Tag Archives: pianist

September 7~ in Music History

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today

• 1920 ~ Al Caiola, Musician, guitarist

• 1921 ~ Arthur Ferrante, Pianist, duo: Ferrante and Teicher

• 1924 ~ Hugh Aitkin, American composer

• 1929 ~ “Sonny” (Theodore) Rollins, American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, awarded Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972

• 1936 ~ Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley), American rock-and-roll singer and guitarist with The Crickets

• 1940 ~ Artie Shaw and his orchestra recorded Temptation on the Victor label.

• 1951 ~ Chrissie Hynde, Guitarist, singer, songwriter with The Pretenders

• 1972 ~ Curtis Mayfield earned a gold record for his Superfly album, from the movie of the same name. The LP contained the hits, Freddie’s Dead and Superfly. Both songs were also million sellers.

• 1975 ~ Steve Anderson set a record for picking a guitar. Anderson, 22, picked for 114 hours, 7 minutes, breaking the old record by over four hours.

• 2001 ~ Igor Buketoff, an American conductor who specialized in Russian music and contemporary opera, died at the age of 87. Buketoff was best known for his orchestration of the first act of Rachmaninoff’s unfinished opera, Monna Vanna. Buketoff led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the world premiere in 1984. Buketoff also was recognized for restoring folk texts to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Buketoff earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Juilliard School, and later directed the choral departments there and at Adelphi College and Columbia University. He won the first Alice Ditson Award for outstanding American conductors in 1941. He won it again in 1967. In 1959, Buketoff established the World Music Bank – now called the International Contemporary Music Exchange – to promote modern orchestral music.

• 2001 ~ Stelios Kazantzidis, a legendary Greek folk singer with a career spanning more than half a century, died at the age of 70. His popularity crossed generations and his music reflected the joys, sorrows and battles of Greece, according to MBI, his recording company. Kazantzidis’ popularity was carried beyond Greek borders by immigrants to such countries as the United States, Canada and Australia, which he often visited. He abandoned the night club scene in 1965 and would only have contact with the public through recordings after that. During his prolific career, he released more than 120 albums. In a letter to the singer shortly before his death, Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos said Kazantzidis occupied an “unrivaled” chapter in the history of Greek music.

September 5 ~ in Music History

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OCMS 1735 ~ Johann Christian Bach, German composer
J.C. Bach was one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons. After he moved to London, he became known as the London Bach.
More information about J.C. Bach

OCMS 1791 ~ Giacomo Meyerbeer, German Composer
More information about Meyerbeer

OCMS 1912 ~ John Cage, American avant-guarde composer, pianist and writer
Read quotes by and about Cage
More information about Cage

• 1934 ~ Carol Lawrence (Laraia), Singer, actress

• 1939 ~ John Stewart, Singer with The Kingston Trio; songwriter

• 1945 ~ Al Stewart, Singer, guitarist with Time Passages

• 1946 ~ Freddie Mercury (Bulsara), singer, Queen, (1975 UK No.1 single ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ also UK No.1 in 1991, plus over 40 other UK Top 40 singles. 1980 US No.1 single ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’). Solo, (1987 UK No. 4 single ‘The Great Pretender’). Mercury died of bronchio-pneumonia on November 24th 1991 aged 45, just one day after he publicly announced he was HIV positive.

• 1946 ~ Loudon Wainwright III, Songwriter, singer

• 1956 ~ Johnny Cash hit the record running with I Walk the Line. Cash’s debut hit song climbed to #17 on the pop music charts.

• 1969 ~ Dweezil Zappa, Musician: guitar: MTV; son of musician Frank Zappa, brother of singer Moon Unit Zappa

• 1972 ~ Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway won a gold record for their duet, Where is the Love. The song got to number five on the pop music charts and was one of two songs that earned gold for the duo. The other was The Closer I Get To You in 1978.

• 2002 ~ Florence Lessing, a dancer who performed in films, nightclubs and Broadway musicals died. She was 86. Lessing worked with the famous jazz-dance choreographer Jack Cole, who spotted her as a teenager in an East Indian dance class. Lessing, Cole, and the teacher of the class, Anna Austin, formed a trio that performed at the Rainbow Room in 1938 and in the musical “Moon Over Miami” in 1939. Lessing went on to perform in many Broadway shows, including “Windy City,” choreographed by Katherine Dunham, and “Sailor Beware” and “Kismet,” both choreographed by Cole. She appeared in the 1952 film musical “Just for You,” which was choreographed by Helen Tamiris and starred Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman. Lessing, who studied a wide variety of dance forms, choreographed two of her own nightclub acts in the mid-1940s and taught dance at several schools.

