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Conductor John Alexander McGlinn III was born in Bryn Mawr, PA, on September 18, 1953, and grew up in nearby Gladwyn, PA. He taught himself to play piano and studied music theory and composition at Northwestern University, from which he graduated in 1976. He moved to New York City at a time of renewed interest in the history of Broadway musicals and began to specialize in restoring old scores to their original form. His first recording was Songs of New York for Book-of-the-Month Records. In the early '80s, he took on the major project of restoring the original score of the 1927 musical Show Boat with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, initially under the auspices of the Houston Grand Opera. His efforts resulted in a new touring version of the show that ran on Broadway in 1983 and, in 1988, his restoration was recorded for a three-CD set by EMI on its Angel imprint, featuring the London Sinfonietta with opera singers featured in the cast, all conducted by McGlinn. The EMI association resulted from a set of lesser Kern musicals McGlinn had presented at Carnegie Hall in 1985 as part of a Kern centennial celebration. For EMI/Angel, he oversaw an album of Gershwin overtures, as well as studio cast recordings of Anything Goes, No, No, Nanette, Annie Get Your Gun, Brigadoon, and Kiss Me, Kate. (His other efforts for EMI/Angel include The Busby Berkeley Album [1994], containing music from movie musicals with choreography by Busby Berkeley, such as 42nd Street, and songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin.) McGlinn also worked on albums by Kiri Te Kanawa, Frederica Von Stade, Kim Criswell, and Thomas Hampson, singers who also appeared on his studio cast recordings. At the start of the 21st century, McGlinn was commissioned by the Packard Humanities Institute to restore the complete works of Jerome Kern and Victor Herbert, but he worked on the project only a year before departing to accept an offer to conduct the works of Richard Wagner. Later in the 2000s, he was working for drama publisher Samuel French on restoring the 1954 Broadway musical Peter Pan. He died suddenly of an apparent heart attack at his home in Manhattan on February 14, 2009.
Wikipedia:
John Alexander McGlinn III (September 18, 1953 – February 14, 2009) was an American conductor and musical theatre archivist. He was one of the principal proponents of authentic studio cast recordings of Broadway musicals, using original orchestrations and vocal arrangements.
Biography
John Alexander McGlinn III was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. A self-taught pianist, he studied music theory and composition at Northwestern University, graduating in 1976.
His first recording, 1984's Songs of New York for the Book of the Month Club was not his first experience as a conductor. He had previously conducted Hey Feller! and Misery's Come Round, using Karla Burns and members of the Houston Grand Opera production of Show Boat, for one of the "Jerome Kern Revisiteds" for Ben Bagley's Painted Smiles Records. He had previously worked for the New York City Opera and planned a book on Jerome Kern. McGlinn's interest in Kern emerged at the same time as a 1970s' revival of interest in authentic American music, including a Scott Joplin revival and Gunther Schuller's ragtime performances. In the early 1980s he joined with the Houston Grand Opera to work on a major revival of Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat, acting as musical editor and restoring the original orchestrations for the production. He also did some work for Ira Gershwin on original orchestrations for several Gershwin projects and worked with veteran orchestrator Hans Spialek on the 1983 Broadway revival of On Your Toes. Following the Book of the Month Club recording, McGlinn performed three Kern musicals in concert at the Carnegie Recital Hall and this success led to a recording contract with EMI-Angel Records. The first recordings were an album of George Gershwin songs with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and a program of Gershwin overtures.
From 1987 to 1992 he made recordings of the complete scores for Show Boat, Anything Goes, Brigadoon, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me, Kate, and an obscure Jerome Kern musical, Sitting Pretty.
The three-disc, three-and-a-half hour Show Boat album, and the one-disc Anything Goes album, have been acclaimed. The New Yorker magazine called McGlinn's Show Boat "the show album of the past" and "a show album for the future. It unites the possibilities of reproduction and reinvestigation." McGlinn unearthed the lost materials for Show Boat in a Secaucus, New Jersey, warehouse in 1982.
In 1992 EMI chose not to renew his contract. During this period he conducted many performances of musicals in concert, including the original 1925 No, No, Nanette (at the Carnegie Recital Hall), and the Kern-Hammerstein show Sunny. He made several radio appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for BBC Radio 3, conducted several concerts in conjunction with the Library of Congress Music Division, and was guest conductor on an "Evening With The Boston Pops" telecast. He returned to the recording studio to make two albums of excerpts from Wagner operas for Naxos Records. At the New York City Opera he conducted revivals of Brigadoon and H.M.S. Pinafore and, in 1993, at Juilliard School of Music, he conducted the Poulenc one-act operas La Voix Humaine and Les Mamelles de Tiresias.
Another project, begun in early 2001, was to record and edit for The Packard Humanities Institute scholarly editions of Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern musicals, but none of these albums have been released. McGlinn left the project in 2002 and the future of the recordings remains in limbo.
His last project was to edit a new edition of the 1954 Broadway version of Peter Pan for Samuel French.
McGlinn was found dead in his New York City apartment on February 14, 2009. The cause of death was a heart attack. He is survived by two sisters and a brother.