A Trip to Coney Island

Musiche di: Theodore Moses Tobani, D.W. Reeves, Andrew Herman, C.L. Barnhouse, T.H. Rollinson, Albert C. Sweet
In 1884, writing in Harper's Weekly, Leon Mead estimated that more than 10,000 bands were active throughout the United States. From the largest cities to the smallest village, bands were an important thread in the fabric of American life. During the period from around 1880 to 1920, sometimes called the "Golden Age of American bands," thousands upon thousands of original works and arrangements for band were published. All but forgotten now in that parade of marches, waltzes, cornet solos, and transcriptions of opera overtures was a genre of program music known by the bandsmen of the period as "descriptives" or "descriptive overtures." -George Foreman