09-07: The Who 1974 Charlton Football Club - Britten War Requiem 1963 - Erma Franklin Soul Sister 1969 - Cecilia Bartoli Rossini Heroines

1741 – Henri Desmarets (French composer)
1775 – Johann Georg Holzbogen (German composer to Prince Clemens Franz de Paula of Bavaria)
1819 – Jean-Louis Duport (French composer & cellist)
1838 – Joseph Panny (Austrian composer & violinist)
1845 – Isabella Colbran (Spanish dramatic coloratura soprano sfogato & song composer, wife of Rossini)
1872 – Antoni Stolpe (Polish composer & pianist)
1881 – Sidney Lanier (American poet, composer & flutist)
1902 – Franz Wüllner (German composer & conductor)
1916 – Junius W. Hill (American organist, teacher & music editor)
1925 – John Wesley Work, Jr. (American collector of African-American folk songs, songwriter & director of Fisk Jubilee Singers)
1944 – Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes (Cuban composer, music folklorist & author)
1971 – Ludwig Suthaus (German operatic Heldentenor)
1977 – Gustave Reese (American musicologist & teacher, medieval & Renaissance specialist)
1978 – Cecil Aronowitz (South African-born British violist, founding member of Melos ensemble)
1978 – Keith Moon (English rock drummer, The Who)
1978 – Charles Williams (English composer & conductor of soundtracks & light music)
1983 – Hans Münch (Alsatian conductor, composer, cellist, pianist, organist & teacher)
1986 – Vladimir Vlasov (Russian composer & conductor)
1989 – Mikhail Goldstein (Ukrainian composer & violinist)
1991 – Archie N. Menzies (American playwright & composer, Under Your Hat)
1992 – Indra Kamadjojo (Javanese-born Dutch dancer & actor)
1994 – Eric Crozier (English librettist & stage director, associate of Britten)
1996 – Niccolò Castiglioni (Italian composer, pianist & writer on music)
2001 – Igor Buketoff (American conductor, arranger & teacher)
2002 – Erma Franklin (American gospel & R&B singer, older sister of Aretha)
2003 – Warren Zevon (American rock & folk singer-songwriter, guitarist & pianist)
2005 – Sergio Endrigo (Italian singer-songwriter)
2008 – Dino Dvornik (Croatian singer, songwriter, record producer & actor)
2008 – Peter Glossop (English operatic dramatic baritone)
2008 – Nagi Noda (Japanese pop artist & video director)

A lot of Brits here, in particular three who interestingly had connections to composer Benjamin Britten: Eric Crozier, who wrote libretti for and worked closely with Britten in the production of a number of his operas; violist Cecil Aronowitz of the Melos Ensemble, who comprised the chamber group in the premiere performance and recording of Britten's War Requiem in 1962–63 (and it was also for Aronowitz that Britten arranged a string-orchestra accompaniment in 1976 of his Lachrymae (1950), originally written with piano accompaniment for William Primrose); and baritone Peter Glossop, seen above in one of his signature roles, Verdi's hunchbacked jester Rigoletto, whose other roles included Balstrode in Britten's Peter Grimes, and the title role and Mr. Redburn in his Billy Budd - Glossop also sang Billy Budd on two recordings of the opera, the first a television film transmitted by BBC-2 on December 11th, 1966 (conducted by Charles Mackerras, with Peter Pears as Vere, Robert Langdon as Claggart, and John Shirley-Quirk as Redburn), and the second a studio audio recording for Decca from the following year, with the same cast conducted by the composer... (Read more below)

Also from the world of opera, Isabella Colbran, spouse of Gioachino Rossini between 1822 and 1837, and the soprano sfogato (basically, an alto or mezzo with a very extended upper range) for whom he wrote leading roles in about a dozen of his operas between 1815 and 1823, including Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, Otello, Armida, Ricciardo e Zoraide, La donna del lago, Maometto II, Zelmira, and Semiramide. Unfortunately, Colbran's voice already began changing and showing signs of strain by 1817 (perhaps the wear and tear caused by a mezzo or alto singing in a high soprano range!), and by 1824 she had decided to retire completely from the opera stage. Rossini himself retired from the opera business after William Tell in 1829, apparently deciding that after 20 years he'd had quite enough of the exhausting work of putting on operas. Colbran and Rossini would live on another 20 years and 40 years after their respective retirements... (Read more below) ...see you on the other side of the injured vocal cords...

