Orienta (album)

Orienta
Studio album by The Markko Polo Adventurers (Gerald Fried)
Released	May 1959
Recorded	1958
Genre	Exotica
Length	34:53
Label	RCA Victor
Producer	Simon Rady (Michael H. Goldsen, associate producer)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Billboard

Orienta is an album by The Markko Polo Adventurers released in 1959. The album was produced by Simon Rady, arranged and conducted by Gerald Fried and recorded in stereo in Hollywood, California. The album uses a combination of sound effects and Asian-inspired music to tell humorous vignettes. Its suggestive cover art features a photograph by Murray Laden.

Orienta was the work of three music industry professionals with a long history of involvement in exotica and easy listening music. Producer Simon Rady (1909-1965) was coming off the huge success of The Music from Peter Gunn, which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard magazine's album chart, and won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1959. Associate producer Michael H. Goldsen was one of the industry leaders in popularizing Hawaiian music and was later inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame. The album was arranged and conducted by Gerald Fried, a Juilliard School-trained oboist who later went on to fame as a composer of music for motion pictures and television, including the 1960s series Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Gilligan's Island, and the 1970s miniseries Roots.

Orienta was an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of exotica music in the late 1950s. The genre's popularity peaked in 1959 as Martin Denny's 1957 album Exotica spent five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard magazine's album chart. The album's liner notes stated that the music "resembles the dreams of an imaginative person who has fallen asleep during a 'Dr. Fu Manchu' movie on television," with vignettes that "combine the sounds of the East with the wit of the West; the charm of the Orient with the humor of the Occident."

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