Music of Baltimore

Music and Musical traditions of Baltimore

The music of Baltimore, the largest city in Maryland, can be documented as far back as 1784, and the city has become a regional center for Western classical music and jazz. Early Baltimore was home to popular opera and musical theatre, and an important part of the music of Maryland, while the city also hosted several major music publishing firms until well into the 19th century, when Baltimore also saw the rise of native musical instrument manufacturing, specifically pianos and woodwind instruments. African American music existed in Baltimore during the colonial era, and the city was home to vibrant black musical life by the 1860s. Baltimore's African American heritage to the start of the 20th century included ragtime and gospel music. By the end of that century, Baltimore jazz had become a well recognized scene among jazz fans, and produced a number of local performers to gain national reputations. The city was a major stop on the African American East Coast touring circuit, and it remains a popular regional draw for live performances. Baltimore has produced a wide range of modern rock, punk and metal bands and several indie labels catering to a variety of audiences. Music education throughout Maryland conforms to state education standards, implemented by the Baltimore City Public School System. Music is taught to all age groups, and the city is also home to several institutes of higher education in music. The Peabody Institute's Conservatory is the most renowned music education facility in the area, and has been one of the top nationally for decades. The city is also home to a number of other institutes of higher education that have music programs, the largest being nearby Towson University. The Peabody sponsors performances of many kinds, many of them classical or chamber music. Baltimore is home to the Baltimore Opera and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, among other similar performance groups. Major music venues in Baltimore include the nightclubs and other establishments that offer live entertainment clustered in Fells Point and Federal Hill.

The documented history of music in Baltimore extends to the 1780s. Little is known about the cultural lives of the Native Americans who formerly lived along the Chesapeake Bay, prior to the founding of Baltimore. In the colonial era, opera and theatrical music were a major part of Baltimorean musical life, and Protestant churches were another important avenue for music performance and education. Baltimore rose to regional performance as an industrial and commercial center, and also become home to some of the most important music publishing firms in colonial North America. In the 19th century, Baltimore grew greatly, and its documented music expanded to include an abundance of African American music, and the city's denizens played a crucial role in the development of gospel music and jazz. Musical institutions based in Baltimore, including the Peabody Institute and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, became fixtures in their respective fields, music education and Western classical music. Later in the 20th century, Baltimore produced notable acts in the fields of rock, R&B and hip hop.

Local music in Baltimore can be traced back to 1784, when concerts were advertised in the local press. These concert programs featured compositions by locals Alexander Reinagle and Raynor Taylor, as well as European composers like Frantisek Kotzwara, Ignaz Pleyel, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Giovanni Battista Viotti and Johann Sebastian Bach. Opera first came to Baltimore in 1752, with the performance of The Beggar's Opera by a touring company. It was soon followed by La Serva Padrona by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the American premier of that work, Maryland was the only state to so openly flout the ban, giving special permission to the Maryland Company in 1781, to perform both in Baltimore and Annapolis. Shakespearean and other plays made up the repertoire, often with wide ranging modifications, including the addition of songs. The managers of the Maryland Company had some trouble finding qualified musicians to play in the theatre's orchestra. The Maryland Company and the American Company performed sporadically in Baltimore until the early 1790s, when the Philadelphia Company of Alexander Reinagle and Thomas Wignell began dominating, based out of their Holliday Street Theater. In the late 18th century, Americans like William Billings were establishing a bold, new style of vocal performance, markedly distinct from European traditions. John Cole, an important publisher and tune collector in Baltimore, known for pushing a rarefied European outlook on American music, responded with the tunebook Beauties of Psalmody, which denigrated the new techniques, especially fuguing. Cole continued publishing tunebooks up to 1842, and soon began operating his own singing school. Besides Cole, Baltimore was home to other major music publishers as well. These included Wheeler Gillet, who focused on dignified, European style music like Cole did, and Samuel Dyer, who collected more distinctly American styled songs. The tunebooks published in Baltimore included instructional notes, using a broad array of music education techniques then common. Ruel Shaw, for example, used a system derived from the work of Heinrich Pestalozzi, interpreted by the American Lowell Mason. Though the Pestalozzian system was widely used in Baltimore, other techniques were tried, such as that developed by local singing master James M. Deems, based on the Italian solfeggi system. Baltimore's Eubie Blake, born in 1883, became a musician at an early age, hired as a house musician at a brothel, run by Aggie Shelton. He perfected his improvisational piano style, which used ragtime riffs, and eventually completed "The Charleston Rag", in 1899. With compositions like that, Blake pioneered what would eventually become known as the stride style by the end of the 1890s; stride later became more closely associated with New York City. With his own technique, characterized by playing the syncopation with his right hand and a steady beat with the left, and became one of the most successful ragtime performers of the East Coast, performing with prominent cabaret entertainers Mary Stafford and Madison Reed.

