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Ghost Train Orchestra
Ghost Train Orchestra is a Brooklyn-based jazz and chamber ensemble led by Boston-based musician Brian Carpenter. The band formed in 2006 when an historic theater in Boston commissioned Carpenter as musical director for its 90th year celebration. For the commission, Carpenter transcribed and arranged a set of overlooked music from late 1920s Chicago and Harlem and formed a side project from his regular band Beat Circus to perform it. The following year the group started performing under the name Ghost Train Orchestra. Recordings The band first recorded in 2009 at Avatar Studios in Manhattan and released ''Hothouse Stomp'' in 2011 on Accurate Records. The album featured Carpenter's rearrangements and often avant-garde treatments of early jazz from the 1920s and 1930s, drawn from recordings by such artists as Tiny Parham, Charlie Johnson, Fess Williams, and McKinney's Cotton Pickers. GTO's 2013 album, ''Book of Rhapsodies'', featured chamber-jazz works from the 1930s and '40s c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behind New York County (Manhattan). Brooklyn is also New York City's most populous borough,2010 Gazetteer for New York State . Retrieved September 18, 2016. with 2,736,074 residents in 2020. Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, Brooklyn is located on the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avatar Studios
Power Station at BerkleeNYC, formerly known as Avatar Studios (1996–2017) and Power Station, is a recording studio at 441 West 53rd Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City. The building contains 5 studio spaces: A, B, C, G, and E, as well as a black box theater. History The building was originally a Consolidated Edison power plant. In 1977, it was rebuilt as a recording studio by producer Tony Bongiovi and his partner Bob Walters. The complex was renamed Avatar Studios (under the Avatar Entertainment Corporation) in May 1996. In 2017, the studios were renamed back to Power Station, by special arrangement with Berklee NYC. The studio reopened in 2020 after a full renovation, while maintaining the studio spaces. In 1995, Sonalysts, which had begun as an underwater acoustics research company, licensed the Power Station's design and naming rights from Bongiovi and Walters. The company built a perfect replica of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Town Hall (New York City)
The Town Hall (also Town Hall) is a performance space at 123 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue near Times Square, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It was built from 1919 to 1921 and designed by architects McKim, Mead & White for the League for Political Education. The auditorium has 1,500 seats across two levels and has historically been used for various types of events such as speeches, musical recitals, and film screenings. Both the exterior and interior of the building are New York City landmarks, and the building is on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark. Town Hall was designed in the Georgian Revival style and has a brick facade with limestone trim. The base contains seven arched doorways that serve as the venue's entrance. The facade of the upper stories contains a large limestone plaque, niches, and windows. Inside the ground story, a rectangular lobby leads to the auditorium. The uppe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moondog
Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999), known professionally as Moondog, was an American composer, musician, performer, music theoretician, poet and inventor of musical instruments. Largely self-taught as a composer, his prolific work widely drew inspiration from jazz, classical, Native American music which he had become familiar with as a child, and Latin American music. His strongly rhythmic, contrapuntal pieces and arrangements later influenced composers of minimal music, in particular American composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Due to an accident, Moondog was blind from the age of 16. He lived in New York City from the late 1940s until 1972, during which time he was often found on Sixth Avenue, between 52nd and 55th Streets, busking, selling records and performing poetry. Regularly appearing in a cloak and a horned helmet, he was recognized as "the Viking of Sixth Avenue" by thousands of passersby and residents who were not aware of his musical c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kronos Quartet
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for almost 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classical music. More than 900 works have been commission (art), written for it. History The quartet was founded by violinist David Harrington in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington. Its first performance was in November 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers (from 1978 to 1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. In 1999, Jeanrenaud left Kronos because she was "eager for something new"; she was replaced by Jennifer Culp, who, in turn, left in 2005 and was replaced by Jeffrey Zeigler. In June 2013, Zeigler was replaced by Sunny Yang. With over 40 studio albums to their credit and having performed worldwide, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alec Wilder
Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder (February 16, 1907 – December 24, 1980) was an American composer. Biography Wilder was born in Rochester, New York, United States, to a prominent family; the Wilder Building downtown (at the "Four Corners") bears the family's name and his maternal grandfather, and namesake, was prominent banker Alexander Lafayette Chew. As a young boy, he traveled to New York City with his mother and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel. It would later be his home for the last 40 or so years of his life. He attended several prep schools, unhappily, as a teenager. Around this time, he hired a lawyer and essentially "divorced" himself from his family, gaining for himself some portion of the family fortune. He was largely self-taught as a composer; he studied privately with the composers Herman Inch and Edward Royce, who taught at the Eastman School of Music in the 1920s, but never registered for classes and never received his degree. While there, he edited a humor m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Kirby (musician)
