Arthur Ferrante, known solely by his surname as part of the piano duo of Ferrante Teicher, can certainly be said to have demonstrated great loyalty in his lengthy music career. He has been associated with one other performer and one other performer only: Louis Teicher, younger by only a few years, a fellow child prodigy and a classmate at the Juilliard School of Music. The listening public's reaction to the music created by Ferrante Teicher can be considered a quite typical expression of loyalty -- or lack of it.

The recordings made by these two pianists, and there were a lot of them, were Top Ten fare in the '60s. Theme from The Apartment, Exodus, and Tonight were among the huge hits during that decade for the duo, who had started out their career as a concert act in 1947. It was a half a century later when the pair finally called it quits, retiring together to a snowbird community in Florida. In the 21st century, Ferrante Teicher sides are most likely to be found in the section of the used record pile in which a sign that simply says "free" is hung. The record-buying audience has abandoned easy listening music, upgrading to new age and content to find elevator music for free in shopping centers, or elevators themselves.

Yet Arthur Ferrante and his pal did much more than just play easy listening music. The duo left few genres untouched: they did not play rap or Scottish bagpipe music but they did play both classical and folk, psychedelic cover versions, and their own arrangements of boogie-woogie piano. With so much ground covered, the actual historic status of the duo in reality depends on what aspect of Ferrante Teicher's career is examined. Albums cut for labels such as Westminster in the '50s would be snatched up with a gasp if found in the freebie pile; only a foolish, drunken record store manager would place them there. These are not the records that put the duo on the charts, but they are projects of great interest in which the instructions of avant-garde composer John Cage are followed, objects such as nuts and bolts are inserted into the workings of the pianos, and weird spaced-out music is created.

Ferrante Teicher started out as a simple piano duo performing in small clubs. Eventually the show involved an orchestra and the plotting of backing arrangements. The venues became larger and the repertoire evolved from classical nuggets to Tin Pan Alley favorites. The United Artists label signed the duo in the '60s, the far-out lounge sounds from the previous decade were abandoned, and the pianists revealed a knack for staying on top of trends, milking the public's enthusiasm for hit movies of the day, shadow-boxing the evolution of rock music itself. By 1972 there was no longer room on the charts for any of these stylistic moves. Ferrante Teicher ran their own record label in the final decade of the duo's career. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi