New All Anderson Complete Works on CD
Leonard Slatkin / Leroy Anderson / Naxos

Leonard Slatkin will conduct all of Leroy Anderson’s works with the BBC Orchestra for the Naxos label, in honor of Leroy Anderson’s Centennial year. The five discs will be released individually. The first recording session took place April 24, 2006. The final recording session will take place in the Fall of 2007.

New Leroy Anderson DVD
"Once Upon A Sleigh Ride"
The Life and Music of Leroy Anderson

One hour video documentary about the life and music of Leroy Anderson with two hours of rare bonus features.

For the Anderson Centennial the award-winning PBS program "Once Upon a Sleigh Ride" about the music and life of Leroy Anderson, has been released on DVD. Since first broadcast on Public Television in 1999, the show has aired on PBS stations more than 1,500 times. The program features the Boston Pops Orchestra under the batons of Keith Lockhart, John Williams and the late Arthur Fiedler performing Anderson's music, along with interviews about the composer with colleagues, including actress Elaine Stritch, the late conductor Skitch Henderson, and choreographer Mark Morris, whose Sandpaper Ballet uses eleven Anderson works.

This DVD contains over an hour of previously unreleased bonus material. There are two rare television programs about Anderson that have not been seen in over 30 years: a 1961 television program in which Anderson conducts the CBS Orchestra, and a 1970 televised interview show with Anderson at his Woodbury, Connecticut home playing piano and discussing his music.

This DVD is available for purchase.

New All-Anderson Recordings
Jelani Eddington on Theatre Pipe Organ
RJE Productions, RJE-1908A, RJE-1908B

Award-winning theatre organist Jelani Eddington has just released a 2-volume CD compilation of Leroy Anderson music. Blue Tango and its companion disc Sleigh Ride contain 50 compositions and over 2 hours of music, making them the most comprehensive collection of Leroy Anderson's music ever recorded, and the only such recording performed on the theatre organ.

Additionally, these discs contain the first ever recording of two compositions Leroy Anderson wrote specifically for the organ: "Easter Song" and "Cambridge Centennial March Of Industry."

The albums were recorded on the world's largest theatre pipe organ: a five-manual, 80-rank Wurlitzer installed in the residence of Jasper & Marian Sanfilippo in Barrington, Illinois. Theatre pipe organs were developed in the early 20th century to replicate the sounds of the orchestra. Through the instruments' many orchestral voices (such as strings, reeds, flutes) as well as various tuned percussion instruments (including the marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel, and celesta), and traps and effect (such as the snare drum, wood block, triangle, tap cymbal, slide whistle, etc.), the theatre pipe organ stands in the unique position of being the only self-contained acoustic musical instrument capable of faithfully recreating orchestral music, and thereby a perfect choice for recording the music of Leroy Anderson.

The albums contain the following titles:

Blue Tango (Volume One):

Blue Tango, Clarinet Candy, The First Day Of Spring, The Phantom Regiment, The Syncopated Clock, The Waltzing Cat, Music From "Goldilocks" - (The Pussy Foot, Lazy Moon, Town House Maxixe, Shall I Take My Heart And Go?, I Never Know When To Say When), Pirate Dance, Pyramid Dance, The Golden Years, The Typewriter, A Trumpeter's Lullaby, Ticonderoga March, The Penny-Whistle Song, The Irish Suite (The Irish Washerwoman, The Minstrel Boy, The Rakes Of Mallow, The Wearing Of The Green, The Last Rose Of Summer, The Girl I Left Behind Me), Serenata, Arietta, The Captains And The Kings, Easter Song.

Sleigh Ride (Volume Two):

Sleigh Ride, Belle Of The Ball, Summer Skies, Buglers' Holiday, Jazz Pizzicato, Jazz Legato, The Scottish Suite (The Blue Bells Of Scotland, Turn Ye To Me), Home Stretch, The Girl In Satin, Horse And Buggy, China Doll, Promenade, Forgotten Dreams, Fiddle Faddle, The Song Of The Bells, Sandpaper Ballet, Saraband, Plink, Plank, Plunk, Baladette, Cambridge Centennial March Of Industry, Piano Concerto In C for Piano And Orchestra

Review excerpt: "the absolute staggering magnitude of what Jelani has accomplished.... a recording that is in such a class of its own that I rank it among the six or seven finest examples of music played on the [theatre] organ that I have ever heard...then Jelani takes it to a level that is almost unbelievable in musical complexity and sheer brilliance, by recording Leroy Anderson's entire Piano Concerto in C Major by himself. Yes, Virginia, the complete and complex orchestra part and the entire solo piano, are all flawlessly integrated into an end result of lavish color, texture, and virtuosity."

Lyn Larsen
Journal of the American Theatre Organ Society, August 2006

These albums are available at www.rjeproductions.com.




Home Page
Home

About Leroy Anderson
Biography
Photo Gallery
Bibliography
Appreciation

Contact Woodbury Music Company
and the Leroy Anderson family
Contact

Site Map