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Breakthru (Ran Blake Album)
''Breakthru'' is an album of solo piano performances by the American jazz pianist Ran Blake recorded in 1975 and released on the Improvising Artists label.Ran Blake discography accessed February 11, 2015 Reception of AllMusic stated, "Blake's emotional playing (which emphasizes the contrast between silence and explosive sounds) is both witty and unpredictable... Intriguing music".Track listing # "Breakthru" (Ran Blake) - 1:35 # " |
Ran Blake
Ran Blake (born April 20, 1935) is an American pianist, composer, and educator. He is known for his unique style that combines blues, gospel, classical, and film noir influences into an innovative and dark jazz sound. His career spans over 40 recording credits on jazz albums along with more than 40 years of teaching jazz at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he started the Department of Third Stream (now called the Department of Contemporary Improvisation) with Gunther Schuller. Early life Blake was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on April 20, 1935. He grew up in Suffield, Connecticut, and became fascinated by film noir after seeing Robert Siodmak's ''Spiral Staircase'' as a twelve-year-old. He began playing piano as a young child, and as a teenager studied with Ray Cassarino. In his teenage years, he developed a love for gospel music and studied the compositions of Béla Bartók and Claude Debussy. After high school, he attended Bard College in New York, graduati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) director in the musical theater for almost 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. He is best known for his collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers, as the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musicals include ''Oklahoma!'', '' Carousel'', '' South Pacific'', ''The King and I'', and ''The Sound of Music''. Described by Stephen Sondheim as an "experimental playwright", Hammerstein helped bring the American musical to new maturity by popularizing musicals that focused on stories and character rather than the lighthearted entertainment that the musical had been known for beforehand. He also collaborated with Jerome Kern (with whom he wrote ''Show Boat''), Vincent Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parker's Mood
"Parker's Mood" is a piece of music originally performed by Charlie Parker as an improvised blues in 1948. Vocalese lyrics were later written and recorded by King Pleasure and Eddie Jefferson. Original recording Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker recorded "Parker's Mood" in New York City on September 18, 1948. The other musicians for the Savoy Records session were pianist John Lewis, bassist Curley Russell, and drummer Max Roach. There were five takes: two false starts and three complete takes. The complete takes were improvised spontaneously, with the probable exception of the opening two bars, which are the same on each take. Parker "varies the phrasing and motivic relatedness of the opening melodic idea in each take". The tempo across the takes varies from 65 quarter notes to 87. "Parker's Mood" is a B blues. "The introduction begins on G minor ..The feature then proceeds to C minor, which ..suggests i–iv in G minor (or v–i in C minor)." Then, from the third bar, "the rhythm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Legrand
Michel Jean Legrand (; 24 February 1932 – 26 January 2019) was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, ''The Umbrellas of Cherbourg'' (1964) and ''The Young Girls of Rochefort'' (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from '' The Thomas Crown Affair'' (1968), and additional Oscars for ''Summer of '42'' (1971) and Barbra Streisand's '' Yentl'' (1983). Life and career Legrand was born in Paris to his father, Raymond Legrand, who was himself a conductor and composer, and his mother, Marcelle Ter-Mikaëlian, who was the sister of conductor Jacques Hélian. Raymond and Marcelle were married in 1929. His maternal grandfather was Armenian. Legrand composed more than two hundred fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan And Marilyn Bergman
Alan Bergman (born September 11, 1925) and Marilyn Keith Bergman (November 10, 1928 – January 8, 2022) were an American songwriting duo. Married from 1958 until Marilyn's death, together they wrote music and lyrics for numerous celebrated television, film, and stage productions. The Bergmans enjoyed a successful career, honored with four Emmys, three Oscars, two Grammys (including Song of the Year), and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Biography and career Alan Bergman was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1925, the son of Ruth (Margulies), a homemaker and community volunteer, and Samuel Bergman, who worked in children's clothing sales. He studied at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned his master's degree in music at UCLA. Marilyn Bergman was born in 1928, coincidentally at the same Brooklyn hospital where Alan had been born three years earlier, and was the daughter of Edith (Arkin) and Albert A. Katz. Both Alan and Marilyn are from Jewish famili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?
