Category Archives: Performers

by | September 13, 2015 · 6:00 am

Mel Tormé’s first gig

mel-torme

In a 1996 interview, Mel Tormé described his formative years.

“When I was a baby in Chicago my favorite toy was the radio, and I listened faithfully to the Coon-Sanders Orchestra.”

“My parents finally took me to see them at the Blackhawk Restaurant when I was four years old, and Carleton Coon and Joe Sanders saw me sitting there tapping my feet and singing along.”

“Finally Joe came over and asked ‘Who’s the little dwarf?’ My mother said ‘He listens to your program and knows everything you do’ so they took me onstage and had me sing a tune called You’re drivin’ me crazy. People seemed to like it, so for the next seven months they had me sit in every Monday night and sing that song.”

“I loved being onstage, and when that experience was over I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

Quoted in Mel Tormé, an interview included in Kristine McKenna’s Book of changes: A collection of interviews (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001, pp. 217–224).

Today would have been Tormé’s 90th birthday! Above, the singer early in his career; below, the seasoned pro in a memorable performance.

BONUS:  Tormé was also an accomplished drummer.

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by | September 1, 2015 · 6:00 am

Ozawa arrives

 

A piano prodigy at an early age, Seiji Ozawa’s virtuoso career was cut short in his teens when he broke two fingers playing rugby. He switched to composition and conducting, and after graduating with honors he left Japan for Europe.

His rise was swift, and in 1973, at the age of 38, he became Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Sporting a Beatles haircut and Nehru jackets, he took Boston’s hyper-traditional classical music scene by storm; overnight, America’s most staid orchestra gained a hip new image.

This according to “Wild card” by Andrew Moravcsik (Opera news LXXIII/6 [December 2008] pp. 32–33).

Today is Ozawa’s 80th birthday! Below, a recording from 1974.

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by | August 5, 2015 · 6:00 am

Emma Abbott in the heartland

Emma Abbott

Stung by the mixed reviews of New York critics who apparently preferred their divas to be foreign-born, the operatic soprano Emma Abbott created a highly successful—and somewhat revolutionary—niche for herself.

In 1898 Abbott founded the Emma Abbott English Grand Opera Company with her husband, Eugene Wetherell, as business manager. There were precedents for translating operas into English, and even for Abbott’s role as both prima donna and production manager; the distinctive and brilliant move was to take her company to the U.S. heartland with the perfect persona for 19th-century American tastes.

Having grown up poor in Peoria, Illinois, she had the quintessential American dream narrative. She was openly both devout and patriotic, often interpolating beloved religious and U.S. songs into her opera performances. And the marital bliss projected by her close relationship with Wetherell further burnished the persona that her audiences relished.

As Abbott’s close friend and biographer Sadie E. Martin recalled, “The pleasing voice and manners of the operatic star, and her sympathetic nature, seemed at once to attract towards her the hearts of the public. She was from the first very popular, and after the first year there were many who watched, waited, and longed for her annual appearance, as for that of an old friend.”

By the time she retired, Abbott had officiated at the openings of more opera houses than any singer before her, and—owing also to her canny buisness sense—had amassed a fortune far beyond that of her European counterparts.

This according to Women in the spotlight: Divas in nineteenth-century New York by Andrea Saposnik (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing).

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by | July 1, 2015 · 6:00 am

Willie Dixon, blues innovator

 

Using conventional musical devices for blues compositions as a basis, Willie Dixon expanded the possibilities for blues songwriting by introducing elements from pop song forms, using a quatrain refrain text form with longer musical structures than a 12-bar form, and amalgamating the 12-bar/a-a-b form with the 16-bar/quatrain refrain form in different sections of a composition.

Dixon also helped artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Koko Taylor to intensify their public images; his development of their performing personae is relevant to the tradition of the blues as a secular religion, and Dixon’s casting of them originated in traditional black badman tales circulated in the postbellum South.

This according to Willie Dixon’s work on the blues: From the early recordings through the Chess and Cobra years, 1940–1971 by Mitsutoshi Inaba, a dissertation accepted by the University of Oregon in 2005.

Today is Dixon’s 100th birthday! Below, he sings his own Back door man, first recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1960; the song is a classic example of Dixon’s innovations in blues song forms.

BONUS: The inimitable Howlin’ Wolf recording:

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by | June 4, 2015 · 6:00 am

Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music

Braxton Composition no. 228

In a 2011 interview, Anthony Braxton described his recent work as “a trans-temporal music state that connects past, present, and future as one thought component. This idea is the product of the use of holistic generative template propositions that allow for 300 or 400 compositions to be written in that generative state.”

“The Ghost trance musics would be an example of the first of the holistic, generative logic template musics. The Ghost trance music is concerned with telemetry and cartography, and area space measurements.”

Quoted in “Anthony Braxton: Music as spiritual commitment” by Josef Woodard (DownBeat LXXIX/3 [March 2010] pp. 32–37).

