One brief melodic piece I just love is called Dance of the Blessed Spirits from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck. I believe it was originally a ballet interlude in the opera, and then became a four part movement with a flute solo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwrxsJrMunA&NR=1
At Luciano Pavarotti's funeral the flutist, Andrea Griminelli, who sometimes appeared with Pavorotti, played Dance of the Blessed Spirits as a tribute to the great tenor.
Here they are appearing together. The clip says it is in Central Park, NYC, but I think that may be wrong. I don't suppose it really matters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3xboy4Ixxc&feature=related
Ah, that voice, that voice, that
magnificant voice. I would be happy to listen to it all day, and I wish I could.
Stunning is right, lzzie. I've never heard Il Divos before. They are wonderful--great, strong voices--and quite good to look at as well. Thanks for posting that.
THinking of you Letty...
Love this song - play Jamie O Neals version on many late nite.
Hugs to you girlie xxxxxxx
Good morrow, ladies and gents. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Good morning, WA2K radio audience.
First, I would like to thank you all for the lovely songs of support and comfort. I do apologize for seeming so gloomy last evening. I don't usually do that.
It seems that today is the birthday of a member of Three Dog Night, so let's hear one from him. This was performed at Pompano Beach and it's not too far from where I live.(pompano fish are indeed a delicacy)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_cOOu_-mQOc
Good morning WA2K.
Glad to hear you're feeling better today, Letty.
Was the song I played for you last night the one you were looking for or do we have to search further?
Raggedy, I think that version was one written by Johnny Mercer, but it was lovely. I still am amazed at the voice of Mario Lanza. Speaking of India, I do wonder about the where abouts of Prince Gautam.
Anyone care to join me in a quick breakfast? Food, they say, is a restorative.
Percy Grainger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961)
Born George Percy Grainger
8 July 1882
Brighton, Melbourne, Australia
Died 20 February 1961
White Plains, New York, USA
Cause of death Prostate cancer
Burial place Adelaide, Australia
West Terrace Cemetery
Residence Springfield, Missouri, USA
Nationality Australian
Education Hoch Conservatory, Frankfurt
Occupation Composer
Known for The tune "English country garden"
Spouse Ella Viola Brandelius Ström
Parents John Harry Grainger
Rose Annie Aldridge
George Percy Grainger (8 July 1882-20 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, pianist and champion of the saxophone and the concert band, who worked under the stage name of Percy Aldridge Grainger.
Family
His mother was Rose Grainger (née Rosa Annie Aldridge), born July 3, 1861, Adelaide and died April 30, 1922, New York City. Rose was the daughter of George Aldridge and Sarah Jane Aldridge (née Brown). Her father George died at the age of 62 on December 12, 1879 and her mother, Sarah Jane, died November 26, 1895 at the age of 75. Rose had six brothers and two sisters: George Sydney, James Henry, Edward William, Frederick Clement, Emma Elizabeth, Clara Jane, Charles Edwin, and Frank Herbert. Rose married John Harry Grainger, giving birth to George Percy in 1882.
Early life and career
Grainger was born in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. His father was a successful architect who emigrated from London, England, and his mother, Rose, was the daughter of hoteliers from Adelaide, South Australia, also of English immigrant stock. His father was an alcoholic. When Grainger was age 11, his parents separated after his mother contracted syphilis from his father, who then returned to London.
The Grainger family once lived at 36 Oxley Road, Hawthorn, Victoria. Grainger's mother was domineering and possessive, although cultured. While pregnant, she allocated time each day to stare at a statue of a Greek god in the belief it would pass some of its qualities to her child. Percy became a striking individual with blue eyes and brilliant orange hair who gave his first public performance at the age of 12, and critics hailed him as a new prodigy. Due to taunts about his appearance Grainger spent less than three months in school and after refusing to return was home schooled by his mother. A strict disciplinarian, Rose used a whip as punishment which may have contributed to his later sado masochistic sexuality?-ironically, her tombstone reads "Wise, wonderful, devoted, angelic mother." Grainger excelled in languages and his correspondence shows he was fluent in 11 foreign languages including Icelandic and Russian.[1]
His mother took him to Europe in 1895 to study at Dr. Hoch's conservatory in Frankfurt. There he displayed his talents as a musical experimenter, using irregular and unusual meters. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. Fellow-students included Cyril Scott, Henry Balfour Gardiner, Norman O'Neill and Roger Quilter. Grainger himself did not believe in such a concept as musical talent and attributed his career to his mother's influence. During his time in Frankfurt, he lost the tip of an index finger while working on a bicycle chain. Although Grainger himself hoped he would have to give up concerts and be able to concentrate on composing, his performance ability was not affected by this handicap.
