I think "Focus" was the best thing Getz did in his carreer; really fine music, but I prefer the likes of Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley.
hebba, Welcome back, honey. Well, since you are an artist yourself, how about a little Joe to go with one of your sculptures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJxHFW2S-Eo
I also notice that he did one with Herbie Hancock, y'all.
There's our puppy, with a great quartet of notables. Thanks, PA, and although the West Side duo was a little out of sync and had a hiccup or two, it was beautifully done.
I did a double check to make certain that I was not amiss with this celeb, and it seems that I am all right, and that David, formerly of Pink Floyd, is all right with BB King, so let's listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKNHFX8Dua4&feature=related
Well, folks. It's time for me to say goodnight. I've been a referee most of the day.
Here's my "time to retire" song.
Keep the spirits singing, and that is good advice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S75DrNLZ2ts&feature=related
Tomorrow, then
From Letty with love
Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.
edgar, I recall Charlie's "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", but I truly enjoyed "Rolling with the Flow". Also enjoyed the Beatles' song, Texas. Something quite sad about it, however.
Today is Maurice Ravel's birthday, and as one would expect, Ravel's Bolero is on the agenda. Maurice himself did not count it among his best compositions.
Nice looking fellow, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP3qwZxm7p4
Hi Letty, talking about Ravel's Bolero, have you ever heard this version of "No more Bolero" by Gerard Joling? This was a great hit in Europe some years ago and is still frequently played on the airwaves there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRuMR5EW3c
Dutchy, thank you so much for helping me to test the equipment here on our cyber radio. That was fabulous, Mr. DownUnder. Even though nothing seems to be working properly via alerts, etc., it doesn't matter after hearing that man sing.
Here's another by him, Dutchy, and thanks for the introduction.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LghhG6cWgRA&feature=related
Letty wrote:Dutchy, thank you so much for helping me to test the equipment here on our cyber radio. That was fabulous, Mr. DownUnder. Even though nothing seems to be working properly via alerts, etc., it doesn't matter after hearing that man sing.
Here's another by him, Dutchy, and thanks for the introduction.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LghhG6cWgRA&feature=related
Thank you Letty, nice to hear him sing in my native tongue.
edgar, GEEsele MacKinzie? Wow! Thanks, Texas, and now I am receiving alerts.
You know, Dutchy, I understood Shangri La, and that's about it, but regardless of the language, the melody was the message. (with apologies to Marshall McLuan in Canada)
Good morning WA2K.
That's the first time I've heard "No More Bolero" and I love it.
Thank you Dutchy. I wish I could transfer it to my DVD collection. Wondering if that video is ever shown on TV.
Maurice Ravel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937) was a Basque French composer and pianist of the impressionistic period, known especially for the subtlety, richness and poignancy of his music. His piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music have become staples of the concert repertoire.
Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs and Gaspard de la Nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses tonal color and variety of sound and instrumentation very effectively.
To the general public, Ravel is probably best known for his orchestral work, Boléro, which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music."[1]
According to SACEM, Ravel's estate earns more royalties than that of any other French musician. Most of Ravel's works will not enter the public domain until 2015.[2]
Biography
Early life
Ravel was born in Ciboure (Ziburu in Basque language), in the north of Basque Country, France, near Biarritz, part of the French Basque region. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist. Some of the father's inventions were quite important, including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death," an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a hit in the early 1900s. After the family moved to Paris, Ravel's younger brother Édouard was born. At age seven, young Maurice began piano lessons and, five or six years later, began composing. His parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. During the first few years of the 1900s, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists who were referred to as the "Apaches" (hooligans).
He studied composition at the Conservatoire under Gabriel Fauré for a remarkable fourteen years. During his years at the Conservatoire, Ravel tried numerous times to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, but to no avail. After a scandal involving his loss of the prize in 1905 (to Victor Gallois ?- Ravel had been considered the favorite to win), Ravel left the Conservatoire. The incident ?-named the "Ravel Affair" by the Parisian press ?- also led to the resignation of the Conservatoire's director, Théodore Dubois.
Work with Diaghilev
Ravel later worked with impresario Sergei Diaghilev who staged Ma Mère l'Oye and Daphnis et Chloé. The latter was commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the great Vaslav Nijinsky. In 1920, the French government awarded him the Légion d'honneur, but Ravel refused. Soon, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit less prolifically.
Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to write La Valse (1920), originally named Wien (Vienna), and Ravel was hurt by the fact that Diaghilev never used the composition. When the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand, and Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel (friends talked Diaghilev out of it). The men never met again.[3]
In 1928, Ravel made a concert tour in America. In New York City, he received a moving standing ovation which he remarked was unlike any of his underwhelming premieres in Paris. He traveled as far west as San Francisco, where he conducted a concert of his orchestral music. That same year, Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He also met George Gershwin and the two became friends. Ravel's admiration of American jazz led him to include some jazz elements in a few of his later compositions, especially the two piano concertos.
Ravel is not known to have had any intimate relationships. Many of his friends have suggested that Ravel was known to frequent the bordellos of Paris, but the issue of his sexuality remains largely a mystery. Rumors have surfaced fron time to time that Ravel was homosexual, possibly because of his work with Diaghilev. No factual (or reliably anecdotal) evidence has ever been found to substantiate this rumor. Ravel made a remark at one time suggesting that because he was such a perfectionist composer, so devoted to his work, that he could never have a lasting intimate relationship with anyone.
Although he considered his small stature and light weight an advantage to becoming an aviator, during the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist as a pilot because of his age and weak health. Instead, upon his enlistment, he became a truck driver. He named his truck "Adelaide". Most references to what he drove in the war indicate it was an artillery truck or generic truck. No primary source mentions him driving an ambulance.
His few students included Maurice Delage, Manuel Rosenthal, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Vlado Perlemuter.
Ravel made one of his few recordings when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930. Ravel reportedly conducted a group of Parisian musicians following the world premiere of his second piano concerto, the Concerto in G, with Marguerite Long, who had been the soloist in the premiere. EMI later reissued the 1932 recording on LP and CD. Although Ravel was listed as the conductor on the original 78-rpm discs, this is now disputed and it's possible he merely supervised the recording.
Illness and death
In 1932 Ravel sustained a blow to the head in a taxi accident. The injury was considered minor, but soon thereafter he began to complain of aphasia-like symptoms similar to Pick's disease. He had begun work on music for a film version of Don Quixote (1933) featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst. When Ravel became unable to compose, he could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert.
In late 1937 Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery. One hemisphere of his brain was re-inflated with serous fluid. He awoke from the surgery, called for his brother Edouard, lapsed into a coma and died shortly after. He is buried in Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris.
Musical style
Ravel considered himself in many ways a classicist. He relied on traditional forms and structures as ways of presenting his new and innovative harmonies. He often masked the sections of his structure with transitions that disguised the beginnings of the motif. This is apparent in his Valses nobles et sentimentales ?- inspired by Franz Schubert's collections, Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales ?- where the seven movements begin and end without pause, and in his chamber music where many movements are in sonata-allegro form, hiding the change from developmental sections to recapitulation.
Though Ravel's music has tonal centers, it was innovative for the time period. In keeping with the French school pioneered by Chabrier, Satie, and Debussy (to name a few), Ravel's melodies are almost exclusively modal. Instead of using major or minor for his predominant harmonic language, he preferred modes with major or minor flavors - for example the Mixolydian, with its lowered leading tone, instead of major, and the Aeolian instead of harmonic minor. As a result, there are virtually no leading tones in his output. Melodically, he tended to favor two modes: the Dorian and the Phrygian. He was in no way dependent on the modes exclusively; he used extended harmonies and intricate modulations outside the realm of traditional modal practices. Ravel was fond of chords of the ninth and eleventh, and the acidity of his harmonies is largely the result of a fondness for unresolved appoggiaturas (listen to the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales). His piano music, some of which is noted for its technical challenges (for example Gaspard de la nuit), was an extension of Lisztian virtuosity. Even his most difficult pieces, however, are marked by elegance and refinement. He was inspired by various dances, his favorite being the minuet. Other forms from which Ravel drew material include the forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera, passacaglia, and the boléro.
Ravel has almost always been considered one of the two great French musical Impressionists (the other being Debussy), but in reality he is much more than just an Impressionist. In his A la maniere de...Borodine (In the manner of...Borodine), Ravel plays with the ability to both mimic and remain original. In a more complex situation, A la maniere de...Emmanuel Chabrier /Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod ("Faust IIème acte"), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Emmanuel Chabrier. Even in writing in the style of others, Ravel's own voice as a composer remained distinct.
