Frank Gagliardi
Frank Gagliardi (November 16, 1931, Denver, CO – February 6, 2011, Plano, TX) was an American jazz drummer and percussionist, big band composer, arranger, director, and professor. He was the creator and director of the UNLV Jazz Ensemble from 1974 until 1996. Prior to that, he worked as the drummer and percussionist at the Sands Hotel, accompanying such notable performers as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Patti Page, Lena Horne, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Joe Williams, Marlena Shaw and Joey Bishop among many others. Early life Born in Denver, Frank’s interest in music started at a young age. Inspired by his accordion-playing older brother Vince, at age 8, Frank began the drum lessons that led to his becoming, at 17, a percussionist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, where he played for the next 15 years. During that time, Frank earned his master's degree in Music Education and taught a course in Jazz at University of Denver. Career In 1964, Fran ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth most populous state capital. It is the principal city of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the first city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. Denver is located in the Western United States, in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Its downtown district is immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, approximately east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It is named after James W. Denver, a governor of the Kansas Territory. It is nicknamed the ''Mile High City'' because its official elevation is exactly one mile () above sea level. The 105th meridian we ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Joe Williams (jazz Singer)
Joe Williams (born Joseph Goreed; December 12, 1918 – March 29, 1999) was an American jazz singer. He sang with big bands such as the Count Basie Orchestra and the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and with his combos. He sang in two films with the Basie orchestra and sometimes worked as an actor. Life Williams was born in Cordele, Georgia, the son of Willie Goreed and Anne Beatrice ''née'' Gilbert. When he was about three, his mother and grandmother took him to Chicago. He grew up on the South Side, Chicago, South Side of Chicago, where he attended Austin Otis Sexton Elementary School and Englewood Technical Prep Academy, Englewood High School. In the 1930s, as a teenager, he was a member of a gospel group, the Jubilee Boys, and performed in Chicago churches. Work He began singing professionally as a soloist in 1937. He sometimes sang with big bands: from 1937 he performed with Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, and also toured with Les Hite in the Midwest. In 1941 he toured wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Las Vegas Valley
The Las Vegas Valley is a major metropolitan area in the Southern Nevada, southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada, and the second largest in the Southwestern United States. The state's largest urban agglomeration, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area is coextensive since 2003 with Clark County, Nevada, Clark County, Nevada. The Valley is largely defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a Depression (geology), basin area surrounded by mountains to the north, south, east and west of the metropolitan area. The Valley is home to the three largest incorporated cities in Nevada: Las Vegas, Henderson, Nevada, Henderson and North Las Vegas, Nevada, North Las Vegas. Eleven unincorporated towns governed by the Clark County government are part of the Las Vegas Township and constitute the largest community in the state of Nevada. The names Las Vegas and Vegas are interchangeably used to indicate the Valley, Las Vegas Strip, the Strip, and the city, and as a brand by the Las Vegas Co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Antonio Morelli
Antonio Morelli (1904-1974) was a producer, arranger, bandleader, movie producer, and conductor most well known for serving as orchestra leader for the famous Sands Hotel Copa Room in its Rat Pack heyday from 1954 through 1971. He was music director, band leader, and friend to some of the biggest names in show business for twenty years and is credited with bringing classical music to Las Vegas, Nevada, Las Vegas. He was also a songwriter, arranger, and music director for several Broadway musicals, and beloved for his devotion to philanthropic endeavors in his community most notably founding The Las Vegas Pops. Musical legacy Dean Martin ("Live At The Sands - An Evening of Music, Laughter and Hard Liquor") Frank Sinatra (''Sinatra at the Sands''), Sammy Davis, Jr. (''The Sounds of '66'', ''That's All!''), Tommy Sands (entertainer), Tommy Sands, Nat King Cole and Count Basie (a posthumous set, also recorded during the ''Sinatra at the Sands'' stand) were among those who recorded live ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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University Of Denver
