Nathaniel Shilkret

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Nathaniel Shilkret (1920s)

Nathaniel "Nat" Shilkret (born December 25, 1889 in New York City as Naftule Schüldkraut , † February 18, 1982 ibid) was an American musician, orchestra conductor, composer and music manager.

Live and act

Shilkret comes from a musical family who immigrated from Austria: his father played numerous instruments; most of his siblings were also active as musicians. In 1895 he learned the clarinet and violin; two years later he also took piano lessons. In 1896 he went as a member of the New York Boys' Symphony Orchestra with this on a nationwide tour; In 1902 he was announced by the orchestra as a nine-year-old "phenomenon on the clarinet". In 1905 he belonged to the Russian Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra of Arnold Volpe, in 1907 to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (where he appeared under the direction of Vasily Safanow and Gustav Mahler ). For the next decade he was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Orchestra of Victor Herbert , the Grand Concert Band of John Philip Sousa and the ensembles of Arthur Pryor and Edwin Franko Goldman . He also worked for Walter Damrosch and accompanied Isadora Duncan .

In 1915 he worked as an arranger and conductor for the foreign department of the Victor Talking Machine Company (which later became RCA Victor ). In 1921 he led the Shilking Orchestra together with Eddie King , with which it also made recordings. Since 1923 he has conducted the orchestra of John Philip Sousa on recordings. In 1924 he formed his Victor Salon Orchestra , which recorded popular music in novel arrangements. In 1926 he became the head of popular music for Victor .

Shilkret (with baton) and the Victor Salon Orchestra (around 1925)

With his orchestra and other ensembles, he made several thousand recordings and appeared on the radio since 1925, first on WEAF Radio, then on NBC in Eveready Hour and numerous advertising-sponsored programs. Members of his orchestra included Jimmy Dorsey , Tommy Dorsey , Benny Goodman , Lionel Hampton , Glenn Miller , Artie Shaw , Mike Mosiello and Del Staigers.

Shilkret was involved in numerous innovations in the field of sound recording , in particular the first "electrical recording" in 1925 and a recording in 1932 in which the earlier (acoustic) recorded voice of Enrico Caruso was electrically recorded together with an orchestra. He also conducted the Paul Whiteman orchestra in 1927 on the “electric” re-recording of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue . He received a posthumous Grammy for his recording of Gershwin's An American in Paris in 1929 .

Shilkret worked with George Gershwin, Jascha Heifetz , Mischa Elman and Andrés Segovia as well as with opera singers such as Rose Bampton , Feodor Chaliapin , Miguel Fleta , Amelita Galli-Curci , Mary Garden , Beniamino Gigli , Maria Jeritza , Giovanni Martinelli , John McCormack , Grace Moore , Jan Peerce , Lily Pons , Rosa Ponselle , Elisabeth Rethberg , Tito Schipa or Lawrence Tibbett .

Shilkret moved to Los Angeles in 1935 to intensify its collaboration with the film industry. For RKO Pictures he wrote the music for films such as That Girl from Paris (1936), Mary of Scotland (1936), Swing Time (1936, Oscar for best song), Winterset (1936, Oscar nomination) and Hitting a New High (1937). He was also involved in the music production of Dick & Doof films at MGM : in The Bohemian Girl (1936) as a composer, in other films such as Way Out West (1937) and Swiss Miss (1938) as a conductor. He was also responsible for the music for animated films by Walter Lantz such as The Mysterious Jug (1937) or The Lamplighter (1938).

In the 1940s he founded his Nathaniel Shilkret Music Company (1940) to produce the music for MGM films and for RKO-Pathe. He also played recordings for Capitol Records . In the 1950s he was mainly active as a conductor. In 1963, after the death of his wife, he retired and moved back to New York.

Compositions

African serenade . Composition by Shilkret, which he recorded with his orchestra in 1930

Shilkret composed and arranged thousands of popular pieces of music. He also added pieces by the German composer Paul Preil to his repertoire. In 1924 he arranged the then popular The Prisoner's Song . His best-known song was The Lonesome Road (1927), which was first sung by his co-author Gene Austin and was used in the final scene of Show Boat in 1929 before it became the pop and jazz standard and, for example, by Louis Armstrong , Bing Crosby , Frank Sinatra and Paul Robeson was interpreted. He also wrote the theme song Lady Divine for a Oscar winning period film The Divine Lady ( The Divine Lady , 1929). The theme song for Children of the Ritz (1929), Some Sweet Day , was also very successful. The sheet music of his composition Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time sold nearly two million copies; The song was covered by artists as diverse as Louis Armstrong, Skitch Henderson , Guy Lombardo , London Philharmonic Orchestra , John McCormack, Mitch Miller , Hugo Montenegro , The Platters and Lawrence Welk . The song If I Should Send a Rose , written together with Robert Lewis Shayon , also proved to be successful.

Shilkret had already written his symphonic poem Skywards in 1928 . From the 1940s he returned to composing classical works. In 1942 he wrote his Concerto for Trombone for Tommy Dorsey. After the world premiere with Dorsey, the sheet music was lost, so the concert was not performed again until 2003 (with Jim Pugh as the soloist). With Arnold Schoenberg , Darius Milhaud , Alexandre Tansman , Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco , Ernst Toch and Igor Stravinsky , he wrote the Genesis Suite in 1944 , which was premiered in Los Angeles in 1945 and recorded on record in 1945 and 2000. Further performances took place in 1947 and 2008. He also wrote the Southern Humoresque for violin and orchestra.

Prizes and awards

In 1934 Shilkret was awarded an honorary degree in music from Bethany College in Kansas. He received a total of five Grammys.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Nat Shilkret  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Cf. Nathaniel Shilkret (Niel Shell and Barbara Shilkret, eds.): Nathaniel Shilkret: Sixty Years in the Music Business. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland, 2005, ISBN 0810851288
  2. ↑ In fact, he was three years older. He also made himself three years younger in his autobiography, although contradictions arose. See Jeff Hopkins liner notes on Nat Shilkret and the All Star Orchestra: More Than Satisfied
  3. ↑ Niel Shell: Nathaniel Shilkret. A Most Prolific and Diverse Creator of Recorded Sound . In: ARSC Journal. Volume 39, 2008, pp. 80-90.
  4. ↑ See Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  5. ↑ Tim Gracyk, Frank W. Hoffmann: Popular American recording pioneers, from 1895 to 1925. London, New York 2000, p. 302
  6. ^ Entry in the Victor Library of the University of California, Santa Barbara University Library , accessed September 5, 2012
  7. ↑ Gracyk, Hoffmann: Popular American recording pioneers, from 1895 to 1925. P. 302f.
  8. ↑ Since then the work has been played more than sixty times.
  9. ↑ See also Gracyk, Hoffmann: Popular American recording pioneers, 1895-1925. P. 303 and Genesis Suite (1944) . In a fire in Shilkret's house, the notes were lost; the new recording by Naxos is based on a partially reconstructed score.
personal data
SURNAME Silkret, Nathaniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shilkret, Nat; Schüldkraut, Naftule
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician, composer, conductor, and record producer
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1982
Place of death New York City