Ravel had very meticulously crafted manuscripts. Unfortunately, early printed editions of his works were prone to errors. Painstakingly, he worked with his publisher, Durand, in correcting them. In a letter, Ravel wrote that when proofing L'enfant et les sortilèges, after many other editors had proofread the opera, he could still find ten errors per page. Each piece was carefully crafted, although Ravel wished that, like the historical composers he admired, he could write a great quantity of works. Igor Stravinsky once referred to Ravel as the "Swiss Watchmaker", a reference to the intricacy and precision of Ravel's works.
Musical Influence
Active in a period of great artistic innovations and diversification, Ravel benefited from many influences, though his music defies any facile classification. As Vladimir Jankélévitch notes in his biography, "no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely [
]. Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks which the snobbery of the century has attempted to impose."[5] Ravel's musical language was ultimately highly original, neither absolutely modernist nor impressionist. Like Debussy, Ravel categorically refused this description which he believed was reserved exclusively for painting.[6]
Nonetheless, Ravel was very open to influences and was a remarkable synthesist of disparate styles. Certain aspects of his music can be considered to fall into the lineage of 18th century French classicism beginning with Couperin and Rameau as in Le tombeau de Couperin. The uniquely 19th century French sensibilities of Fauré and Chabrier are reflected in Sérénade grotesque, Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Menuet antique, while pieces such as Jeux d'eau, and the String Quartet owe something to the innovations of Satie and Debussy. The virtuosity and poetry of Gaspard de la nuit and Concerto pour la main gauche hint at Liszt and Chopin. His admiration and interest in American jazz is echoed in L'Enfant et les sortilèges, Sonate pour violon and the Piano Concerto in G, while the Russian school of music inspired homage in In the style of Borodin and the orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition. He variously cited Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Schubert and Schönberg as inspirations for various pieces.
Ravel wrote, in 1928, that composers should be aware of both individual and national consciousness. That year, Ravel had toured the United States and Canada by train performing piano recitals in the great concert halls of twenty-five cities. In their reluctance to take jazz and blues as a nationalistic style of music, he stated American composers' "greatest fear is to find themselves confronted by mysterious urges to break academic rules rather than belie individual consciousness. Thereupon these musicians, good bourgeois as they are, compose their music according to the classical rules of the European epoch."
There is a story that when American composer George Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would have liked to study with the French composer, if that were possible. (Generally, Ravel did not take students.) According to Gershwin, the Frenchman retorted, "Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"[7]The second part of the story has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's reply, Ravel suggested that maybe he should study with Gershwin. (This tale may well be apocryphal: Gershwin seems also to have told a near-identical story about a conversation with Arnold Schoenberg; see the Wikipedia article for George Gershwin.) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro which became financially very successful for him.
He intended to write an earlier concerto, Zazpiak Bat, but it was never finished. The title reflects his Basque heritage: meaning 'The Seven Are One', it refers to the seven Basque regions, and was a motto often used in connection with the idea of a Basque nation. Surviving notes and fragments also confirm that this naturally was to be heavily influenced by Basque music. Instead, Ravel abandoned the piece, using its nationalistic themes and rhythms in some of his other pieces.
Ravel commented that André Gédalge, his professor of counterpoint, was very important in the development of his skill as a composer. As an orchestrator, Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully in order to determine the possible effects. This may account for the success of his orchestral transcriptions, both of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.
Anna Magnani
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born March 7, 1908(1908-03-07)
Rome, Italy
Died September 26, 1973 (aged 65)
Rome, Italy
Spouse(s) Goffredo Alessandrini (1935-1950)
[show]Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Actress
1955 The Rose Tattoo
BAFTA Awards
Best Foreign Actress
1956 The Rose Tattoo
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1956 The Rose Tattoo
Other Awards
National Board of Review Award for Best Actress
1946 Rome, Open City
1955 The Rose Tattoo
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
1955 The Rose Tattoo
Anna Magnani (March 7, 1908 - September 26, 1973) was an Academy Award-winning Italian stage and film actress. Magnani won the Academy Award for her lusty portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo.
