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452
MOVING PICTURE WORLD
December 11, 1926
A ISIovelty Orchestra Proposal
Suggestion Offers Clever Variety For Showmen Everywhere
By O. T. TAYLOR
NOVELTY Orchestras are proving very popular all over the country. Even the smaller towns find that a clever Novelty Orchestra is good for one and often two changes a week for a number of weeks. The Novelty Orchestra may be styled the successor to the Jazz Orchestra. We find that the public does not care altogether for Jazz, but that it does enjoy music that strikes a happy average in appeal.
A program as rendered by a Novelty Orchestra will include a semi-classical number, perhaps a pot-pourri of known airs. A ballad or waltz number. A popular song or Fox Trot and for a â– closer, a novelty or comedy number. Then a Jazz burst for an encore.
Variety Is Offered
An entire program of popular numbers is just as impossible as a program of classics. It lacks variety, and varietv is the spice of life.
So the Novelty Orchestra offers variety, and the Novelty Orchestra player must be more than a musician, he must be an entertainer. A cleverly presented novelty or comedy number will invariably "go over" bigger than a fair, or even very good, rendering of a classical number. Consequently the novelty or comedy number is the logical number to use as a closer.
As an entertainer the musician must be able to do a bit of comedy, acting, drollery, pantomime.
A band of musicians sitting stiff-postured on the stage, like so many automatons, may as well play in the orchestra pit. Life, movement, pep, action must be in the make-up of the Novelty Orchestra, otherwise it remains just an ordinary kind. An orchestra, no matter how clever, working in the same set change after change cannot endure. The -public looks for a change in background, in setting, as well as for a change in musical offering. An orchestra repeating the same program would not be tolerated.
The silent drama is presented with music ; take the music away and your patrons would soon object. Yet how many people can recall the best knowl meodies when played to a picture. The public enjoys music, they want imusic with the picture even .CContinued on page 453)