Frederick Fennell

Frederick Fennell (July 2, 1914 – December 7, 2004) was an American conductor and one of the primary figures which promoted the Eastman Wind Ensemble as a performing group.

He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the US and abroad.

In Fennell's New York Times obituary, colleague Jerry F. Junkin was quoted as saying "He was arguably the most famous band conductor since John Philip Sousa."

Fennell was born in Cleveland, Ohio.

He chose piccolo as his primary instrument at the age of seven, as drummer in the fife-and-drum corps at the family's encampment called Camp Zeke.

He owned his first drum set at age ten.

In the John Adams High School orchestra, Fennell performed as the kettledrummer and served as the band's drum major.

His studies at the Interlochen Arts Camp (then the National Music Camp) included being chosen by famed bandmaster Albert Austin Harding as the bass drummer in the National High School Band in 1931.

The band was conducted by John Philip Sousa on July 26, the program including the premiere of Sousa's Northern Pines march.

Fennell himself conducted at Interlochen at the age of seventeen.

Fennell formed a compatible and fruitful relationship with the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

As a student, he organized the first University of Rochester marching band for the football team and held indoor concerts with the band after the football season for ten years.

At Eastman, he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees (in 1937 and 1939).

Fennell became the first person to whom the Eastman School of Music awarded a degree in percussion performance.

He was also awarded a fellowship that allowed him to study at the Mozarteum Salzburg in 1938, where he took several courses with Herbert Albert and visited several times with the festival's chief conductor, the renowned Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Returning, he sailed on the SS Bremen (1928) from Southampton on September 3, 1938.

For the purpose of the passenger manifest, he signed his name as Frederick Putnam Fennell (a rare use of his middle name).

Fennell also studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1942 (with classmates Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss and Walter Hendl).

He was appointed Koussevitzky's assistant at the Center in 1948.

During World War II, Fennell served as the National Musical Advisor for the USO (United Service Organizations).

While Fennell was recuperating from hepatitis for six weeks in 1952, the idea for a new, smaller type of symphonic band occurred to him: scaling the typical concert band down to the size of the wind section of a symphony orchestra, allowing for greater clarity and better intonation.

He recruited nearly 40 players in May 1952 for this, explaining, “I chose the best students in the school, the best solo performers and the best ensemble players." On September 20, 1952, he conducted the first rehearsal for this new Eastman Wind Ensemble, and its first concert at Eastman's Kilbourn Hall on February 8, 1953. Desiring expanded repertoire, he wrote to nearly 400 composers around the world commissioning appropriate compositions for the new group. The first three composers to respond were Percy Grainger, Vincent Persichetti and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Conducting the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and various other groups, Fennell recorded many of the standards of the wind band repertoire.

He became one of America's most-recorded conductors.

Starting with "American Concert Band Masterpieces" in 1953, Fennell recorded over 300 compositions on 29 albums for Mercury Records with the Eastman-Rochester "Pops", London "Pops" (actually the London Symphony Orchestra in shirt-sleeves), and free-lance groups of New York musicians.

However, best known are the 22 of the 29 Mercury releases made with Fennell's own Eastman Wind Ensemble.

One of these albums, Lincolnshire Posy, with music by Percy Grainger (recorded in 1958), was selected by Stereo Review magazine as one of the 50 best recordings of the Centenary of the Phonograph 1877-1977.

The two-volume Civil War-Its Music and Its Sounds, recorded in December 1960, was a notable set also made with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, this time performing on period or original instruments.

In 1961, Fennell received a citation and a medal from the Congressional Committee for the Centennial of the Civil War for this album.

Fennell was associate music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the Minnesota Orchestra) from 1962 to 1964.

In September 1965 he became conductor-in-residence at the University of Miami, where he conducted its symphony orchestra and also founded a wind ensemble.

He also served as the resident conductor of the Miami Philharmonic from 1974 to 1975, and as principal guest conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy and Dallas Wind Symphony.

Fennell made the first symphonic digital recording in the United States for Telarc with the Cleveland Symphonic Winds, on April 4–5, 1978.

The recording included the two Suites for Military Band by Gustav Holst.

With the Dallas Wind Symphony, Fennell recorded five programs of music by Nelhybel, Albeniz, Grainger, Bernstein and more, for Reference Recordings.

Fennell also recorded for Brain, Columbia Records, Delos, King, Kosei, Ludwig, Premier Recordings, and Sine Qua Non Superba not to mention the Library of Congress label.

In 1986, 24 Sousa marches performed by the Eastman Wind Ensemble were transferred to compact disc by Philips Records, which now owned the Mercury catalog.

In 2003, the 1958 Mercury album Winds in Hi-Fi was chosen by the National Recording Preservation Board for the National Recording Registry.

Nearly all of Fennell's Mercury recordings were reissued on compact disc.

Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble were also featured in the premiere issuance of Mercury material on compact disc.