June 16: Today’s Music History

Posted by MaryO on June 16, 2023

Be sure your student reads and listens to Today’s Daily Listening Assignment

• 1633 ~ Nathaniel Schnittelbach, Composer

• 1651 ~ Marsilio Casentini, Composer, died at the age of 74

• 1637 ~ Giovanni Paulo Colonna, Composer

• 1752 ~ Meingosus Gaelle, Composer

• 1804 ~ Johann Adam Hiller, Composer, died at the age of 75

• 1808 ~ Georg Wenzel Ritter, Composer, died at the age of 60

• 1813 ~ Otto Jahn, German philologist and musicographer

• 1831 ~ Joseph Ignaz Schnabel, Composer, died at the age of 64

• 1837 ~ Valentino Fioravanti, Composer, died at the age of 72

• 1843 ~ David Popper, Composer

• 1843 ~ Jan Malat, Composer

• 1853 ~ Johan Gustaf Emil Sjogren, Composer

• 1858 ~ Eugene Ysaye, Composer

• 1863 ~ Paul Antonin Vidal, Composer

• 1879 ~ Gilbert and Sullivan’s “HMS Pinafore” debuted at Bowery Theater New York City

And from StarTrek: Picard and Worf sing HMS Pinafore in an effort to control a renegade Data.

• 1899 ~ Helen Traubel, Opera singer at the St. Louis Symphony and New York Metropolitan Opera (“The Met’s premier Wagnerian soprano.”)

• 1890 ~ A glittering program of music and ballet, featuring composer Edward Strause, opened the first Madison Square Garden in New York City.

• 1901 ~ Conrad Beck, Composer

• 1903 ~ Huldreich Georg Fruh, Composer

• 1909 ~ Willi Boskovsky, Austrian violinist and conductor

• 1910 ~ Wendelin Weissheimer, Composer, died at the age of 72

• 1916 ~ Francis Lopez, Composer

• 1928 ~ Sergiu Comissiona, Rumanian-born American conductor

• 1929 ~ James Kirtland Randall, Composer

• 1931 ~ Ivo Petric, Composer

• 1934 ~ Lucia Dlugoszewski, Composer

• 1938 ~ Mickie Finn, TV hostess and banjo player

• 1939 ~ Billy ‘Crash’ Craddock, Country singer

• 1940 ~ Vitezslava Kapralova, Composer, died at the age of 25

• 1941 ~ Lamont Dozier, Songwriter

• 1942 ~ Eddie Levert, Singer

• 1945 ~ Ian Matthews (McDonald), Musician, guitarist and singer with Fairport Convention

• 1946 ~ Miloje Milojevic, Composer, died at the age of 61

• 1946 ~ “Annie Get Your Gun” opened at Imperial Theater NYC for 1147 performances

• 1950 ~ James Smith, American singer with the Stylistics

• 1952 ~ Gino Vannelli, Singer, songwriter

• 1956 ~ Be-Bop-A-Lula, by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, was released on Capitol Records. Vincent was called Capitol’s answer to Elvis Presley. The tune became Vincent Eugene Craddock’s biggest hit of three (Lotta Lovin’, Dance to the Bop) to make the pop music charts. Vincent died in 1971.

• 1958 ~ Jose Pablo Moncayo Garcia, Composer, died at the age of 45

• 1962 ~ Paula Abdul, Singer

• 1967 ~ The Monterey Pop Festival got underway at the Monterey Fairgrounds in Northern California. Fifty thousand spectators migrated to the site that featured Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Mamas and the Papas and The Who.

• 1969 ~ Karl Hubert Rudolf Schiske, Composer, died at the age of 53

• 1970 ~ Heino Eller, Composer, died at the age of 83

• 1972 ~ The only museum devoted exclusively to jazz music opened. The New York Jazz Museum welcomed visitors for the first time.

• 1977 ~ “Beatlemania” opened on Broadway

• 1978 ~ The film adaptation of Grease, a success on the Broadway stage, premiered in New York City. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Several hit songs came out of the motion picture: Grease, by Frankie Valli, You’re the One That I Want and Summer Nights (both sung by Travolta and Newton-John). The first two songs were platinum 2,000,000+ sellers, while the third was a million-seller.

