Glenn Miller band at PICC on July 2

[VeeVee]

Anyone attending this concert in period clothing?

www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?publicationSubCategoryId=70&articleId=812859




MANILA, Philippines - The music scene will reverberate with the unique and timeless sound of the big band and swing era in the ’40s when one of the greatest bands of all time, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, comes for a two-night dance-concert tour that will kick off on July 2 at the Plenary Hall of the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex in Pasay City.

Performing with the world-famous orchestra are the Swing Kittens as the reincarnation of the celebrated Andrews Sisters, while Filipino balladeer Arthur Manuntag will be featured as special guest.

The dance-concert series ends with a show on July 3 at the Waterfront Hotel & Casino in Cebu City.

Considered as the most popular big band in the world today for both concert and swing dance engagements, the Glenn Miller Orchestra will take the audience back in time as it re-creates the distinctive sound of the big band through an array of its vintage World War II hits and other popular tunes from the Great American Songbook.

The musical event to be mounted by Ovation Productions promises a truly entertaining evening as the 17-piece orchestra faithfully depicts the Glenn Miller band’s instrumentation and style.

The audience will be enthralled by a flamboyant and spectacular performance with the band opening with Moonlight Serenade, then shifting to a fast-paced repertoire of jazz, swing, classics and traditional big-band numbers.

Other songs that the orchestra is expected to play are In The Mood, Pennsylvania 6-5000, Chattanooga Choo Choo, A String of Pearls, At Last, (I’ve Got A Gal In) Kalamazoo, American Patrol, Tuxedo Junction and Little Brown Jug, among others.

The Philippine dance-concert engagement is part of the band’s current world tour that averages 300 live dates as it celebrates 75 years of existence and achievements in popular music under the leadership and inspiration of its founder and original member, Glenn Miller, America’s big-name headliner in the big band-swing era.

The American jazz musician (trombone), arranger, composer and band leader from Clarinda, Iowa had been recognized for pursuing his musical career with great fervor and intensity until he was able to lift himself and his band to a lofty position among the finest groups of the Big Band Era.

He hit it big in 1938 with a revamped orchestra that drew attention to its unique sound arranged around a clarinet and tenor saxophone playing the melody while three other saxophones played the harmony.

The band instantly gained popularity and began breaking attendance records all up and down the East Coast and at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, where it attracted the largest dance crowd in the city’s history.

It recorded a string of chart-topping songs such as Tuxedo Junction, which sold 115,000 copies in the first week; In The Mood and Pennsylvania 6-5000, all of which appeared in the RCA Victor Bluebird label. From 1939 to 1940, the band racked up eight million-selling records and 23 chart-toppers.




Miller’s rise to fame continued when he topped all other bands in the Sweet Band Poll of Down Beat Magazine in the early 1940. He hosted the Moonlight Serenade radio series which aired three times a week over CBS.

On Dec. 15, 1944, Miller boarded a transport plane in England for a flight over the English Channel to France, where he planned to join up with his service band to perform for the soldiers who had just liberated Paris. The plane never made it and no trace of its crew and passengers, including Miller, was ever found.

Despite the death of Miller at the age of 40, his music lives on in several reincarnations of his orchestra.

The original band was reformed a number of times and, since 1956, has continued to record and perform under the direction of various leaders and is still consistently touring major cities all over the world.

Hollywood contributed to the popularity of the band and its founder with the 1953 release of The Glenn Miller Story, a partly fictionalized film biography starring James Stewart.

(Glenn Miller Orchestra Live In Manila! is presented by Ovation Productions. Tickets to the PICC concert on July 2 are available through Ticketnet or Ticketworld. For ticket inquiries and reservations, call Ticketnet at 911-5555 or Ticketworld at 891-9999.)

[VeeVee]

manilaconcertscene.blogspot.com/2012/06/glenn-miller-orchestra-live.html

[labrador]

in uniform? hehe

[VeeVee]

Works best if the wives and girlfriends could attend in period attire too

[VeeVee]

A post-concert review/article...


lifestyle.inquirer.net/56692/glenn-miller-in-content-and-context


Glenn Miller in content and context
By: Benito J. Legarda Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer

The concert at the PICC Hall on July 2 of the “Legendary Glenn Miller Orchestra” was remarkable for both content and context.
The content was, of course, what has been called the Big Band sound, propagated in the late ’30s and early ’40s by Miller and others like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

Miller made a special contribution, what he called in the biographical movie starring James Stewart “the sound,” which he finally found to his satisfaction when he gave the melody to the soothing clarinets rather than the brash trumpets.

The context was that brave time in human history during which their music flourished. The publicity spoke of remembering World War II. But one must go beyond such labels for its deeper significance. It was not just another hegemonic war (although that aspect could not be avoided) but a titanic struggle against so much that was evil—Nazism, Fascism, militarism.

The generation that fought and won that epic battle was later called the Greatest Generation, and the Big Band sound was the music that accompanied it to the field of combat.

The World War II generation is said to number only three percent of this country’s population today, but the music evidently had its attractions for later generations, to judge by the multi-generational audience that filled the PICC Hall. They applauded the numbers they knew, singing along to familiar songs, including an 86-year-old lady who sang from the beginning of the concert.
Room was made on the sides of the stage for those who wanted to dance. At first there was a couple doing the Boogie and then a woman dancing alone. But it was not very easy getting there from the seats, and after a while the dancing stopped.

The orchestra was generous in offering a solid evening of music, two halves of about an hour and a quarter each, preceded by an hour-long performance by our own very good singer Arthur Manuntag. He, knowingly or not, harked back to World War II when he did “You’ll Never Know,” the very first song hit to come to liberated Manila in 1945.

Three pretty young girls called the Swing Kittens did the songs of the Andrews Sisters, the WWII reminder being “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” of Company B. Seeing their smart uniforms, one could envision a whole youthful generation marching off in the cause of freedom.

Also reminiscent of the war years was American Patrol and the St. Louis Blues March, done by Miller when he was drafted into the US Air Force.

Not all the selections were from that era. There was “What a Day This Has Been” from “Brigadoon,” many years after the war. On the other hand, one missed the Miller standard “The Little Brown Jug.”

There was a very brief version of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” which, if it were a food item, would have been labeled a tasting portion.

Perennial favorite “Stardust” was played, like everything else, beautifully, but the arrangement omitted the nostalgic introduction.

“Perfidia” took one back to prewar Manila, where even those who spoke no Spanish could understand it.

The most applauded piece was the lively “In The Mood,” which climaxed the first part, and reminded one of Manila’s street mockery. In 1945, the chorus was furnished the words “GI Joe, you wanna pam-pam?” repeated four times.

Also reminiscent of Manila street mockery was the Swing Kittens’ “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” which in prewar Manila was given Tagalog words, “Anong Ganda Mo? Mukha Kang Kabayo.” Nothing escaped Manila’s street mockery.

“Tuxedo Junction” was almost hypnotic with its repeated first bars periodically punctuated by brilliant trumpet-playing.

For the rest, one sat back and let the Glenn Miller sound, with the assistance of two soloists, male and female, engulf one in the old favorites—“A String of Pearls,” “At Last,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “Chatanooga Choo-Choo”—which for a certain generation will forever be waiting on Track 29, with the station clock stopped at a quarter to four.

The last number on the regular program was the signature song par excellence “Moonlight Serenade,” the epitome of the Miller sound that would linger long and dreamily in the afterglow of memory.

[labrador]

Nice that one of our new guys, Nicky Ong attended this in uniform. Apparently (judging from the FB pics) the "andrews sisters" clones got a kick out of it.