(Vocals, 1896–1967) An important figure in the so-called ‘classic blues’ genre, Ida Cox (née Prather) performed in minstrel and tent shows as a teenager. She had already become a vaudeville star when she began to record for the Paramount label in 1923. Apart from her gifts as a vocalist, she was an independent spirit who wrote much of ...
Indie guitarist Graham Coxon (b. 1969) was born in West Berlin, the son of an army bandsman. His early years were characterized by the itinerant army life until the family settled in Colchester in the late 1970s. The young Coxon was a Beatles fan and possessed a talent for art. He began to learn saxophone and then at 12, ...
Billie Holiday was entirely untrained as a singer, but drew on the example of popular recording artists such as Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in developing her musical approach. She was able to make much of poor songs as well as great ones. Her phrasing, intonation, attention to the weight and nuance of lyrics, and her lightly ...
c. 1612–85, Spanish Most works by Juan Hidalgo, who was born in Madrid, were intended for church performance. However, Hidalgo was greatly attracted to Italian opera. While it would not have been acceptable for him to use the opera style in church music, he did introduce it into several of his secular songs and other vocal ...
Premiered: 1707, Venice Libretto by Girolamo Frigimelica Roberti Act I King Farnace and Stratonica, Mitridate’s mother, have usurped the Pontus throne by killing Mitridate’s father. Mitridate, the true heir, has sought refuge in Egypt; his sister, Laodice, awaits his return and dreams of avenging her father’s death. Egypt and Pontus are set to form ...
Aida, set in Ancient Egypt, was not composed to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, as has often been suggested. Nor was it commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt to mark the opening of the Cairo Opera House that same year. It happened that the French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, keeper of monuments to ...
b. 1948 Japanese pianist Born near Tokyo, her diplomat parents brought her to Vienna, where she studied at the Academy of Music (with Kempff among others). After gaining second prize at Leeds (1975), she initially made her name as a Mozart specialist, performing (and later recording) the complete sonatas and concertos. Her repertoire nonetheless extends through Schubert and ...
Bessie Smith was one of the greatest vocalists of the twentieth century; her emotional delivery and exquisite phrasing has been an influence on instrumentalists as well as innumerable singers, both male and female. Many of her records, including ‘Gimmie a Pigfoot’, ‘Woman’s Trouble Blues’, ‘St. Louis Blues’ and the song that became an anthem of the Great Depression, ...
(Banjo, guitar, 1905–73) Originally from Indiana, Condon became associated with Chicago’s Austin High School Gang, a group of white West-Side teenagers who emulated King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and created their own take on hot jazz. In 1927, Condon co-led a band with William ‘Red’ McKenzie (which also included Bud Freeman, Frank Teschemacher, Gene ...
(Vocals, banjo, c. 1890–1938) New Orleans-born Charlie Jackson brought a jazzman’s sophistication to an instrument still too often overlooked by blues historians. He alternated single-string solos with percussive chording and dexterous fingerpicking, allowing him to bridge styles and genres with rare facility. He released more than 60 sides of his own, and he also recorded with Freddie ...
Although Texas has a rich legacy of acoustic country blues artists, its primary contribution to the blues was electric. An inordinate number of dazzling electric guitarists hailed from the Lone Star state, including T-Bone Walker, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Albert Collins, Freddie King and scores of hotshot six-stringers still on the scene. Often accompanied by flamboyant showmanship ...
Jazz and blues are rooted in the enormous technological and social transformations affecting the USA and Western Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. The most striking changes were the advent of easier and cheaper travel; better communications; electric lighting; improvements in audio recording and moving pictures; increased urbanization; and the rise of the US, concurrent with the fall ...
Country music is identified with the American South and West, but its roots were established on the Atlantic seaboard, from Cape Breton to New England, then filtered into the lower-central USA through the 2,400-km 1,500-mile) Appalachian mountain range. Eventually it proliferated everywhere. And if such a reach seems so vast as to defy a single culture ...
The 1920s was, without doubt, the Jazz Age. Workers and the newly burgeoning middle class turned into consumers due to relatively higher wages. The international political advantages that came from having just won a major war buttressed a ‘lost generation’ of artistic types, who took up residence in Europe. New moral codes, sophistication and cynicism abounded. Some ...
As if at the convenience of history, the stock market crash in the final weeks of 1929 severed the 1920s from the 1930s. The breach was economic but its consequences were pervasive, sweeping away economic values and social illusions, and affecting all aspects of life for Americans and Europeans alike. America’s compliant 1920s middle class became the 1930s ...
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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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