Grainger was an innovative musician who anticipated many forms of twentieth century music well before they became established by other composers. As early as 1899 he was working with "beatless music", using metric successions (including such sequences as 2/4, 2½/4, 3/4, 2 ½ /4). His use of chance music in 1912 predated John Cage by forty years, and he wrote "unplayable" music for player piano rolls twenty years before Conlon Nancarrow.
From 1901 to 1914, Grainger lived in London, where he befriended and was influenced by composer Edvard Grieg. Grieg had a longstanding interest in the folk songs of his native Norway, and Grainger developed a particular interest in the folk songs of rural England. The interest moved to active collecting after he heard Lucy Broadwood's lecture on folksong collecting in 1905. In 1906, Grainger hiked around Britain making field recordings of these folk songs on Edison wax cylinders, the first to make such recordings in Britain.[2] During this period, Grainger also wrote and performed piano compositions that presaged the forthcoming popularization of the tone cluster by Leo Ornstein and Henry Cowell.
Grainger's energy was legendary. In London, he was known as "the jogging pianist" for his habit of racing through the streets to a concert, where he would bound on stage at the last minute because he preferred to be in a state of utter exhaustion when playing. After finishing a concert while touring in South Africa, he then walked 105 km to the next, arriving just in time to perform. When travelling by ship on tour, he spent his free time shoveling coal in the boiler room.
In 1910 Grainger began designing and making his own clothing, ranging from jackets, to shorts, togas, muumuus and leggings, all made from towels and also intricate grass and beaded skirts. The clothing was not just for private use but were often worn in public by Grainger. He also designed a crude forerunner of the modern sports bra for his Danish sweetheart.
Grainger moved to the United States at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. His 1916 piano composition In a Nutshell is the first by a classical music professional in the Western tradition to require direct, non-keyed sounding of the strings?-in this case, with a mallet?-which would come to be known as a "string piano" technique. When the United States entered the war in 1917, he enlisted into a United States Army band playing the oboe and soprano saxophone, and spent the duration of the war giving dozens of concerts in aid of War Bonds and Liberty Loans. Also during the year 1917, he was elected an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity. In 1918, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Career success
Grainger's piano solo Country Gardens became a smash hit, securing his reputation as a remarkable composer, although Grainger grew to detest the piece. With his newfound wealth, Grainger and his mother settled in the suburb of White Plains, New York after the war. Rose Grainger's mental and physical health, however, was in decline. She committed suicide in 1922 by jumping from the building where her son's manager, Antonia Sawyer, had an office.[3] This ended an intimate relationship, which many had incorrectly assumed to be incestuous. After his mother's death, he found a letter that she had written to him the day before she took her life, explaining her state of mind, which she explained was caused by accusations of incest. Grainger kept it in a cylinder he wore around his neck for many years. He later compiled an album containing photos of his mother (including several of her in her coffin), and had thousands of copies made and distributed to friends.
In the same year, he traveled to Denmark, his first folk-music collecting trip to Scandinavia (although he had visited Grieg there in 1906). The orchestration of the region's music would shape much of his finest output.
By 1925 Grainger was financially secure. He was now earning $5,000 a week for performances and charging up to $200 an hour for private lessons. In November 1926, Grainger met the Swedish artist and poet Ella Viola Ström, and fell in love at first sight. Their wedding took place on 9 August 1928 on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl, following a concert before an audience of 20,000, with an orchestra of 126 musicians and an a cappella choir, which sang his new composition, To a Nordic Princess, dedicated to Ella.
In December 1929, Grainger developed a style of orchestration that he called "Elastic Scoring". He outlined this concept in an essay that he called, "To Conductors, and those forming, or in charge of, Amateur Orchestras, High School, College and Music School Orchestras and Chamber-Music Bodies".
In 1932, he became Dean of Music at New York University, and underscored his reputation as an experimenter by putting jazz on the syllabus and inviting Duke Ellington as a guest lecturer. Twice he was offered honorary doctorates of music, but turned them down, explaining, "I feel that my music must be regarded as a product of non education".
Declining career and death
He died February 20, 1961, and was buried on March 2, 1961. His epitaph reads, "Lover of mankind, art, and nature."In 1940, the Graingers moved to Springfield, Missouri, from which base Grainger again toured to give a series of army concerts during the Second World War. However, the gradual decline in popularity of his music after the war hit his spirits hard. To get his music heard, he offered to play for little or no fee, which resulted in his income from concerts drying up. He last appeared in public at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1960.
