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Soldier String Quartet
The Soldier String Quartet was a string quartet, founded by composer and violinist Dave Soldier, that specialized in performing a fusion of classical and popular music. The quartet proved a training ground for many subsequent experimental classical groups and performers, including violinists Regina Carter and Todd Reynolds, and performed at venues ranging from the classic punk rock club CBGBs to Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center. From 1984 to 2004, in addition to a large repertoire of original compositions and transcriptions of blues, jazz and hip-hop by Soldier, the group premiered over 100 compositions including major works by Teo Macero, