(Guitar, vocals, b. 1941) Of Mexican and Irish extraction, Baez was the surprise hit of 1959’s Newport Folk Festival. With her pure soprano and deft way with an acoustic six-string, she was thus well-placed to become one of North America’s leading folk music ambassadors via ongoing international tours and albums that appealed initially to an intellectual fringe. ...
1926–2010, Australian Dubbed ‘La Stupenda’ in Milan, this great coloratura soprano was capable of flawless trills and vocal pyrotechnics that were best suited to the bel canto repertoire, especially Bellini and Donizetti heroines. Sutherland’s musical engagements began at a young age in Sydney and culminated in her winning Australia’s foremost voice competition. Thereafter she studied at London’s Royal ...
1926–2010 Australian soprano Sutherland studied in Sydney and sang in public there before travelling to London for further study at the Royal College of Music. She joined the Covent Garden company in 1952 and sang many roles, including Jenifer in the premiere of Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage. Her performance as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor under Serafin in 1959 launched her ...
‘One Of Us’, 1995 ‘One Of Us’ was a popular radio-friendly hit that Osbourne followed with a few minor singles, though she has never replicated its popularity. Questioning what would happen if God were ‘one of us’, it earned Osbourne a mid-1990s supporting slot for Bob Dylan, while Prince would later take to covering the song in concert. It ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1965–75) Although their best-known work was released in the 1970s, Badfinger had been around since 1965 as The Iveys in their native north Wales. In 1966, they toured the UK backing David Garrick. Signed to the Apple Records label in 1968 as The Beatles’ potential successors, Tom Evans (bass), Mike Gibbins (drums), Pete Ham (guitar ...
Next to The Beatles, Bob Dylan was the most influential artist of his generation, writing and performing songs whose poetic, sometimes-abstract, often-philosophical lyrics of astute commentary and therapeutic introspection spoke to the masses during an era of social unrest, political upheaval and radical change. While cross-pollinating folk and country with electric rock, Dylan elevated the ...
(Banjo, vocals, 1900–76) A trained musician who thought he had left old-time music behind him in rural Kentucky, Kazee nevertheless became an important early country recording artist. His banjo-accompanied versions of traditional American ballads like ‘East Virginia’ and ‘The Wagoner’s Lad’ influenced generations of singers, incuding Joan Baez. His career didn’t outlast the Depression, but by ...
While the Mississippi Delta gave birth to guitar-based acoustic blues, in the area known as the Piedmont region – which stretches along the Atlantic seaboard from Virginia to Florida – a wide range of blues styles flourished, from the backwoods sound of the Appalachian foothills of Virginia to the more urbane sound of big cities such as Atlanta. The ...
The relationship between politics and folk music has always been fuel for lively debate. Some argue that the two should not mix, and that aligning traditional song with politics demeans it. Front-line singers such as Dick Gaughan and Roy Bailey, however, argue that folk songs are inextricably linked with politics, and perform plenty of strident material to ...
The term ‘singer-songwriter’ tends to be applied to the kind of introspective, socially conscious artist who – in the wake of the folk-inspired movement that was kick-started by Bob Dylan in the early 1960s before peaking in the next decade – performs in a direct yet reflective manner, emphasizing the song’s message over style or calibre of presentation. This is ...
Mention of the folk revival is generally applied to the late-1950s and early 1960s, when a new generation of enthusiasts earnestly set about exploring the history of folk music and recreating its passionate, social ideals. There had been other folk revivals throughout history, but they tended to stem from the middle classes in search of a purer identity ...
Following the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe enjoyed a short period of relative stability with Napoleon’s exile, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the establishment of the Vienna Peace Settlement in 1815. However, in the early 1820s a number of minor revolts broke out in Naples and ...
Composed in 1787 and triumphantly premiered in Prague on 29 October that year, Don Giovanni reworks the old legend of the serial seducer, drawing on the Spanish play by Tirso de Molina (1630) and Molière’s Don Juan (1665). The opera revolves around the tensions of class and sex that were so central to Figaro. Ensembles and propulsive ‘chain’ finales ...
‘The Sleepwalker’ Vincenzo Bellini’s two-act opera La sonnambula, which had a pastoral background, was first produced at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March 1831. The story derived from a comédie-vaudeville of 1819 and a ballet-pantomime of 1827, both part-written by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. The title role, Amina, was created by Giuditta Pasta ...
Composed in 1944–45 and first performed on 7 June 1945, Peter Grimes reopened London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre following the Second World War – at the request of managing director, soprano Joan Cross. This opera, and its success, provided the momentum that the post-war arts environment needed. From the moment Britten read ‘The Borough’ he began making plans ...
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David Bowie
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