“Stella by Starlight” was written by Victor Young for the 1944 film The Uninvited, with lyrics by Ned Washington added later. It became a jazz standard through recordings by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and countless others, and it’s considered a rite of passage because of its winding, non-repeating chord progression.
The form is 32 bars in an ABCD-style layout, usually in Bb major, but the tune doesn’t announce Bb for a while. It opens with a minor ii-V (Eø, A7), then shifts to Cm7 and F7, followed by Fm7 to Bb7 into Ebmaj7, and then Ab7. The middle sections climb through G7#5, Cm7, Ab7 and then a long Bbmaj7 moment before the closing sequence walks through a series of ii-Vs back to Bbmaj7. Very little repeats, which is why it’s a great tune for building your ii-V vocabulary.
Improvisation approach: break the tune into two-bar ii-V chunks and treat each as its own mini-key. Eø to A7 points to D minor, Cm7 to F7 points to Bb, Fm7 to Bb7 points to Eb, and so on. Over the Ab7 chords, use Ab Lydian dominant; they’re “backdoor” dominants that resolve to Bb. Try playing a single ii-V lick and moving it through every key the tune visits. That’s how the bebop players learned to sound fluent on it.
Common mistake: treating the opening Eø as a “home” chord. It’s actually the start of a ii-V toward the relative minor, so let your line feel like it’s moving forward. Memorizing the progression as a series of ii-Vs, rather than isolated chords, is the single biggest shortcut to playing this tune well.
Practice slowly. Play roots, then guide tones (thirds and sevenths) through the whole form. Then arpeggiate each chord ascending, then descending. Listen to Miles Davis’s 1958 live recordings for a lyrical model. Read more about the composer on Victor Young’s Wikipedia page, and find more challenging standards explained on Minedit.