Biography
Born in Rome, she was brought up in poverty by her maternal grandmother in a slum district of the city. After some education at a convent school, she enrolled at Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art and sang in nightclubs and cabarets to support herself. Due to her work in nightclubs, Magnani was dubbed the Italian Édith Piaf.
In 1927 she acted in the screen version of La Nemica e Scampolo. She had also been in the stage production. She met Italian filmmaker Goffredo Alessandrini in 1933 and the two were married in 1935. He was one of the first Italian filmmakers to adapt the new sound technology used in American cinema. Her marriage to Alessandrini ended in 1950, and she never married again. Magnani once said, "Women like me can only submit to men capable of dominating them, and I have never found anyone capable of dominating me."
In 1941, Magnani starred in Teresa Venerdì, ("Friday Theresa") which the writer and director, Vittorio De Sica, called Magnani's "first true film." In it she plays Loletta Prima, the girlfriend of Di Sica's character, Pietro Vignali. De Sica had called her laugh, "loud, overwhelming, and tragic."
International career
She had worked in films for almost 20 years before gaining international renown as 'Pina' in Roberto Rossellini's neorealist milestone Roma, Cittá Aperta. (also known as Rome, Open City, 1945). Her harrowing death scene remains one of cinema's most devastating moments. In Italy (and gradually elsewhere) she soon became established as a star, although she lacked the conventional beauty and glamour usually associated with the term. Slightly plump and rather short in stature with a face framed by unkempt raven hair and eyes encircled by deep, dark shadows, she smouldered with seething earthiness and volcanic temperament.
Magnani was Rossellini's second choice to play the role of Pina. He had originally wanted Clara Calamai, the lead of Ossessione, (a part Luchino Visconti had originally offered Magnani) but she was already under contract and working on another film. Rossellini almost had to resort to his third actress choice because Magnani demanded she be paid the same amount of money the male lead Aldo Fabrizi was earning. The difference in salary was only 100,000 lire, and more about principle than price. Rossellini, whom she called "this forceful, secure courageous man", was her lover at the time, and she collaborated with him on other films.
Other collaborations with Rossellini include L'Amore, a two part film from 1948 which includes The Miracle and The Human Voice (Il miracolo, and Una voce umana). In the former, Magnani, playing a peasant outcast who believes the baby she's carrying is Christ, plumbs both the sorrow and the righteousness of being alone in the world. The latter film, based on Jean Cocteau's play about a woman desperately trying to salvage a relationship over the telephone, is remarkable for the ways in which Magnani's powerful moments of silence segue into cries of despair. One could surmise that the role of this unseen lover was Rossellini, and was based on conversations that took place throughout their own real-life affair.
In Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951) she plays Maddalena, a blustery, obstinate stage mother who drags her daughter to Cinecittà for the "Prettiest Girl in Rome" contest. When she realizes that the studio heads are laughing at her daughter's screen test, a shattering close-up of Magnani's face reveals rage, humiliation, and maternal love. She starred as Camille, a woman torn between three men, in Jean Renoir's film Le Carrosse d'or (also known as The Golden Coach, 1953). Renoir called her "the greatest actress I have ever worked with".
As the widowed mother of a teenage daughter in Daniel Mann's 1955 film of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo, Magnani's adroit, mercurial performing offsets the hammy Method acting style of co-star Burt Lancaster. It wasn't until then that she broke into Hollywood mainstream cinema with her first English speaking role. Playing Serafina Delle Rose in The Rose Tattoo, she won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar. Tennessee Williams wrote it and based the character of Serafina on Magnani, since the two were good friends. It was originally put on stage starring Maureen Stapleton, because Magnani's English was too limited at the time for her to star. Magnani worked with Williams again in his 1959 film, The Fugitive Kind, where she played Lady Torrance and starred opposite Marlon Brando.
The Wild, Wild Women (1958) is notable for pairing Magnani, as an unrepentant streetwalker, with Giulietta Masina in a women-in-prison film. In Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962), Magnani is both the mother and the whore, playing an irrepressible prostitute determined to give her teenage son a respectable middle-class life. Mamma Roma, is one of Magnani's critically acclaimed films, yet it wasn't released in the United States until 1995, for having been deemed too controversial.
