More than a Music Show; a Memorable Musical Experience!

The Golden Gate Radio Orchestra entertains today's audiences with the best music of yesterday. It is a 19-piece re-creation of the versatile radio station or network "house orchestra," with the full-bodied sound of violins, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and vocalists. It exists because of the passion of its members for the tuneful music that these orchestras played every day. The time period, and the Orchestra's capabilities, range from the 1890s to the Big Band era.

We are irresistibly transported back in time to a bygone America, to a culture that encompassed the backward and the progressive, the innocent and the cruel, the heroic and the zany. During the period from Grover Cleveland through Teddy Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt, America spawned a wide range of popular and folk music. It came from Broadway and the Barbary Coast; from Tin Pan Alley and from dusty country lanes; from the Missouri hills and the New Orleans streets. And hundreds of orchestras played that music. We estimate that more than two thousand "small" orchestras played in American theatres, hotels, ballrooms and other places. They played ragtime, they played classics light and heavy, they played the latest Tin Pan Alley tunes, and they played the latest vaudeville and Broadway musical hits.

When Radio swept the nation, beginning in the 1920s, the old theatre orchestras were transformed by network and station managements into the musical voice of the nation, playing a wide variety of music old and new. Radio has changed considerably since, of course; but much of that original music, reflecting the exuberance of America, has been preserved.

Now, that repertoire lives again, with sparkling style, for listening and sometimes for dancing. While the music brings back memories to many people of all ages, it has also attracted a surprisingly large number of young people for whom this is real music, not just nostalgia.

The Orchestra's library contains more than 8,000 selections, making it one of the largest working orchestra libraries in America. The programs are tied together by expert narration and audience involvement, sometimes tongue-in-cheek and sometimes serious; reminding us that regardless of the advances of society, in many ways people were not that different in our grandparents' day.