Rhythm's New Friends

Serious musicians know The Carnival of Venice as a florid soprano air. Dinicu's Hora Staccato as a Rumanian showpiece for concert violinists. Last fortnight these two pieces went into an RCA recording studio in Manhattan and got lost somewhere in the groove. Even the names were changed: to Heavy Traffic on Canal Street and Coo-Dinny-Coo. This Victor recording provided the light-fingered New Friends of Rhythm with one of its most successful jam sessions to date.

The New Friends of Rhythm were born two years ago when, at a musicians' party, the Stuyvesant Quartet--four NBC Symphony men--leaned on the famed Tschaikowsky Andante Cantabile. When the New Friends recorded the piece with an enlarged ensemble, they named it Droshky Drag. They retagged other classics Bach Bay Blues, Shoot the Schubert to Me, Hubert (ballet music from Rosamunde), Riffin' Raff (Cavatina by Raff). The Overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro (he was a barber) became Barber's Hitch; Stephen Foster's Old Black Joe, Foster Chile'. Since last August, New Friends six recordings have tidily sold 20,000 copies.

Masterminds of the New Friends are Cellist Alan Shulman, who does the arrangements and has written two original pieces for the group (High Voltage, Mood in Question), and his brother Sylvan, a violinist who is probably the first to jive on wax with a $15,000 Stradivarius (borrowed). Known around NBC as "Toscanini's hep cats," the New Friends do not know how "The Old Man" likes their recordings, which were sent to him last Christmas. Toscanini made no comment, but his cats suspect that he does not mind.

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