When Kansas City saxophonist Dr. Nathan Davis accepted a position at the University of Pittsburgh’s music school in 1969 as a professor of Jazz, he felt the city needed a large Jazz ensemble to be “artistic ambassadors” representing Pittsburgh’s monumental Jazz legacy. After working throughout the 1970s to establish the annual Pitt Jazz Seminar, which included some of the most impressive Jazz lineups of that era, Dr. Davis was ready to pursue his goal of having a Jazz big band that represented Pittsburgh’s great Jazz heritage. By the mid 1980s, he had chosen 16 of the city’s top Jazz musicians and The Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra was a reality with Dr. Davis setting out to get the band off the ground.

In 1986, the PJO had their first fundraising gig which featured The Modern Jazz Quartet, while George Benson played another event with the band later that year. The band included some of the very best Jazz musicians from Pittsburgh: Danny Conn, Chuck Austin, Dr. Nelson Harrison, Joe Dallas, Harold Betters, Joe Harris, Johnny Costa, Randy Purcell, Ray DeFade Sr. and Sandy Staley among others. Dr. Davis wanted the band to have salaries that included a pension plan and medical benefits.

Unfortunately, the funding climate for such a band in the mid 1980s was not favorable and the band did not last very long, as economic realities of that time proved to be too much.

When Warren, OH native and trumpeter, Sean Jones, accepted a job teaching Jazz at Duquesne University in the early 2000s, he also saw the same need that Dr. Davis saw two decades earlier. Jones knew that the only way to have a successful, working large Jazz ensemble would be to have the band become a 501C-3 non-profit organization. The PJO incorporated and has been grateful for all its supporters.

In the summer of 2009, with the blessing of Dr. Nathan Davis, Jones officially reformed the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra. The band’s first performance was at the annual Highland Park Reservoir of Jazz in the city’s Highland Park. The new PJO also secured a home at the newly built August Wilson African American Cultural Center on Liberty Ave downtown. Performing 4-5 concerts per year from the fall of 2009 through 2014, the PJO welcomed some of The Music’s Grand Masters as guests including NEA Jazz Masters Benny Golson and Jimmy Heath – both of whom composed original works commissioned by the PJO - Christian McBride, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Hubert Laws, Freddy Cole, Rufus Reid, Roger Humphries, Rene Marie, Allan Harris, Kim Nazarian, Ann Hampton-Calloway, and David and Maureen Budway. The band has been featured on both the MCG Jazz concert series at Manchester Craftsman’s Guild and the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, as well as presenting a Jazz education series for kids on behalf of Jazz at Lincoln Center at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh and collaborating with The Dance Theater of Harlem.

In 2014, the PJO recorded a holiday album, Joyful Jazz, for the MCG Jazz label. The album was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the year’s 10 Best New Holiday recordings. Joyful Jazz welcomes guest vocalists Freddy Cole and Maureen Budway, along with brand new arrangements from band members Mike Tomaro, Jeff Bush and Jay Ashby.

Current members of the PJO represent not only an intergenerational cross section of the Pittsburgh Jazz scene, but also most of the area’s institutions of higher learning including, Duquesne University, West Virginia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Slippery Rock University, West Virginia Wesleyan, as well as The Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts and The Afro-American Music Institute.