"According to the annotations on this Klavier CD, Anderson made 30 arrangements for band. Thirteen of them can be heard here. The non-Anderson arrangements are those of Bugler’s Holiday and A Trumpeter’s Lullaby, but they are certainly in the Anderson style. He was, not surprisingly, no less skilled with a band than he was with an orchestra, and I am sure bandmasters, who need as much good repertoire as they can find, are grateful for it. Bruce Leek, the engineer on this recording, once told me that if he likes the sound of a hall, he’ll move the mikes back to get more hall sound; if the hall is not to his taste, he’ll move in to minimize its bad influence. I don’t know where he stationed them in DiCicco Hall in Indiana, Pennsylvania, but he sure seems to have hit upon a sweet spot, for I think this is a gorgeous recording and a pleasure to listen to just for its own sake, even without the sympathetic performances. Perhaps a contributing factor was that the conductor, Jack Stamp, is himself an experienced recording producer. The best tribute I can pay to Stamp (and Anderson) is that I didn’t even miss the orchestral originals one bit."

FANFARE: James Miller