Norman Von Holtzendorff Hal GlatzerBorn and raised in Manhattan, HAL GLATZER performs the music of his native islanders-The Great American Songbook, from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. He began collecting sheet music more than forty years ago, and is profoundly grateful for this opportunty to talk about them.Hal got his first paying gig at age 12, in the Boys' Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Though he initially studied violin and clarinet, he took up guitar and banjo as a teenager, joined the folk music revival of the Sixties, and performed in bluegrass bands. But in 1980, he returned to his Manhattan roots and has been playing and singing the popular songs of the 1920s, '30s and '40s ever since. He is a published mystery author, best known for the Katy Green series, set in musical milieux during the years just before World War II. For the audio play version of Too Dead to Swing, about murder in an all-female Swing band, he also composed the songs. More about Hal's music and mysteries is at www.halglatzer.comNORMAN GHOLSON VON HOLTZENDORFF attributes his interest in Jazz Age music to his mother's side of the family, and dedicates his work on this project To my late mother, Shirley Gholson (1935-2021), who got me piano lessons as a kid and passed along to me her love of music. His maternal great-aunt Ethel played piano for silent films in Atlanta movie theaters, and he inherited some of her sheet music from his maternal grandfather. Norman also heard his grandfather's stories about seeing Sophie Tucker and Eva Tanguay in vaudeville shows in New York in the 1910s and 1920s. On the west coast, Norman's great-uncle Louis von Holtzendorff worked in security for Paramount Pictures, where he rose to the position of chief, and later became a private detective in Hollywood. Secrets of the stars he knew (Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, etc.) were well kept-Norman's mother could never get any Hollywood gossip out of Uncle Louis. Norman's sheet music collecting stands on the shoulders of collector friends who have been doing it longer and have much better collections, such as Alex Hassan, Peter Mintun, Harold Jacobs, Roy Bishop, Vince Giordano, and Michael Feinstein. To these luminaries go much of the credit and none of the blame for Norman's collection. Norman lives in a house from 1907 in the historic Garvanza neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles with his husband Francesco, their rescue dog Rocco, and a restored 1926 Steinway M baby grand piano. Read More Read Less
