• 1879 ~ New York’s Madison Square Garden displayed a real floating ship in a gigantic water tank as Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore, was performed.
• 1902 ~ Stefan Wolpe, German-born American composer
• 1913 ~ Bob Crosby, Bandleader with The Bob Cats, brother of Bing Crosby
1918 ~ Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, composer and pianist
Read quotes by and about Bernstein
Links to more information about Bernstein Grammy winner
• 1939 ~ Dorothy embarked on a journey down the yellow brick road with a lion, a tin man and a scarecrow in the classic film “The Wizard of Oz.”
• 1941 ~ Skinnay Ennis and his orchestra recorded the tune Don’t Let Julia Fool Ya.
• 1942 ~ Walter Williams, Singer with The O’Jays
• 1955 ~ Elvis Costello (Declan McManus), Musician, songwriter
• 1961 ~ Billy Ray Cyrus, Singer
• 1964 ~ The Beatles received a gold record for their hit single A Hard Day’s Night. It was the third gold record for the Fab Four. They would collect 18 more through 1970.
• 1971 ~ Ted Lewis passed away. He was an American entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician.
• 1982 ~ The group, Fleetwood Mac, received a gold record for the album Mirage.
• 2001 ~ Aaliyah died at the age of 22. She was a R&B singer and budding actress who made her film debut in “Romeo Must Die” and was killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas.
• 2001 ~ Jazz musician John Nelson, the father of pop star Prince, died at the age of 85. Nelson was the model for a character in the 1984 Prince movie “Purple Rain.” He also co-wrote songs on several of his son’s hit albums.
In the 1950s, Nelson was a pianist in the jazz group Prince Rogers Trio featuring singer Mattie Shaw. Shaw and Nelson married, and they named their son Prince Roger Nelson.
Nelson left the household when Prince was about 10 and his sister Tyka was 8. The father and son reconciled after Prince began his climb to fame.
Nelson co-wrote Computer Blue on the Purple Rain album, The Ladder on Around the World in a Day; Christopher Tracy’s Parade and Under the Cherry Moon on Parade and Scandalous on the Batman soundtrack.
• 2008 ~ Josef Tal, Israel composer (Israeli art music), died at the age of 97
The clever arranger has woven together 57 famous classical melodies by 33 composers. You’ve learned about most in the last 3 months. How many can you identify?
Answers below
We didn’t listen to all these this summer. For those we didn’t hear, the numbers after the title are the time you can hear the melody on the video clip.
Redditor NeokratosRed had an idea: depict the hands of great composers and pianists, according to the characteristics of their music. He shared it on the social media site, and also punted for suggestions of more. It has since received over 300,000 images views, and lots of further suggestions from fellow Redditors and piano geeks.
Whisks for Chopin’s elegant pianistic souffles, feather dusters for the gentle impressionism of Debussy, instruments of trade for the composer of the thunderous Hammerklavier sonata.
Piano, and the internet – top marks to the both of you.
• 1854 ~ Moritz Moszkowski, Polish-born German pianist and composer
More information about Moszkowski
• 1900 ~ Ernst Krenek, Austrian-born American composer, conductor and pianist
• 1905 ~ Constant Lambert, British composer, conductor and writer
• 1912 ~ Gene (Eugene Curran) Kelly, Dancer, actor: Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris, Anchors Aweigh, The Three Musketeers, Marjorie Morningstar, Inherit the Wind, North and South Book I; director: Singin’ in the Rain, Hello, Dolly!, A Guide for the Married Man, The Cheyenne Social Club
• 1917 ~ Tex (Sol) Williams, American country-western singer
• 1923 ~ Billy Jones and Ernie Hare, The Happiness Boys, were heard on radio for the first time. The two were billed as radio’s first comedians and were also credited with creating and performing the first singing commercial.
• 1936 ~ Rudy Lewis, Singer with Drifters
• 1942 ~ Patricia McBride, Ballerina: New York City Ballet. For many years she was Mikhail Baryshnikov’s only partner
• 1943 ~ LIFE magazine spotlighted a dance craze that was sweeping the U.S.A., the Lindy Hop
• 1947 ~ Keith Moon, Singer, drummer with The Who
• 1947 ~ Margaret Truman, daughter of U.S. President Harry S Truman, presented her first public concert. Margaret sang before 15,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. The concert did not get great reviews. In fact, the critics didn’t like Margaret’s singing at all. And Margaret’s dad didn’t like the critics, and said so, from the White House.
• 1949 ~ Rick Springfield, Singer
• 1951 ~ Mark Hudson, Singer with The Hudson Brothers
• 1966 ~ The U.S. premiere of the motion picture Help!, starring The Beatles, was held for thousands of moviegoers wanting to see the group’s first, color, motion picture. Their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, had been produced in black and white.
• 1990 ~ David Rose passed away
• 2001 ~ Kathleen Freeman, a veteran character actress whose face if not her name was known to audiences from television sitcoms, the film classic “Singin’ in the Rain” and Broadway’s “The Full Monty,” died of lung cancer at the age of 82.
Freeman gave her final performance in “The Full Monty”. She played a sassy piano player in the hit musical and earned a Tony nomination in May 2001.
Big, brash and funny were Freeman’s trademarks in playing recalcitrant maids, demented nuns, mouthy housekeepers, battle-ax mothers, irate landladies and nosy neighbors.
Starting in the Golden Age of television, Freeman appeared in such shows as “Topper,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” “The Lucy Show,” “The Golden Girls,” “Murphy Brown” and “Married … With Children.”
“This will sound very corny and I’m sorry,” Freeman said last year in an Associated Press interview, “but I have always had the sense I was put here to do this: I am somebody who is around to help the world laugh. I have always had that sense. Corny but absolutely true.”
In “Singin’ in the Rain,” considered by many to be the best movie musical ever made, she played Jean Hagen’s frustrated voice teacher. Among Freeman’s other films were the sci-fi thriller “The Fly,” “The Rounders” with Henry Fonda, “Far Country” with Jimmy Stewart, and “North to Alaska” starring John Wayne. More recently she appeared in “Dragnet,” “Gremlins II,” “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps” and both “Blues Brothers” comedies.
Freeman was born in Chicago and was propelled into show business at age 2. Her parents had a vaudeville act, Dixon and Freeman, in which their daughter did a little dance.
Freeman attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where she majored in music and was going to be a classical pianist. Then, she said, “A terrible thing happened. I got in a play and got a laugh. I just said a line and, `boom.”‘
Freeman then worked in many small theater groups, including the Circle Players, acting for such eminent directors – and actors – as Charles Laughton, Charlie Chaplin and Robert Morley.
At the same time, the early 1950s, the television explosion took over Los Angeles. From her first regular sitcom role, as the maid in “Topper,” Freeman went on to do just about every sitcom of the last 50 years.
For all her voluminous credits, Freeman’s stage credits were mostly on the road – touring as Miss Hannigan in “Annie” for 18 months, then in “Deathtrap” and later with Lauren Bacall in “Woman of the Year.”
Her only other Broadway appearance was for five months in the 1978 production of “13 Rue de l’Amore” starring Louis Jordan.
• 2001 ~ Frank Emilio Flynn, a blind pianist and Latin jazz pioneer who performed with many great American jazz artists, died at the age of 80.
Flynn lost his sight at age 13 but continued to study and perform classical works, transcribed into Braille, with the Symphonic Orchestra of Havana.
Flynn’s great passion was jazz, and in the 1950s he developed his own jazz-influenced ballad style, known in Cuba as “feeling.”
Performing with the Quinteto Cubana de Musica Moderno, or Cuban Quintet of Modern Music, he developed into one of the most important Cuban jazz musicians of his era.
When my students are first working with the Grand Staff, they are often confused about the placement of the various clefs.
In piano music, we generally use only the G-clef (Treble clef – not “trouble clef” as some think!) and the F-clef (Bass clef) I try to show students how the curvy part of the G-clef wraps around the G above middle C and the F-clef looks sort of like an F marking the F below middle C. I draw out G and F on the staff to show how these could have looked.
Originally, instead of a special clef symbol, the reference line of the staff was simply labeled with the name of the note it was intended to bear: F and C and, more rarely, G. These were the most often-used ‘clefs’ in Gregorian chant notation. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions.
Over time the shapes of these letters became stylized, leading to their current versions.
1862 ~ Claude Debussy, French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself disliked the term when applied to his compositions.
More information about Debussy
• 1906 ~ The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey began to manufacture the Victrola (record player). The hand-cranked unit, with horn cabinet, sold for $200. Records sold separately.
• 1917 ~ John Lee Hooker, American blues guitarist and singer, born in Clarksdale, Miss. He began his career in Detroit in 1948 with the release of Boogie Chillun, the biggest of his several hit records and a staple of both the blues and rock repertoires. He toured continually, and among “deep blues” artists, enjoyed an unusually successful career, appearing in concerts and on recordings with many of the leading figures in rock. He was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
1928 ~ Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer
More information about Stockhausen
Read quotes by and about Stockhausen
• 1926 ~ Bob Flanigan, Singer with The Four Freshmen
• 1932 ~ The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began its first experimental TV broadcast in England.
• 1938 ~ Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared, dancing, on the cover of LIFE magazine, published on this day.
• 1938 ~ Count Basie recorded the classic swing tune, Jumpin’ at the Woodside, for Decca Records.
• 1942 ~ Joe Chambers, Musician: guitar, singer with The Chambers Brothers
• 1950 ~ Sam Neely, Singer
• 1960 ~ Debbi Peterson, Drummer, singer with Bangles
• 1961 ~ Roland Orzabal, Singer, guitarist
• 2002 ~ Frederick Selch, an advertising executive and magazine publisher who collected hundreds of antique musical instruments, died at the age of 72.
Selch began collecting almost 50 years ago and owned more than 300 musical instruments by 1977.
In that year, he founded the Federal Music Society, an organization dedicated to performing music from the Colonial-Federal period. The group’s 26 players used instruments in Selch’s collection to perform in more than 70 concerts.
Selch was also the owner, editor and publisher of Ovation, a monthly magazine about classical music, from 1983 to 1989. He produced the Broadway musical “Play Me a Country Song” in 1982, and in the past 10 years was involved in a series of American Music Festivals at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Selch, who received a master’s degree in radio-television production from Syracuse University, worked at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency from 1955 to 1974.
He is to be awarded a posthumous doctorate from the American Studies program at New York University.
• 2002 ~ Richard Lippold, a sculptor whose abstract works are featured at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and at Harvard University, died. He was 87. Lippold created giant metal abstractions, many of which are suspended by wires so they appear to be hovering or moving through space.
His piece World Tree, a 27-foot structure of straight and circular metal tubes that resembles a radio antenna, stands on the Harvard University campus.
He is also known for Ad Astra, a double spire that rises 115 feet in front of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and Orpheous and Apollo, a constellation of bronze bars connected by wires in the lobby of Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center.
Lippold studied industrial design, piano and dance at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. He worked as a freelance industrial designer for several years before teaching art at the University of Michigan.
He later taught at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., and Hunter College in New York.
• 2018 ~ Ed King, former guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd who co-wrote ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ died at the age of 68
• 1904 ~ (William Allen) Count Basie, Bandleader, pianist
More information about Count Basie
• 1928 ~ Art Farmer, Trumpeter, flugelhorn, worked with Horace Henderson, Johnny Otis, Lionel Hampton Band; recorded be-bop classic Farmer’s Market; developed musical instrument called ‘flumpet’
1933 ~ Dame Janet Baker, British mezzo-soprano Read quotes by and about Baker
More information about Baker
• 1938 ~ Kenny (Kenneth Donald) Rogers, Grammy and CMA Award-winning singer; groups: The Kirby Stone Four, The New Christy Minstrels, The First Edition
• 1561 ~ Jacopo Peri, Italian composer
More information about Peri
• 1882 ~ Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” first performed in Moscow.
• 1885 ~ The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan, opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City.
• 1905 ~ Weldon Leo ‘Jack’ Teagarden, Jazz musician, trombonist and singer whose relaxed, melodic instrumental style was highly influential
More information about Teagarden
• 1923 ~ Jim (James Travis) Reeves, American country singer and actor
• 1926 ~ Frank Rosolino, Musician: trombone, played with Stan Kenton, Harold Land, Bob Cooper, Clarke-Boland Big Band
• 1927 ~ Joya Sherrill, Singer
• 1931 ~ Frank Capp, Musician, drummer with the big jazz band, Capp-Pierce Juggernaut
• 1935 ~ Justin Tubb, Singer, Ernest Tubb’s son
• 1939 ~ Orrin Tucker’s orchestra recorded Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!, on Columbia Records.
• 1942 ~ Issac Hayes, Grammy and Academy Award-winning American rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter and arranger
• 1947 ~ Jim Pankow, Trombonist, songwriter with Chicago
• 1948 ~ Robert Plant, British rock singer with Honeydrippers and composer
• 1952 ~ Doug Fieger, Musician, guitar, singer with The Knack
• 1952 ~ Rudy Gatlin, Singer with The Gatlin Brothers
• 1969 ~ Andy Williams received a gold record for the album Happy Heart on Columbia Records.
• 1977 ~ Best of My Love, by the Emotions, topped the pop charts. It had a number one run of four weeks.
