(Nels Ga’-de) 1817–90 Danish composer In Copenhagen, Gade, a pioneer of the modern Scandinavian school, was violinist in the Royal Orchestra where many of his earliest works were performed, including the prize-winning tone-poem Ossian (1841). His masterly Symphony in C minor (1843) was first given in Leipzig by Mendelssohn. The following year, Gade assisted Mendelssohn as conductor ...
Dave Mustaine (b. 1961) was the original lead guitarist for the heavy-metal band Metallica and the co-founder, lead guitarist and lead singer of the thrash-metal band Megadeth. He was born in La Mesa, California. Brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness, by the age of 17, he was surviving financially by dealing drugs. In the 1970s, Mustaine ...
As lead guitarist and primary songwriter of the rock band Cheap Trick, Rick Nielsen fired the band’s melting pot of pop melodies and punk energy. Nielsen also became a highly coveted session player in the 1970s. With his legendary guitar collection (numbering over 250) and a unique stage wardrobe featuring bow ties and baseball caps, Nielsen’s style made him ...
(Vocals, guitar, fiddle, b. 1936) Daniels was a North Carolina rock’n’roller who had a song cut by Elvis Presley and who played on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline. Daniels formed his own band in 1972, modelled on the southern rock of The Allman Brothers Band, and had a hit with the 1973 tall tale, ‘Uneasy Rider’ ...
(Kärl Nel’-sen) 1865–1931 Danish composer Nielsen was born of working-class parents on the island of Funen; his father was well known locally as a folk fiddle-player. After a period in a military band, he studied the violin and for some years made his living as an orchestral violinist, then as a conductor. At the centre of his output are ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1983–present) Ex-Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine hardened and sped up his erstwhile band’s already ferocious thrash metal. His pessimistic, politicized lyrics drive the likes of Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying ? (1986) and his best album so far Rust In Peace (1990), matching his former employers’ impact in the process. After an attempt to go more mainstream ...
In the early 1980s, as the new wave of British heavy metal was taking the US by storm, an American music revolution called ‘thrash metal’ was brewing, combining the heavy sounds of metal with the unabashed aggression and speed of punk. At the centre of this sonic storm was a young quartet called Megadeth, which featured the ...
Wagner’s Ring cycle is made up of four works – Das Rheingold (‘The Rhinegold’, 1851–54), Die Walküre (‘The Valkyrie’, 1851–56), Siegfried (1851–57; 1864–71) and Götterdämmerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’, 1848–52; 1869–74). Although there have been other, even more ambitious projects in the history of opera – Rutland Boughton’s cycle of choral dramas based on the Arthurian legends and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ...
(Zden’-yek Fe’-bikh) 1850–1900 Czech composer Fibich was conductor of the National Theatre in Prague and later of the Russian Orthodox Choir. Trained in Prague and Leipzig, he deployed Wagnerian techniques in his seven Czech operas, including The Bride of Messina (1884). The librettist of his opera Sárka (1897) was Anezka Schulzová, a pupil with whom he had a love affair ...
(Ed’-värd Greg) 1843–1907 Norwegian composer Of Scottish ancestry, Grieg first studied music with his mother, and later went to Leipzig (1858–62) to study with Ignaz Moscheles and Carl Reinecke, and with Gade in Copenhagen. There he became organizer of the Euterpe Society for Scandinavian Music and subsequently, in Norway, founded the Norwegian Academy of Music (1867). The ...
California native Joe Pass (1929–94) developed a thoroughly precise jazz technique that propelled him to virtuoso status alongside pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, with whom he made a series of essential recordings for the Pablo label in the Seventies. Pass was raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He took up guitar after being inspired by singing cowboy Gene Autry. ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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