• 1979 ~ Ben Weber, American composer and winner of the Thorne Music Award in 1965, died at the age of 62

• 1980 ~ The movie The Blues Brothers opened in Chicago, IL. John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, formerly of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, starred. The pair played Jake and Elwood Blues. James Brown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin performed. Cab Calloway also appeared with a rendition of his classic Minnie the Moocher.

• 1990 ~ Eva Turner, British soprano, died

• 1991 ~ Vicky Brown, American singer (Power of Love), died

• 1991 ~ “Fiddler on the Roof” closed at Gershwin Theater NYC after 241 performances

• 1994 ~ Boris Alexandrov, Conductor of the Red Army Song/Dance Ensemble, died at the age of 88

• 1997 ~ Thirtyfirst Music City News Country Awards: Alan Jackson & LeAnn Rimes

• 2000 ~ Richard Dufallo, a conductor known for his energetic performances of contemporary music, died at age 67 of stomach cancer. Dufallo, who lived in Denton, conducted more than 80 major orchestras and festivals in the United States, Canada, and Europe, premiering numerous works by American and European composers, including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jacob Druckman, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Krzystof Penderecki. He was a former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and worked closely with Leonard Bernstein from 1965 to 1975. He also served as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic and as artistic director of contemporary music at the Aspen Festival in Colorado. He was married to pianist Pamela Mia Paul.

• 2001 ~ Joe Darion, the lyricist for “Man of La Mancha,” died at the age of 90. “Man of La Mancha” opened in New York in 1965 and ran for 2,328 performances. It won Darion and his composing partner Mitch Leigh a Tony Award for best score. Inspired by Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” the musical went on to become the third-longest-running Broadway musical of the 1960s. Its music included the popular song The Impossible Dream. In the early 1950s, Darion had three top 10 hits: the Patti Page ballad “Changing Partners,” the Teresa Brewer novelty song Ricochet and Red Buttons’s comedy hit The Ho Ho Song. At the time of his death, Darion was working on a show titled “Oswego.”

• 2017 ~ Jacques Charpentier, French composer, died at the age of 83

• 2019 ~ Franco Zeffirelli, Italian film and opera director (Romeo & Juliet), died at the age of 96

May 3: Today’s Music History

Posted by MaryO on May 3, 2023

• 1844 ~ Richard D’Oyly Carte, British impresario; producer of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He also founded the Savoy Theater in London.

• 1912 ~ Virgil Fox, Organ virtuoso: credited for bringing the organ “to the forefront among classical concert instruments”

• 1919 ~ Betty Comden, Composer

• 1919 ~ Pete Seeger, American folk singer, banjo player, guitarist and songwriter

• 1924 ~ Joe Ames, Singer with The Ames Brothers

• 1926 ~ Jimmy Cleveland, Composer, musician, trombone

• 1928 ~ Dave Dudley (Pedruska), Country singer

• 1933 ~ James Brown, American rhythm-and-blues singer songwriter, dancer and instrumentalist, The Godfather of Soul, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986

• 1937 ~ Frankie Valli (Francis Castellucio), Falsetto singer with The Four Seasons

• 1939 ~ Beer Barrel Polka, one of the standards of American music, was recorded by The Andrews Sisters for Decca Records. Patti, Maxine and LaVerne turned this song into a giant hit.

• 1951 ~ In Britain, the King and Queen inaugurated the Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank and also opened the Festival Hall.

• 1956 ~ Most Happy Fella, a musical by Frank Loesser, opened at the Imperial Theatre in New York City. The show, an adaptation of They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard, ran for 676 performances on Broadway.

• 1960 ~ The play, The Fantasticks, opened at the Sullivan Playhouse in New York City. It would later become the longest-running off-Broadway play.

• 1971 ~ NPR, National Public Radio, the U.S. national, non-commercial radio network, was born.

• 1997 ~ Narciso Yepes, famous Spanish classical guitarist, died.