In his last years, working in collaboration with physicist Burnett Cross, Grainger invented the "Free Music Machine", which was the forerunner of the electric synthesizer.
Although still physically fit into his 60s, he spent his last years suffering pain from abdominal cancer which had spread, despite a number of operations, from prostate cancer diagnosed in 1953.[4] Grainger died in White Plains, New York in 1961 and he was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide, South Australia. His personal files and records have been preserved at The Grainger Museum in the grounds of the University of Melbourne, the design and construction of which he oversaw. Many of his instruments and scores are located at the Grainger house in White Plains, New York, now the headquarters of the International Percy Grainger Society.
Free Music and Grainger's machines
In Australia Grainger is remembered chiefly for his musical innovations and for what he called "Free Music". He first conceived his idea of Free Music as a boy of 11 or 12. It was suggested to him by observing the waves on Albert Park Lake in Melbourne. Eventually he concluded that the future of music lay in freeing up rhythmic procedures and in the subtle variation of pitch, producing glissando like movement. These ideas were to remain with him throughout his life, and he spent a great deal of his time in later years developing machines to realise his conception
Free Music is melodic (polyphonic), making use of long, sustained tones capable of continuous changes in pitch. No traditional form of notation exists to describe it in detail. Grainger's own scores were originally notated on graph paper, with an individual trace for both the pitch and dynamic changes of each note. Free Music assumes a moving tone, precluding any harmonic stability and working with Free music is difficult since almost every basic assumption about musical relationships and method must be ignored. Free music requires the abolition of the scale and its replacement by a controlled continuous glide.
Grainger resorted to the use of machines because human performers on traditional instruments were not capable of producing the wide range of "gliding tones" with the necessary control over minute fluctuations of pitch. The machines were not intended as performance devices. Rather, they were designed to allow Grainger to hear the sounds he composed. He insisted on hearing his compositions before allowing them to be published, and often went to extraordinary lengths to achieve this.
His most famous machine is the "Hills and Dales" machine, described by Grainger as the "Kangaroo Pouch method of synchronising and playing eight oscillators" (on display in the Grainger Museum). Commonly known as the "Kangaroo Pouch machine", it consists of a large wooden frame approximately eight feet tall, housing upright rotating turrets left and right (the "feeder' and "eater" turrets) and between which a large paper roll is wound. This roll consists of three layers: a main paper roll 80 inches high, across which eight smaller horizontal strips of paper (or subsidiary rolls) are attached front and back. The top edges of these subsidiary rolls are cut into curvilinear shapes (the hills and dales) and attached to the main roll at their bottom edges, each forming a type of "pouch". As the turrets are rotated clockwise, the undulating shapes cut into the rolls move from right to left. Eight valve oscillators are mounted onto the wooden frame, four at the front and four at the back, as are eight amplifiers. The pitch controls of the oscillators are attached to levers, connected at the other ends to circular runners, or spools, which "ride" moving rolls. The volume controls of the amplifiers are operated in the same way. Thus, the pitch of the oscillators, and the volume of the amplifiers, can be accurately controlled by carefully cutting shapes into the paper rolls. The large size of the machine is necessary to maintain accuracy of pitch control. Because the valves changed characteristics as they aged, the machine needed to be recalibrated after around three hours of use.
Grainger's final machine was perhaps the most sophisticated. It too worked on the principle of a moving roll, but this time made of clear plastic. A row of spotlights projected light beams through the plastic roll and onto an array of photocells, which in turn controlled the pitch of the oscillators. The undulating shapes cut into the paper rolls of the Kangaroo Pouch machine were now simply painted onto the plastic roll with black ink. The circuitry for this machine was transistorised, lending a stability which could not be achieved with the use of valves. The machine was lost in the 1970's while being transported from Grainger's home in White Plains to the Grainger museum in Melbourne.
Idiosyncrasies
Grainger was a sado-masochist, with a particular enthusiasm for flagellation, who extensively documented and photographed everything he and his wife did. His walls and ceilings were covered in mirrors so that after sessions of self-flagellation he could take pictures of himself from all angles, documenting each image with details such as date, time, location, whip used, and camera settings.[5] He gave most of his earnings from 1934-1935 to the University of Melbourne for the creation and maintenance of a museum dedicated to himself. Along with his manuscript scores and musical instruments, he donated the photos, 83 whips, and a pair of his blood-soaked shorts.[citation needed] Although the museum opened in 1935, it was not available to researchers until the 1960s.
