Tag Archives: Performers

by | July 15, 2013 · 1:00 am

Julian Bream, autodidact

As a child, Bream first learned to play the guitar along with his father from “an extraordinary little book, and that was great fun.”

When he was around 11 Boris Perrot, the president of the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists, heard him and, duly impressed, offered to teach him. The boy was honored, but soon found that he disliked the outmoded technique that Perrot insisted on.

Bream stopped the lessons and never took another one; instead, “I watched how Segovia did it and made up my technique as I went along.”

“Actually, I think I must have been quite a little horror because I was very instinctive about things. I only did what I wanted to do. I didn’t care a damn what other people wanted me to do.”

This according to “Julian Bream at 60: An interview” by Gareth Walters (Guitar review 96 [winter 1994] pp. 2–15).

Today is Julian Bream’s 80th birthday! Above, the guitarist in 1947; below, his arrangement of Danza del molinero from Manuel de Falla’s El sombrero de tres picos.

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by | June 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Malmsteen and classical music

 

Two televised performances galvanized the young Yngwie Malmsteen: one by Jimi Hendrix when Malmsteen was 8, and, when he was 13, one by a violinist playing works by Paganini.

Malmsteen has openly embraced the premises of classical music more than any rock musician before him. With his fetishization of instrumental technique and his move toward absolute music he adopted classical music’s style and vocabulary, models of virtuosic rhetoric, and modes of practice, pedagogy, and analysis; he also adopted the social values that underpin these activities.

This according to Running with the devil: Power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music by Robert Walser (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993, pp. 94–98).

Today is Malmsteen’s 50th birthday! Below, the birthday boy holds forth.

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by | June 19, 2013 · 1:00 am

Martha Graham and Freud

 

Martha Graham found Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas useful for making sense of both her personal life and the material to which she was drawn as a choreographer; they were particularly central to the creative process for her works based on Greek myths.

In Night journey (above), in which Oedipus’s mother and wife is forced by the blind seer Tiresias to relive the most painful moments of her life, Graham turns Jocasta into a powerful female protagonist by turning a straightforward linear narrative into a complex and difficult one, evoking the physically charged and taboo themes of eroticism, the maternal body, and death.

This according to “Dance, gender and psychoanalysis: Martha Graham’s Night journey” by Ramsay Burt (Dance research journal XXX/1 [spring 1998] pp. 34–53). Below, Graham herself dances in the opening of Alexander Hammid’s 1960 film of the work.

Related article: Herskovitz and Freud

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by | May 20, 2013 · 1:00 am

Loïe Fuller’s serpentine success

 

Skirt dancing, involving the dancer’s graceful manipulation of a full skirt, was a widely popular genre in the U.S. when Loïe Fuller premiered her Serpentine dance in 1892.

Fuller’s costume for this dance involved so much fabric that—combined with atmospheric lighting—it almost completely obscured her human form. By shifting the focus from the dancer to the costume, she added a new level of abstraction to the skirt dance genre, prefiguring many of the innovations of modern dance.

The dance was a huge success and was much imitated, prompting Fuller to sue for copyright infringement; but the judge ruled against her, stating that a dance depicting no story, character, or emotion could not be considered a “dramatic composition” protected by the copyright act.

This according to “Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine dance: A discussion of its origins in skirt dancing and creative reconstruction” by Jody Sperling (Proceedings of the Society for Dance History Scholars XXII [1999] pp. 53–56). Below, a hand-colored 1895 film of an unnamed dancer by the Lumière brothers suggests what Fuller’s performance was like.

Related article: Tórtola Valencia and Otherness

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by | May 16, 2013 · 1:00 am

Early lip-synching

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Sometime in October 1939 Woody Herman and his band traveled to the Vitaphone Studio in Brooklyn to begin work on a ten-minute film short.

Probably within a week or two they returned with their instruments, but not to play them—this time they were there to mime playing as the recordings from their first session were played back! The film was issued with a phonograph record to be played during projection, creating an early example of what is now called lip-synching.

The producers also added some stock clips of an audience whose formal dress and staid demeanor indicate that they were a world away from any jazz performance.

This according to “Celluloid improvisations: Woody Herman and his orchestra” by Mark Cantor (The IAJRC journal XL/1 [February 2007] pp. 22–30).

Today is Herman’s 100th birthday! Above, a still from the second session; below, Herman leads the band in the finale of the Vitaphone film, King Oliver’s Doctor Jazz.

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by | April 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Willie Nelson goes to pot

 

“I was about six when I started smoking cedar bark and grapevine, and rolling up Bull Durham” writes Willie Nelson. “I was trading a dozen eggs for a pack of Camels.”