• 2001 ~ Legendary jazz drummer Billy Higgins died at the age of 64. Higgins was one of the most recorded figures in the history of jazz, performing with John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Milt Jackson, Charles Lloyd, Pat Metheny, Lee Morgan, Art Pepper and Joshua Redman, among others. He played with pianist Cedar Walton and was involved with the first edition of bassist Charlie Haden’s innovative Quartet West. Higgins came to prominence in the 1950s with saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s free jazz group, which included Haden and trumpeter Don Cherry. Higgins’ drumming laid the foundation for the group’s free jazz flights of fancy. That group sparked a decade of innovation in jazz that was carried on by the Coleman Quartet, Coltrane, George Russell, Charles Mingus and Albert Ayler, among others. Higgins’ ability to adapt his sense of swing to any genre made him one of the most in-demand drummers of the past four decades. Higgins helped found World Stage, a storefront performance space and teaching venue in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park. He was also on the jazz faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. Higgins was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master’s Fellowship in 1997.

• 2002 ~ Yevgeny Svetlanov, a renowned Russian pianist, composer and former chief conductor of the Bolshoi Theater, died. He was 73. He was born in Moscow in 1928. He graduated from the Gnesinykh Musical- Pedagogical Institute and from the Moscow Conservatory. For several years he was conductor and chief conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre. From 1965 on he was artistic director and chief conductor of the State Symphonic Orchestra of USSR. He composed several symphonies, symphonic poems, chamber music works, and vocal-instrumental works. Svetlanov was the chief conductor of the Bolshoi Theater from 1963 to 1965, when he was named artistic director and chief conductor of the Soviet State Symphony. He was named a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1968 and was awarded the Lenin prize in 1972 and the Order of Lenin 1978. He was given the Soviet State prize for creative achievement in 1983. Svetlanov was born in the Soviet Union in 1928. In 1951, he graduated from the Gnesin Institute of Music. Svetlanov graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1955 as a pianist, composer and conductor.

Some Musical Presidents

Posted by MaryO on February 20, 2023

Presidents’ Day (celebrated on the third Monday in February), was originally established in 1885 in recognition of George Washington. The holiday became popularly known as Presidents’ Day after it was moved as part of the 1971 Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an attempt to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers. Presidents’ Day is now popularly viewed as a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents past and present.

Wondering how many U.S. Presidents played musical instruments?

Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) Third president of the United States, drafted the Declaration of Independence, and played the violin and cello.

John Quincy Adams (1767 – 1848) The sixth president of the United States formulated the Monroe Doctrine, and played the flute.

John Tyler (1790-1862) The tenth president of the United States was the first Vice President to become President by the death of his predecessor. He played the violin.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) The sixteenth president of the United States issued the Emancipation Proclamation and played the violin.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822- 1884) The eighteenth president of the United States certainly scrapes the bottom of the list. He was tone deaf and famously commented, “I only know two tunes. One of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn’t.”

Chester Alan Arthur (1829 – 1886) Became the 21st president of the United States following the assassination of President James A. Garfield. He played the banjo.

Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) The 32nd President of the United States and the fifth cousin to President Theodore Roosevelt, played the piano and sang soprano in his school choir.

Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924) The 28th president of the United States and creator of the League of Nations, played the violin and sang tenor in his college glee club.

Warren Harding (1865-1923) The 29th president of the United States organized the Citizen’s Cornet Band, available for both Republican and Democratic rallies. He once remarked that, “I played every instrument but the slide trombone and the E-flat cornet.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) The 30th president of the United States was determined to preserve old moral and economic precepts amid American prosperity. He played the harmonica.

Harry Truman (1884 – 1972) The 33rd president of the United States who served during the conclusion of World War II, played the piano.

Richard Nixon (1913 – 1994) The 37th president of the United States, who ended American fighting in Vietnam and later resigned from office in the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal, was a classically-trained pianist and also played the accordion. He composed and played this piece, set to concerto form with “15 Democratic violinists.” Nixon takes a dig at Harry Truman just before playing.:

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) The 40th president of the United States implemented the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. He played the harmonica.

Bill Clinton (born 1946) The 42nd president of the United States and the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term, plays the saxophone.

Barack Obama (born 1961) The 44th president of the United States and first African American president has broken into song on several recent occasions. President Obama sang Amazing Grace at the funeral for South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney:

June 16: On This Day in Music

Posted by MaryO on June 16, 2020