He was a cheerful believer in the racial superiority of blond-haired and blue-eyed northern Europeans. This led to attempts, in his letters and musical manuscripts, to use only what he called "blue-eyed English" (akin to Anglish and the 'Pure English' of Dorset poet William Barnes) which expunged all foreign (i.e., non-Germanic) influences. In Grainger's writings, a composer was a "tone-smith" who "dished up" his compositions and a piano was a "keyed-hammer-string". He hated Italian terms in music scores; "poco a poco crescendo molto" became "louden lots bit by bit".
This thinking was, however, inconsistently and eccentrically applied: he was friends with and an admirer of Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, and also gave regular donations to African-American causes. Grainger eagerly collected folk music tunes, forms, and instruments from around the world, from Ireland to Bali, and incorporated them into his own works. Furthermore, alongside his love for Scandinavia was a deep distaste for German academic music theory; he almost always shunned such standard (and ubiquitous) musical structures as sonata form, calling them "German" impositions. He was ready to extend his admiration for the wild, free life of the ancient Vikings to other groups around the world, which in his view shared their way of life, such as the ancient Greece of the Homeric epics.
Other eccentricities included never ironing his shirts and wearing the same clothes for days. He once said "concert audiences can't tell the difference'". While in America, he was twice arrested for vagrancy due to his dress. In his later years, when he scavenged in rubbish bins in the middle of the night for parts to make musical instruments, he dressed in his best clothes for task. He was a vegetarian who hated vegetables, living chiefly on boiled rice, milk, cereals, nuts and oranges.
Throughout the 1920s Grainger recorded numerous live-recording player piano music rolls for the Aeolian Company's "Duo Art" system, all of which survive and can be heard. Amongst these is a complete rendition of Grieg's Piano Concerto and a recently unearthed performance of music from "The Warriors". Grainger's own Duo-Art grand pianola can still be seen at the Grainger Museum, replete with Grainger's music machine experimental modifications.
Dramatic portrayals
Grainger's life has been portrayed in a number of dramas, notably Rob George's 1982 stage play, Percy & Rose, and a loose 1999 film adaptation, Passion. Featuring Richard Roxburgh as Grainger and Barbara Hershey as his mother, it was co-written by Rob George and John Bird, author of the 1999 Oxford University Press biography of Grainger.
Billy Eckstine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name William Clarence Eckstein
Born 8 July 1914
Origin Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died 8 March 1993 (age 78)
Genre(s) Jazz
Occupation(s) Singer
Instrument(s) Vocals
Voice type(s) Baritone
Associated acts Dizzy Gillespie
Charlie Parker
Sarah Vaughan
Billy Eckstine (8 July 1914-8 March 1993), born William Clarence Eckstein in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was a ballad singer and bandleader of the Swing Era. Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music.
An influence looming large in the cultural development of soul and R&B singers from Sam Cooke to Prince, Eckstine was able to play it straight on his pop hits "Prisoner of Love," "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." Raised in Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He had also planned on a football career, though after breaking his collar bone he made music his focus. After working his way west to Chicago, Eckstine joined Earl Hines' Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939, staying with the band as vocalist and, occasionally, trumpeter, until 1943. By that time, he had begun to make a name for himself through the Hines band's radio shows and such juke box hits as "Stormy Monday Blues" and his own "Jelly Jelly."
In 1944, Eckstine formed his own big band and made it a fountainhead for young musicians who would reshape jazz by the end of the decade, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, and Fats Navarro. Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller were among the band's arrangers and Sarah Vaughan gave the vocals a contemporary air. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra was the first bop big-band, and its leader reflected bop innovations by stretching his vocal harmonics into his normal ballads. Despite the group's modernist slant, Eckstine hit the charts often during the mid-'40s, with Top Ten entries including "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love." On the group's frequent European and American tours, Eckstine, popularly known as Mr. B., also played trumpet, valve trombone and guitar.
After a few years of touring with road hardened be-boppers, Eckstine became a solo performer in 1947, and seamlessly made the transition to string-filled balladry. He recorded more than a dozen hits during the late '40s, including "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." He was one of the first artists to sign with the newly established MGM Records and had immediate hits with revivals of "Everything I Have Is Yours" (1947), Richard Rodgers' and Lorenz Hart's "Blue Moon" (1948), and Duke Ellington's, Irving Mills and Juan Tizol's "Caravan" (1949). He had further success in 1950 with Victor Young's theme song to "My Foolish Heart" and a revival of the 1931 Bing Crosby hit, "I Apologize." However, unlike Nat "King" Cole who followed him into the pop charts, Eckstine's singing, especially his exaggerated vibrato, sounded increasingly mannered and he was unable to sustain his recording success throughout the decade. While enjoying success in the middle-of-the-road and pop fields, Eckstine occasionally returned to his jazz roots, recording with Vaughan, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones for separate LPs, and he regularly topped the Metronome and Downbeat Polls in the Top Male Vocalist category.