It was after this role along with her many other parts of playing poor women that Magnani was quoted in 1963 as having said, "I'm bored stiff with these everlasting parts as hysterical, loud, working-class women".
Magnani made her final film performance as Rosa in The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) except for her uncredited appearance as herself (within a dramatic context) in Fellini's Roma (1972). Towards the end of her career, Magnani was quoted as having said, "The day has gone when I deluded myself that making movies was art. Movies today are made up of
intellectuals who always make out that they're teaching something"
She died at the age of 65 in Rome, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. A huge crowd gathered for her funeral in a final salute that Romans usually reserve for Popes. She was provisionally laid to rest in the Roberto Rossellini's family mausoleum, her favorite director and longtime friend. She now rests in the Cimitero Comunale, San Felice Circeo, Lazio, Italy.
Family
Francesco Magnani: Father
Marina Casadei: Mother
Luca Alessandrini: Son
Olivia Magnani: Granddaughter
Relationships
Goffredo Alessandrini (husband 1935-1950)
Massimo Serato
Roberto Rossellini
Walter Chiari
hey, Raggedy. That is the first time that I have ever heard the man. Great, no?
Well, I see our hawkman is here today so I will wait to play something special when his bio's are behind us.
Peter Wolf
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Wolf (born Peter Blankfeld, March 7, 1946, Bronx, New York) is an American rock and roll musician, best known as the lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1982.
He planned a career as an artist, but landed a job in the late 1960s as a disc jockey on then-cutting edge Boston FM radio station WBCN and began exploring his interest in blues and rhythm and blues music, giving himself the nickname "the Woofer Goofer", sometimes expanded to "the Woofer Goofer with the Green Teeth". He formed a group called the Hallucinations, then saw the then J. Geils Blues Band in concert and quickly joined. He was the vocalist and frontman, and often acted as a sort of manager. He was known for his charismatic stage antics of fast-talking quips and "pole-vaulting" with the mic stand. He and keyboard player Seth Justman were responsible for most of the song writing, but Wolf left the group in 1983. He and the group felt their creativity was stagnating and they were faced with a decision to follow the path they had been on, or the new path which had won them chart success with "Centerfold", a pop music record with very little traditional blues or rhythm and blues content.
Wolf was a solo act for the next 15 years (with the assistance of guitarist Johnny A for seven of those years[1]), but in 1999 the J. Geils Band reunited for several appearances, with Wolf resuming his duties as lead vocalist. They have since separated again, probably with no hope of reunion. Wolf then began touring once more, as a solo act.
Wolf's first solo record, Lights Out, was produced by Michael Jonzun of the Jonzun Crew, also features Adrian Belew, and has a somewhat funky, electro sound. His last two solo albums, Fool's Parade and Sleepless (the latter featuring guest appearances from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), were both highly praised by Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone, receiving four-and-a-half and five stars, respectively. Sleepless was noted as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time in Rolling Stone issue 937. He has performed on stage with his friends Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lesh.
Wolf was married to actress Faye Dunaway from 1974 to 1979. He studied painting in Stockbridge, Massachusetts with Norman Rockwell as a boy.
Wolf was a roommate of well-known surrealist filmmaker David Lynch at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Wolf is currently on a 1/2 tour with Kid Rock, and Rev. Run.
'The Obedient Wife'
There was a man who had worked all his life, had saved all of his money, and was a real miser when it came to his money.
Just before he died, he said to his wife...'When I die, I want you to take all
my money and put it in the casket with me. I want to take my money to the
afterlife with me.'
And so he got his wife to promise him, with all of her heart, that when he died, she would put all of the money into the casket with him.
Well, he died. He was stretched out in the casket, his wife was sitting there -
dressed in black, and her friend was sitting next to her. When they finished the ceremony, and just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket,
the wife said, 'Wait just a moment!'
She had a small metal box with her; she came over with the box and put it in the casket. Then the undertakers locked the casket down and they rolled it away. So her friend said,
'Girl, I know you were not foolish enough to put all that money in there with your husband.'
The loyal wife replied, 'Listen, I'm a Christian; I cannot go back on my word. I promised him that I was going to put
that money into the casket with him.'
You mean to tell me you put that money in the casket with him!?!?!?'
'I sure did,' said the wife. 'I got it all together, put it into
my account, and wrote him a check.... If he can cash it, then he can spend it.'
