(Experimental vocal/instrumental group, 1973–94) Founded in Sheffield by Krautrock fans Chris Watson, Richard H. Kirk and Stephen Mallinder. The trio manipulated tapes and played conventional instruments against and over them. Signed to Rough Trade in 1978, an underground hit ‘Nag Nag Nag’ emerged. The group became more interested in danceable beats, but still retained an experimental edge. ...
Cabaret thrived on sensuality, wit and an intimacy between performer and audience. Its essence lies in intimate, escapist venues, where charismatic artists perform with ad-hoc backing from piano, brass and bass. Unlike the popularist music hall, cabaret was born from experimentation and a desire to explore the space between mass entertainment and the avant-garde. A French ...
(1860–1911), Claude Debussy (1862–1918) and Benjamin Britten (1913–76), who formed a highly successful partnership with the tenor Peter Pears. The combination of voice and piano is also very popular in cabaret and comedy acts, and it has alsobeen used in jazz, folk and pop music. Perhaps the most famous example was Elton John’s performance of ‘Candle In The Wind ...
was music hall, the favoured form of entertainment for the British working classes around the turn of the twentieth century. A broader, less politically motivated relation of European cabaret, with the emphasis on accessible song-and-dance routines and innuendo, the style had a charismatic cockney queen in the shape of Marie Lloyd. At the French revues, costumed ...
of musical theatre are woven into stories played out by the characters on stage. A film soundtrack is composed to interlock with the action on a cinema screen, while cabaret songs work in harmony with the theatrical components of a cabaret performance. Of course, the above styles may be appreciated in solely musical terms, and recordings of works ...
opera was ahead of its time in its introduction of real popular music: the Habanera in Act I where Carmen advocates free love was taken from a book of Spanish-language cabaret songs and the Chanson Bohème and the Seguidilla, among other movements, employ Spanish modes and dance rhythms. The theme which introduces Carmen and accompanies the fateful card scene ...
ties this work together with a number of structural devices that operate on a subliminal level, while his masterful orchestration ranges from the dense and lush to the stark cabaret style popularized by Kurt Weill. Composed: 1929–35 Premiered 1937, Zürich (incomplete version); 1979, Paris (complete in three acts) Libretto by the composer, after Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist ...
making the operations of these devices and techniques subliminal. However, the spoken score traverses numerous musical styles, from tonal to atonal, Sprechgesang to song, and from cabaret to dissonant counterpoint. Composed: 1917–22 Premiered: 1925, Berlin Libretto by the composer, after Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck Act I Wozzeck, an orderly, is shaving the captain ...
emotionally or financially. Her career slipped in the wake of her jail sentence, in large part because she could no longer work in clubs in New York without the Cabaret Card, which was automatically denied to musicians convicted of drug charges. Hard Times Her health and her voice began to show the ravages of a hard life and drug ...
recordings survive. He was one of the few black singers to be featured on national radio, largely thanks to his beguiling romantic ballads. He remained a draw on the cabaret circuit in later years. Styles & Forms | Forties | Jazz & Blues Personalities | Dizzy Gillespie | Forties | Jazz & Blues ...
(Vocals, 1940–83) This fated Liverpudlian was on a par with Cliff Richard as a British Elvis Presley, enjoying 11 Top 10 hits before vanishing into a cabaret netherworld. Though dogged by severe ill health, he resurfaced as a typecast rock’n’roll singer in the 1973 movie That’ll Be The Day. As he may have wished, he died with ...
1960s, working with George Wein, Benny Goodman and others. His singing style – like the man himself – was polite, courtly and gentle, suited to both cabaret and jazz clubs; he performed regularly in New York throughout the rest of his long life. Styles & Forms | Thirties | Jazz & Blues Personalities | Charlie Christian | ...
of portentousness, while his lucid simplicity was admired both by ‘Les Six’ and, half a century later, by the minimalists. Inspired by the ancient modes and by cabaret (he made his living playing a piano in a night club), his music is both simple and profound, humorous and nostalgic. Recommended Recording: Piano Music, Pascal Rogé (Decca) ...
Les Six colleagues were highly influenced by Parisian culture’s popular music. Some of the melodies in his opera Les mamelles de Tirésias are strongly influenced by French music hall and cabaret, most notably Thérèse’s ‘Envolez-vous, oiseaux de ma faiblesse…’ and the closing scene ‘Il faux s’aimer…’. Introduction | Modern Era | Opera Major Operas | Dialogues des Carmélites by ...
(Hans Iz’-le) 1898–1962 German composer A pupil of Schoenberg, but also a committed Communist, Eisler appalled his teacher by writing political music in a popular style derived from cabaret and marches. A refugee in the US during World War II, he was investigated by Senator McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, and spent the rest of his life ...
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