John Kirby (December 31, 1908 – June 14, 1952), was an American jazz double-bassist, who also played trombone and tuba. In addition to sideman work (prominently with Benny Goodman), Kirby is remembered for leading a successful chamber jazz sextet in the late 1930s and early 1940s, which scored several hit songs including "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond, Loch Lomond" and the debut recording of "Undecided", a jazz standard. He is perhaps the first musician in the chamber jazz genre. Background Kirby was born John Kirk in Winchester, Virginia, United States, on 31 December 1908. His mother, Dolly Kirk (died October 1925) gave him up for adoption in 1908 and he was raised by Reverend Washington Johnson and his wife, Nancy, at 442 North Kent Street in Winchester. (Kirby is listed as a household member in the 1920 United States Federal Census, but not in the 1910 census.) Kirby was a student at the Winchester Colored School, renamed Douglass School in 1916. He took piano lessons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reginald Foresythe
Reginald Foresythe (28 May 1907 – 28 December 1958) was a British jazz pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. Early life Foresythe was born and died in London. His father was a West African barrister of Sierra Leone Creole descent and his mother was an Englishwoman of German descent. The Foresythe family descended from Charles Foresythe, a Sierra Leonean colonial official who settled in Lagos, Nigeria, in the 1860s. Charles Foresythe was born in the early nineteenth century to a European army captain and a mother from Tasso Island, Sierra Leone. Career He played piano from age eight. He worked in the second half of the 1920s as a pianist and accordionist in dance bands in Paris, Australia, Hawaii, and California. He also wrote music for films by D. W. Griffith and played in Paul Howard's Quality Serenaders. In 1930, Foresythe moved to Chicago, Illinois, United States. In America he wrote arrangements for Earl Hines and music for Paul Whiteman. Hines made one of his so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow; September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994) was an American composer, band leader, pianist, record producer, and inventor of electronic instruments. Though Scott never scored cartoon soundtracks, his music is familiar to millions because Carl Stalling adapted it in over 120 Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and other Warner Bros. ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' cartoons. His compositions may also be heard in ''The Ren and Stimpy Show'' (which uses Scott's recordings in twelve episodes), ''The Simpsons'', ''Duckman'', ''Animaniacs'', ''The Oblongs'', ''Batfink'', and '' Bluey''. The only time he composed to accompany animation was three 20-second commercial jingles for County Fair Bread in 1962. Early life and career Scott was born in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrants, Joseph and Sarah Warnow. His older brother, Mark Warnow, was a conductor, violinist, and musical director for the CBS radio program ''Your Hit Parade'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irwin Chusid
Irwin Chusid (born April 22, 1951 in Newark, New Jersey) is a journalist, music historian, radio personality, record producer, and self-described "landmark preservationist". His stated mission has been to "find things on the scrapheap of history that I know don't belong there and salvage them." Those "things" have included such previously overlooked but now-celebrated icons as composer/bandleader/electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, Space Age Pop avatar Esquivel, illustrator/fine artist Jim Flora, various outsider musicians (including William "Shooby" Taylor, a.k.a. "The Human Horn"), and The Langley Schools Music Project. Chusid calls himself "a connoisseur of marginalia," while admitting he's "a terrible barometer of popular taste." Chusid oversees the catalog of the late Afrofuturist artist/composer/bandleader Sun Ra and administers Ra's music rights on behalf of the artist's heirs. His forthcoming book, ''Sun Ra: Art on Saturn — The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra's Saturn Labe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McKinney's Cotton Pickers
McKinney's Cotton Pickers were an American jazz band, founded in Detroit, Michigan, United States in 1926, and led by William McKinney, who expanded his Synco Septet to ten players. Cuba Austin took over for McKinney on drums, with the latter becoming the band's manager. Between 1927 and 1931, they were one of the most popular African American bands. Many of their records for Victor were bestsellers. In 1927, Fletcher Henderson's arranger and saxophone player Don Redman was invited to become the Cotton Pickers' musical director and he assembled a band. John Nesbitt helped Redman with arrangements and rehearsals. The band in 1928 included Cuba Austin (drums and vocals), Langston Curl (trumpet), Ralph Escudero (tuba), Claude Jones, Redman (clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, vocals), Todd Rhodes (piano, celeste), Prince Robinson (clarinet, tenor saxophone), Milton Senior (trombone), George Thomas (clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, vocals) and Dave Wilborn (banjo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fess Williams
Fess Williams ''(né'' Stanley R. Williams; April 10, 1894 – December 17, 1975) was an American jazz musician.''Biography Index, A Cumulative Index to Biographical Material in Books and Magazines, Volume 10: September 1973 — August 1976'', New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1977 Early life As a child Williams played several instruments. He received his formal education from N. Clark-Smith at Tuskegee University. By his late teens he had settled on clarinet, and soon afterwards formed the first of many bands he was to lead over the coming years. Career From 1919 to 1923, he led his own band before moving to Chicago, Illinois, and joining Ollie Powers. In 1923, he formed a new group in order to back the variety act Dave and Tressie and traveled to New York with them in 1924. There he led a trio in Albany, New York, as well as a band that played at the Rosemont Ballroom. In 1926, Williams formed the Royal Flush Orchestra. The popular hot jazz outfit held residency at Harlem's Sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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