Baltimore was also home to the piano building businesses of William Knabe and Charles Steiff. Knabe emigrated to the United States in 1831, and he founded the firm, with Henry Gaehle, in 1837. It began manufacturing pianos in 1839. The company became one of the most prominent and respected piano manufacturers in the country, and was the dominant corporation in the Southern market. The company floundered after a fire destroyed a factory, and the aftermath of the Civil War lessened demand in the Southern area where Knabe's sales were concentrated. By the end of the 19th century, however, Knabe's sons, Ernest and William, had re established the firm as one of the leading piano companies in the country. They built sales in the west and north, and created new designs that made Knabe & Co. the third best selling piano manufacturer in the country. The pianos were well regarded enough that the Japanese government chose Knabe as its supplier for schools in 1879. After the death of William and Ernest Knabe, the company went public. In the 20th century, Knabe's company became absorbed into other corporations, and the pianos are now manufactured by Samick, a Korean producer. Heinrich Christian Eisenbrandt, originally of Göttingen, Germany, settled in Baltimore in 1819, going on to manufacture brass and woodwind instruments of high quality. His output included several brass instruments, flageolets, flutes, oboes, bassoons, clarinets with between five and sixteen keys, and at least one drum and basset horn. Eisenbrandt owned two patents for brass instruments, and was once praised for "great improvements made in the valves" of the saxhorn. His flutes and clarinets won him a silver medal at the London Great Exhibition of 1851, and he also earned high marks for those instruments and the saxhorn at several Metropolitan Mechanics Institute exhibitions. The Smithsonian Institution now possesses one of Eisenbrandt's clarinets, adorned with jewels, and the Shrine to Music Museum at the University of South Dakota is in possession of a drum and several clarinets made by Eisenbrandt. He is also known to have made a cornet which uses a key mechanism that he had patented. Eisenbrandt died in 1861, and his son, H. W. R. Eisenbrandt, continued the business until at least 1918.

The Peabody Orchestra, formed in 1866, was the first professional orchestra in Baltimore. The Orchestra premiered many works in its early years, including some by Asger Hamerik, a prominent Danish composer who became director of the Orchestra. Ross Jungnickel founded the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra before 1890, when the Orchestra first performed, and the Peabody Orchestra ceased to exist. Jungnickel's orchestra, however, lasted only until 1899. African American vocal music, specifically doo wop, also established an early home in Baltimore. More recently, Baltimore was home to a number of well known rock, pop, R&B, punk, and hip hop performers.

