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Vinyl L.P - Columbia Records - C 30097
1970 - U.S.A
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Back cover
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Labels
Liner notes:
Produced by Irving Townsend
Arranged & Conducted by Percy Faith
Engineering / Jack Lattig & Bill Driml
Side 1
Let It Be
Here, There And Everywhere
Norwegian Wood
Michelle
The Ballad Of John And Yoko
Something
Side 2
Eleanor Rigby
Because
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Yesterday
The Fool On The Hill
Soloists:
Buddy Childers / flugel horn
Dick Nash / trombone
Ted Nash / alto saxophone and flute
Erno Neufeld / violin
Cover Photos / Brian Hennessey
Design / Virginia Team
The Percy Faith Strings, born a dozen years ago in a golden and inevitable album we called Bouquet, are, indeed, the essence of the Percy Faith writing. In four wedges of first and second violins, violas and cellos, forty-eight of the finest string players in the world spread out from the podium like four exquisite ribs in a delicate fan of sound—a Beatle ballad as familiar as a friend woven into counter melodies so precisely right that they too sound familiar. Then, the startling individuality of a flugel horn, an alto sax, a trombone or a flute appears warm and confidential, then disappears again into the flowing strings. Percy Faith, the composer, the arranger, the conductor, distills in this orchestra these complimentary talents, which, for him, are best expressed by the bows of a family of strings.
The songs of The Beatles, which “play for strings” was the criterion. The most memorable and meaningful compositions of the past decade of important music are the program. To some these performances simply reinforce what they have always known—that these songs are beautiful. To some others this new and flattering expression of the songs brings, at last the new realization. To me, and probably to you, the setting fits the gem, and the listening is lovely.
And isn’t it nice to know that not everything in the air waters the eyes, stings the membranes, shatters the atmosphere? This graceful, airborne music enhances our environment and charms the surface of the earth just as Thoreau’s flute, floating above Walden, charmed the perch in the pond.
Irving Townsend
ReplyDeletePercy Faith (April 7, 1908 – February 9, 1976) was a Canadian–American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of instrumental ballads and Christmas standards.
He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format.
He became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s.
Although his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the swing era, he refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s.
Faith died of cancer in Encino, California, and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.