Among Eckstine's best records of the fifties was a 1957 duet with Sarah Vaughan, "Passing Strangers," a minor hit in 1957, but a perennial hit in the UK. Even before folding his band, Eckstine had recorded solo to support it, scoring two million-sellers in 1945 with "Cottage for Sale" and a revival of "Prisoner of Love." Far more successful than his band recordings, though more mannered and pompously sung, these prefigured Eckstine's future career. Where before black bands had played ballads, jazz and dance music, in the immediate post-war years they had to choose.
The classic 1960 live in Las Vegas LP No Cover, No Minimum featured Eckstine taking a few trumpet solos as well. He recorded several albums for Mercury and Roulette during the early '60s, and he appeared on Motown for a few standards albums during the mid-'60s. After recording very sparingly during the '70s, for Al Bell's, Stax/Enterprise imprint, Eckstine although still performing to adoring audiences throughout the world, made his last recording, the Grammy nominated Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter in 1986.
Eckstine also made numerous appearances on television variety shows including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Nat King Cole Show, The Tonite Show with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, The Art Linkletter Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Flip Wilson Show, and Playboy After Dark. He also performed as an actor in the TV sitcom, Sanford and Son, and in such films Skirts Ahoy, Let's Do It Again, and Jo Jo Dancer.
Eckstine was a style leader and noted sharp dresser. He designed and patented a high roll collar that formed a B over a Windsor-knotted tie, which became known as a Mr. B. Collar. In addition to looking cool, the collar expanded and contracted without popping open, which allowed his neck to swell while playing his horns. The collars were worn by many a hipster in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Legend has it his refined appearance also had an effect on trumpeter Miles Davis. Once when Eckstine came across a dishevelled Davis in the depths of heroin excess, his remark "Looking sharp, Miles" served as a wake-up call for Davis who promptly returned to his father's farm in the winter of 1953 and finally kicked the habit.[1]
In 1984, Eckstine recorded his final album, I Am A Singer, featuring beautiful ballads arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo.
He died on March 8, 1993, aged 78.
Faye Emerson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Faye Margaret Emerson
July 8, 1917(1917-07-08)
Elizabeth, Louisiana, U.S.
Died March 9, 1983 (aged 65)
Deya, Majorca, Spain
Spouse(s) Skitch Henderson (1950-1957)
Elliott Roosevelt (1944-1950)
William Crawford (1938-1942)
Faye Margaret Emerson (July 8, 1917 - March 9, 1983) was an American film actress. She is remembered as an actress in many Warner Bros. films beginning in 1941. She was born in tiny Elizabeth in Allen Parish in south central Louisiana. In 1944, she played one of her more memorable roles as Zachary Scott's ex in The Mask of Dimitrios.
In 1948, she made her move to television, acting in various anthology series, such as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse. She served as host for several short-lived talk shows and musical/variety shows including Paris Cavalcade of Fashions (1948), The Faye Emerson Show (1950), Wonderful Town, U.S.A. (1951), Author Meets the Critics (1952) and Faye and Skitch (1953). She also made numerous guest appearances on various variety shows and game shows.
Although the Faye Emerson Show on CBS only lasted one season, it gave her wide exposure because her time slot immediately followed the CBS Evening News and alternated weeknights with the popular The Perry Como Show.
Emerson hosted or appeared on so many talk shows?-usually wearing long, low-cut gowns?-and game shows such as I've Got a Secret that she was known as "The First Lady of Television". The glamorous Emerson was so popular in the early 1950s, it was rumored that the newly created Emmy Award was named after her.
She was once married to Elliott Roosevelt, son of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Emerson was later married to band leader Skitch Henderson in the 1950s. Once a Hollywood starlet enjoying the show business spotlight, the wealthy Emerson moved to Spain and spent the rest of her life in seclusion.
She died of stomach cancer in Deya, Majorca in 1983 at the age of sixty-five.
According to author Gabe Essoe in The Book of TV Lists, on one of her Faye Emerson Show segments, her low-cut gown slipped, "and she exposed her ample self coast to coast."
