01-06: The Stooges : Azkena Rock Festival 2006 - Dizzy in Greece 1956 - Don Cherry : Art Deco 1988 - Lou Rawls : Live! 1966 - Michel Petrucciani : Power of Three 1986

Not shown: Malachias Siebenhaar, Carlo Mannelli & Johann Georg Reinhardt

1685 – Malachias Siebenhaar (Czech-born German composer)
1697 – Carlo Mannelli (Italian violinist, castrato singer & composer)
1738 – Franz Xaver Murschhauser (German composer, music theorist, organist & singer)
1742 – Johann Georg Reinhardt (Austrian composer & organist)
1831 – Rodolphe Kreutzer (French violinist, teacher, composer & conductor)
1847 – Tyāgarāja [Thyagaraja, త్యాగరాజు] (Indian Carnatic composer, singer & saint)
1866 – Louis Antoine Ponchard (French tenor & singing teacher)
1906 – Gabrielle Krauss (Austrian soprano, aunt of conductor Clemens Krauss)
1933 – Vladimir de Pachmann (Ukrainian-born pianist of Russian & German ancestry)
1942 – Emma Calvé (French soprano & friend of Swami Vivekananda)
1959 – José Enrique Pedreira (Puerto Rican composer & pianist, noted for his danzas)
1987 – Domingo Santa-Cruz-Wilson (Chilean composer)
1993 – Dizzy Gillespie (American jazz trumpeter, composer & bandleader)
1995 – James Clay (American jazz tenor saxophonist & flutist)
1996 – Chubby Wise (American bluegrass fiddler)
1999 – Michel Petrucciani (French jazz pianist & composer)
2001 – Victor Braun (Canadian baritone)
2003 – Hirini Melbourne (New Zealand Māori musician, university lecturer, poet & author)
2006 – Lou Rawls (American soul, R&B & jazz singer & actor)
2007 – Sneaky Pete Kleinow (American pedal steel guitarist & songwriter, Flying Burrito Brothers et al.)
2009 – Ron Asheton (American rock guitarist, bass guitarist & songwriter, The Stooges)

If you thought yesterday was a big jazz day, with Mingus, it was only an appetizer for this huge jazz day we have today. Among our huge figures is the little pianist with the big technique, Michel Petrucciani, who was born with the condition osteogenesis imperfecta, which stunted his height but left him with average-sized hands. Petrucciani was a living testament to one's ability to overcome limitations, and his only special requirements were that the pedals of his piano be raised so he could reach them with his feet. Sometimes his small size even had its advantages - early in his career, Petrucciani's manager would often smuggle him into hotels in a suitcase in order to save money.

Aside from James Clay and Lou Rawls (who some people don't realize was a jazz singer long before he was doing the smooth soul which brought him hits during the 70s), of course there's Diz, about whose importance in the history of jazz too much cannot be said. One of the most unique and dazzling trumpeters who ever was, one of the inventors of bebop, a powerhouse who with his very physical appearance personified the coolness of jazz in the 40s and 50s. I'll not go any further, except to add that I got the chance once to see Gillespie in rehearsal a couple years before he passed, and it's a memory I know I'll always treasure.

As if that were not enough, we also remember Ron Asheton, one of the great guitarists of proto-punk; Vladimir de Pachmann and Emma Calvé, two of the most famous stars of the classical music world in the early 20th century; and Tyāgarāja, one of the very greatest composers in the history of South Indian music. I regret not being able to bring you any of Tyāgarāja's compositions today. I located what looked to be a very good record that consists largely of improvisations upon them, but as fate would have it the link directs one to the now-unreachable multiupload. Quite disappointing. But if I find something suitable later, I'll be sure to update this post and let you know about it.

10-19b: Don Cherry Eternal Rhythm 1968 - Alice Cooper Los Angeles Forum 1973

Our labels runneth over!

10-07: Ornette Coleman This Is Our Music 1960 - Dixie Dregs Atlanta 1982 - Morales : Missa Si Bona Suscepimus / Tallis Scholars - Mario Lanza EP : Granada | Lolita | 2 Rigoletto Arias

1553 – Cristóbal de Morales (Spanish composer)
1766 – André Chéron (French keyboardist, composer & conductor, teacher of Jean Marie Leclair)
1887 – George James Webb (English-born American composer)
1890 – John Hill Hewitt (American songwriter, playwright & poet)
1915 – Samuel Prowse Warren (Canadian-born American organist, choirmaster, music editor, composer & teacher)
1918 – Sir Hubert Parry (English composer, teacher & musicologist, "Jerusalem")
1925 – Hubert Platt Main (American teacher, publisher & hymn composer)
1959 – Mario Lanza (American tenor & movie star)
1966 – Grigoris Asikis [Γρηγόρης Ασίκης] (Turkish-born Greek rebetiko singer, songwriter & outi & bouzouki player)
1966 – Smiley Lewis (American R&B singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1976 – Nikolai Lopatnikoff (Estonian-born American composer)
1981 – Wouter Paap (Dutch composer, keyboardist & writer)
1988 – Billy Daniels (American pop singer & actor)
1992 – Ed Blackwell (American jazz drummer)
1998 – Arnold Jacobs (American tuba player & teacher, Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
2002 – Pierangelo Bertoli (Italian folk singer-songwriter, guitarist & political activist)
2003 – Arthur Berger (American composer & writer)
2006 – Abraham Afewerki (Eritrean pop, jazz, R&B & reggae singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2010 – T Lavitz (American jazz & rock keyboardist, reed player, composer & producer, Dixie Dregs, Jefferson Starship)

Cristóbal de Morales, a composer of sacred music, is regarded as the greatest Spanish composer of the Renaissance prior to Tomás Luis de Victoria. You'll recall, of course, that this year marks the 400th anniversary of Victoria's death, and thus we've been trying to pay particular attention to him.

Hubert Parry is best known for his setting in 1916 of a short poem which appears in the preface to William Blake's Milton, A Poem, first printed in 1808. Here is that preface as it appears in Blake's own illuminated version:

This of course is the anthem everyone knows as "Jerusalem." It's a song that's used for a number of particular occasions in England - it's sung, for example, at the end of the annual Labor Party conference, in some Anglican cathedrals on Jerusalem Sunday, and as the recessional music on St. George's Day, and by all those gathered each year as the closing music (save for the national anthem and the traditional "Auld Lang Syne") on the Last Night of the Proms, using an orchestration Edward Elgar made of the anthem in 1922.

Now, if you don't happen to be British, or Anglican, you may not know what Blake is talking about in the little poem set by Parry. He's making a reference to an old legend (whose veracity he does not take for granted - note that it's stated in the form of questions) that Jesus actually visited England, in Somerset, as a child or young man, in the vicinity of where Glastonbury Cathedral now stands, along with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. It's one of several legends, Christian, Arthurian, and Neo-Pagan in nature, that surround this particular part of southwestern England, and made it one of the most popular tourist destinations in the British Isles many years before they started having a music festival there! What, exactly, Blake meant in his reference to the legend has been the subject of debate. But regardless of your status as regards citizenship, religion, or political affiliation, I think there's something in the combination of his words and Parry's music that really stirs the soul.

(More later... on Mario Lanza, Ed Blackwell, Pierangelo Bertoli, and Abraham Afewerki...)