11-05a: Art Tatum 1932-1934 | Tatum / Hampton / Rich Trio 1955 - Vladimir Horowitz : Brahms Concerto 2 Toscanini 1940 | Pictures at an Exhibition 1947 | Tchaikovsky Concerto 1 Szell 1952

1933 – Texas Guinan (American saloon keeper, actress & musician)
1942 – George M. Cohan (American entertainer, songwriter & author)
1956 – Art Tatum (American jazz pianist & composer)
1960 – Johnny Horton (American country singer & songwriter)
1964 – Buddy Cole (American jazz pianist & orchestra leader)
1977 – Guy Lombardo (Canadian jazz orchestra leader)
1986 – Bobby Nunn (American R&B singer, The Coasters)
1989 – Vladimir Horowitz [Владимир Горови] (Russian-born American pianist)

See, now... this is what we like to see here at Yestermonth. The greatest pianist in jazz history, and the greatest classical pianist of the 20th century, both pooping on the same day, 33 years apart. Yes, it's all Tatum & Horowitz today on YiDM, Pianists Pooping Properly edition.

10-16a: Sweelinck: Keyboard Music Koopman 1981 - Bantock The Cyprian Goddess etc. Handley 1995 - Benny Goodman Together Again! 1963 - Puccini Manon Lescaut : Tebaldi / Del Monaco 1954 - Strauss Till Eulenspiegel Gui 1947

1621 – Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (Dutch composer, teacher & organist, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam)
1655 – Joseph Solomon Delmedigo [ישר מקנדיא] (Crete-born Italian rabbi, author, physician, mathematician & music theorist, active in Europe & North Africa)
1750 – Sylvius Leopold Weiss (German composer & lutenist)
1814 – Juan José Landaeta (Venezuelan composer)
1893 – Carlo Pedrotti (Italian conductor & composer)
1920 – Alberto Nepomuceno (Brazilian composer, pianist, organist & conductor)
1946 – Sir Granville Bantock (English composer & conductor)
1949 – Hale Ascher VanderCook (American composer, conductor, cornettist & teacher, founder of VanderCook College of Music)
1959 – Minor Hall (American jazz drummer)
1973 – Gene Krupa (American jazz drummer & composer)
1975 – Vittorio Gui (Italian conductor)
1982 – Mario Del Monaco (Italian dramatic tenor)

October 16th wasn't a very good day for jazz drummers, was it? We just said goodbye to Art Blakely in edition 10-16b, and here in 10-16a we have Minor Hall, a major (heh) New Orleans drummer, who played with Kid Ory, among others, and Gene Krupa, almost surely the greatest drummer of the Big Band/Swing era, who's most famous for his work in the Benny Goodman orchestra, and his highly energetic, almost frenetic style of playing.

We also have Sweelinck, one of the most important keyboard composers active around 1600; Mario Del Monaco, one of the greatest operatic dramatic tenors of the 20th century; a couple of quite notable South American composers; Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, who sounds like a very interesting figure I must get to know better; and Granville Bantock, who provides an interesting comparison with Kaikhosru Sorabji, whom we only just remembered on the 10-15 edition.

For both composers were British and had a spiritual and aesthetic affinity with the East, but Sorabji also had ethnic roots there, while Bantock did not. For him, the legends of those exotic lands, which he toured briefly as a young man while conducting a musical comedy troupe, simply held a special fascination that stuck with him his entire life, and which permeates many of his works, most famously his epic choral work Omar Khayyám, based on the Rubaiyat of that 11th-century Persian poet.

Okay, so there's your write-up. Happy? Oh, I also moved the Follow & Subscribe gadgets to a more convenient place on the page. I think I may monetize the blog soon, so expect to see the place plastered with Donate buttons. I spend a lot of time working on this place, you know.

08-31: The Move 1968 - John Ward / Rose Consort of Viols - Lionel Hampton Complete Jazztone Recordings 1956 - Verdi Otello arias / Francesco Tamagno 1903 - Bartók / Spivakovsky / Balsam 1947

1604 – Giovanni Giovenale Ancina (Italian priest, scholar & composer, beatified 1889)
1616 – Gemignano Capilupi (Italian composer)
1631 – Nicolaus Erich (German composer & church musician)
1638 – John Ward the younger (English composer, chorister & lawyer)
1667 – Johann von Rist (German poet, playwright & hymnist)
1730 – Gottfried Finger (Moravian composer)
1795 – François-André Danican Philidor (French composer & chess master)
1805 – Joseph dall'Abaco (Belgian cellist & composer, active in Germany, England & Italy)
1832 – Jean Nicolas Auguste Kreutzer (French violinist & composer, younger brother of Rodolphe)
1862 – Ignaz Aßmayer (Austrian composer, organist & church musician)
1905 – Francesco Tamagno (Italian operatic tenor)
1910 – Pierre Aubry (French musicologist, 13th-century specialist)
1910 – Emīls Dārziņš (Latvian composer, conductor & music critic)
1923 – Ernst Van Dyck (Belgian operatic tenor)
1946 – Paul von Klenau (Danish composer & conductor, active in Germany & Austria)
1949 – Paul Höffer (German composer, pianist & teacher)
1964 – Désiré Defrère (Belgian operatic tenor)
1965 – Antonin Trantoul (French operatic tenor)
1969 – Ottmar Gerster (German composer, violinist & pianist)
1975 – Jonny Born (German operatic baritone)
1994 – Artur [Arthur] Balsam (Polish-born American pianist & teacher)
2002 – Lionel Hampton (American jazz vibraphonist, drummer, pianist, bandleader & actor)
2002 – Farhad Mehrad (Iranian rock singer, songwriter, guitarist & pianist)
2003 – Jaap Geraedts (Dutch composer & flutist)
2004 – Carl Wayne (English rock singer, keyboardist & electric bassist, The Move)

Well, I'm not going to say "write-up pending" today, because I already have three posts I have to go back and amend, so today I'm just going to keep it short and sweet for a change.

On August 31st we remember John Ward, English composer of viol music (Read more below); F.-A. Danican Philidor, whose family formed a long lineage of French court musicians, and who also has two chess moves named after him; Auguste Kreutzer, brother of Rodolphe Kreutzer, to whom Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" (the sonata after which Tolstoy's novella (the novella by which Janáček's first string quartet was inspired) was named) was dedicated; and Ignaz Aßmayer, who gave organ lessons to Anton Bruckner, and whose name looks very funny if you don't have a German double-s handy.

We also remember Francesco Tamagno, the tenor who created the title role of Verdi's Otello in 1887 (that's to say, he was the very first to sing the role of Otello - well, unless you count the much less famous Otello by Rossini from 1816, for which Andrea Nozzari created the title role - Read more below); Ernst Van Dyck, the tenor who created the title role of Massenet's Werther in 1893; Pierre Aubry, an early scholarly specialist in medieval music; and Artur Balsam, a pianist who made many recordings in the late 78 and early LP era (Read more below).

Finally, we remember Lionel Hampton, who for all intents and purposes invented jazz vibraphone during the swing era (Read more below); Farhad Mehrad, who pioneered Persian rock music in the 70s, and had his music banned in Iran after the revolution, but has grown to be more accepted by the religious establishment as Iran's population has become younger and more liberal; and Carl Wayne, lead singer for The Move (Read more below), the British psychedelic rock group that later metamorphized into E.L.O. after Jeff Lynne joined it.

There! That was so short I needn't even bother with the usual "jump." But if you really feel like doing some more "reading," I think you know what to do...

Read more...