Leslie De'Ath completely gives into a whim with this album of his favorite pieces by English composer/pianist Billy Mayerl. Mayerl isn't well known outside of England, but in the 1920s and '30s, and afterward, he was on the radio, popular in London's music theaters and operating a correspondence course to teach tens of thousands of people syncopation via records and booklets. His lasting legacy, however, has been not his theater works or songs for radio and film, but his piano music. "Whimsy" is a word that suits this music ...
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Leslie De'Ath completely gives into a whim with this album of his favorite pieces by English composer/pianist Billy Mayerl. Mayerl isn't well known outside of England, but in the 1920s and '30s, and afterward, he was on the radio, popular in London's music theaters and operating a correspondence course to teach tens of thousands of people syncopation via records and booklets. His lasting legacy, however, has been not his theater works or songs for radio and film, but his piano music. "Whimsy" is a word that suits this music more than any other. Mayerl began his schooling as a classical pianist, but even as a teenager worked in hotels and cinemas, quickly picking up the music that was coming over from America. The variety of his music -- even within a single two- or three-minute piece -- reflects a mixture of the traditional and popular, classical, and jazz, high brow and low, that "resists easy categorization," as De'Ath states in his notes. The livelier pieces, like Postman's Knock, Antiquary, or...
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