| Biography | André Kostelanetz ( December 22, 1901 January 13, 1980) was a popular orchestral music conductor and arranger, one of the pioneers of easy listening music.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Kostelanetz escaped in 1922 after the Russian Revolution. He arrived in the United States that year, and in the 1920s, conducted concerts for radio. In the 1930s, he began his own weekly show on CBS, André Kostelanetz Presents.
Kostelanetz was known for arranging and recording light classical music pieces for mass audiences, as well as orchestral versions of songs and Broadway show tunes. He made numerous recordings over the course of his career, which had sales of over 50 million and became staples of beautiful music radio stations.] For many years, Kostelanetz also conducted the New York Philharmonic in pops concerts and recordings, in which they were billed as Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra.
André Kostelanetz may be best known to modern audiences for a series of easy listening instrumental albums on Columbia Records from the 1940s until 1980. Kostelanetz actually started making this music before there was a genre called "easy listening". He continued until after some of his contemporaries, including Mantovani, had stopped recording.
Outside the United States, one of his best known works was an orchestral arrangement of the tune "With a Song in my Heart", which was the signature tune of a long-running BBC radio program, at first called Forces Favourites, then Family Favourites, and finally Two Way Family Favourites.
He was the first husband of actress/singer Sarah Loy; they were married from 1923 to 1937 when the marriage was dissolved.He was the second husband of the soprano Lily Pons; they were married from 1938 to 1958, when the marriage was dissolved.
|