1759 – Girolamo Chiti (Italian composer & biographer of Giuseppe Pitoni)
1827 – Michael Pamer (Austrian composer & conductor)
1844 – Oliver Holden (American minister & hymn composer)
1853 – Jonathan Blewitt (English organist & composer, active in Ireland)
1903 – Herman Zumpe (German conductor & composer)
1907 – Edvard Grieg (Norwegian composer & pianist)
1937 – Giovanni Salviucci (Italian composer & organist)
1937 – Stanisław Dobrzański (Polish tenor)
1937 – Vasily Petrov (Ukrainian operatic lyric bass)
1965 – Albert Schweitzer (Alsatian theologian, physician, missionary, philosopher, organist & Bach scholar)
1977 – Stellakis [Stelios Perpiniadis] (Greek rebetiko singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1991 – Carlos Alexander (American baritone)
1991 – Charlie Barnet (American jazz saxophonist, composer & bandleader, "Cherokee")
1991 – Dottie West (American country singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1995 – Chuck Greenberg (American new age musician & producer, Shadowfax)
1997 – Belle Stewart (Scottish folksinger)
2002 – Vlado Perlemuter (Lithuanian-born French pianist)
2003 – Tibor Varga (Hungarian violinist & conductor)
2003 – Lola Bobesco (Romanian-born Belgian violinist)
2006 – Astrid Varnay (Swedish-born American dramatic soprano of Hungarian ancestry)
Write-up pending. Won't really be all that much to say, though. I mean, you got your Grieg, you got your Dottie West, you got your Charlie Barnet, you got your Albert Schweitzer (he didn't just give medical attention to African children, he played the organ and wrote about Bach, too), and you got some pretty famous violinists & singers. You also got your first chance to pay a little attention to Gustav Mahler, like we're trying to do during this, his death centenary year. Haven't been any Mahler conductors of note on our lists in the past month, but baritone Carlos Alexander fits the bill, thanks to a certain landmark Carnegie Hall performance he participated in. Of course, he was just one performer among, oh, about 1000 others, I guess (*wink*wink*), but he does get a big solo in one part.
You know what, forget about the "write-up pending" nonsense. I'm going to go ahead and call this one finished, even though it might have been nice to say some things about Stellakis Perpiniadis, and Lola Bobesco, and Belle Stewart, and Astrid Varnay, and even Edvard Grieg, famous as he is. Go, now, and do what you know you must...
I'm a sucker for a rock band "covering" famous classical music. Anyone want to arrange a heavy metal version of Beethoven's Ninth? With that said, I saw a video of Jefferson Airplane doing a fragment of "Hall of the Mountain King". And then, of course, you had your Smurfs. Can't vouch for the upcoming movie, but I hope that the soundtrack uses alot of Grieg.
ReplyDeleteCorrection. I now remember that it was Big Brother and The Holding Company that did "HOTMK", or was it? I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Jefferson Airplane or BB&THC but I have heard The Who do it.
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