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Lou Teicher Half of Ferrante & Teicher Piano Duo

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Lou Teicher, half of the popular Ferrante & Teicher piano duo that had top-10 hits in the 1960s with lushly orchestrated movie-theme singles, has died. He was 83.

Teicher, a longtime resident of Sarasota, Fla., died unexpectedly of heart failure Sunday at his summer home in Highlands, N.C., said Scott W. Smith, Teicher and Arthur Ferrante's personal manager.

Ferrante & TeicherIn a musical collaboration that spanned five decades and ended when the duo retired from the concert stage in 1989, Ferrante & Teicher recorded 150 original albums that, along with dozens of singles, sold 88 million records worldwide. In the process, they earned 22 gold and platinum records. Although we were two individuals, at the twin pianos our brains worked as one.

No one was more blessed than I to have Lou Teicher as my best friend since we met at the Juilliard School of Music at the ages of 9 and 6. Lou was certainly one of the world's most gifted pianists.
--Arthur Ferrante

Ferrante and Teicher were faculty instructors at Juilliard by day and performed standards on their twin pianos in posh Manhattan nightclubs at night for a couple of years before they made their debut as a classical two-piano team at Town Hall in New York City in 1947. They were soon touring North America and in 1952 began recording.

They recorded eight albums in the 1950s featuring what they termed their prepared pianos, whose sound they altered by adding various objects to the piano strings, including rubber wedges, metal chains, glass, wood and cardboard.

If that weren't innovative enough, they also would reach inside their pianos to strum and pound on the strings. “That became their gimmick to become noticed, and that got them on television in New York," Smith said. “Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen and Dave Garroway picked them up immediately because it was avant-garde; it was weird."

Ferrante & Teicher's prepared-piano and classical albums of the 1950s were well received but no match for what came in 1960 with the duo's recording of “Theme from 'The Apartment.' “

“They told their producer/co-arranger Don Costa, 'Two pianos, it'll never sell,' “ Smith said. “Those were their famous last words."

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