Ferrante & Teicher

Ferrante & Teicher ranked among the decade's highest-selling easy listening ensembles, supplying understated renditions of well-known classical selections, film themes, Broadway numbers, and comparable material. Arthur Ferrante came into the world on September 7, 1921, in New York City, while Louis Teicher was born August 24, 1924, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; the two first encountered each other as students at the distinguished Juilliard School of Music. Recognized early as piano prodigies, they formed an immediate rapport and appeared together regularly even before graduation. Once they finished their piano degrees, both accepted faculty appointments at Juilliard yet continued refining a personal approach during off hours. They turned professional in 1947, beginning with nightclub dates before shifting to orchestral classical programs and later adopting standards by Kern, Porter, Gershwin, and Rodgers that secured their place in the pops-orchestra circuit.

Concurrently with their concert activity, the pair investigated prepared pianos after an unexpected encounter with ideas from avant-garde composer John Cage. Inserting paper, sticks, rubber, wood blocks, metal bars, chains, glass, mallets, and assorted objects among the strings, together with further techniques, allowed them to craft an array of unconventional textures that at moments suggested percussion instruments and at others produced an airy, nearly electronic atmosphere. In the second half of the 1950s they captured several projects in this manner for Westminster, most prominently Soundproof and Soundblast in 1956, plus additional titles for ABC-Paramount that included Blast Off! in 1958. The results remained strikingly singular and stood apart from their later catalog, attracting attention chiefly from audiophiles and space-age pop listeners.

United Artists signed the duo in 1960, prompting an immediate adjustment toward wider commercial appeal. Numerous ensuing albums featured orchestras under the direction of Nick Perito, and their instrumental pop style gained swift acceptance. A Top Ten pop entry arrived later that year with "Theme from 'The Apartment'," followed by their strongest chart performance—an arrangement of Ernest Gold's sweeping film theme "Exodus" that rose to number two and inspired a popular jazz reading by saxophonist Eddie Harris. In 1961 they scored another Top Ten single with the West Side Story selection "Tonight," featured on their highest-placing LP, West Side Story and Other Motion Picture & Broadway Favorites, which reached number ten. Roughly thirty of the many albums they issued across the 1960s appeared on the pop charts through 1972. They sustained an intensive touring regimen that exceeded one hundred concerts annually at the peak of their popularity and registered one final Top Ten single in 1970 with the movie-theme reading "Midnight Cowboy," whose accompanying album introduced limited guitar treatments.

Recording output slowed during the 1970s, though releases continued on a steady schedule. They departed United Artists in 1979 to launch their own label and withdrew from live performance altogether in 1989, settling in Sarasota, Florida. The lounge and exotica revival of the 1990s rekindled interest in their early experimental work, resulting in the first commercial appearance in 2001 of Denizens of the Deep, a group of treated-piano pieces originally conceived to evoke sea creatures and representing their earliest recordings, which dated from 1950 yet had been abandoned in favor of an extended concert tour. For the eventual release, Ferrante & Teicher supplied a handful of modest additions to the archival tapes that realized their initial conception of the material.