b. 1964 English tenor Bostridge completed a doctorate in history at Oxford before making his Wigmore Hall recital debut (1993) and his operatic debut at Covent Garden (1995). He has performed at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and Salzburg Festivals, at La Scala, Milan, and the Vienna State Opera, and with leading orchestras including the Berlin and Vienna ...
The most famous female musician and poet of ancient Greece was Sappho (b. c. 612 bc) from the island of Lesbos. Her music has not survived, but she is known to have accompanied her poetry on a variety of harp-like instruments. Sappho’s work includes love songs to other women and epithalamia (choral wedding songs). Elsewhere in ancient Greece women worked ...
(A-dre-a’-no Ban-kya’-re) 1568–1634 Italian composer Banchieri is known for his books of music theory and for his contribution to a small, but fascinating repertory: the madrigal comedy. L’organo suonarino (‘The Sound of the Organ’, 1605), a handbook for church organists, is one of the earliest sources of practical advice for realizing a basso continuo. His madrigal comedies – collections of ...
(Che-pre-a’-no da Ro’-ra) c. 1515–65 Franco-Flemish composer Rore spent much of his relatively short life in Italy, first in Ferrara and then in the brilliant musical circle around Willaert in Venice. Rore was cited by Monteverdi as a pioneer of the seconda pratica, and modern critics tend to emphasize the serious, intellectually rigorous side to his musical personality. But ...
(A’-dre-an Vil-lârt) c. 1490–1562 Flemish composer Willaert was one of an important group of composers who settled in Italy and there adapted the Franco-Flemish style. He spent most of his career as maestro di cappella at St Mark’s, Venice. He gathered around him an influential group of musicians, including Rore and the great theorist Zarlino. His greatest publication was Musica ...
The racket was a short double-reed instrument that looked like a kaleidoscope. It had nine parallel bores, all connected at alternate ends to form a continuous tube, with eight of them arranged around a central ninth. In this last a reed was inserted on a staple, much as in a shawm. The fingerholes were at the front and ...
A blues guitarist best known for his slide-guitar work, Sonny Landreth (b. 1951) was born in Canton, Mississippi. The family relocated to Lafayette, Louisiana, where Sonny was immersed in the area’s swamp-pop and Zydeco music. Beginning as a trumpeter, he was already a virtuoso guitarist in his teens. His earliest role model was Scotty Moore, ...
Alternative guitarist and singer Jeff Buckley (1966–97) was born in Anaheim, California. Jeff barely knew his father, singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, who died when he was eight. His mother, Mary Guibert, was a classically trained pianist and cellist, which meant that music was all around when Buckley was growing up. He started playing acoustic guitar at ...
Charlie Christian (1916–42) pushed guitar to the forefront of the big-band era, furthering the instrument’s evolution from a provider of acoustic accompaniment to an electrified foreground instrument that could pound out rhythm like a drum set or solo out front like a horn. His playing, in fact, was likened to jazz horn players who were leading the evolution ...
Fingerstyle master Adrian Legg (b. 1948) defies categorization. But though his music combines British folk, Celtic, rock, classical, blues, jazz and country sounds, Legg’s warm, soulful playing is the thread that unites the styles. Born in Hackney, London, England, Legg took the first steps of his musical journey playing the oboe ...
Master of guitar-generated sound effects, Adrian Belew (b. 1949) makes his Parker Deluxe guitar not only sing but also scream, squawk, roar, tweet and talk in elephant tongue. Best known for his time in King Crimson during the early Eighties as comic foil to Robert Fripp’s relatively nerdy straight man, Belew is one of the most ...
Queen guitarist Brian May is among the most recognizable players in the world. His distinctive tones, created by the home-made guitar he built when he was 16 and has used throughout his career, are integral to the sound of Queen. Many of the sounds he produced were so innovative that the first seven Queen albums pointedly stated that no ...
American guitarist Joe Satriani is widely credited with pioneering the rock-instrumental style in the 1980s, opening up the genre for guitarists like Steve Vai, Eric Johnson and Yngwie Malmsteen. His talent for creating highly evolved music, using a pop-song structure with tuneful melodies before applying his own virtuoso skills, has made him one of the most successful ...
Driven by a fierce intelligence, a relentless pursuit of social justice and a wide-ranging taste in sounds and songs, Tom Morello (b. 1964) was the driving force behind the bands Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave. Morello has won Grammys and performed around the world inspiring and uniting people with music. Known for innovative guitar solos and varied, ...
The man beneath the top hat, Saul ‘Slash’ Hudson (b. 1965) was born in the Hampstead area of London. When he was 11, his family moved to Los Angeles, California, where at the age of 14, he heard Aerosmith’s Rocks for the first time and found his life’s calling. Practising guitar for hours on end, ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.