Big Band
Big band is jazz played by a large ensemble of ten or more musicians, split into saxophone, trumpet, trombone and rhythm sections.
Because so many players are involved, the music is mostly written out in arrangements, with sections trading riffs and leaving gaps for improvised solos. Big bands dominated American popular music during the swing era of the 1930s and early 1940s, playing for dancers in ballrooms. The term names the kind of group more than one style, and big bands have also played bebop, Latin jazz and modern concert works.
Artists it is known for: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller.
- Family
- Jazz & Blues
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United States, 1910s
- Also called
- jazz orchestra, swing band
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 4%
About 3,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have big band among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Big Band artists
Frank Sinatra
Ella Fitzgerald
Dean Martin
Billie Holiday
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
Bobby DarinThe big band artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.