(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1948) Gail Davies initially played jazz, and then formed a duo with her brother, songwriter Ron Davies. After session work in Los Angeles, she moved to Nashville in the mid-1970s. Two breaks came in 1978: Ava Barber’s only US Top 20 country hit was Davies’ song ‘Bucket To The South’, and Davies released ...
Trailblazing Kinks lead guitarist Dave Davies was born in Muswell Hill, London in 1947. The Davies were a close-knit, musical family and Dave acquired his first guitar, a Harmony Meteor, at the age of 11. He taught himself to play, citing blues pioneer Big Bill Broonzy as his earliest influence. Other inspirations were James Burton, ...
b. 1934 English composer Early use of serialism (Trumpet Sonata, 1955) led Davies to a less systematic method of composing with smaller sets of pitches (Prolation, 1958). Alongside this grew a fascination for the pre-Baroque. Davies makes particular use of plainsong themes, which he then subjects to quasi-serial transformations. A peculiar leaning towards parody was central to Davies’s ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1950) A member of The Hot Band from 1975–77 as Emmylou Harris’s duet partner, Crowell wrote contemporary classics for her, including ‘’Til I Gain Control Again’ and ‘I Ain’t Living Long Like This’. After a modest start in chart terms with Warner Bros. in the late 1970s, his second Columbia album, Diamonds ...
New country took many years and miles of travel before its current evolution – not least the new traditionalist movement of the 1980s, which returned country music to its roots. Garth Brooks (b. 1962) did it far more quickly, but that’s a different story. Sometimes it seemed like these artists were chipping away at a mountain with nothing more ...
A frame drum is a skin stretched over and nailed to a shallow square or circular frame. It is played with sticks or with the hands. Frame drums are common to many musical cultures, and the modern tambourine and bodhrán are essentially the same instruments that were being played in Arabia and India in pre-Islamic times. They are often played ...
A conically bored baritone instrument, the serpent is supposed to have been invented by Edmé Guillaume in 1590. Like its close relative, the cornett, it is sounded by buzzing the lips into an ivory-, horn- or metal-cup mouthpiece which, in turn, agitates the air column. Its 213-cm (84-in) length is undulating in appearance, giving it ...
One of the most popular instruments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the viol, or viola da gamba, developed alongside the violin family. It has been central to the development of western art music. It is thought that the viol developed from the vihuela, a Spanish guitar-like instrument. At some point a bow was used with the ...
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 ...
Janáček referred to this opera’s protagonist, Emilia Marty, as ‘the icy one’. Perhaps he was thinking of Kamila Stösslová, the opera singer in Capek’s comedy who so fascinated Janáček that he immediately requested the rights for a libretto. Capek was sceptical that the elderly composer could understand his play, yet the final result was superlative and Capek had ...
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 ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1962–67) Alexis Korner (guitar, piano, vocals), born in Paris, France in 1928, was considered to be the father of electric British blues. When he and Cyril Davies (harmonica, vocals) formed Blues Incorporated in 1962 with Dick Heckstall-Smith (saxophone), Andy Hoogenboom (bass), Ken Scott (piano) and Charlie Watts (drums), their amplified line-up met with ...
(Ar’-vo Pairt) b. 1935 Estonian composer Pärt initially wrote in a neo-classical style, gradually shifting to serial techniques as previously banned scores filtered into the country. Works such as Perpetuum mobile (‘Continuous Motion’, 1963) attracted the wrath of the state. A love of Baroque music and particularly J. S. Bach is revealed in works such as Collage teemal B-A-C-H (1964). ...
(Vocals, b. 1951) Loretta Lynn’s younger sister was born Brenda Gail Webb, and her professional career began as part of her older sister’s show. After minor success on Decca, she signed with United Artists in 1974, which resulted in an almost-immediate change of fortunes. The lilting Top 10 hit, ‘Wrong Road Again’ (1975), opened the floodgates ...
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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
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