09-06: Atari Teenage Riot The Future of War 1987 - Jeff Beck Truth 1968 - Nico Chelsea Girl 1968 - Hanss Eisler Deutsche Sinfonie - Ernest Tubb Say Something Nice To Sarah 1972 - Marcel Journet 78s 1906-1919

1811 – Julien-Amable Mathieu (French violinist & composer)
1819 – Georg Druschetzky [Jiří Družecký] (Bohemian composer, oboist & timpanist)
1831 – Johann Ernst Friedrich Wollank (German composer)
1933 – Marcel Journet (French operatic lyric bass)
1937 – Henry Hadley (American composer & conductor)
1949 – Walter Widdop (English Heldentenor)
1952 – José Forns y Cuadras (Spanish musicologist & author)
1956 – Felix Borowski (English-born American composer, music critic, teacher, pianist & violinist)
1962 – Hanns Eisler (German-born composer, pupil of Schoenberg, friend & colleague of Brecht)
1965 – Konstantin Mostras (Russian violinist & composer, pupil of Auer, teacher of Galamian)
1966 – Luigi Perrachio (Italian composer & pianist)
1968 – Karl Rankl (Austrian-born British conductor (Covent Garden) & composer (pupil of Schoenberg & Webern))
1973 – Sir William Henry Harris (English organist, choirmaster & composer, New College & Christ Church, Oxford & St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle)
1977 – Paul Burkhard (Swiss composer & songwriter, "O mein Papa")
1977 – Guido Pannain (Italian musicologist, author & composer)
1978 – Tom Wilson (American record producer)
1979 – Ronald Binge (English composer & arranger of light music)
1981 – Joseph Yasser (Polish-born American music theorist, organist & composer)
1984 – Ernest Tubb (American country singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1985 – Léon Orthel (Dutch composer, pianist & teacher)
1985 – Franco Ferrara (Italian conductor & teacher of many conductors)
1985 – Johnny Desmond (American jazz & pop singer)
1990 – Tom Fogerty (American rock guitarist, songwriter & singer, older brother of John, CCR)
1994 – Max Kaminsky (American jazz trumpeter & bandleader)
1994 – Nicky Hopkins (English session keyboardist & vocalist, Rolling Stones et al.)
1995 – Joanne Gail Abbott (MTV executive)
1996 – Esther [Ester] Soré (Chilean popular singer & actress)
1998 – Ric Segreto (American pop singer, actor, teacher & journalist, active in the Philippines & Guam)
2001 – Carl Crack (Swazi-born German techno musician, Atari Teenage Riot)
2007 – Luciano Pavarotti (Italian operatic lyric tenor)

Weren't we just talking yesterday about the tragic recent passing of Salvatore Licitra, who'd been hailed as "the New Pavarotti," and who'd made his Met debut as a stand-in for Pavarotti on just 2 hours' notice? And now look who's on our list... the old Pavarotti! And the image I used of Luciano is of him making his curtain call for the same role Licitra sang that night: Cavaradossi from Puccini's Tosca... I'll bet you're grateful I used that pic instead of the usual concert-performance-in-formal-attire-with-white-hanky photos we're used to seeing of the great and now 4-years defunct tenor. I was tempted to make a mini-collage of him in photos alongside various pop stars... Michael Jackson, Bono, Julio Iglesias, Vanessa Williams... aren't you also grateful I resisted that impulse?