• 2003 ~ Gisele MacKenzie, a singer-actress who became one of early television’s biggest stars through her appearances on “Your Hit Parade,” died. She was 76. Once known as Canada’s first lady of song, MacKenzie moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1951. In 1952 and 1953 she toured with Jack Benny, who recommended her for a spot on “Your Hit Parade.” In 1957, she left the show to headline her own musical variety program, “The Gisele MacKenzie Show.” It lasted half a year. She returned to weekly television in 1963 as a regular on “The Sid Caesar Show.” She also appeared on radio in Los Angeles with Edgar Bergen and Morton Downey. She was a regular on Bob Crosby’s Club 15 show and a featured performer on radio’s “The Mario Lanza Show.” She continued to appear regularly on television into the 1990s, on such shows as “Studio One,” “The Hollywood Squares,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “MacGyver” and “Boy Meets World.”

September 4 ~ in Music History

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OCMS1824 ~ Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer and organist
More information about Bruckner
Read quotes by and about Bruckner

OCMS 1892 ~ Darius Milhaud, French composer
More information about Milhaud

• 1905 ~ Meade “Lux” Lewis, American jazz pianist

• 1907 ~ Edvard Grieg passed away
More information about Grieg

• 1928 ~ Wingy Manone recorded Downright Disgusted for Vocalion Records. Playing drums for Wingy was a young sideman named Gene Krupa.

• 1930 ~ Mitzi Gaynor (Franchesca Mitzi Marlene de Charney von Gerber), Singer, dancer, actress

• 1942 ~ Merald ‘Bubba’ Knight, Singer with Gladys Night and the Pips

• 1944 ~ Gene Parsons, Drummer with The Byrds

• 1946 ~ Gary Duncan (Grubb), Musician, guitar with Quicksilver Messenger Service

• 1946 ~ Greg Elmore, Musician, drums with Quicksilver Messenger Service

• 1950 ~ Ronald LaPread, Bass with Commodores

• 1951 ~ Martin Chambers, Drummer with The Pretenders

• 1959 ~ Mack the Knife was banned from radio – at least from WCBS Radio in New York
City. Teenage stabbings in the city had people pretty uptight; therefore, the ban.

• 1971 ~ The Lawrence Welk Show was seen for the last time on ABC~TV. ABC felt the show attracted “too old an audience … not good for attracting advertisers.” Syndication allowed the champagne music to continue until 1982 as a weekly favorite for millions of people. Welk charted a half-dozen tunes on the pop music charts between 1956 and 1961, including the number one song, Calcutta, in 1960.
More information about Welk

• 1982 ~ After six weeks, Eye of the Tiger, by Survivor, dropped out of the top spot on the music charts. The song, from the movie, Rocky III, dropped all the way to number 2 (for two weeks), then to number 3 for one week and to number 4 for two weeks before starting to fade. That’s what we call a hit, folks! It was the group’s biggest, earning them a platinum record.

• 2001 ~ Robert Pagent, a dancer and choreographer who appeared in the original productions of Oklahoma! and Carousel died at the age of 87. Born Robert Weisser in Pittsburgh, Pagent began his career in European classical ballet troupes in the 1930s. In 1942 he adopted the stage name Robert Pagent and was square-dance caller in the premier of Agnes de Mille’s cowboy-themed ballet, Rodeo. It was the start of a long friendship and collaboration with DeMille and choreographer Jerome Robbins. The following year he replaced an injured dancer in the original cast of Oklahoma! a night after its opening. Two years later he appeared in the premiere of Carousel. Pagent was a choreographer for television in the 1950s and 60s, including the Miss America Pageant. He staged Rudolph Nureyev’s first U.S. television appearance.

• 2003 ~ Susan Chilcott, one of Britain’s leading opera singers, died. She was 40. Chilcott, a soprano, had performed across Europe and with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Chilcott made her Royal Opera House debut in Covent Garden June 2003 to glowing reviews, playing Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s “Queen Of Spades” opposite Placido Domingo.

• 2003 ~ Tibor Varga, a conductor and violinist known for his teaching and for his performances of Béla Bartók and other modern masters, died. He was 82. Varga was born in Hungary and made his public debut with Mendelssohn’s E minor concerto when he was 10. He began touring in Europe while a teenager and studied in Budapest and in Berlin. After World War II he performed widely as a violin virtuoso. In 1947 he moved to England, where he obtained British citizenship. He founded the Tibor Varga Chamber Orchestra in Detmold, Germany, in 1954, then moved to Switzerland, where he was based the rest of his life. He continued to conduct the Detmold-based orchestra until 1988. His repertoire covered baroque, classical and romantic works, but he was best known for his performances of modern composers including Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Berg.

