Biography
Harry Breuer first saw the light of day in Brooklyn, New York, on October 21, 1901. Although he began his musical education on violin, he switched to xylophone—an instrument still viewed as a curiosity—while attending high school, which soon opened doors to work with early radio stars the Cliquot Club Eskimos and an assortment of vaudeville ensembles. Engagements with the house orchestras at New York’s Roxy Theater and Radio City Music Hall came next, after which Breuer spent the war years on staff at Warner Bros. and Fox, both scoring studio productions and appearing on camera in several short subjects and educational films. In the mid-1940s he became a staff musician at NBC radio and remained with the network for more than three decades.
Breuer entered the recording field in 1958 with Mallet Magic, a set of percussion instrumentals released on the Audio Fidelity label expressly to illustrate stereo playback; that same year he followed it with Mallet Mischief, an album that would later appear on the cover of Incredibly Strange Music, Vol. 1 and become a collector’s favorite among space-age pop devotees. Roughly ten years afterward he joined electronic pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey to create The Happy Moog for Pickwick. The Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame welcomed him in 1980. He maintained an active performing schedule into his final years, issuing the LP Mallets in Wonderland in 1986, and died in New York City on June 27, 1989.
Breuer entered the recording field in 1958 with Mallet Magic, a set of percussion instrumentals released on the Audio Fidelity label expressly to illustrate stereo playback; that same year he followed it with Mallet Mischief, an album that would later appear on the cover of Incredibly Strange Music, Vol. 1 and become a collector’s favorite among space-age pop devotees. Roughly ten years afterward he joined electronic pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey to create The Happy Moog for Pickwick. The Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame welcomed him in 1980. He maintained an active performing schedule into his final years, issuing the LP Mallets in Wonderland in 1986, and died in New York City on June 27, 1989.
Albums
