John Sebastian (classical harmonica player)

John Sebastian (born John Sebastian Pugliese; April 25, 1914 − August 18, 1980) was an American musician and composer known as a master of the classical chromatic harmonica.

He was the first harmonicist to adopt an all-classical repertoire and, along with Larry Adler and Tommy Reilly, established the harmonica as a serious instrument for classical music.

In addition to performing, Sebastian increased the range of classical music available for the harmonica by transcribing numerous existing classical works for the harmonica, composing works of his own, and commissioning or otherwise encouraging other composers to write for the instrument.

Sebastian was born John Sebastian Pugliese on April 25, 1914, into a wealthy Italian banking family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his father was a bank president.

Later in life, Sebastian truncated his name to "John Sebastian."

He is sometimes called "John Sebastian Sr."

to distinguish him from his rock musician son John Benson Sebastian; however, the Sr./ Jr. designation is not strictly correct as his son has a different middle name.

As a boy, Sebastian became interested in the harmonica, which in the 1920s was being promoted to Philadelphia youth through bands and contests organized by philanthropist Albert N. Hoxie and sponsored by the Philadelphia Rotary Club and Musical League.

The harmonica was seen as a cheap instrument, easy to learn and play, that could provide young people with both a social outlet and the basic musical knowledge to stimulate their interest in learning more "important" instruments such as piano and violin.

In 1924, approximately 10,000 boys participated in the citywide harmonica contest, and by 1926, an estimated 70,000 Philadelphia boys were members of harmonica groups.

Sebastian's harmonica skills were quickly recognized.

He joined Hoxie's Philadelphia Harmonica Band, an elite ensemble of 50 to 60 boys that traveled the country and played for presidents, visiting dignitaries, and special events such as the Philadelphia celebration of Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight.

He also worked for several seasons as an instructor at Hoxie's summer harmonica camp, teaching other boys to play.

By age 12, he was featured as a soloist with John Philip Sousa's band.

In 1930, at age 16, Sebastian won the citywide contest and was named Philadelphia's harmonica champion.

His prize included a one-week engagement at the Mastbaum Theatre, then the largest and most lavish movie theater in Philadelphia, for which he was paid $125.

Rejecting a management request that he play the popular "St. Louis Blues," he chose instead to play an adaptation of pianist Alexander Borovsky's composition "Adoration", which was well received by the audience.

Despite this early success, Sebastian's father did not want his son to have a musical career and instead encouraged his interests in history and Renaissance art.

Sebastian began his harmonica soloist career in the late 1930s playing nightclubs and cabarets, where his repertoire initially included swing music.

Because very little classical music had been written for the harmonica, Sebastian painstakingly transcribed and adapted suitable works that had been composed for other wind instruments or for violin.

Between his club dates, he rehearsed for three hours a day and worked on his transcriptions.

As each new adaptation was complete, he added it to his repertoire, until within a few years, his sets consisted solely of classical music.

He refused to compromise by playing "swing" versions of the classics, and even turned down a Hollywood contract because he would not have control over the musical selections he would play.

Sebastian graduated from Haverford College in 1936 and studied abroad in Rome and Florence in preparation for a foreign service career, although he was still interested in the harmonica.

On the ship back to the United States, he met and was encouraged by Broadway composers Rodgers and Hart, and some time thereafter decided to make the harmonica his career.

His choice of material enhanced his reputation as a nightclub performer, and by the early 1940s he regularly appeared at elite clubs such as Café Society and the rooms at the Pierre, Waldorf and St. Regis hotels in New York City, and the Palmer House in Chicago.

Despite Sebastian's nightclub success, he aspired to perform in a concert setting (which his contemporary Larry Adler had already accomplished), and to have the harmonica accepted as a serious instrument by classical music critics and the concert-going public.

In order to achieve his goals, Sebastian had to overcome the prevalent view of a harmonica as a "lowly" instrument with little musical value.

From the 1940s through the 1960s, he toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada, giving concerts and recitals.

He performed in a wide range of settings, including appearances with major orchestras, community concerts staged at local churches and high schools, and other stage productions such as a revue produced by Vincent Youmans.

He also frequently appeared on radio, including performances with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and a fourteen-week series of solo programs over the Blue Network, and later on television.

With the assistance of his manager, André Mertens of the prestigious Columbia Artists Management, in 1941 he debuted as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

Following this breakthrough, Sebastian transitioned from nightclubs to the concert stage.

The program was billed as his "debut" in a positive New York Times review by critic Ross Parmenter, even though by then he had already performed as a soloist with a number of major orchestras, and in 1946 had given a previous recital at the Town Hall with Virgil Thomson and Leonard Bernstein.

Parmenter noted that Sebastian, rather than trying to hide the fact that the harmonica was a "small-toned" instrument, made its sound "smaller than need be by the way he envelops it in his hands" and that he worked for "subtlety and poetry within a small dynamic range."

He toured internationally throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances in Europe as well as the Far East and Africa.

He appeared not only in major cities such as Seoul and Tokyo, but also in less traveled areas such as Okayama, Japan, where he was enthusiastically welcomed by children studying harmonica as part of a program to re-establish music education in local schools.

In December 1954, he gave a full-length classical music recital at The Town Hall in New York City, then considered essential for an American soloist.

In 1954, Sebastian was one of five American musicians invited to visit West Germany as guests of the Federal Republic of Germany; this marked the first time a foreign government had acted as host to American artists.

He is the father of singer-songwriter John B. Sebastian, a founder of the popular 1960s folk rock band The Lovin' Spoonful.