"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" is a song with lyrics written by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman and original music written by Michel Legrand for the 1969 film ''The Happy Ending''. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song but lost out to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head". The same title was used 25 years earlier by Ted Koehler and Burton Lane for their song for the 1944 film Hollywood Canteen. A Ted Weems recording of 1938 also has an identical title. Background Alan Bergman would recall that after Michel Legrand had written eight melodies which were somehow not viable for the film, Marilyn Bergman suggested the opening line "What are you doing the rest of your life?", and Legrand then completed the song's melody based on that phrase. Marilyn Bergman would later comment on the dual meanings of the phrase "What are you doing the rest of your life?" to the film: its title alludes to the marriage proposal Mary Spencer (played by Jean Simmons) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nick Kenny (poet)
Nicholas Aloysius Kenny (February 3, 1895 in Astoria, New York - December 1, 1975 in Sarasota, Florida) was a syndicated newspaper columnist, a song lyricist and a poet who wrote light verse in the Edgar Guest tradition. Biography Born in Queens, Kenny attended high school for only three months before joining the Navy (1911–18), serving on the USS Arizona, followed by a tour of duty in the Merchant Marine (1918–20). He enlisted in the navy in April 1917 and was discharged in November 1918 as a Yeoman 2nd Class."U.S. Veterans Bureau Form 7202 Index Card", "United States Government, Veterans Administration Master Index, 1917-1940" database, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, Missouri, available through FamilySearch. Enl was listed as "4/6/17", Dis was as "11/14/18". He continued his education with extensive reading in ships' libraries. He began writing poetry but did not sign his poems until one was published in Arthur Brisbane's column. While a sportswri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drop Me Off In Harlem
"Drop Me Off in Harlem" is a 1933 song composed during the Harlem Renaissance composed by Duke Ellington, with lyrics written by Nick Kenny. A.H. Lawrence writes that the song originated from an off the cuff remark from Ellington. Nick Kenny had hailed a taxi, and offered to share it with Ellington. Kenny asked "Where to, Duke?", and Ellington replied "Drop me off at Harlem". Kenny then fashioned lyrics from Ellington's remark and presented him with them a few days later at the Cotton Club.Lawrence, A.H. ''Duke Ellington and His World'' (New York: Routledge, 2003), 189. Notable recordings *Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, February 17, 1933 *Ella Fitzgerald - ''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook'' (1958) *Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong on ''The Great Summit'' (1961, re released 2001) This recording appeared in the 1989 film ''Harlem Nights''. *Richie Kamuca - ''Drop Me Off at Harlem'' (1975) *Ran Blake - ''Duke Dreams'' (1981) *Sun Ra - ''Nuclear War'' (1982) * G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitchell Parish
Mitchell Parish (born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky; July 10, 1900 – March 31, 1993) was an American lyricist, notably as a writer of songs for stage and screen. Biography Parish was born to a Jewish family in Lithuania, Russian Empire in July 1900 His family emigrated to the United States, arriving on February 3, 1901, aboard the '' SS Dresden'' when he was less than a year old. They settled first in Louisiana where his paternal grandmother had relatives, but later moved to New York City, where he grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and received his education in the public schools. He attended Columbia University and N.Y.U. and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He eventually abandoned the notion of practicing law to become a songwriter. He served his apprenticeship as a writer of special material for vaudeville acts, and later established himself as a writer of songs for stage, screen and numerous musical revues. By the late 1920s, Parish was a well-regarded Tin Pan Alley ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's " Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed multipl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophisticated Lady
"Sophisticated Lady" is a jazz standard, composed as an instrumental in 1932 by Duke Ellington. Background Additional credit is given to publisher Irving Mills whose words were added to the song by Mitchell Parish. The words met with approval from Ellington, who described them as "wonderful—but not entirely fitted to my original conception". That original conception was inspired by three of Ellington's grade school teachers. "They taught all winter and toured Europe in the summer. To me that spelled sophistication." Lawrence Brown, the trombone player in Ellington's band at the time, claimed that he was responsible for the main hook in the A section of the tune. Ellington paid him $15 for his contribution, but he was never officially credited. Duke Ellington and His Orchestra introduced "Sophisticated Lady" in 1933 with an instrumental recording of the song that featured solos by Toby Hardwick on alto sax, Barney Bigard on clarinet, Lawrence Brown on trombone and Ellingto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Clayton-Thomas
David Clayton-Thomas (born David Henry Thomsett, 13 September 1941) is a Grammy Award-winning Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of the American band Blood, Sweat & Tears. Clayton-Thomas has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and in 2007 his jazz/rock composition "Spinning Wheel" was enshrined in the Canadian Songwriter's Hall of Fame. In 2010, Clayton-Thomas received his star on Canada's Walk of Fame. Clayton-Thomas began his music career in the early 1960s, working the clubs on Toronto's Yonge Street, where he discovered his love of singing and playing the blues. Before moving to New York City in 1967, Clayton-Thomas fronted a couple of local bands, first The Shays and then The Bossmen, one of the earliest rock bands with significant jazz influences. But the real success came only a few difficult years later when he joined Blood, Sweat & Tears. Early life Clayton-Thomas was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, Englan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
