Barons of The Sky: From Early Flight to Strategic Warfare : The Story of The American Aerospace Industry

With the support of the American State Department, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, including new members Joe Morello and Eugene Wright, began a major tour of Europe early in 1958. Their first concert in the Netherlands was held on 26 February in the legendary Concertgebouw Hall in Amsterdam, usually reserved for performances of classical music. Since 1951 and the collaboration between Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, the band had gained a stunning reputation. In 1954, Dave Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Rumor has it that Duke Ellington knocked on Brubeck’s hotel door to congratulate him. Brubeck is said to have responded, “It should have been you.” He dedicated one of his most famous pieces, “The Duke”, included on this album, to his fellow pianist.

Aaron Copland did as much as anyone in establishing American concert music on the world stage, and his ballet scores proved to be among his most important and influential works. Grohg is the most ambitious example of his Parisian years, a precociously brilliant one-act ballet scored for full orchestra, inspired by the silent expressionist film Nosferatu. The first example of Copland’s new ‘Americanized’ music of the 1930s was Billy the Kid, based on the life of the 19th century outlaw and heard here in its full version. This was the first fully fledged American ballet in style and content: brassy, syncopated, filmic and richly folk-flavoured.