Bright and Breezy is an installment in the Guild label's exhaustive survey of the genre known as light music in Britain and (since the 1960s) easy listening in North America. The Guild series is a superb accomplishment, combining research, musical sensitivity, and engineering skills in the service of an almost-forgotten genre. The roots of easy listening music lay in the incidental music played by hotel, cafe, and cinema orchestras in the first few decades of the 20th century, and the genre lasted well into the 1970s as the careers of such figures as
Percy Faith,
Mantovani, and
André Kostelanetz neared their ends. Except for two 1930s recordings, which are interesting but don't quite fit with the rest of the music, the pieces on Bright and Breezy all date from between 1957 and 1960. The collection is somewhat random, and they're certainly not all bright and breezy. This is the period in which the style entered a somewhat extreme phase as it attempted to compete with the carnality of rock & roll, and unusual orchestral effects were the order of the day. Sample the contribution by the Starlight Symphony under British conductor Cyril Ornadel (who lived until 2011); his version of Begin the Beguine, track 12, with its multiple instrumental layers arising out of the opening Latin percussion, would have been well known to American audiences. Latin influences appear in several pieces, and cinematic styles are heard in many more, such as the Melachrino Orchestra's Ragazza Romana (track 5). One attraction of this disc is the inclusion of several groups from non-English-speaking countries, such as the Brussels New Concert Orchestra (represented twice) and the miniature light-music symphony at the end by Ernst Fischer, played by a German group conducted by Bruno Seidler-Winkler. This may not be the ideal place to start with Guild's series (shoot for
A First A-Z of Light Music, or one of the 1940s or 1950s collections), but the already converted will find many pleasures here. ~James Manheim