"After Sunset--Intermezzo" Edison Concert Band (1908) composer Arthur Pryor скачать в хорошем качестве

"After Sunset--Intermezzo" Edison Concert Band (1908) composer Arthur Pryor

"After Sunset--Intermezzo" Edison Concert Band Edison Gold Moulded Record 9983 1908 Composer is Arthur Pryor Arthur Willard Pryor was born on September 22, 1870, into a musical family in St. Joseph, Missouri. His father Samuel was the town's bandmaster, and brothers Sam Jr. and Walter would also become accomplished musicians. Taking lessons from his father, Arthur learned various instruments in his youth (one of Victor's earliest discs, "A Cork Dance" on seven-inch A-407, features Pryor as a solo pianist). Before he was a teen he won local fame for his skill on the valve trombone but then switched to slide trombone. In the late 1880s he played with the traveling band of Alessandro Liberati (1847-1927) and won fame in the 1890s as first trombonist in the famous Sousa's Band. He became John Philip Sousa's assistant conductor by 1895. Because Sousa viewed the recording medium with disdain, Pryor served as conductor on most Sousa's Band releases prior to the trombonist leaving the band in 1903. He recorded solo performances as well as a duet on Columbia cylinders in 1895 but he was more important as a recording artist on discs, working regularly for Berliner's Gramophone Company beginning in 1897 and continuing with the Victor Talking Machine Company. Upon returning in 1903 from Sousa's third European tour, the trombonist formed his own Pryor's Band, taking from Sousa's Band the euphonium player Simone Mantia, who became Pryor's assistant. Mantia for decades had been first trombone and orchestra manager with the Metropolitan Opera. His knowledge of operatic scores proved invaluable during recording sessions. Pryor made cross-country tours and played regularly on the Boardwalk at Asbury Park, New Jersey; at Willow Grove Park in Philadelphia; and at Royal Palm Park, near Miami. The first public concert was on November 15, 1903 in New York City's Majestic Theatre. From 1920 to 1925 he played summer engagements at Luna Park, Coney Island, New York. Pryor's Band was the most prolific of all so-called military bands to record. When recording in its first years, the band consisted of perhaps 12 to 15 musicians, not the 60-70 players generally used for concerts. No other band recorded so many takes of overtures, finales, marches, rags, two-steps, medleys, fantasias, waltzes, and lancers. By 1907, most military band records issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company were of Pryor's Band (the company used the name Pryor's Orchestra for some performances), and this continued until around 1914 when the Victor Military Band succeeded Pryor's Band as Victor's chief band for recording military band arrangements. By this time demand was high for dance music, and though labels on some Pryor records state "For Dancing," such as on "The Grizzly--Turkey Trot, Barn Dance or Schottische" (the label for this record, Victor 17111, even states "54 bars per minute"), Pryor's was more of a concert band than dance band, and recording sessions became infrequent. A few hundred Pryor compositions were published. He did little recording from 1914 onwards. For long periods no new Pryor records were released. When two new titles were announced in Victor's January 1923 supplement, the writer of that month's promotional literature attempted to reassure readers that military band records are not old-fashioned: "Nothing in music will ever take the place of the military band march." Nonetheless, jazz and dance band records sold well by this time. Military bands were passé. Pryor's Band made a few dozen recordings in the electric era--selections were generally numbers that had been popular decades earlier, such as "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Stars and Stripes Forever," and "The Chimes of Liberty"--but output was miniscule compared to that of earlier decades. The heyday of military bands in general was over. From the point of view of the Victor Talking Machine Company, demand for electric recordings of this type of music was easily met in a mere handful of Sousa's Band as well as Pryor's Band sessions in the mid-1920s. Pryor was a bandmaster on radio. Page 119 of the January 1929 issue of Talking Machine World states, "Arthur Pryor...and his augmented military band of forty-one pieces have been engaged by the De Forest Radio Co. to broadcast a series of weekly concerts over the stations of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Mr. Pryor, who has been engaged for a period of one year, made his debut on the De Forest Hour on Sunday, January 6." H. W. Schwartz states in Bands of America (Doubleday, 1957), "Pryor's last role in radio was as conductor of a large band which presented the popular Cavalcade of Music, sponsored by Du Pont." Pryor went into semi-retirement in the 1930s, living on a farm near West Long Branch, New Jersey, where he died on June 18, 1942.