20th Century American composer Roger Sessions is featured this weekend. The 1949 recording of his Symphony Number 2, which had just won the coveted Walter Naumberg Foundation American Composition Award.

This is the first commercial recording of the work, made shortly after the award was given. It features the New York Philharmonic conducted by Dimitri Mitropolous, and issued by Columbia Records in 1950 as a 10" lp (ML 2120).

If this is your first time, enjoy - if you know this work, welcome back - you may not have heard it in a while.

(Mitch Miller - In every living room and Hi-fi in America in the 1950s and early 60's)

Mitch Miller lived to the incredible age of 99, having passed from the scene this past Saturday quietly and after a short illness. In the 1950's Miller was as much a staple in the American home as Franco-American Spaghetti and was responsible for bringing to the masses more bland music than any single human being on earth.

But he was a remarkable talent, a gifted musician and a true professional. I came of age during the first season of "Sing Along With Mitch" blaring from my family TV. We had our copy of "Yellow Rose Of Texas" and you could always tell a Mitch Miller record by the amount of cavernous reverb injected into each song. Frankly, it drove even my 12 year old ears nuts.

But when I got older, and started discovering music on my own, I stumbled across a whole different side of Mitch Miller, a side I never heard before and one I was instantly glued to.

In addition to his work as an A&R man, Mitch Miller also had a long and successful career as an oboist. He was also a champion of "modern music" and recorded numerous albums of his contemporaries like Alec Wilder, Paul Hindemith and Vaughan Williams. His recordings of the music of Alec Wilder are milestones and, in addition to the album he did with Frank Sinatra in the 1940's of Wilder's music, he also recorded several Wilder pieces for the Vocalion label in the 1930's and had several works for oboe written for him throughout the 1940s and 50's.

He was active all the way up to the end - not as the former A&R man, but as the musician and champion of new music.

Over the coming weeks I'll be playing some of the Wilder pieces Mitch Miller recorded for Columbia. But tonight I thought I would play something more along his commercial lines. No, I'm not going to play "Yellow Rose Of Texas" - but I am going to play a piece he wrote for a TV series in 1956. Written for the GE Summer Playhouse, this track, Song For A Summer Night features an orchestra led by Mitch.

Thank you Mitch - you definitely led a double life, but you kept it honest and that's all you can ever ask for.

(Sir John Barbirolli - taking over the reins from Toscanini in 1937)

From 1937-1943 Sir John Barbirolli took over as Conductor of the New York Philharmonic when Arturo Toscanini left to assume his role as music director of the newly-formed NBC Symphony. During that time he was actively courted by American record companies and did a number of memorable sessions with RCA Victor and Columbia Records before relinquishing his post and returning to his native England and the height of the war where he began his long association with the Halle Orchestra.

Barbirolli had a long and distinguished career and was guest conductor throughout the world before and after World War 2, performing with all the great orchestras. He was active both on the concert stage and in the studio all the way until his death in 1970.

Barbirolli did an arrangement of works by Henry Purcell (the Suite for Strings with four horns, two flutes and English Horn), and was one of the first recording sessions issued by RCA during his New York tenure.

The Suite was originally issued in 1938 as Victor set M-533 and was recorded on October 24, 1937.

(Ted Nash, uncle of Ted Nash - heading into major mellow territory)

Tonight we're heading into West Coast Cool-School territory with a track by the elder Ted Nash. The current Ted Nash is the nephew. This Ted Nash had a long and illustrious career as a sideman and soloist with a number of big bands of the 1940s, before settling into the Hollywood session scene and doing countless film scores and TV shows before retiring and heading to Carmel in the 1980s. But, like so many musicians of the period, the gig enabled the evocation and Nash was able to put together a number of groups on his own and record extensively for a number of labels through the 1950s.

One session, done for Columbia Records and issued in 1957 as Star Eyes (CL 989) and it's this track, "That Old Feeling" which comes from it. Recorded on July 21, 1956 and featuring an uncredited group of sidemen (although I suspect the guitar is Jim Hall).

Since it's Monday night and the end of the holiday season, a little mellow seems to be in order. No?