• 2016 ~ David Brown, American guitarist (Santana), died at the age of 53

September 2 ~ in Music History

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today

• 1863 ~ Isador Philipp, French pianist

• 1888 ~ Friedrich Schorr, Hungarian bass-baritone

• 1917 ~ Laurindo Almeida, Grammy Award-winning composer, musician, guitarist

• 1919 ~ Marge Champion (Marjorie Belcher), Dancer, actress, choreographer with Gower Champion, model for animated Snow White

• 1924 ~ Theatregoers heard the song Indian Love Call for the first time in the operetta Rose Marie, which opened in New York City.

• 1927 ~ Sophie Tucker recorded her signature song, Some of These Days, for Columbia Records.

• 1931 ~ The radio show 15 Minutes with Bing Crosby debuted on CBS. The singer became a super-hot property after the debut.

• 1936 ~ David Blaki, British composer

• 1939 ~ Sam Gooden, Singer with Roosters

• 1940 ~ Jimmy Clanton, Singer, songwriter, toured with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars

• 1943 ~ Rosalind Ashford, Singer with Martha and the Vandellas

• 1946 ~ Marty Grebb, Musician, keyboards with The Buckinghams

• 1957 ~ Steve Porcaro, Keyboards, singer with Toto

• 1958 ~ Fritz McIntyre, Keyboards with Simply Red

• 1965 ~ The Beatles received a gold record for their single Help!, from the movie of the same name.

• 1997 ~ Sir Rudolf Bing died.  He was an Austrian-born opera impresario who worked in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, most notably being General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1950 to 1972.

• 2000 ~ Elvera Sanchez Davis, a tap dancer and the mother of Sammy Davis, Jr., died at the age of 95. Known as Baby Sanchez, Davis began performing at 16 in the chorus line at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem. She continued her career into the early 1940s, dancing for six years in the chorus line at the Apollo Theatre. In 1923, performing in a touring show called “Holiday in Dixie”, she met and married Sammy Davis Sr., also a dancer in the show. Their son was born in 1925. He became a tap-dance prodigy by age 10, trained and brought up by his father after his parents separated. Mrs. Davis retired when the Apollo disbanded its dance chorus, though she danced informally into her 90s. She also performed in touring revues and in films including Carl Micheaux’s 1936 “Swing”. Davis continued to be involved with tap dance until her death, serving from 1989 as an adviser to the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day.
Sammy Davis, Jr. died in 1990 at the age of 64.

• 2001 ~ Troy Donahue died at the age of 65. He was a matinee idol who climbed to stardom in the 1950s with his role in “A Summer Place.”

• 2001 ~ Jazz saxophonist Jay Migliori, who worked with musicians and singers ranging from
Frank Zappa to Frank Sinatra, died of colon cancer. He was 70.
Migliori, who was also a founding member of the Grammy-winning jazz group Supersax, played on some 4,000 recordings during his career. Although he described his own style as “modern acoustic jazz with roots in bebop,” he was equally comfortable working with country stars like Glen Campbell, a wide variety of rock musicians including Zappa and the Four Seasons and pop stars as varied as Dean Martin and Celine Dion. He performed with more than two dozen bands over the years, including those led by Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, Terry Gibbs and Maynard Ferguson. In 1971, he joined Supersax, an ensemble built around a five-saxophone section that specialized in orchestrated Charlie Parker solos. He also recorded several albums of his own, including “Jazz in Transition” and “Smile.”

• 2006 ~ [Jean-Josephat] Clermont Pépin, Canadian pianist and composer (Implosion Symphony), died at the age of 80

A Piano’s Voice

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Picture a seven-foot grand piano in a studio. The lid’s missing, so you can see all the strings. Researchers suspend a rod embedded with 32 microphones over the piano’s body.

“We played this middle C at a very soft level, a medium level, and a very loud level,” says Agnieszka Roginska, a professor in NYU’s music technology program. She says using a pianist to play middle C over and over wouldn’t be scientific. So they’re using a disklavier, a fancy player piano triggered by electronics. “So we could hit the same note, with the same velocity, thousands of times,” she says.

They’d record the piano in one spot. Then move the microphones eight inches. Record the note. Move the mics again. Record the note. Over and over and over, until they reach the back of the piano. At the end, they get “what is basically a very dense acoustical scan of the radiation pattern of the grand piano,” Roginska says.

