Conrad Salinger

Conrad Salinger (August 30, 1901, Brookline, Massachusetts – June 17, 1962, Pacific Palisades, California[1]) was an American arranger, orchestrator and composer, who studied classical composition at the Paris Conservatoire.

[3] During his Broadway apprenticeship Salinger first came across Johnny Green, his future MGM musical director, when they were recording motion picture overtures in the early days of sound at New York to be shown before the main features began.

He reputedly studied mathematical musical progressions under the influential theorist Joseph Schillinger, whose other students included George Gershwin, and major Broadway/Hollywood orchestrators such as Ted Royal, Edward B. Powell, and Herbert W.

His lush scoring for the ballet sequences in Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon (1954) have come to be regarded as high points of the orchestrator's art in the Golden Age of musicals.

Salinger orchestrated for film the music of all the major popular composers of the mid-20th century, including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter.

[8] Barbra Streisand insisted on reusing his original orchestrations when they could be found[9] and colleagues, including Stanley Donen, Debbie Reynolds, Johnny Green and André Previn, have subsequently paid tribute to his musical abilities.

[10] The British conductor John Wilson has also been repopularizing his work in a series of concerts and recordings featuring reconstructions of the original orchestrations of the MGM classics.