Most of the major musical organizations in Baltimore were founded by musicians who trained at the Peabody Institute's Conservatory of Music. These include Baltimore Choral Arts, Baltimore Opera Company (BOC), and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). These organizations all have excellent reputations and sponsor numerous performances throughout the year. Baltimore has produced a number of well known modern composers of classical and art music, most famously including Philip Glass, a minimalist composer and Christopher Rouse, a Pulitzer winner. Glass grew up in the 1940s, working in his father's record store in East Baltimore, selling African American records, then known as race music. He was there exposed to Baltimore jazz and rhythm and blues. The first half of the twentieth century saw Baltimore hosting composers including George Frederick Boyle, Joseph Pache, Mark Fax, Adolph Weiss and Franz Bornschein. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra of the 19th century had floundered in 1899, was replaced by a new orchestra organized by the Florestan Club, which included author H. L. Mencken; the Club ensured that the orchestra would be the first municipally funded company in the country. The reformed Baltimore Symphony Orchestra began in 1916, under the leadership of Gustav Strube, who conducted the orchestra until 1930. The Baltimore Chamber Music Society, founded by Hugo Weisgall and Rudolph Rothschild in 1950, has commissioned a number of renowned works and is known for a series of controversial concerts featuring mostly 20th century composers. The Baltimore Women's String Symphony Orchestra was led by Stephen Deak and Wolfgang Martin from 1936 to 1940, Inspired by A. Jack Thomas, who had been appointed conductor of the city's municipally supported African American performance groups, Charles L. Harris led the Baltimore Colored Chorus and Symphony Orchestra from 1929 to 1939, when a strike led to the company's dissolution. beginning with slow, mournful tunes and ending with lively ragtime numbers, very similar to the New Orleans music that gave rise to jazz. Pennsylvania Avenue (often known simply as The Avenue) and Fremont Avenue were the major scenes for Baltimore's black musicians from the 1920s to the 1950s, and was an early home for Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, among others. Baltimore had long been a major stop on the black touring circuit, and jazz musicians frequently played on Pennsylvania Avenue on the way to or from engagements in New York. Music venues were segregated, though not without resistance a 1910 tour featuring Bert Williams resulted in an African American boycott of a segregated theater, hoping the threat of lost business from the popular show would cause a change in policy. Pennsylvania Avenue was also a center for black cultural and economic life in Baltimore, and was home to numerous schools, theaters, churches and other landmarks. The street's nightclubs and other entertainment venues were most significant however, including the Penn Hotel, the first African American owned hotel in Baltimore (built in 1921). Even the local bars and other establishments that didn't feature live music as a major feature generally had a solo pianist or organist. The first local bar to specialize in jazz was Club Tijuana. The Sphinx Club became one of the first minority owned nightclubs in the United States when it opened in 1946, founded by Charles Phillip Tilghman, a local businessman. The Baltimore Afro American was a prominent African American periodical based in Baltimore in the early to mid 20th century, and the city was home to other black music media. Radio figures of importance included Chuck Richards on WBAL.

Baltimore's Eubie Blake was one of the most prominent ragtime musicians on the East Coast in the early 20th century, and was known for a unique style of piano playing that eventually became the basis for stride, a style perfected during World War I in Harlem. Blake was the most well known figure in the local scene, and helped make Baltimore one of the ragtime centers of the East Coast, along with Philadelphia and Washington, D. C. He then joined a medicine show, performing throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania before moving to New York in 1902 to play at the Academy of Music there. Returning to Baltimore, Blake played at The Saloon, a venue owned by Alfred Greenfield patronized by "colorful characters and 'working' girls"; The Saloon was the basis for his well known "Corner of Chestnut and Low". He then played at Annie Gilly's sporting house, another rough establishment, before becoming well known enough to play throughout the city and win a number of national piano concerts. Later Baltimoreans in jazz include Elmer Snowden, and Ethel Ennis. After Pennsylvania Avenue declined in the 1950s, Baltimore's jazz scene changed. The Left Bank Jazz Society, an organization dedicated to promoting live jazz, began holding a weekly series of concerts in 1965, featuring the biggest names in the field, including Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. The tapes from these recordings became legendary within the jazz aficionados, but they did not begin to be released until 2000, due to legal complications. Baltimore is known for jazz saxophonists, having produced recent performers like Antonio Hart, Ellery Eskelin, Gary Bartz, Mark Gross, Harold Adams, Gary Thomas and Ron Diehl. The city's style combines the experimental and intellectual jazz of Philadelphia and elsewhere in the north with a more emotive and freeform Southern tradition. The earliest well known Baltimore saxophonists include Arnold Sterling, Whit Williams, Andy Ennis, Brad Collins, Carlos Johnson, Vernon H. Wolst, Jr.; the most famous, however, was Mickey Fields. Fields got his start with a jump blues band, The Tilters, in the early 1950s, and his saxophone playing became the most prominent part of the band's style. Despite a national reputation and opportunities, Fields refused to perform outside the region and remains a local legend. In the 1960s, the Hammond B 3 organ became a critical part of the Baltimore jazz scene, led by virtuoso Jimmy Smith. The Left Bank Jazz Society also played a major role locally, hosting concerts and promoting performers. The popularity of jazz, however, declined greatly by the beginning of the 20th century, with an aging and shrinking audience, though the city continued producing local performers and hosting a vibrant jazz scene.

Baltimore in the middle of the 20th century was home to a major doo wop scene, which began with The Orioles, who are considered one of the first doo wop groups to record commercially. By the 1950s, Baltimore was home to numerous African American vocal groups, and talent scouts scoured the city for the next big stars. Many bands emerged from the city, including The Cardinals and The Plants. Some doo wop groups were connected with street gangs, and some members were active in both scenes, such as Johnny Page of The Marylanders. Competitive music and dance was a part of African American street gang culture, and with the success of some local groups, pressure mounted, leading to territorial rivalries among performers. Pennsylvania Avenue served as a rough boundary between East and West Baltimore, with the East producing The Swallows and The Cardinals, as well as The Sonnets, The Jollyjacks, The Honey Boys, The Magictones and The Blentones, while the West was home to The Orioles and The Plants, as well as The Twilighters and The Four Buddies. It was The Orioles, however, who first developed the city's vocal harmony sound. Originally known as The Vibra Naires, The Orioles were led by Sonny Til when they recorded "It's Too Soon to Know", their first hit and a song that is considered the first doo wop recording of any kind. Doo wop would go on to have a formative influence on the development of rock and roll, and The Orioles can be considered the earliest rock and roll band as a result. The Orioles would continue recording until 1954, launching hits like "In the Chapel in the Moonlight", "Tell Me So" and "Crying in the Chapel". Soul venues in Baltimore in that period included The Royal and Carr's beach in Annapolis, one of the few beaches black people could use.

Though they rose to prominence in Boston and New York City respectively, new wave musicians Ric Ocasek and David Byrne are both natives of the Baltimore area. Frank Zappa, Tori Amos, Cass Elliot (The Mamas & the Papas), and Adam Duritz (Counting Crows vocalist) are also from Baltimore. Notable Baltimore area rock acts from the 1970s and 1980s include Crack The Sky, The Ravyns, Kix, Face Dancer, Jamie LaRitz, and DC Star. Also, Epic recording Artist Tony Sciuto "Island Nights" who was also a member of Australia's Little River Band, Player and ABC Fullhouse's (Jesse and the Rippers) was raised in Medfield Heights (Hampden)area. Sciuto also has written songs for Tina Turner, Don Johnson, B. J Thomas and more. Baltimore's hardcore punk scene has been overshadowed by that of Washington, D. C., but included locally renowned bands like Law & Order, Bollocks, OTR, and Fear of God; many of these bands played at bars like the Marble Bar, Terminal 406 and the illegal space Jules' Loft, which author Steven Blush described as the "apex of the Baltimore (hardcore) scene" in 1983 and 1984. The 1980s also saw the development of a local new wave scene led by the bands Ebeneezer & the Bludgeons, The Accused / Mission / When Thunder Comes, Thee Katatonix, The Vamps, AR 15, Alter Legion, and Null Set. Later in the decade, emo bands like Reptile House and Grey March had some success and recorded with Ian MacKaye in DC. Some early Baltimore punk musicians moved on to other local bands by the end of the 1990s, while local mainstays Lungfish and Fascist Fascist becoming regionally prominent. The Urbanite magazine has identified several major trends in local Baltimorean music, including the rise of psychedelic folk singer songwriters like Entrance and the house/hip hop dance fusion called Baltimore club, pioneered by DJs like Rod Lee. More recently, Baltimore's modern music scene has produced performers like Jason Dove, Two if by Sea, Cass McCombs, Ponytail, Animal Collective, Spank Rock, Rye Rye, Double Dagger, Roomrunner, Mary Prankster, Beach House, Lower Dens, Future Islands, Wye Oak, The Seldon Plan, Dan Deacon, Ed Schrader's Music Beat, Sick Weapons, The Revelevens, Witch Hat, Sal Bando, Dope Body, Rapdragons, Adventure, and JPEGMafia, many of whom are associated with the New Weird America movement, and thus is the city itself. In 2009, Baltimore produced its own indigenous rock opera theatrical company, the all volunteer Baltimore Rock Opera Society, which operates out of Charles Village. The group has so far put on two rock operas, one in 2009 and the other in 2011. They both have featured original scores.