And weren't we just remembering Gisele MacKenzie yesterday? Well, turns out that one of the most memorable television appearances by singer Johnny Desmond, whom we remember today, was with Boris Karloff in 1957, on guess whose show on  NBC... that's right, The Gisele MacKenzie Show!

And wasn't it just a week ago that we were remembering Carl Wayne from the Move, specifically with their 1968 album that included session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins on a few tracks? And so who makes it to the list today? Yep, it's the "Sixth Stone" himself... (Read more about him below)

And then in the comments to the post from a few days ago in which we remembered Feldman and Partch, weren't Wes and I (Say "hi" to Wes everybody - he's the one person who reads this blog - say "hi" to yourself, Wes) discussing equal divisions of the octave, in which I mentioned 19-tone equal temperament? And now along comes none other than Joseph Yasser, one of the main theorists to suggest this very tuning way back in the 30s, and poops on September 6th!

Well, it's all uncanny or whatever, and if you like you can imagine me as Jack Palance from Ripley's Believe It Or Not with that creepy grin on my face, talking about how very uncanny it is. Oh, and Jack Palance. I'll bet you're just dying (like just about everyone we ever talk about has) to know what day he met his maker, aren't you? You'll never guess... it was... it was... November 10th. Why, that's only about a month away! It's positively canny, I tell you!
 

09-05: Antonio Mairena : Actuaciones Historicas - Mahler 5 & 8 Solti - Wolfgang Fortner : Triplum etc. Wergo 1967

1629 – Domenico Allegri (Italian composer & singer, younger brother of Gregorio)
1734 – Nicolas Bernier (French musician & composer)
1803 – François Devienne (French composer, flutist & teacher)
1890 – Ludwig Deppe (German composer, conductor, pianist & teacher)
1910 – Franz Xaver Haberl (German priest, church musician & musicologist, friend of Liszt)
1910 – Julian Edwards (American composer & popular songwriter)
1921 – Joseph Mann (Polish-born Austrian operatic tenor)
1962 – Alessandro Granda (Peruvian operatic tenor)
1964 – Giórgios Kokoliós (Greek operatic tenor)
1965 – Stephan De Jonghe (Belgian musicologist)
1969 – Mitchell Ayres (American conductor, arranger & composer, Perry Como, The Hollywood Palace)
1969 – Henk Bijvanck (Dutch composer)
1973 – Petre Ştefănescu Goangă (Romanian baritone)
1975 – Georg Ots (Estonian baritone of opera, art song, folk song & film)
1980 – Don Banks (Australian composer of concert, jazz, & commercial music)
1983 – Antonio Mairena (Spanish flamenco singer)
1987 – Wolfgang Fortner (German composer, conductor & teacher)
1993 – René Klijn (Dutch pop singer & photo model)
1994 – Billy Usselton (American jazz tenor saxophonist, clarinetist & oboist)
1995 – Pigmeat Jarrett (American blues singer & pianist)
1997 – Sir Georg Solti (Hungarian-born British conductor)
2003 – Gisele MacKenzie (Canadian-born American pop singer, violinist, actress & TV personality)
2007 – Saint Thomas [Thomas Hansen] (Norwegian alt-country singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2011 – Salvatore Licitra (Italian operatic tenor)

Sometimes you go with what you can. For Domenico Allegri's much more famous brother Gregorio (he of the sublime, if not entirely his own, Miserere), there is a good etching of his likeness. For Domenico, we have a receipt from his employer.

The most recent addition to our list of names is that of Salvatore Licitra, an excellent tenor whose star only began rising about 12 years ago. Things really picked up for his career in 2002, when he debuted at the Met unexpectedly, substituting for Pavarotti as Cavaradossi in Tosca after the ailing legend cancelled at the last minute. He passed away this September 5th after a motor-scooter accident in Sicily that left him lingering in a coma for several days. Our condolences to his family, friends, and many colleagues, who mourn the tragic loss of a singer who has been dubbed "the New Pavarotti," and a tenor "worthy of the great Italian tradition."

