YIKES!
elviswoman | Dallas, TX United States | 03/29/2006
(2 out of 5 stars)
"I selected this recording because of the wide variety of songs it contained. I love all of these military and patriotic songs, and have quite fond memories of playing them in band in school.
However, the musicianship on this recording is TERRIBLE. The songs are okay, recognizable, but listening to the clarinets and piccolo's screech out of tune and against the timing of the rest of the band-well that just killed my ability to focus on the overall performance of these songs.
So my two stars are for the collection of songs, the missing 3 stars are for what The American Military Band did to these songs.
For a more professional sounding recording, I would recommend "American Anthems" performed by Gramercy Brass and conducted by John Henry Lambert, also for sale on Amazon.com. It has some of the songs featured on this CD, but the musicianship is dazzling compared to this feeble recording. You can also hear samples of the recordings on "American Anthems"-if they had samples of the recordings on "Patriotic Music of America", I surely would have skipped this purchase."