(Bass, cello, composer, 1922–60) Oscar Pettiford was the first bass player to develop the new melodic and rhythmic concepts of bebop on his instrument and was an accomplished cellist and composer. He was of mixed African-American and Native American extraction and had a famously irascible temperament, frequently falling out with his many collaborators. He worked with Duke ...
(Piano, b. 1925) Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson made his name on ‘Jazz At The Philharmonic’ (JATP) tours in the early 1950s, and formed his own trio in 1952. His most famous line-up (1953–58) featured Herb Ellis (guitar) and Ray Brown (bass); he replaced the guitar with more conventional drums from 1958. His extravagant improvisations combined pre-bop and bop elements. ...
(Comedy duo, 1945–85) This popular musical comedy duo went through several personnel changes during its four decades on the Grand Ole Opry. The original Lonzo And Oscar comprised two Kentucky-born brothers, Johnny (1917–67) and Rollin Sullivan (b. 1919). The Sullivans began performing on a Jackson, Tennessee radio station, and in 1945 started working as stage and studio ...
Though it was often referred to as a musical revolution, bebop was actually a natural evolution of jazz, involving innovative approaches to harmony and rhythm that advanced the music forward to a modern era. Traces of bebop began to emerge during the early 1940s, in orchestras led by Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine. Those adventurous impulses were further ...
In 1891, when the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) wrote his famous words ‘Life imitates art far more than art imitates life’, he had somehow managed to overlook the artistic realities of the late nineteenth century. By that time, after some 50 years of the High Romantic era, music and opera had brought real life on stage and ...
The singing cowboys did not have the monopoly on country music on the silver screen, although it was their breed that first caught Hollywood’s attention. By the time the 1940s rolled around, several of Nashville’s top stars found that they could expand their careers by bringing their talents to the vast new audiences. Singing Stars In the earlier decade ...
This section encompasses styles that were, at least initially, designed to work in tandem with other forms of expression, deepening or enhancing their impact. The scores of musical theatre are woven into stories played out by the characters on stage. A film soundtrack is composed to interlock with the action on a cinema screen, while cabaret songs ...
Strauss saw Hedwig Lachmann’s German version of Oscar Wilde’s play in Berlin in 1903. Directed by Max Reinhardt, it made an immediate impression on the composer and he decided to set Lachmann’s text himself. The relatively short length of Salome allowed Strauss to approach the composition as though it were another of the tone-poems with which he had established his ...
‘A Masked Ball’ In 1857, Verdi was virtually asking for censorship trouble when he chose Gustavuse III, ou Le bal masqué (‘Gustavus III, or The Masked Ball’) for his next work. In 1792 King Gustavusus III of Sweden had been shot dead at a masked ball in Stockholm. Regicide was a taboo subject and the Neapolitan censors immediately ...
European culture lay in ruins after the end of World War II. There were many who, in company with the philosopher Theodor Adorno, felt that Nazi atrocities such as Auschwitz rendered art impossible, at least temporarily. Others, though, felt that humanity could only establish itself anew by rediscovering the potency of art, including opera. On ...
The almost uncategorizable Irish composer Gerald Barry, whose untrammelled imagination and irreverent wit is displayed in operas such as his 1990 ‘opera within an opera’, The Intelligence Park, returned to the stage more recently with his take on Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest. The Los Angeles concert premiere (conducted by Thomas Adès, ...
1871–1942, Austrian Dedicated to opera as a conductor and composer, Zemlinsky attracted critical acclaim, yet by the time of his death he was all but forgotten. He had his second opera, Es War Einmal (‘Once Upon a Time’, 1899), conducted and revised by Gustav Mahler for its first performance at the Vienna Court Opera in 1900. Zemlinsky ...
(Alto and tenor saxophones, 1925–82) Art Pepper was a soloist with Stan Kenton (1947–52) and took part in trumpeter Shorty Rogers’s first so-called West Coast jazz recordings in 1951. He made a series of classic records for the California-based Contemporary label (1957–60), but was imprisoned at various times for heroin-related offences, culminating in three years’ voluntary rehabilitation in Synanon ...
(Guitar, 1923–2004) Barney Kessel took inspiration from his fellow Oklahoman, guitarist Charlie Christian, and developed an electric-guitar style that straddled swing and bop in effective fashion. He was featured in the Oscar-nominated short film Jammin’ The Blues (1944), and recorded with Charlie Parker in 1947. A stint with the Oscar Peterson Trio in 1952–53 led to recordings as ...
(Vocals, b. 1946) Born Cherilyn Sarkasian La Pier in California, her early career yielded hits such as ‘All I Really Want To Do’ (1965) and ‘Gypsys, Tramps And Thieves’ (1971), alongside successes with husband, Sonny Bono (‘I Got You Babe’, ‘All I Ever Need Is You’). She emphasized her Native American heritage on ‘Half-Breed’ (1973) and ‘Dark ...
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