Product Description
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From sea to shining sea, enjoy this musical tribute that
carries you across 3,000 miles of imagery and song. This film
takes you on a journey that lets your eyes, ears, and heart
experience America. See our landscapes and landmarks; hear the
music that says America the Beautiful in so many different ways.
Includes thirty-three songs, such as: America the Beautiful, New
York, New York, Seventy-Six Troms, Chicago, Amazing Grace,
Shenandoah, Rocky ain High, This Land is Your Land, Star
Spangled Banner, and much more.
About the Actor
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Gerhardt was the first conductor to treat film
soundtracks in the same manner as fine concert music. He
re-recorded the music with a professional orchestra, thereby
encouraging awareness of the many composers writing for the
medium. He began to play the piano at the age of five and was
already composing and orchestrating his scores at nine. His
formal studies were undertaken at the College of William and Mary
and the Juilliard School of Music. During World War II, Gerhardt,
known to his friends simply as Chuck, was a chains assistant.
At the conclusion of the conflict, he enrolled at the
universities of Illinois and Southern California. Upon
graduation, he was hired by RCA Victor to transfer old s
by legendary artists such as Enrico Caruso and British pianist
Artur Schnabel for issue on the new LP formatted vinyl records.
He soon advanced to the mixing and assembly of new s by
such artists as Sir Adrian Boult, Leopold Stokowski, Massimo
Freccia, Alexander Gibson, René Leibowitz, Erich Leindsorf,
Charles Münch, Fritz Reiner, and James Levine. Gerhardt met and
became friends with many of these legendary conductors. Arturo
Toscanini, who had created the NBC Symphony for RCA Victor,
worked with Gerhardt for several years and encouraged him in the
direction of a conducting career. In 1955, Gerhardt left RCA
Victor and began production work for the American Westminster
Company in London and Vienna. When the company went bankrupt,
Gerhardt worked briefly for Bell Sound producing the s
of several pop music artists like Eddie Fischer. In 1960,
Gerhardt returned to RCA Victor and, together with Kenneth
Wilkinson, produced a series of classical music albums that
featured well-known artists for Readers Digest. The first series
of 12 LPs was entitled The Festival of Light. In 1961, Gerhardt
began the work that was to make him legendary when, substituting
for a contracted conductor who had to cancel at the last moment,
he led the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with a pencil at a
session in the Walthamstow Assembly Hall. By 1964,
Gerhardt had assembled, together with Sydney Sax, an orchestra
they named the National Philharmonic, which brought together many
of the finest musicians in London. With this group, Gerhardt
created more than 600 albums for Readers Digest over the next 12
years. In 1968, Gerhardt recorded the first of his albums of film
scores, entitled Great Music from the Movies, which included a
17-minute suite arranged by Gerhardt of Korngolds music for the
film Kings Row. In 1972, because of the success of the film music
arrangements, RCA contracted Gerhardt to produce a series of
s, entitled Classic Film Scores. The first of these was
the music for the film Sea Hawk by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The
composers son, George Korngold, became the producer for the
12-album series, which included music by Alfred Newman, Max
Steiner, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, and
John Williams. Gerhardt used the National Philharmonic and
prepared suites of the music when the original composer had not
done so. Gerhardt would meet with the composers and discuss with
them the forms these arrangements should take, to remain faithful
to their intentions. Many of Gerhardts suites continue to be used
in concert performances.
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About the Director
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Chris Valentini also directed: Splendors of Nature
(Video documentary) (1996); Great Wonders of the World (TV Series
documentary) (1993); and Scenic Wonders of America (TV Series)
(1992).
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