Biography
Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on September 18, 1953, conductor John Alexander McGlinn III spent his childhood in the neighboring town of Gladwyn. Without formal instruction, he mastered the piano on his own and later pursued studies in music theory and composition at Northwestern University, completing his degree in 1976. Upon relocating to New York City amid a growing fascination with Broadway’s past, he focused on reconstructing vintage theatrical scores in their authentic versions. His debut project on disc was Songs of New York, issued by Book-of-the-Month Records. In the early 1980s he undertook the extensive task of reclaiming the 1927 score of Show Boat—music by Jerome Kern, words and book by Oscar Hammerstein II—under the initial sponsorship of the Houston Grand Opera. The endeavor produced a touring production that reached Broadway in 1983; five years afterward, McGlinn led the London Sinfonietta and a cast of opera singers through the same restored material for a three-CD EMI Angel release. That label connection originated with a 1985 Carnegie Hall series of lesser-known Kern works staged to mark the composer’s centennial. Under the EMI Angel banner he also prepared a collection of Gershwin overtures and studio-cast editions of Anything Goes, No, No, Nanette, Annie Get Your Gun, Brigadoon, and Kiss Me, Kate. Additional EMI Angel projects included the 1994 Busby Berkeley Album, which drew upon film scores choreographed by Busby Berkeley, notably 42nd Street, with songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. He further contributed to recordings featuring Kiri Te Kanawa, Frederica Von Stade, Kim Criswell, and Thomas Hampson, artists who likewise performed on his own studio-cast discs. Early in the new century the Packard Humanities Institute engaged him to edit the complete output of Jerome Kern and Victor Herbert, yet he left the assignment after a single year to concentrate on the music of Richard Wagner. In the later 2000s he turned to restoring the 1954 Broadway version of Peter Pan for the drama publisher Samuel French. On February 14, 2009, he died suddenly at his Manhattan residence, apparently from a heart attack.
Albums
