(Vocals, b. 1980) NYC native Aguilera has been making records since 1999, but singing since her very earliest years, inspired by the talents of the likes of Whitney Houston and Madonna. Her own vocal ability has long been the selling point of her talent, but her ‘blonde bombshell’ looks have not hindered her progress. Breaking on to ...
(Singer-songwriter, b. 1988) Big-voiced London-born singer-songwriter Adele (born Adele Laurie Blue Adkins) rose from posting a demo on Myspace to a Grammy award in just a couple of years. Her debut LP 19, released in 2008, reached No. 1 in the UK and No. 10 in the US after an appearance on Saturday Night Live; her 2008 single ...
Alternative-rock guitarist Dave Navarro (b. 1967) was born in Santa Monica, California. After hearing Jimi Hendrix, Navarro began playing guitar at the age of seven and was in various bands in school. In 1986, he joined Jane’s Addiction on the recommendation of drummer Stephen Perkins, a childhood friend. Inspired by The Velvet Underground, Joy Division, ...
(Vocals, b. 1986) Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, alias Lady Gaga, made an impact on pop music reminiscent of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera a decade earlier when her infectious, electronic debut single ‘Just Dance’ went straight to No. 1 in the UK and US in 2008. The extrovert New Yorker’s eccentric fashion style further added to her ...
(Vocals, b. 1979) Alecia Beth Moore, a.k.a. Pink or P!nk, has risen to prominence through her refreshing dissimilarity to more conventional pop starlets – happy to wear her hair cropped pink and wear leather when others were long blondes in dresses. A protégé of Linda Perry, the songwriter who also took Christina Aguilera and ...
Buoyed by its unprecedented international exposure in the 1990s, Latin pop greeted the new century with the first-ever Latin Grammy awards, which took place in the United States in September 2000. Conceived as an internationally minded award, clearly distinct from – although related to – the Grammys, one of the objectives of the Latin Grammys was to ...
Although boy bands and girl bands held sway over anglo-American pop for much of the 1990s, the end of the decade witnessed the return of the individual artist. While the likes of *NSYNC, Blue and Sugababes continued to fly the flag for groups, artists such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Pink emerged as arena-filling soloists. The ...
West-coast city Seattle was the unanticipated epicentre of 1990s music as grunge, the biggest ‘back to basics’ movement since punk, shook traditional American rock – Nirvana was to enjoy iconic status for a spell until Kurt Cobain’s death. In the UK, the dance-rock of The Stone Roses, a holdover from the late 1980s, put Manchester briefly ...
Literary clubs that were established in seventeenth-century Italy were commonly known as ‘academies’, taking their name from the Athenian garden where Plato was thought to have met with his followers. One of the most important such groups in the early eighteenth century was the Roman ‘Arcadian Academy’. It was formally established in 1690 to honour the late Queen Christina of Sweden ...
1660–1725, Italian Sicilian-born Alessandro Scarlatti came to the attention of the Italian opera world with his first opera, Gli equivoci nel sembiante (‘Mistaken Identities’, 1679), which he wrote when he was only 19. The work was soon being staged by opera houses outside Rome, but this was not the limit of Scarlatti’s new renown. At around the same ...
(Al-es-san’-dro Skär-lat’-te) 1660–1725 Italian composer Scarlatti was born in Sicily but spent most of his working life in Rome, where he studied, and in Naples. He made important and prolific contributions to the genres of opera, oratorio, serenata and cantata forms, composing a much smaller quantity of instrumental and keyboard music. His musical talent attracted the attention ...
(A-lel’-san’-dro Stra-del’-la) 1644–82 Italian composer By the age of 20 Stradella was composing for the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, who appointed him servitore di camera (servant of the chamber). He enjoyed the patronage of several leading families, but was forced to leave Rome briefly in 1669 after attempting to embezzle money from the church. An ill-judged affair with one ...
(Ärk-an’-jel-o Ko-rel’-le) 1653–1713 Italian composer and violinist Corelli studied in Bologna, but by the mid-1670s was living in Rome, where he acquired a reputation as one of the city’s foremost violinists. His first patron in Rome was the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, to whom he dedicated his earliest printed collection, 12 trio sonatas op. 1 (1681). Next ...
(Bâr-när’-do Pas-kwe’-ne) 1637–1710 Italian composer Pasquini was a keyboard virtuoso and teacher working in Rome, who numbered Muffat, Francesco Gasparini (1668–1727) and Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726) among his pupils. He benefited from several of the leading Roman patrons of the time, including the cardinals Pamphili and Ottoboni, as well as from the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden. He served ...
(A-mel’-yo da Ka-val-ya’-re) c. 1550–1602 Italian composer Cavalieri was born in Rome and was a teacher, dancer and diplomat at the Medici court. In 1589 he organized the celebrated Florentine intermedi for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine. He was associated with the Florentine Camerata of Giovanni de’ Bardi, whose members experimented with musically continuous ...
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...
CURATED
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.