1920–2001 American violinist Born in Russia, Stern was taken by his parents to America when he was just a baby. He later studied in San Francisco, where he played the Brahms concerto under Pierre Monteux in 1936. He played for Allied troops during World War II, and made his European debut at the Lucerne Festival in 1948. He ...
(Hin’-rikh E’-zak) c. 1450–1517 Flemish composer Isaac worked in Florence from the mid-1480s until 1494, when the changing fortunes of the Medici family cost him his job. In 1497 he was hired by the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I, to the appointment of Hofkomponist (court composer). Although he remained in Maximilian’s pay for the rest of his life, he travelled ...
Mike Stern (b. 1953), the American jazz guitarist, emerged as a major force in the jazz guitar scene through his work with Miles Davis’ band in the early Eighties, Stern has played with stars such as Stan Getz, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Martino and David Sanborn. Stern was also a guitarist in Steps Ahead and the Brecker Brothers ...
Western swing is an innovative, free-wheeling yet complex instrumental amalgam drawn from blues, jazz and Dixieland syncopations and harmonies. Central to the style is an emphasis on instrumental solos, often involving the transposition of jazz-style horn parts to fiddle, guitar and steel guitar. It is indicative of western swing’s sophistication that Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, the ...
(E’-zak Al-ba’-neth) 1860–1909 Spanish pianist and composer Albéniz led the revival of a Spanish national musical style at the turn of the twentieth century. He studied composition with Felipe Pedrell (1841–1922), famous for his pioneering collections of Spanish folk and classical music that also inspired Albéniz’s contemporary Enrique Granados and, a little later, Manuel de Falla (1876–1946). Aged 20, ...
1816–75 English composer Bennett was a leading figure of the ‘London Piano School’, a significant group of pianist-composers that included Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) and Johann Baptist Cramer (1771–1858). A boy chorister at King’s College, Cambridge, he began studies aged 10 at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where his teachers included Cipriani Potter. Close friends included ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1930s–40s) Louise Massey And The Westerners are largely forgotten today, but in their heyday, this was one of the most successful western acts in the USA. Polished, versatile and influential, they boasted a smooth sound that obscured their origins as rural musicians under their fiddling father Henry’s tutelage in New Mexico. The band included ...
From the late 1940s onwards, John Cage was a figure of major significance as a thinker, inventor and exemplar whose approach drew crucial sustenance from outside the Western tradition. A different conception of time and sound informed Cage’s music from the start, including his influential makeover of the conventional piano, which he ‘prepared’ by inserting bolts, ...
(Saxophone, vocals, b. 1942–2008) This soul singer from Tennessee began his musical career as a saxophonist for Stax Records studio band The Mar-Keys. The album Hot Buttered Soul (1969) was his commercial breakthrough and Hayes became internationally famous with the soundtrack to the film Shaft (1971), the style of which anticipated disco. After leaving Stax, his records were ...
(Vocals, b. 1951) Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Isaacs is one of the top reggae artists of the last four decades. After a handful of records for smaller labels he started his own African Museum label with fellow singer Errol Dunkley. He also recorded for myriad other producers, and discs with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Sly and Robbie ...
b. 1953 Hungarian-British pianist Schiff studied at the Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest, before winning prizes at both the Moscow Tchaikovsky (1974) and Leeds (1975) piano competitions. Having appeared with most of the world’s major orchestras, he has focused increasingly on chamber and solo repertoire, recording the keyboard works of Bach (on the piano), the Mozart and Schubert ...
b. 1971 Russian pianist A child prodigy, he gave his first solo recital at the age of 10 and as a teenager worked with Karajan, later collaborating with Solti, Giulini, Abbado, Maazel and Ashkenazy among conductors, and with Martha Argerich, Isaac Stern and Joshua Bell in chamber music. But it is for solo performances ...
In 1905, and probably for several decades before that, there were more pianos in the United States than there were bathtubs. In Europe, throughout the nineteenth century, piano sales increased at a greater rate than the population. English, French and German makers dispatched veritable armies of pianos to every corner of the Earth. It was the ...
The first African slaves arrived in America in 1619 and brought their music with them. From then until the Civil War of 1861–65, the music both fascinated and frightened the white slave owners who would flock to see the black people celebrating their weekly ‘day off’ in New Orleans’s Congo Square. At the same time, slave owners suppressed the ...
The Modern Age was characterized by rapid and radical change and political turmoil. By 1918 the Russian tsar, the Habsburg emperor and the German kaiser had lost their thrones. The two Russian revolutions of 1917 resulted in a Communist government led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was fragmented to allow self-determination to the newly formed countries of Czechoslovakia ...
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David Bowie
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