Vince Gill (b. 1957) broke out of a respected but static 10-year career as a bandmember and solo act and into country stardom with the 1990 hit ‘When I Call Your Name’. Gill was in the forefront of the neo-traditional country movement and became one of the biggest crossover singing stars in Nashville. It helped that he was an excellent country ...
(Vocals, guitar, songwriter, b. 1957) Oklahoman Vince Gill paid his dues, first in high-school band Mountain Smoke, then with Sam Bush in Bluegrass Alliance around 1975, and was a member of Pure Prairie League from 1978–80. Gill joined The Cherry Bombs in 1981, backing Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash, and befriended musician/producer/label executive ...
(Zhel Bansh-wa’) c. 1400–60 Franco-Flemish composer Binchois spent his formative years in Mons (now Belgium) and appears to have led a remarkably static life. In the late 1420s he joined the itinerant Burgundian court chapel, and served there with distinction until his retirement in the early 1450s, continuing to draw a pension until his death. Although he left a substantial ...
(Vin-chant’-zo Ga-le-la’-e) c. 1520–91 Italian theorist and musician The father of Galileo Galilei, Vincenzo, also had a scientific mind. His experience as a lutenist and composer formed the practical basis for a significant body of music theory. His later works, especially, are heavily influenced by contemporary humanist enquiry into the nature of ancient music and, in particular ...
(Ven-chant’-zo Bel-le’-ne) 1801–35 Italian composer One of the most important opera composers of the nineteenth century, Bellini cultivated a bel canto (literally ‘fine singing’) melodic style that influenced not only other opera composers but also Chopin and Robert Schumann. He studied first with his grandfather, composing youthful sacred works, ariettas and instrumental pieces, and in 1819 moved to ...
1812–65 Irish composer Between 1835, when he emigrated to Tasmania, and 1845, when he appeared in concert in London, Wallace travelled across the globe establishing a considerable reputation as a virtuoso performer on the piano and violin, and initiating a number of fanciful tales of his expeditions that seemed to precede him wherever he went. Once ...
(Van-son’ Dan-de’) 1851–1931 French composer An influential member of Franck’s circle, D’Indy was a vociferous promoter of Franck’s ideas, and his biographer. He was a prolific composer in every genre. He excelled in programme music, inspired by French and Swiss landscapes and nature. Best known are the colourful tone-poems for piano and orchestra, Jour d’été à la montagne ...
John Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie shares the credit for creating bebop with Charlie Parker, but his place in the history of twentieth-century music rests on a considerably wider achievement. He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1917 and acquired his nickname in the 1930s. He moved to New York and worked in big bands with Teddy Hill, Lionel ...
(Alto saxophone, flute, composer, b. 1944) One of the most prolific and original composers of his generation, Chicago native Threadgill was a charter member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the mid-1960s. During the 1970s he collaborated with several AACM colleagues and also worked with Air, his trio with drummer Steve ...
(Vocals, 1935–71) Despite a leg permanently crippled in a road accident, Eugene Craddock, from Norfolk, Virginia, rocketed to stardom in 1956 with his multi-million seller ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ for Capitol. Other hits and movie appearances followed, and along with his group, The Blue Caps, he developed a wild and highly visual stage act. Vincent’s health ...
(Vocals, mandolin, b. 1962) Vincent won six consecutive Female Vocalist Of The Year Awards (2000–05) from the IBMA for a reason. She has a high, lonesome voice reminiscent of bluegrass pioneers Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, and she pushes it ever forward with her hard, driving mandolin riffs. After her mid-1990s fling with mainstream country, ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1967) Gillian Welch met David Rawlings at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, where most of their classmates were studying jazz and classical music. Welch and Rawlings were drawn instead to lyric-heavy songwriting and concluded that Appalachian string-band music would be the best vehicle for those songs. It was a foreign tradition for them, but ...
1801–35, Italian The musical abilities of Vincenzo Bellini were already well known in his home city of Catania in Sicily before he went to Naples at age 18 to study at the conservatory under Zingarelli. A competent pianist at age five, composer of his sacred music at six, the youthful Bellini’s ariettes and instrumental works were performed in ...
‘The Sleepwalker’ Vincenzo Bellini’s two-act opera La sonnambula, which had a pastoral background, was first produced at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March 1831. The story derived from a comédie-vaudeville of 1819 and a ballet-pantomime of 1827, both part-written by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. The title role, Amina, was created by Giuditta Pasta ...
Norma, Bellini’s eighth opera and his masterpiece, followed hard on the heels of his La sonnambula when its first performance was given at La Scala less than four months later, on 26 December 1831. Once again, Giuditta Pasta created the title role, although this time she had parts of the opera transposed down to the key ...
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