Our next most recent passage was that in 2007 of Norwegian alt-country artist Saint Thomas, who died as a result of an unfortunate deadly combination of prescription drugs, at the age of 31. He was another artist who'd only recently begun to achieve international attention, touring with Lambchop in Europe and Of Montreal in the U.S. during the mid-00s.

On a brighter note, our long-awaited major Mahler conductor has finally shown up, in the form of Sir Georg Solti, whose tenure at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra rivalled those of the legendary Frederick Stock and Fritz Reiner years. An energetic conductor of both concert music and opera, his Wagner Ring cycle (with the Vienna Philharmonic) and Mahler symphony cycles are treasured by many, if not to everyone's taste. But pretty much everyone agrees that his Mahler 8th from 1971, with its superb roster of vocal soloists, is one of the very best available... (Read more below)

09-04: Mahler 8 Stokowski live 1950 - Stellakis & Rita Rebetiko - Bach / Albert Schweitzer 1935 - Grieg Holberg Suite / Oslo Camerata 2006

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...

09-03: Morton Feldman : Coptic Light / Tilson Thomas 1995 | Rothko Chapel / New Albion 1990 - Harry Partch : The Bewitched 1957 / CRI - Canned Heat : Living the Blues 1968 - Noah Howard : The Black Ark 1969 - Coleman Hawkins : The Hawk Flies High 1957

1708 – Christian Liebe (German composer & organist, teacher of Andreas Silbermann)
1714 – Pietro Antonio Fiocco (Italian composer & choirmaster)
1790 – Thomas Norris (English organist, composer & singer)
1811 – Ignaz Fränzl (German violinist & composer)
1871 – Václav Emanuel Horák (Czech composer, church musician & teacher)
1914 – Albéric Magnard (French composer)
1944 – František Drdla (Czech violinist & composer)
1946 – Paul Lincke (German composer & violinist, "Berliner Luft")
1946 – Moriz Rosenthal (Polish pianist, composer & wit)
1951 – Robert Hernried (Austrian composer, musicologist & music editor)
1960 – Joseph Lamb (American ragtime composer)
1963 – Frico Kafenda (Slovak composer, teacher, pianist & conductor)
1964 – Joseph Marx (Austrian composer, teacher & music critic)
1970 – Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson (American blues-rock singer, songwriter, guitarist & harmonica player, Canned Heat)
1974 – Harry Partch (American experimental composer, instrument inventor, music theorist & hobo)
1981 – Mafalda Favero (Italian operatic soprano)
1984 – Dora Labbette (English operatic & concert soprano, mistress of Sir Thomas Beecham)
1985 – Johnny Marks (American writer of many Christmas songs, e.g. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer")
1985 – Papa Jo Jones (American jazz drummer)
1985 – John Herbert McDowell (American composer for dance, theater & film)
1987 – Morton Feldman (American experimental composer)
1994 – Major Lance (American R&B & soul singer)
2007 – Carter Albrecht (American rock keyboardist & guitarist, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
2010 – Noah Howard (American free jazz alto saxophonist)

Well, what a banner day for good, old-fashioned, solid American experimental composition... it's a tradition that started with Charles Ives and Henry Cowell, and continues up to this very day! We have Harry Partch and Morton Feldman, both pooping on September 3rd. Partch - gay, iconoclastic, and a man who spent much of the Great Depression as a train-hopping vagabond - stretches our ears with his unequal 43-note scale that maps closely onto an 11-limit just intonation (a tuning system which is derived from acoustically pure intervals through the first 11 partials of an overtone series, if that's any easier for you to understand), and the truly weird-looking and even weirder-sounding instruments he had to design and build himself so that one could play in this scale. A few of them are seen above in our little Partch mini-collage: the Cloud Chamber Bowls, the Chromelodeon, the Bamboo Marimba, the Adapted Viola, the Quadrangularis Reversum, and the Gourd Tree. Partch's collection of exotic instruments continues to be curated and used in performance by Dean Drummond and the ensemble Newband.