• 2001 ~ Frank C. “Papa” Mangione, father of jazz musicians Chuck and Gap Mangione, died at age 91.
Mangione worked at Eastman Kodak Co., ran a grocery store for about two decades and returned to the photography company until his retirement in 1975. For the next 15 years, he sold music and merchandise on worldwide tours with his more famous son, Chuck, a flugelhorn ace.
A son of Italian immigrants, Mangione’s childhood was chronicled by his brother, Jerry, in a best-selling 1942 memoir called “Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life.”
Three of Chuck Mangione’s songs, 60 Miles Young, 70 Miles Young and Papa Mangione, were dedicated to his father.
• 2013 ~ Marian McPartland, British jazz pianist (Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz), died at the age of 95
• 2016 ~ Irving Fields, American composer and pianist (Miami Beach Rhumba), died at the age of 101
Stephen Powers first thought of his grand piano as an impressive piece of furniture.
But he enjoyed listening to music so much when friends played at parties at his home in North Wilmington that he began taking lessons.
“I enjoy having a couple of songs under my belt,” says Powers, a 52-year-old banker. “I play Happy Birthday. I play Getting to Know You for my mom.”
Powers is part of a boomlet of adults who are studying piano. Many took lessons briefly as children and regret giving it up. Some simply enjoy music. Others gravitated toward the keyboard because studies suggest piano improves mental acuity while reducing the odds of dementia.
A Swedish study published in 2014 in the International Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that when a twin played a musical instrument later in life, he or she was 64 percent less likely to develop dementia than the twin who did not play.
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2013 evaluated the impact of piano lessons on cognitive function, mood and quality of life in adults age 60 to 84.
The group that studied piano showed significant improvement in tests that measure executive function, controlling inhibitions and divided attention, as well as enhanced visual scanning and motor ability. Piano students also reported a better quality of life.
Some grownups simply relish a challenge.
In the United Kingdom, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, took to the keyboard at age 56. He chronicled the year he spent learning Chopin’s demanding No. Ballade 1 in G Minor in the book Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible.
Richard Swarmer, 57, of Lewes, played the trumpet from grade school through college. He has sung in several choirs. This year, he began piano lessons.
Learning the piano isn’t easy even for someone with a musical background. Still, Swarmer appreciates that the creative thought process is different from the focus required by his job for a medical benefits company.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed taking piano lessons as an adult,” he says. “It provides a welcome respite from the demands of my job.”
Ethel Thirtel of North Wilmington is 71 and a student at the Music School of Delaware. She is also taking French lessons to help keep her intellect sharp.
“Both pursuits involve active studying and practice to master new skills,” she says.
To meet rising demand, the Music School of Delaware offers adults-only evening group classes to accommodate working people, says Matthew Smith, student and alumni relations officer. The school also provides instruction for adults 50 and older through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at University of Delaware.
“In addition to professionals, we are getting a lot more inquiries from older adults who are retired and have time on their hands,” he says.
Geri Smith, a Julliard-trained singer, musician and composer, has taught piano to children in public schools as well as private arts centers. Her adult students include a 59-year-old writer who took up piano after the death of her husband, a gifted musician.
“Teaching children is a different experience than teaching adults,” says Smith, of Unionville. “Kids pretty much do what you ask them to do but adults ask lots of questions. They want to know why things have to be done a certain way.”
An important part of learning piano is creating new pathways in the brain. A Harvard Medical School study examined the impact of practicing the piano on synapses, the connections between neurons that encode memories and learning.
Volunteers practiced two hours a day for five days, playing a five-finger exercise to the beat of a metronome. To learn how that impacted the neurons scientists used transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS), in which a wire coil sends magnetic impulses to the brain.
They discovered that after a week of practice, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to the finger exercises had expanded like crabgrass.
“Playing the piano creates new synapses,” Smith says. “Think of it as creating a conduit so your right hand can talk to your left hand.”
Meldene Gruber of Rehoboth Beach, who has taught piano for more than 40 years, has seen a surge in adult students in the past two years. Now, half her students are adults.
“A number of my adults say they think playing the piano will help with mental acuity,” she says. “Playing the piano forces you to use both sides of the brain, which is great for neuron firing.”
Most adults have specific goals in mind, such as learning to play Christmas carols or a few favorite pieces.
“You don’t get adults who are focused on becoming concert pianists,” Gruber says. “They come for the joy of playing, not because their mothers made them.”
1918 ~ Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, composer and pianist
Grammy winner
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