- My Beloved
- Hey, Professor!
- Devotion
- Night Train
- Mine At Last
- Reflection
- Whirlwind
- Whirlwind (Reissued Version)
- Devotion (Vocal Version)
Sugar and Spice
Once a member of San Francisco's enormous Italian community, composer
Otto Cesana (1899 - 1980)
caused a good deal of controversy during his heyday, particularly among
the crowd that likes to put labels on musical bottles. No less an
expert than
Leonard Feather thought
Cesana was worthy of an entry in the 1960 Encyclopedia of Jazz, published several years after
Cesana himself decided to travel to Italy. Yet
Feather
admits the man's work is "better judged by classical standards and
involves no jazz improvisation." While defining jazz has always been a
bit tricky, the presence of improvised sections is indeed an important
if not requisite characteristic.
Cesana most likely got the nod from
Feather because his most famous composition is entitled "Symphony in Jazz."
Other classical composers heavily influenced by jazz --
Darius Milhaud or
Karlheinz Stockhausen, for example -- do not show up in
Feather's reference. But other blockades await as
Cesana
is herded over to the classical ranch. Noted Brazilian music critic
José Domingos Raffaelli feels the composer should be associated with
lighter forms of music, writing "...in my opinion easy listening music
is the kind of music played by the string orchestras of
Mantovani,
Otto Cesana,
David Rose,
Peter Yorke, and others." Even without a clear consensus of how he should be categorized,
Cesana
also caused a form of retrospective controversy with the titles of his
other compositions, particularly a piano roll entitled "Negro Heaven."
Cesana
began his study of the piano in 1909. One fact beyond dispute is that
the man liked to learn; he had many teachers and became adept at organ,
orchestration, and harmony. He turned out compositions and arrangements
for radio stations and the Hollywood film studios and began premiering
his original works in the early '40s at prestigious venues such as New
York City's Town Hall. The direction taken by his subsequent recording
career tends to underscore the comments of Raffaelli. For example,
Cesana was contracted by Columbia alongside company such as
Ray Conniff.
Clearly it was the easy listening, lounge, and bachelor pad/hi-fi crowd
that was being aimed at, not serious modern classical listeners.