Read the entire article here: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-10/science-tries-understand-what-gives-piano-its-voice

August 26 ~ in Music History

Posted by MaryO on

today

• 1661 ~ Louis Couperin, composer, died

• 1813 ~ Daniel Gottlob Turk, composer, died at the age of 63

• 1873 ~ Lee DeForest, Inventor of the triode vacuum tube, possibly the most significant invention that made radio possible.
More information about DeForest

• 1894 ~ Arthur Loesser, American pianist and writer

• 1915 ~ Humphrey Searle, British composer and writer

• 1919 ~ Ronny Graham (Ronald Montcrief Stringer), Singer, actor

• 1928 ~ Peter Appleyard, British jazz vibraphonist and drummer

• 1939 ~ The radio program Arch Oboler’s Plays presented the NBC Symphony, for the first time, as the musical backdrop for the drama, This Lonely Heart.

• 1942 ~ Vic Dana, Singer

• 1949 ~ Bob Cowsill, Singer with The Cowsills

• 1957 ~ John O’Neill, Musician, guitar with That Petrol Emotion

• 1958 ~ Ralph Vaughan Williams, Composer, passed away
More information on Vaughan Williams

• 1960 ~ Branford Marsalis, Musician, saxophone, bandleader with The Tonight Show, toured with Sting
More information about the Marsalis family

 

 

• 1967 ~ Brian Epstein passed away

• 1970 ~ Jimi Hendrix opened his recording studio in New York City. Because of its state-of-the-art 36-track recording capability, it attracted many top rock groups.

• 2000 ~ George Edmund Sandell, a noted violin and viola player, teacher and inventor died at the age of 88.
Sandell studied in New York under the viola virtuoso William Primrose and on scholarship at the Royal Swedish Conservatory in Stockholm.

Sandell moved to Los Angeles in 1938, where he played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Pasadena and Santa Monica Symphonies.

Along with classical music, he performed pop, swing and Latin music, and played with the string sections of big band luminaries Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey and  Xavier Cugat.

Sandell also played on some of Frank Sinatra’s recordings and worked for most of the big Hollywood studios on orchestral soundtracks, including the soundtrack for the movie Citizen Kane.

In 1947, he invented the Gee-Bee, a kitchen sponge with a plastic handle for washing dishes. He sold the company to DuPont in 1953.

• 2001 ~ Alix Williamson, the classical music publicist who suggested to Baroness Maria von Trapp that she write a book about her family’s experiences, died at the age of 85.

Williamson’s suggestion resulted in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The Sound of Music.”

She represented artists such as André Watts and Frederica von Stade and helped the New York Grand Opera get a citation in the Guinness Book of World Records for its performances of a complete cycle of Verdi’s operas in Central Park. Williamson also ghostwrote books.

• 2018 ~ Neil Simon died at the age of 91. He was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.

August 25 ~ in Music History

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Screenshot 2016-08-25 10.48.11

 

• 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

• 1909 ~ Ruby (Ethel Hilda) Keeler, Dancer, actress

• 1913 ~ Bob Crosby, Bandleader with The Bob Cats, brother of Bing Crosby

OCMS   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

Hands According to Pianists.

Posted by MaryO on

pianist-hands

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.

via This infographic of composers’ hands is painfully (and hilariously) accurate | Classic FM.

August 24 ~ in Music History

Posted by MaryO on

today

• 1837 ~ Théodore Dubois, French organist and composer

• 1856 ~ Felix Mottl, Austrian conductor, composer and arranger

• 1919 ~ Neils Viggo Bentzon, Danish composer

• 1924 ~ Louis Teicher, Pianist with the duo, Ferrante and Teicher

• 1938 ~ David Freiberg, Bass guitar with Jefferson Starship

• 1938 ~ Mason Williams, Guitarist, Emmy Award-winning writer

• 1941 ~ Ernest Wright, Singer with Little Anthony and the Imperials

• 1943 ~ John Cipollina, Guitarist with Quicksilver Messenger Service

• 1944 ~ Jim Brady, Singer with The Sandpipers

• 1945 ~ Ken Hensley, Musician, guitar, keyboard, composer, with Uriah Heep

• 1955 ~ Jeffrey Daniel, Singer with Shalamar

• 1969 ~ Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant premiered in both New York and Los Angeles.

• 1979 ~ B.B. King celebrated his 30th year in show business at a special celebration held at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles, CA.

• 1985 ~ Huey Lewis and The News reached the top. The Power of Love was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.