Illustration: DREAMLAND ORCHESTRA
Michael Arenella And His Dreamland Orchestra At The Hempstead House.
Available on YouTube at
Illustration: DREAMLAND ORCHESTRA
Michael Arenella.
Illustration: DREAMLAND ORCHESTRA
MICHAEL ARENELLA.
Michael Arenella grew up in Georgia, United States of America, with parents who were artists from New York City. He sang in the Church Choir and studied music from an early age, working as a professional musician by his teens.
Among his formative influences is his life-long obsession with "Times Past". He has always loved Trains, and jokes that he was a "Brake-Man" in an earlier life. As a boy, he could often be found exploring abandoned Rail-Yards. The story of those Trains' forgotten Routes were illuminated when he heard this old music. Suddenly, he saw new worlds.
The Dreamland Orchestra.
Illustration: DREAMLAND ORCHESTRTA
Michael is also a Composer, with a considerable body of work written for String Quartet, up to large Chamber Orchestra. His style is comprised of elements gleaned from Baroque through to Impressionism. This background helps him to break-down and reassemble the fragile orchestrations of ’20s Dance Music. He knows that Claude Debussy and Bix Beiderbecke would have really "dug" each other.
Like his Jazz-Age avatars, he moved from rural America to New York, where he entered music school. Disenchanted, he shortly made his departure from the gloomy conservatory halls and set out to bring his lost music into the daylight. Though his initial audiences were subway commuters, he eventually made his way above ground and founded his Dreamland Orchestra.
Illustration: DREAMLAND ORCHESTRA
Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra are the World's premier Jazz-Age Dance Orchestra, steeped in the Hot-Dance Band Tradition of the 1920s and Early-1930s. Their size ranges from a full Dance Orchestra to smaller incarnations. They play their "Hot-and-Sweet" music anywhere that fine and eclectic tastes meet.
The Dreamland Orchestra is authentic. Arenella transcribes by hand their entire repertoire from period recordings. Their delivery, as well as their instruments, attire, and equipment — are faithfully accurate. Arenella's strong, yet vulnerable, baritone lacks pretence or sarcasm. He treasures each lyric, and has faith in the songs he sings. Even the most optimistic Tin Pan Alley tune has a disarming quality in his hands.
Though certainly anachronistic, the Orchestra's presence invokes the vibrations of something unmistakably timeless. While authentic to a "T", Michael Arenella prefers not to be labelled a
"Re-Creationalist". He takes an antiquated template and infuses it with the immediacy of the present. Spontaneity is what gave the original music of the era its magic, and it is also the imprimatur of The Dreamland Orchestra.
His men are Dapper Dandies; hair pomaded and shoes shined. They are based in New York, which, with London, were the halcyon Capitals of decadence. All of this allows them to capture the essence of what this music and times were all about; joy, romance, modernity, and possibility.
These are essential themes, just as valid today as eighty years ago. Ask the punk and heavy metal kids who end up liking the Orchestra more than the bands they originally came to hear at the same venue. Truly, this music was the rock ‘n’ roll, or punk, of its day; rebellious, reckless, and, in the eyes of the older generations, dangerous.
The Dreamland Orchestra’s mission is to mine the forgotten, yet vital, beauty of the past, and bring it into the light of today — to be danced and romanced to, by a new generation of Flappers and Sheiks.
Michael Arenella And His Dreamland Orchestra At The Hempstead House.
Available on YouTube at