The University of Denver (DU) is a private university, private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Mountain States, Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – very high research activity". DU enrolls approximately 5,700 undergraduate students and 7,200 graduate students. The main campus is a designated arboretum and is located primarily in the Denver#Neighborhoods, University Neighborhood, about five miles (8 km) south of downtown Denver. The 720-acre Kennedy Mountain Campus is located approximately 110 miles northwest of Denver, in Larimer County. History In March 1864, John Evans (Colorado governor), John Evans, former List of Governors of Colorado#Governors of the Territory of Colorado, Governor of the Colorado Territory, appointee of President Abraham Lincoln, founded the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Music Education
Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do original research on ways of teaching and learning music. Music education scholars publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, and teach undergraduate and graduate education students at university education or music schools, who are training to become music teachers. Music education touches on all learning domains, including the psychomotor domain (the development of skills), the cognitive domain (the acquisition of knowledge), and, in particular and the affective domain (the learner's willingness to receive, internalize, and share what is learned), including music appreciation and sensitivity. Many music education curriculums incorporate the usage of mathematical skills as well fluid usage and understanding of a secondary language or cult ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed in a frame), colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The concertina , harmoneon and bandoneón are related. The harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family, but are typically larger than an accordion and sit on a surface or the floor. The accordion is played by compressing or expanding the bellows while pressing buttons or keys, causing ''pallets'' to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called '' reeds''. These vibrate to produce sound inside the body. Valves on opposing reeds of each note are used to make the instrument's reeds sound louder without air leaking from each reed block.For the accordion's place among the families of musical ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marlena Shaw
Marlena Shaw (born Marlina Burgess, September 22, 1942) is an American jazz, blues and soul music, soul singer. Shaw began her singing career in the 1960s and is still singing today. Her music has often been sampled in Hip hop music, hip hop music, and used in television commercials. Early life Marlena Shaw was born in New Rochelle, New York. She was first introduced to music by her uncle Jimmy Burgess, a jazz trumpet player. In an interview with ''The New York Times'', she told the reporter: "He [Jimmy Burgess] introduced me to good music through records – Dizzy Gillespie, Dizzy [Gillespie], Miles Davis, Miles [Davis], a lot of Gospel music, gospel things, and Al Hibbler, who really knows how to phrase a song." In 1952, Burgess brought her on stage at the Apollo Theatre, Apollo Theater in Harlem to sing with his band. Shaw's mother did not want Marlena to go on tour with her uncle at such a young age. Shaw enrolled in the New York State Teachers College in Potsdam (now known a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sands Hotel
The Sands Hotel and Casino was a historic American hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, United States, that operated from 1952 to 1996. Designed by architect Wayne McAllister, with a prominent high sign, the Sands was the seventh resort to open on the Strip. During its heyday, it hosted many famous entertainers of the day, most notably the Rat Pack and Jerry Lewis. The hotel was established in 1952 by Mack Kufferman, who bought the LaRue Restaurant which had opened a year earlier. The hotel was opened on December 15, 1952 as a casino and hotel with 200 rooms. The hotel rooms were divided into four two-story motel wings, each with fifty rooms, and named after famous race tracks. Crime bosses such as Doc Stacher and Meyer Lansky acquired shares in the hotel and attracted Frank Sinatra, who made his performing debut at Sands in October 1953. Sinatra later bought a share in the hotel himself. In 1960, the classic caper film ''Ocean's 11'' was shot at the hotel, and i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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UNLV
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is a public land-grant research university in Paradise, Nevada. The campus is about east of the Las Vegas Strip. It was formerly part of the University of Nevada from 1957 to 1969. It includes the Shadow Lane Campus, just east of the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, which houses both School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. UNLV's law school, the William S. Boyd School of Law, is the only law school in the state. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, UNLV spent $83 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 165th in the nation. History The first college classes, which eventually became the classes of UNLV, were offered as the southern regional extension division of the University of Nevada, in 1959 in a classroom at Las Vegas High School. In 1955, State Senator Mahlon Brown "sponsored the legislation ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Percussionist
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |