Ratibor, Germany, marked the birthplace of this highly productive arranger and orchestrator on April 29, 1930. After relocating from Europe to the United States in 1959, he established ties with the Verve label, contributing arrangements to projects involving Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, among them the 1967 release Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim—the initial collaboration of two between the pair—as well as Astrud Gilberto, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz, Cal Tjader, and additional prominent figures. His earlier collaborations with producer Creed Taylor across multiple Verve titles throughout the 1960s extended after Taylor launched the A&M-affiliated CTI imprint, where Ogerman handled arrangements for releases such as Jobim's classic Wave, issued in 1967 as merely the second album on the CTI roster.
In subsequent decades extending into the twenty-first century, Ogerman functioned as arranger, orchestrator, and/or conductor for recordings by artists including George Benson, Michael Brecker, Danilo Perez, and Diana Krall, securing a Grammy for his work on the title track of Krall's 2009 bossa-themed Quiet Nights. A repeated Grammy nominee, he had earlier received the award for arranging guitarist Benson's "Soulful Strut" on the 1979 album Livin' Inside Your Love. He also gained recognition for his arrangements supporting pop performers, his original scores composed chiefly for German films during the 1950s and 1960s, and his output as a classical composer; in the instance of 1982's Cityscape, co-billed with saxophonist Brecker, he served as composer, arranger, and conductor for a well-received classical-jazz hybrid concerto. Claus Ogerman passed away on March 8, 2016, in Germany at the age of 85.
