The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The ASO's main concert venue is Atlanta Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center.
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC Symphony performed weekly radio concert broadcasts with Toscanini and other conductors and served as house orchestra for the NBC network.
The Nutcracker is an 1892 two-act "fairy ballet" set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination. The music is by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, his Opus 71. The plot is an adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The ballet's first choreographer was Marius Petipa, with whom Tchaikovsky had worked three years earlier on The Sleeping Beauty, assisted by Lev Ivanov. Although the complete and staged The Nutcracker ballet was not as successful as the 20-minute Nutcracker Suite Tchaikovsky had premiered nine months earlier, The Nutcracker soon became popular.
Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers.
Robert Lawson Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He was known for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard of his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards throughout his career.
"The Little Drummer Boy" is a popular Christmas song written by American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. First recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family, the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale; the Simeone version was re-released successfully for several years, and the song has been recorded many times since. In the lyrics, the singer relates how, as a poor young boy, he was summoned by the Magi to the Nativity of Jesus. Without a gift for the Infant, the little drummer boy played his drum with approval from Jesus's mother, Mary, recalling, "I played my best for him" and "He smiled at me".
"(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays" is a popular song, commonly associated with the Christmas and holiday season. The lyrics detail the joys of being in your home community during the holidays and give examples of how some people will travel long distances to be with their loved ones. The music was composed by Robert Allen, with the lyrics written by Al Stillman. The song was published during 1954.
This album is a 1950 recording of selections from George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, sung by the noted opera stars Robert Merrill and Risë Stevens. The album featured no black singers at all, even though the opera was written for a mostly African-American cast. It was recorded by RCA Victor on September 12 and September 13, 1950. The album was originally released on one twelve-inch 331⁄3 rpm LP with the catalog number LM 1124.
"Mary's Boy Child", also known as "Mary's Little Boy Child", is a 1956 Christmas song, written by Jester Hairston. It is widely performed as a Christmas carol.
Robert Spano is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and music director laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO).
Judith Blegen is an American soprano, particularly associated with light lyric roles of the French, Italian and German repertories.
Dynagroove is a recording process introduced in 1963 by RCA Victor that, for the first time, used analog computers to modify the audio signal used to produce master discs for LPs. The intent was to boost bass on quiet passages, and reduce the high-frequency tracing burdens (distortion) for the less-compliant, "ball" or spherical-tipped playback cartridges then in use. With boosted bass, tracing demands could be reduced in part by reduced recording levels, sometimes supplemented by peak compression. This added top-end margin permitted selective pre-emphasis of some passages for greater perceived (psychological) brilliance of the recording as a whole. As with any compander, the program material itself changed the response of the Dynagroove electronics that processed it. But, because the changes were multiple and algorithmic, RCA justifiably referred to the analog device as a computer.
John T. Halloran was an American composer and choral director. He died at 81 of a stroke.
Alice Parker is an American composer, arranger, conductor, and teacher. She has authored five operas, eleven song-cycles, thirty-three cantatas, eleven works for chorus and orchestra, forty-seven choral suites, and more than forty hymns, all original compositions. Also to be noted are wealth of arrangements based on pre-existing folk-songs and hymns, many of which were produced in collaboration with Robert Shaw. Parker is best known for these kinds of arrangements of spirituals, mountain hymns, and folk songs, early-American hymns, and international folk-songs, most notably in French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Ladino.
The Robert Shaw Chorale was a renowned professional choir founded in New York City in 1948 by Robert Shaw, a Californian who had been drafted out of college a decade earlier by Fred Waring to conduct his glee club in radio broadcasts.
Merry Christmas is a compilation album by Bing Crosby that was released in 1945 on Decca Records. It has remained in print through the vinyl, CD, and downloadable file eras, currently as the disc and digital album White Christmas on MCA Records, a part of the Universal Music Group, and currently on vinyl as Merry Christmas on Geffen Records. It includes Crosby's signature song "White Christmas", the best-selling single of all time with estimated sales of over 50 million copies worldwide. The album was certified 4× Platinum by RIAA for selling over 4 million copies in United States. The original 1945 release and subsequent re-releases and re-packages spent a total of 39 weeks at no. 1 on the Billboard pop albums chart.
Manhattan Tower is a composition written by Gordon Jenkins in the 1940s and first issued to the public in 1946 as a two-disc 78-rpm set on the Decca label, DA-438. It was considered quite innovative for its time and was quite warmly received by critics and the public alike. Jenkins also performed the suite in its entirety on the very time-conscious Toast of the Town, hosted by Ed Sullivan, on February 26, 1950. An expanded 90-minute live musical dramatization, featuring Peter Marshall and Helen O'Connell, was presented as an NBC Saturday Spectacular on October 27, 1956.
Robert Wendel is an American composer of classical music.
The discography of Sergio Franchi, the Italian-American tenor (1926–1990), consists of a total of thirty-five albums: Two live albums, and thirty-three studio albums. The studio albums are further identified as collaborations, and nine are compilation albums. The Live category included an LP album (1965) and a CD album of selected songs extracted from Franchi's twenty-four Live TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. This discography also includes thirty single and EP albums recorded or released in various venues.
Perry Como Sings Merry Christmas Music was Perry Como's first Christmas album, originally issued by RCA Victor as a 78 RPM album set in 1946. The original release included "O Little Town of Bethlehem" which was replaced in 1947 by Irving Berlin's famous song "White Christmas". This album, along with Como's later stereophonic Christmas albums, Season's Greetings from Perry Como and The Perry Como Christmas Album, from 1959 and 1968 respectively, are among the best-selling Christmas albums of all time. RCA has reissued Merry Christmas Music on LP, tape and compact disc several times.
