Growing up on Chicago's South Side, Ed Bland began music as a jazz clarinetist.  Jazz greats Gene Ammons and Benny Green were his first mentors.  His musical heroes were Duke Ellington and Art Tatum. As a teenager, Bland hid backstage at local clubs so that he could listen to Stuff Smith, Earl Bostic, and others as they worked and jammed.  

During a break in a jam session with Tatum, Bland happened to hear a recording of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Hearing that landmark work ignited an interest that Bland still continues to develop and investigate--the possibility of composing in newer and larger forms while maintaining the life and vitality of jazz.  Bland initially began to model his compositions on the jam session, incorporating aspects of the grammatical and structural practices of atonality, neo-classicism, serialism, neo-romanticism, and minimalism.

Ed Bland studied composition with John Becker and attended the University of Chicago, where he studied musicology and philosophy.  John Dewey's philosophical works and Charles Seeger's musicological essays helped him codify his views on extended musical form.  Also crucial to his development was Henry Sopkin, conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Bland's concert works have been performed by Speculum Musicae, the Group for Contemporary Music, the American Brass Quintet, the Sonor Ensemble, the Baltimore Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Memphis Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Yale University Wind Ensemble, and the Hungarian Clarinet Choir.  His music has been heard on radio throughout the United States and Europe.

Bland's sense that the Black American experience was a formal as well as a cultural phenomenon was expressed in the film, THE CRY OF JAZZ (1959), which he coproduced with the late Nelam Hill.  Pioneer American filmmaker, Williard Van Dyke, while head of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, described THE CRY OF JAZZ as "the most prophetic film in film history as it predicted the riots in the 60s and 70s and gave the basis for them."  This film continues to be shown by film societies and museums throughout the United States, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.  

Bland's continuing interest in urban social concerns shows itself in his political theater piece, THE NEW WORLD ORDER, which later evolved into the opera ASSASSINS OF THE SOUL.

Bland's command of jazz allowed him to make a living in the record industry as a composer, arranger, and producer of urban-generated forms of Black music, such as Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Jazz, Funk, Rock & Roll, and Urban Blues.  Some of the artists with whom he has worked are George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Country Joe and the Fish, Al Hirt, Richie Havens, The Hesitations, Junior Wells, and Buddy Guy.

From 1974-78, Ed Bland was head of A&R, Executive Producer and Producer for Vanguard Records. From 1979-81, he served as Presidential Commissioner on the White House Record Library Commission.

A resident of Los Angeles since 1984, Bland composed the score for the PBS Television Network specials, A RAISIN IN THE SUN and THE HOUSE OF DIES DREAR. He served as orchestrator on Columbia Picture's A SOLDIER'S STORY. Frequently interviewed on nationally syndicated radio shows like the Studs Terkel Show and the NPR and Pacifica Radio networks, Bland's recording on the Cambria label, URBAN CLASSICAL-THE MUSIC OF ED BLAND (CD-1026), is heard often on the airwaves.

Other recordings of his works include DANCING THROUGH THE WALLS for flute and Virtual Percussion Ensemble (Delos Records), MAYA ANGELOU - BLACK PEARLS (Rhino Records), and DIZZY GILLESPIE - SOULED OUT (GWP Records).

He is currently recording his opera, ASSASSINS OF THE SOUL, and a CD of new piano works for Cambria Records.