Terry Kath (1946–78) was the guitarist and a founding member of the jazz-rock ensemble Chicago Transit Authority (soon shortened to Chicago), which, like their contemporaries Blood, Sweat & Tears, brought a jazzy, horn-based sound to hard rock with their early albums, before settling into a superstardom built around anthemic pop ballads. Early on, however, ...
Although his band of high-school buddies achieved international fame under the name Toto, Steve Lukather (b. 1957), session guitarist extraordinaire, has had to struggle under the same suspicion under which his bandmates have toiled: that the whole may add up to less than the sum of its parts. For Toto, despite achieving worldwide fame with singles like ‘Rosanna’ ...
(Harmonica, vocals, 1911–86) Saunders Terrell was born in Greensboro, Georgia and taught himself to play the harmonica at the age of eight. He lost the sight in one eye, aged 10, and the second eye at 16. Terry played mostly in North Carolina from the late 1920s. He teamed up with Blind Boy Fuller in 1934 ...
(Vocals, piano, songwriter, b. 1943) This Texas-raised musician, sculptor and playwright is an American original. His left-of-centre songs about the road and life’s characters have created a cult following via such albums as Juarez (1975), Lubbock (On Everything) (1979) and Human Remains (1995). ‘New Delhi Freight Train’ and ‘Amarillo Highway’ are his most covered songs. Styles & ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1959) Kathy Mattea joined bluegrass band Pennsboro as a student, before moving to Nashville. After working in Bobby Goldsboro’s road show, she signed with Mercury in 1983. Her first two albums were only modest successes, but Walk The Way The Wind Blows (1986) included her first Top 3 single – a cover of ...
1760–1801, Austrian Katharina Cavalieri, the Austrian soprano, was both the student and the mistress of the court composer Antonio Salieri. In 1775, when she was 15, she made her debut in Vienna in the role of Sandrina in La finta giardiniera by Pasquale Anfossi (1727–97). Her voice was expressive and ‘full’, and she possessed a first-class ...
1912–53 English contralto Ferrier sang in concerts during World War II and made her opera debut in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne in 1946. The two performances she sang at Covent Garden in 1953 were her last appearances in public before her death from cancer. She was a famous Angel in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and recorded ...
b. 1935 American composer Initially influenced by Stockhausen, Riley was profoundly affected by the sustained, minimalist style of La Monte Young, whom he met at the University of California at Berkeley. He had paid for his studies by playing ragtime in a bar. He soon became interested in improvised music and ‘happenings’ and made a serious study of ...
Alternative-metal guitarist Adam Jones (b. 1965) was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. He learned violin in elementary school, continuing with the instrument in high school, before playing acoustic bass for three years in an orchestra and later teaching himself guitar by ear. Jones studied art and sculpture in Los Angeles before working in a Hollywood character shop sculpting ...
La Monte Young was saxophonist and jazz musician as a youth, but his postgraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley (where he met Riley) led to a performance of his Trio for Strings (1958) arranged by his composition teacher, Seymour Shifrin (1926–79), in an attempt to show Young how much he had miscalculated. The work, consisting ...
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 ...
After the devastation wrought in Europe by World War II, the urgent task of rebuilding the continent’s war-torn urban fabric demanded radical solutions. These were found in the centralized urban planning advocated before the war by architects such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Writing in 1953, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) created an explicit analogy ...
Unlike rock music, electronic music is made partly or wholly using electronic equipment – tape machines, synthesizers, keyboards, sequencers, drum machines and computer programmes. Its origins can be found in the middle of the nineteenth century, when many of electronic music’s theories and processes were conceived. In 1863 German scientist Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz ...
It was Louis Armstrong (or Leadbelly, depending on whom you believe) who came up with the famous final word on the definition of folk music: ‘It’s ALL folk music … I ain’t never heard no horse sing.…’ The quote has been repeated ad nauseam throughout the years, but it has not prevented strenuous debate about the meaning of ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1977–82) The charismatic Adam Ant (b. Stuart Goddard) was a prominent figure in the boutiques and clubs of the punk scene, appearing in Derek Jarman’s film Jubilee, and releasing Dirk Wears White Sox in 1979. After his backing band became Bow Wow Wow, he started from scratch, gaining huge fame with his follow-up – ...
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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.