Baltimore's indigenous music media includes The City Paper, The Baltimore Sun, and Music Monthly, which frequently advertise local music shows and other events. The Baltimore Afro American, a local periodical, was one of the most important media in 20th century Baltimore, and documented much of that city's African American musical life. Recently, a number of new media sites have risen to prominence including Aural States (Best Local Music Blog 2008), Government Names, Mobtown Shank and Beatbots (Best Online Arts Community 2007). The organization Jazz in Cool Places also works within that genre, presenting performers in architecturally significant locations, such as in a club full of Tiffany windows. The Society for the Preservation of American Roots Music also puts on jazz and blues concerts at its Roots Cafe.

Many of Baltimore's nightclubs and other local music venues are in Fells Point and Federal Hill. One music field guide points to Fell's Point's Cat's Eye Pub, Full Moon Saloon, Fletcher's Bar, and Bertha's as particularly notable, in addition to a number of others, most famously including the Sportsmen's Lounge, which was a major jazz venue in the 1960s, when it was owned by football player Lenny Moore. Many of the most legendary music venues in Baltimore have been shut down, including most of the shops, churches, bars and other destinations on the legendary Pennsylvania Avenue, center for the city's jazz scene. The Royal Theater, once one of the premiere destinations for African American performers on the East Coast, is marked only by a simple plaque, the theater itself having been demolished in 1971. A statue of Billie Holiday remains on Pennsylvania Avenue, however, between Lafayette and Lanvale, with a plaque that reads I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I am playing a horn. I try to improvise. What comes out is what I feel. There are six major concert halls in Baltimore. The Lyric Opera House is modeled after the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam, and was reopened after several years of renovations in 1982, the same year the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall opened. Designed by Pietro Belluschi, The Meyerhoff Symphony Hall is a permanent home for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Belluschi also designed the Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College, which opened in 1962. The Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Auditorium, located at the Baltimore Museum of Art, also opened in 1982, and hosts concerts by the Baltimore Chamber Music Society. Johns Hopkins University's Shriver Hall and the Peabody's Miriam A. Friedberg are also important concert venues, the latter being the oldest still in use. As students progress through the grades, teachers go into more detail and require more proficiency in elementary musical techniques. Students perform rounds in second grade, for example, while movement (i. e. dance) enters the curriculum in third grade. Beginning in middle school in the sixth grade, students are taught to make mature aesthetic judgements, and to understand and respond to a variety of forms of music. In high school, students may choose to take courses in instrumentation or singing, and may be exposed to music in other areas of the curriculum, such as in theater or drama classes. Public school instruction in music in Baltimore began in 1843. Prior to that, itinerant and professional singing masters were the dominant form of formal music education in the state. Music institutions like the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra sometimes have programs aimed at youth education, and other organizations have a similar focus. The Eubie Blake Center exists to promote African American culture, and music, to both youth and adults, through dance classes for all age groups, workshops, clinics, seminars and other programs.

Baltimore's most famous institute of higher music education is the Peabody Institute's Conservatory of Music, founded in 1857 though instruction did not begin until 1868. The original grant from George Peabody funded an Academy of Music, which became the Conservatory in 1872. Lucien Southard was the first director of the Conservatory. In 1977, the Conservatory became affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. The Arthur Friedham Library collects primary sources relating to music in Baltimore, as do the archives maintained by the Peabody and the Maryland Historical Society. Johns Hopkins University is home to the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, whose Lester S. Levy Collection is one of the most important collections of American sheet music in the country, and contains more than 40,000 pieces, including original printings of works by Carrie Jacobs Bond such as "A Perfect Day" (song).