“Then I ran into beer and whiskey, pills, and then pot. By then I was twenty-five years old and my lungs were killing me….So then I said to myself, “Hey, you’re not getting high on cigarettes, and they killed half your family….”

“So I started quitting everything. No more cigarettes at all. I started running again and getting back in shape.”

“I took my cigarettes and threw them away. I rolled up twenty joints and put them in the cigarette package, and every time I wanted a cigarette, I smoked a hit or two off a joint instead. One joint would last all day and it worked for me.” (Roll me up and smoke me when I die: Musings from the road [New York: HarperCollins, 2012] p. 121).

Today is Nelson’s 80th birthday! Below, the book’s namesake.

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by | April 26, 2013 · 1:00 am

Telek, Bridie, and schismogenesis

telek-bridie

In early 1997 the Australian label Origin Records released Telek, a collaboration between the popular Tolai vocalist George Mamua Telek and the Australian keyboard player and producer David Bridie that was packaged as a debut recording for Telek, even though he was already well known in his native Papua New Guinea.

A repackaged and resequenced version released by Origin later that year and titled Go long we long lon bush won critical acclaim, prompting yet another repackaged and resequenced release shortly thereafter.

These collaborations exemplify a positive and productive outcome of what Steven Feld has termed a schismogenetic relationship between the West and the non-West, indicating that such syncretic projects need not collapse difference, and may even produce a complementary development of existing local characteristics.

This according to “Questions of origin: George Telek and David Bridie’s collaborative recordings” by Denis Crowdy and Philip Hayward (Kulele: Occasional papers on Pacific music and dance III [2001] pp. 85–105). Below, a Telek–Bridie collaboration.

Related article: A lullaby for world music

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by | April 24, 2013 · 1:00 am

Tórtola Valencia and Otherness

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Carmen Tórtola Valencia (1882–1955), who may have reinvented herself as Spanish, made a flamboyant contribution to early modern dance in Spain, Western Europe, and Latin America between 1908 and 1930.

Her rapport with Spanish modernismo enabled her elevation from a music hall and musical theater performer to a solo concert dance artist with a large repertoire of classic, Oriental, and Spanish numbers. Tórtola Valencia’s career particularly flourished in the Hispanic world, while elsewhere she cultivated the figure of the exotic Other.

This according to “Early modern dance in Spain: Tórtola Valencia, dancer of the historical intuition” by Iris Garland (Dance research journal XXIX/2 [fall–winter 1997] pp. 1–22). Below, photographs of Tórtola Valencia and her exotic costumes.

Related article: Loïe Fuller’s serpentine success

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by | April 12, 2013 · 1:00 am

Caballé, Mercury, and Barcelona

 

After Queen’s 1985 tour of Spain, the group’s frontman Freddie Mercury amazed his fans by declaring on Spanish television that the Spaniard he most longed to meet was Montserrat Caballé. Mercury hoped to collaborate with the legendary diva, and in March 1987 he finally arranged a meeting in the Garden Room of the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona with a grand piano, state-of-the art recording and playback equipment, and a sumptuous buffet.

She later described the scene: “We spent the whole time listening to music, eating, and improvising…Barcelona as such did not exist at that time—it was only a musical sketch of just a few bars that Freddie sang. But I liked it and he promised to develop it for me to celebrate the Olympic success.” (Barcelona had just been selected for the 1992 Summer Olympics.)

Mercury worked quickly on the song, and Caballé’s recital in London later that month dovetailed with a recording session at his home. Working until 6:00 in the morning, they produced what effectively became Barcelona’s unofficial Olympic anthem.

This according to Montserrat Caballé: “Casta diva” by Stephen Taylor and Robert Pullen (London: Gollancz, 1995, pp. 302–05).

Caballé is 80 years old today! Below, a memorable performance of Barcelona.

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by | April 3, 2013 · 1:00 am

Honeyboy recognized

honeyboy

On a log sheet typed in the 1940s, Alan Lomax identified a man in a 50-second segment of silent color footage shot in Mississippi as “Charles Edwards” (above).

Mystified folklorists have been unable to find further references to Charles Edwards in Lomax’s materials or anyone else’s; but recently two American Folklife Center staff members noticed that he closely resembled a young David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and even played his guitar in the same way; perhaps Lomax had made a simple error.

To verify their theory, they sent screen captures to Honeyboy’s former agent, who shared them with Honeyboy’s stepdaughter. Her verdict: “That’s my daddy!”

This according to “‘That’s my daddy!’: American Folklife Center staff members identify early color film of David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards” by Stephen Winick (Folklife Center news XXXIII/3–4 [summer/fall 2011] pp. 8–9).

Below, Honeyboy performs in 2005.

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