One of the most successful conductors and arrangers in the history of music, especially in the field of light and pop music, Andre kostelanetz He was born on December 22, 1901 in Saint Petersburg. His prominent and wealthy family had to flee Russia in 1922 after the Russian Revolution, arriving in the United States that same year.
Kostelanetz began to play music in his childhood as a member of the Petrograd choir. Eventually he would become the leader of the choir. When he arrived in the United States, he did not initially find work as a director or arranger, so he had to act as an accompanist. In 1924, he made his radio debut, conducting an orchestra.
André Kostelanetz he arranged classical pieces as light music, bringing the music to a wide, middle-educated audience, who would not normally have heard such music. He harnessed the power of radio and adapted his arrangements to the conventions of mass communications.
In the 1930s, he assembled a 65-instrument orchestra, which turned out to be the largest orchestra to be broadcast on the radio, on the national show. Andre Kostelanetz Presents. In the mid-1930s, he was one of the most popular radio stars in the United States, as evidenced by the number of awards he won and the rankings he topped. In 1943, a poll of American and Canadian audiences praised him for his support of popular and serious music.
Not only was he popular, he was also very innovative. Kostelanetz understood the potential of recording as a way to expose music to the mass audience. Consequently, he also understood the technological needs of recording, and helped promote the value of recording engineers. But his most notable technological advance was his invention of a mechanical tuning instrument that would tell musicians whether they were in tune or not. The device was adapted by the military and used as a way to track submarines.
Kostelanetz it never lost its popularity, even as musical styles changed dramatically over the next four decades. Throughout his career, he sold more than 52 million records. He continued to perform classical pieces, as well as musical and popular songs until his death on January 132, 1980.