(Various saxophones and clarinets, flute, piano, b. 1945) ‘I’ve been isolated and kicked out of jazz as a black man who is not “black” enough, a jazz guy who is not “jazz” enough,’ said Chicago native Braxton, looking back on a highly iconoclastic career that has been documented on more than 130 recordings. After military ...
1781–1861 American composer Heinrich was one of the most important figures in American musical life in the nineteenth century. Born in Bohemia to a German family, he tried unsuccessfully to set up business in America, and in 1817 he settled there to embark on a musical career, becoming the country’s first professional composer, and being dubbed by ...
b. 1960, English One of the most important talents on the contemporary British opera scene, Turnage produces work that expertly captures the times and culture within which he lives. A jazz enthusiast who has served as Composer in Association with both the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and English National Opera, he often attempts to combine numerous genres in his ...
b. 1960 English composer Turnage studied with Knussen at the Royal College of Music and later at the Tanglewood Music Center with Henze, who secured for him his first operatic commission for Greek, a setting of Steven Berkoff’s modern retelling of the Oedipus myth in London’s East End. Like his first major orchestral work, Night Dances (1980–81), much ...
(Vocals, b. 1968) Initially singing with her sisters as The Braxtons, she was signed as a solo artist to La Face productions (L.A. Reid and Babyface) in 1991. This production/writing team crafted her eponymous debut (1993). At ease with soul vocals and the rhythms of R&B, the attractive Braxton was soon scoring hits with emotive ballads like ...
Bagpipe Somewhere, perhaps in Mesopotamia, about 7,000 years ago, a shepherd may well have looked at a goat skin and some hollow bones and had an idea for a new musical instrument: the bagpipe. In the early Christian era, the instrument spread from the Middle East eastward into India and westward to Europe. By the seventeenth ...
Like a great river that runs endlessly, forming numerous tributary streams as it flows, jazz continues to evolve over time. And no matter how far the River Jazz may flow from its source – whether through stylistic evolution or technological innovation – the essential spirit of the music remains intact. Granted, the more academic and esoteric extrapolations of ...
(Harmonica, vocals, b. 1936) Carey Bell is one of Chicago’s most distinctive harmonica players. He began playing with pianist Lovie Lee in Mississippi at the age of 13 and moved to Chicago at 20. Sonny Boy Williamson II and Little Walter were key influences on his harmonica style, while tenures with Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters increased his ...
(Various saxophones, flute, b. 1923) Sam Rivers boasts a most impressive résumé: bebop with Tadd Dameron and Dizzy Gillespie, hard bop with Miles Davis, free jazz with Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton, and Grammy consideration for his big band. Born in Oklahoma, Rivers played around Florida and Boston in the 1950s before settling in New ...
Free jazz is seen by many as an avant-garde art form rather than a type of jazz, with its unpredictable rhythm and chord progressions. Evolving out of bebop in the 1940s and 1950s the exponents of free jazz abandoned traditional forms to expand the music’s creative possibilities, challenging mainstream listeners and players alike. The first documented free jazz recordings ...
A forerunner of jazz, ragtime was derived from brass-band music and European folk melodies, African-American banjo music and spirituals, minstrel songs, military marches and European light classics. The ‘raggy’ style, or ragged-time feeling, of this jaunty, propulsive, toe-tapping piano music refers to its inherent syncopation, where loud right-hand accents fall between the ...
Of the entire century, the 1970s were the years of catching one’s breath. Superficially, the promise of the 1960s had faded or failed, the victim of wretched excess and just plain bad taste. America’s war in Vietnam sputtered to an end, international relations elsewhere seemed to stalemate in détente and economically the world suffered from stagflation: exhaustion ...
The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, ...
The trumpet is one of the most ancient instruments still played today. Clear depictions of trumpets survive in Egyptian paintings and two trumpets – one of silver, the other of gold and brass – found in the tomb of Tutankhamun date back to at least 1350 BC. There are many examples of Roman and Greek trumpets which, like the ...
Mozart had long admired the inspired synthesis of French and Italian opera in Gluck’s ‘reform’ works. His greatest opera seria, Idomeneo, premiered in Munich on 29 January 1781, draws much from Gluck, especially the hieratic scenes of Alceste (another opera concerned with human sacrifice). Yet its harmonic daring, orchestral richness and lyrical expansiveness are entirely Mozart’s ...
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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
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