Denizens Of The Deep

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2001

Label: Varèse Sarabande

When Art Ferrante & Lou Teicher received a phone call early in 1950 from National Concerts And Artists Corp., booking them for 233 concerts, little did they know they were about to become the two busiest pianists in the entertainment world!

Ferrante & Teicher literally dropped everything they were doing to prepare for what would become a 40-year whirlwind career. An analysis of the history of those four decades reveals 4,500 concerts, 5 record labels (that produced 190 F & T albums) and dozens of television and radio appearances, totally consuming their careers until their retirement in 1989.

Eleven years later, in 2000, I discovered an old 7” unlabeled reel-to-reel tape. Fascinated by the tape’s weird piano sounds, I sent copies to Ferrante & Teicher.

Both Art & Lou were stunned upon hearing the tape! It was the recording they made of their ‘gimmicked’ twin-pianos, during their Juilliard School of Music days! They recalled ‘having a ball’ inserting rubber mutes, paper wads, chains and strips of wood or glass across the strings — plucking, strumming the strings, etc. What they had just heard was that forgotten 18-minute tape of their first-ever recording!

And so, filled with memories, they decided to recapture that sound. Out of retirement they came, and back into the studio they went! Seven days later they had applied 18 more minutes to the original tape. Searching for a title, they decided that each weird sound represented a class of aquatic occupant; hence the title — DENIZENS of the DEEP!

Jokingly, Ferrante & Teicher refer to 50 years ago as their ‘first childhood.’ When asked why, they answer — “We’re now in our second childhood!”

— Scott W. Smith, manager

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