New-wave guitarist Bernard Sumner (b. 1956) was born in Salford, Manchester. Seeing the Sex Pistols in Manchester in June 1976 inspired Sumner and Peter Hook to acquire their first instruments, guitar and bass respectively. Originally called Warsaw, later Joy Division, they recruited drummer Stephen Morris and singer Ian Curtis for their band, making some self-produced records ...
Indie guitarist and producer Bernard Butler (b. 1970) was born in Tottenham, London. After learning violin as a child, he took up guitar at the age of 14, inspired by Johnny Marr, learning Smiths’ guitar parts by watching the band play live. He was also influenced by Bernard Sumner and Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame. After replying to ...
(Bâr-när’-do Pas-kwe’-ne) 1637–1710 Italian composer Pasquini was a keyboard virtuoso and teacher working in Rome, who numbered Muffat, Francesco Gasparini (1668–1727) and Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726) among his pupils. He benefited from several of the leading Roman patrons of the time, including the cardinals Pamphili and Ottoboni, as well as from the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden. He served ...
c. 1680–c. 1759, Italian Francesco Bernardi was nicknamed ‘Senesino’ after his birthplace, Siena. His first known performance was at Venice in 1707–08, and he sang for Caldara at Bologna in 1709. He was dismissed from Dresden in 1720 because he refused to sing an aria during rehearsals for Johan David Heinichen’s (1683–1729) Flavio Crespo (1720). He joined the ...
b. 1929 Dutch conductor Haitink studied with Felix Hupka and Ferdinand Leitner, who gave him a post as second conductor at the Netherlands Radio Union. He became principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961 (shared intitially with Eugen Jochum), and of the London Philharmonic Orchestra 1967–79. He was music director at Glyndebourne 1977–88, and at Covent Garden Opera ...
Alt-rock guitarist John Frusciante (b. 1970) was born into a musical family in Queens, New York. While living in Los Angeles after his parents’ divorce, Frusciante became involved with the city’s punk-rock scene. Frusciante was particularly inspired by The Germs, teaching himself to play the songs on their first album before taking guitar lessons. He studied Jeff Beck ...
Indie guitar legend Johnny Marr (b. 1963) was born John Maher in Manchester, England to Irish Catholic parents. He grew up in a household where music was a constant fixture, and he recalled, ‘I always had guitars, for as long as I could remember.’ Guitar technique came easily to young Johnny, and he quickly mastered ...
(Vocal group, 1976–80) One of the UK’s most important post-punk bands, Joy Division’s often bleak and claustrophobic music continues to inspire and influence. Enthused by The Sex Pistols’ legendary first Manchester gig in 1976, school friends Bernard Sumner (guitar) and Peter Hook (bass) formed Stiff Kittens, quickly renamed Warsaw. Recruiting Ian Curtis (vocals) and Steven Morris (drums), ...
Mike Stern (b. 1953), the American jazz guitarist, emerged as a major force in the jazz guitar scene through his work with Miles Davis’ band in the early Eighties, Stern has played with stars such as Stan Getz, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Martino and David Sanborn. Stern was also a guitarist in Steps Ahead and the Brecker Brothers ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1980–93, 1998–2007) Formed by the remaining members of Joy Division after Ian Curtis’s suicide. Bernard Sumner (guitar, vocals), Peter Hook (bass) and Stephen Morris (drums) with Gillian Gilbert (keyboards, synthesizers) added extra groove and technology to the angular post-punk beats of their former band, thus heavily influencing the ‘Madchester’ and dance music scenes of ...
Much derided by music (and fashion) journalists, goth rock is slow, introspective, gloomy and doom-ridden, with elements from hard rock and psychedelia, often with swathes of cold keyboards and angular guitar parts. The dress code was rigid: black clothes, big black hair and face made up to look deathly white. Critics often found the music ...
Early ’76 The Sex Pistols’ First Gigs The Sex Pistols played their first gig at London’s St Martin’s School of Art in November 1975, racing through a batch of Faces and Who numbers plus some of their own, including ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘Did You No Wrong’, while Rotten sneered at the audience, calling them ‘f***ing boring’. The pattern ...
Bugle Best known in its military guise, the bugle is one of the simplest of brass instruments in terms of construction, but it is very difficult to play. The single tube of metal has no valves to help create different notes, so players have to do all the work by changing their embouchure – a combination of the ...
The theremin (or ‘thereminvox’) is one of the earliest examples of a purely electronic instrument, and enjoys the distinction of being the first instrument designed to be played with no physical contact. The theremin was invented in 1919 by Russian cellist and physicist Lev Sergeivitch Termen (Leon Theremin). Growing out of research into proximity sensors, the theremin exploits the ...
Few would deny that the blues has played a more important role in the history of popular culture than any other musical genre. As well as being a complete art form in itself, it is a direct ancestor to the different types of current popular music we know and love today. Without the blues there would have been no Beatles ...
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