In contrast, Feldman (a member of the so-called "New York School," which also includes John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff) stretches our musical perceptions in a very different way, requiring us to recalibrate our relationship to musical sonority and musical time. (Feldman has his own mini-collage up there. He was a curiously photogenic and charismatic individual - I love how even the Iranian teen next to the gong seems intrigued by the man. Go here to look at some rarely-seen vacation slides of Feldman.) He came to prefer softer sounds only, finding them more interesting than louder ones. This causes the sound of "silence" - really, the ambient sounds of the space, especially those of the performers themselves moving around, breathing, etc. - to be bumped up in Feldman's sound-world. In his mature style of the late 60s and thereafter, a Feldman work consists of dissonant yet delicate patterns and textures that evolve so slowly they almost create an effect of complete stasis. This is extended over longer and longer time-spans throughout the 70s, culminating in the String Quartet II of 1983, which takes several hours to perform. So both Partch and Feldman are composers who require some major adjustments to the ways we're accustomed to listening to and processing music. To some, maybe frightening... to you and me, full of the excitement of discovery... (Read more about both Partch and Feldman below)

There's so much more to say about so many others (like jazz drummer Jo Jones... no, not "Philly" Joe Jones, but "Papa" Jo Jones - people have been getting the two of them confused for 60 years, and the situation isn't helped by the fact that they died not just in the same year, but within four days of one another), but I'll just have to say "Remainder of write-up pending" for now...

08-30: UPDATE! Miles Davis : Steamin' 1956 - Ike Quebec : Blue and Sentimental 1960

1985 – Philly Joe Jones (American jazz drummer)

Well, I knew it would happen eventually. That I'd manage to neglect a really, really important musician. And here he is. Philly Joe Jones... how does a person neglect Philly Joe Jones?!? Well, anyway, I hope this post makes up for it, at least a little bit...

09-02: Russ Columbo 1928-1934 - Francesco Landini : Hortus Musicus 1976 | Anonymous 4 2000 - Otto Luening CRI 334 1974 - Wagner Das Rheingold Karajan 1967

1397 – Francesco Landini (Italian composer & organist)
1715 – Constantin Christian Dedekind (German poet & composer)
1870 – Arthur Saint-Léon (French dancer, choreographer, violinist)
1891 – Ferdinand Praeger (German composer, friend & biographer of Richard Wagner)
1905 – Walter Cecil Macfarren (English pianist, composer, piano teacher & music critic)
1916 – Max Schlosser (German tenor)
1934 – Alcide "Yellow" Nunez (American early jazz clarinetist & guitarist)
1934 – Russ Columbo (American pop singer, violinist, actor & composer)
1949 – Giuseppina Cobelli (Italian operatic dramatic soprano)
1955 – Rudolf Kattnigg (Austrian composer, pianist & conductor)
1961 – Greet Koeman (Dutch operatic dramatic soprano)
1963 – László Szemere (Hungarian operatic tenor)
1970 – Kees van Baaren (Dutch composer & teacher)
1973 – Ralph Errolle (American tenor)
1980 – William Douglas Denny (American composer)
1981 – Tadeusz Baird (Polish composer & pianist of Scottish decent)
1996 – Otto Luening (American composer, conductor & pioneer of tape & electronic music)
1996 – Lee Gannon (American composer)
1997 – Sir Rudolf Bing (Austrian-born British opera impresario, General Manager of the Met 1950–72)
1999 – Giuseppe Modesti (Italian operatic bass-baritone)
2007 – Rajae Belmlih (Moroccan singer & champion of women's rights)

Write-up pending...