Andre Kostelanetz (Russian: Абрам Наумович Костелянец, December 22, 1901 – January 13, 1980) was a Russian-born American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music.Andre Kostelanetz (Russian: Абрам Наумович Костелянец, December 22, 1901 – January 13, 1980) was a Russian-born American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music.
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Abram Naumovich Kostelyanetz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia to a prominent Jewish family. He was a cousin of physicist Lew Kowarski. His father, Nachman Yokhelevich (Naum Ignatyevich) Kostelyanetz was active on St. Petersburg stock exchange; his maternal grandfather, Aizik Yevelevich Dymshitz, was a wealthy merchant and industrialist, engaged in timber production. Kostelanetz escaped in 1922 after the Russian Revolution.
He arrived in the United States that year, and in the 1920s, conducted concerts for radio. In the 1930s, he began his own weekly show on CBS, Andre Kostelanetz Presents. Kostelanetz was known for arranging and recording light classical music pieces for mass audiences, as well as orchestral versions of songs and Broadway show tunes. He made numerous recordings over the course of his career, which had sales of over 50 million and became staples of beautiful music radio stations. For many years, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in pops concerts and recordings, in which they were billed as Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra.
Andre Kostelanetz may be best known to modern audiences for a series of easy listening instrumental albums on Columbia Records from the 1940s until 1980. Kostelanetz actually started making this music before there was a genre called “easy listening”. He continued until after some of his contemporaries, including Mantovani, had stopped recording.
Outside the United States, one of his best known works was an orchestral arrangement of the tune “With a Song in my Heart”, which was the signature tune of a long-running BBC radio program, at first called Forces Favourites, then Family Favourites, and finally Two Way Family Favourites.
He commissioned many works, including Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, Jerome Kern’s Portrait of Mark Twain, William Schuman’s New England Triptych, Paul Creston’s Frontiers, Ferde Grofé’s Hudson River Suite, Virgil Thomson’s musical portraits of Fiorello La Guardia and Dorothy Thompson, Alan Hovhaness’s Floating World, and Ezra Laderman’s Magic Prison. William Walton dedicated his Capriccio burlesco to Kostelanetz, who conducted the first performance and made the first recording, both with the New York Philharmonic.
His last concert was A Night in Old Vienna with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at that city’s War Memorial Opera House on December 31, 1979.
His first wife was actress/singer Sarah Loy; they were married from 1923 to 1937, when the marriage was dissolved. He was then married to soprano Lily Pons from 1938 to 1958, when the marriage was dissolved. They owned a home in Palm Springs, California which was built in 1955. In 1960 he married Sara Gene Orcutt; the marriage lasted several years.
His brother Boris Kostelanetz (1911–2006) was a prominent tax defense lawyer.
Kostelanetz died of pneumonia in Haiti on January 13, 1980, at the age of 78. (by wikipedia)
And here we can hear him with many compositions by Jerome Kern:
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as “Ol’ Man River”, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”, “A Fine Romance”, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “All the Things You Are”, “The Way You Look Tonight”, “Long Ago (and Far Away)” and “Who?”. He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg.
A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern’s musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kern’s songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes. (by wikipedia)
First release on 78 rpm in 1946 (four shellac records)
Personnel:
Andre Kostelanetz And His Orchestra
Tracklist:
01 Smoke Gets In Your Eyes 4.38
Medley 1 (4.45):
02.1. Yesterdays
02.2. I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star
02.3. The Song Is You
Medley 2 (4.14):
03.1. The Night Was Made For Love
03.2. She Didn’t Say Yes
03.3. All The Things You Are
Medley 3 (4.25):
04.1. Look For The Silver Lining
04.2. They Didn’t Believe Me
04.3. Long Ago (And Far Away)
Medley 4 (4.47):
05.1. I Dream Too Much
05.2. The Jockey On The Carousel
Medley 5 (4.47):
06.1. Why Was I Born?
06.2. The Way You Look Tonight
06.3. Who?
Medley 6 (4.18):
07.1. Only Make Believe
07.2. Bill
Medley 7 (4.34):
08.1. Why Do I Love You?
08.2. You Are Love
08.3.Ol’ Man River
List of the musicals from which the tracks were taken from:
1: “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and “Yesterdays” taken from “Roberta” (1933).
2: “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star” and “The Song Is You” from “Music In The Air” (1932)
3: “The Night Was Made For Love” and “She Didn’t Say Yes” taken from “The Cat And The Fiddle” (1931). “All The Things You Are” taken from “Very Warm For May” (1939)
4: “Look For The Silver Lining” taken from “Sally” (1920). “They Didn’t Believe Me” taken from “The Girl From Utah” (1913). “Long Ago (And Far Away)” taken from the movie “Cover Girl” directed by Charles Vidor (1944).
5: “I Dream Too Much” and “The Jockey On The Carousel” taken from the movie “I Dream Too Much” directed by John Cromwell (1935).
6: “Why Was I Born?” taken from “Sweet Adeline” (1929). “The Way You Look Tonight” taken from the movie “Swing Time” directed by George Stevens (1936). “Who?” taken from “Sunny” (1925).
7 & 8: “Only Make Believe”, “Bill”, “Why Do I Love You?”, “You Are Love” and “Ol’ Man River” taken from “Show Boat” (1927).Recorded in March-April 1946, except tracks 7 and 8 recorded in December 1945.
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Original front + backcover from 1946:
Mick Abrahams’ return album, “All Said and Done”, is as fine as anything he has ever done. This is an excellent blues album, with fourteen tracks comprised of seven tunes written by Mick (two of which were collaborations with Gordon ‘Mississippi’ Murphy), two new arrangements of traditional pieces, and five covers of older blues pieces.
ManyFantasticColors 