The music

A quick glance at the titles in The Wintergarten Orchestra’s extensive playlist shows what was going on in America during the 1920’s and early ’30’s.  Anything Goes, Let’s Misbehave, Puttin’ on the Ritz, You Do Something to Me, I’m Playing with Fire, Doin’ the Uptown Lowdown, Oh, You Nasty Man!, I Found a Million Dollar Baby, There Ain’t no Maybe in my Baby’s Eyes, Happy Days are Here Again… reflects everything from love, to wild night life to the boom and bust of the economy. It’s all about vaudeville, Prohibition and Tin Pan Alley. In Germany,  social change was reflected in such protest anthems as Chuck All the Men Out, The Lavender Song and It’s All a Swindle.

Many of these songs have become jazz standards like  What is this Thing Called Love, All of Me, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Limehouse Blues, Bye Bye Blues, Cheek to Cheek- songs that endure not only because of their great melodies and chord changes, but because they’re just so much fun to play- and listen and dance to!

These tunes run the gamut from the earnest love songs like Dancing in the Dark, I Only Have Eyes for You, Night and Day to the downright frivolous like Baby Face, You’re the Cream in my Coffee and Doing the Boom Boom.

You can hear many of these great songs on The Wintergarten Orchestra’s first album, Tell Me Tonight, and you can see the band’s entire repertoire here.