DESCRIPTION:
Live video taken from an Artis Wodehouse recording session of Arthur Bird's American Harmonium music. The full CD is available on Raven Compact Discs at
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Bird-Music-American-Harmonium/dp/B01FZTE4N4/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1464627962&sr=1-3&keywords=arthur+bird.

This recording was made in October, 2015 in the sanctuary of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, NYC. Producer is Whitney Slaten, recording engineer Denise Barbarita. Artis Wodehouse, harmoniumist plays on her 1916 Model 86K Mason & Hamlin that has a Normal Harmonium stoplist.

The American composer, Arthur Bird (1856-1923) wrote the most significant body of repertoire composed for the American Harmonium, and this is the repertoire that Wodehouse recorded. Wodehouse's recording will be the first commercial CD of Arthur Bird's music played on the instrument for which it was intended.

The American Harmonium, also know as the reed or pump organ was the most popular home keyboard instrument in the United States until the 1880s, when the piano overtook it in sales and distribution. The instrument was used primarily as a substitute for the pipe organ or in the home setting for playing popular Victorian songs and dances and truncated transcriptions of well-known European music by such composers as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Gounod, etc. Arthur Bird was the first and only American to write significant and original high art music for the instrument.