Ferrante & Teicher

Ferrante & Teicher in 1969.

Ferrante & Teicher were a duo of American piano players, known for their light arrangements of familiar classical pieces, movie soundtracks, and show tunes.

Career

Arthur Ferrante (September 7, 1921, New York City – September 19, 2009), and Louis Teicher (August 24, 1924, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – August 3, 2008) met while studying at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.[1][2] Musical prodigies, they began performing as a piano duo while still in school. After graduating, they both joined the Juilliard faculty.

In 1947, they launched a full-time concert career, at first playing nightclubs, then quickly moving up to playing classical music with orchestral backing. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith relates the story that in the 1950s the two students practiced in the home of his grandmother Constance Neidhart Tallarico.[3] Between 1950 and 1980, they were a major American easy listening act, and scored four big U.S. hits: "Theme From The Apartment" (Pop #10), "Theme From Exodus" (Pop #2), "Tonight" (Pop #8), and "Midnight Cowboy" (Pop #10).[4] They performed and recorded regularly with pops orchestras popular standards by George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others. In 1973, they did the Hollywood Radio Theater theme for the Rod Serling radio drama series, The Zero Hour.[5][6]

The duo also experimented with prepared pianos, adding paper, sticks, rubber, wood blocks, metal bars, chains, glass, mallets, and other found objects to piano string beds. In this way they were able to produce a variety of bizarre sounds that sometimes resembled percussion instruments, and at other times resulted in special effects that sounded as if they were electronically synthesized.[7]

Both men were initiated as honorary members of Tau Kappa Epsilon at Central State University (now University of Central Oklahoma) while on tour.

Ferrante and Teicher ceased performing in 1989 and retired to Longboat Key and Siesta Key, respectively, close to each other on the west coast of Florida. They continued to play together occasionally at a local piano store.

CDs of their music, some of it not previously released, have continued to appear.[8]

Louis Teicher died of a heart attack in August 2008, three weeks before his 84th birthday.[9] Arthur Ferrante died of natural causes on September 19, 2009 at the age of 88[10] (he had once said he wanted to live one year for each piano key). Arthur is survived by his wife, Jena; his daughter, Brenda Eberhardt; and two granddaughters.[11]

Discography

Hit Singles

Year Single Chart positions
US US – AC CB
1960 "Theme From the Apartment" 10 - 9
"Exodus" 2 - 1
1961 "Love Theme from One Eyed Jacks" 37 - 39
"Gone With the Wind" - - 110
"Theme from Goodbye Again" 85 - 84
"Tonight" 8 2 6
1962 "Smile" 94 18 93
"Street of Palms" - - 133
"Lisa" 98 - 81
"Negligee" - - tag
"Lida Rose" - - 144
"Theme from Taras Bulba" 116 - 107
1963 "Theme from Lawrence of Arabia" 84 - 102
"Antony and Cleopatra Theme" 83 - 115
"Crystal Fingers" 127 - 132
1964 "The Seventh Dawn" 124 - -
1965 "The Greatest Story Ever Told" 101 - 143
1966 "Khartoum" - 21 -
"A Man and a Woman" - 24 -
1967 "Live For Life" - 27 -
1969 "Midnight Cowboy" 10 2 10
1970 "Lay Lady Lay" 99 16 71
"Pieces of Dreams" - 28 -
1971 "The Music Lovers" - 39 -
1972 "Love Theme From the Godfather" - 28 110
1973 "Last Tango In Paris" - - 115

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Track appearances

References

  1. ↑ Lanza, Joseph (2004). Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong. University of Michigan Press. pp. 98–100. ISBN 978-0-472-08942-0.
  2. ↑ Whitburn, Jowl (2004). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. Billboard Books. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-8230-7499-0.
  3. ↑ Davis, Stephen; Aerosmith (2003). Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith. It Books. pp. 19–20. ISBN 978-0-06-051580-5.
  4. ↑ Smith, Jeff (1998). The Sounds of Commerce. Columbia University Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-231-10863-8.
  5. ↑ Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press. p. 744. ISBN 978-0-19-507678-3.
  6. ↑ Speer, David (June 1974). "Curtain Going Up-In Minnesota". The Rotarian: 33.
  7. ↑ Huey, Steve; Rovi. "Ferrante & Teicher Biography". CMT. Retrieved 28 October 2010.
  8. ↑ "NME Artists". NME.
  9. ↑ Thedeadrockstarsclub.com 1 - accessed April 2011
  10. ↑ Thedeadrockstarsclub.com 2 - accessed April 2011
  11. ↑ Arthur Ferrante dies at 88, Los Angeles Times

External links

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