New York Rock & Roll Ensemble

The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble was a rock band active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, whose music was described as "classical baroque rock". The group was known for performing in white tie and tailcoat (not tuxedo), as typically worn by classical musicians.

The band was formed by three Juilliard students (Michael Kamen, Marty Fulterman – now known as Mark Snow – and Dorian Rudnytsky) as well as two rock musicians, Brian Corrigan and Clif Nivison.

Rudnytsky indicated that while students at Juilliard, Kamen and Fulterman played in a rock band named "Emil & The Detectives" while he played in a rock band named Invicta with Corrigan and Nivison, all of whom hailed from Toms River, New Jersey. A mutual friend and record producer suggested that all five drop their current bands and form a new band. After the new group's first gig at a Juilliard Halloween dance in 1967, they were signed by Atlantic Records where Ahmet Ertegün was quoted by one of the members as having said in jest, "You play all the right notes on all the wrong instruments."

Their recording debut was the 1968 self-named album The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, which broke the tradition by using classical music instruments in rock songs and rock instruments in classical pieces. This fusion, daring at the time, impressed Leonard Bernstein so much that he invited the group to appear at one of his Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, where they performed their signature song "Brandenburg" which was based on the first movement of Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. This track showed the group at their best, starting off with a straight rendition of Bach's music (featuring two oboes, guitar and cello), then migrating into a rock song, while continuing to use Bach's original music for its basis.

Because Brandenburg was the one song that showed the widest range of their musicianship, the group typically performed that song when they made television appearances on The Tonight Show, The Steve Allen Show and other TV shows of that era.

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