Today is Braxton’s 70th birthday! Above, Composition no. 228 from the Ghost trance series; below, a performance and discussion of more works from the series.

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by | June 1, 2015 · 6:00 am

Frederica von Stade and temperamental people

 

In an interview, the famously agreeable mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade explained why she enjoys working with temperamental people.

“First of all, it’s fun, and secondly, because people protect themselves in all different kinds of ways.”

“I protect myself by being quiet, and going in my dressing room and being upset there by myself. Some people get it out. I admire that more, because it’s gone.”

“As much as we use our voices and our minds, we use our confidence. You take confidence away from a singer and you’ve taken their feet away from them. And to protect your confidence takes all kinds of tricks—some people have it on the outside, some have it on the inside, and whatever works, works.”

Quoted in “My audience with The Grand Duchess” by David F. Wylie (Journal of singing LXV/1 [September–October 2008] pp. 95–104).

Today is von Stade’s 70th birthday! Above, with Hannah in 2014 (we like to imagine that Hannah is only moderately temperamental); below, in one of her signature roles as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.

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by | May 15, 2015 · 6:00 am

Utah Phillips’s principles

 

In a 1997 interview, Bruce “Utah” Phillips (1935–2008) described himself as a “Catholic, anarchist, pacifist, draft dodger of two world wars, tax refuser, vegetarian, one-man revolution in America.”

“My body is my ballot,” he continued, “and I try to cast it on behalf of the people around me every day of my life.”

“I don’t assign responsibility to do things to other people; I accept the responsibility to make sure that things get done. I love to tell that to people who are frustrated with the ballot box. How many people do I know who have never voted for anyone who won, ever in their lives, and are really frustrated? It’s not the end of the road. There’s another way to go, and that’s with your own labor, your own sweat, your own body. I think there’s a lot of hope in that.”

Quoted in “Radical folk: A conversation with Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips, kindred spirits and collaborators on a daring new album” by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers (Acoustic guitar VIII/2:56 [August 1997] pp. 62–70).

Today would have been Phillips’s 80th birthday! Below, classic Phillips from 2005.

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by | May 8, 2015 · 6:00 am

Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts

 

Keith Jarrett began playing improvised solo concerts in 1973, establishing himself as a major figure in the jazz piano tradition.

The performances drew on a new conception of form suggested by free jazz, one which posited a new kind of relationship between a performer and the musical constraints suggested by a composition. This new approach to performance allowed musicians to reconfigure formal conception in the moment, rather than being tied to an invariant set of constraints.

Jarrett’s solo concerts also drew on an aesthetic view of performance that emerged from free jazz, which saw music making as tapping into a divine source of inspiration. The context in which he performed promoted this conception by giving such dramatic weight to the process of improvisation.

This according to Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts and the aesthetics of free improvisation, 1960–1973 by Peter Stanley Elsdon, a dissertation accepted by the University of Southampton in 2001.

Today is Jarrett’s 70th birthday! Below, part of the 1973 Lausanne concert, a performance analyzed in Elsdon’s dissertation.

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by | February 6, 2015 · 6:00 am

Bob Marley’s œuvre

Throughout Bob Marley’s life, and perhaps even more since his death at the age of 36, his music has demonstrated a unique ability to combine with almost any cultural setting, no matter how different the elements might at first appear. Through his adaptable yet enduring musical messages, he represents an especially articulate type of singer-songwriter.

Marley released a large quantity of introspective, autobiographical material at the height of his success, providing a deep understanding of who he was and what he hoped to achieve through his life and music. Salient themes include protest, revolution, love, hate, biblical concepts, and Rastafari culture.

This according to The words and music of Bob Marley by David Vlado Moskowitz (Westport: Praeger, 2007).

Today would have been Marley’s 70th birthday! Above, a photo by Ueli Frey from 1980, a year before Marley’s death; below, performing with The Wailers the same year.

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by | January 25, 2015 · 6:00 am

Ewan MacColl and the BBC

 

Many aficionados of Scottish traditional music regard Ewan MacColl as one of the foremost singers of his generation; fewer know of his pioneering radio work.

The ballad of John Axon was recorded and broadcast by the BBC in 1958 as the first of a group of programs known collectively as  Radio Ballads. It tells the story of a railway accident in which the driver John Axon died heroically while attempting to avert disaster.

In the program, four actual ballads carry the narrative, supplemented by several self-contained songs that illustrate the story rather than tell it, sections of recitative that provide insight into the minds of Axton and his fellow railwaymen, and the recorded speech of Axon’s widow and workmates. Although MacColl and Charles Parker are often credited jointly with the authorship of the program, strong evidence suggests that MacColl wrote it in response to an idea suggested by Parker, who served as the producer.

This according to “John Axon: Ewan MacColl’s tragic hero?” by Mick Verrier (English dance and song LXI/3 [fall 1999] pp. 2–4).

MacColl would have been 100 today! Below, one of the songs from the show, with Peggy Seeger on the banjo.

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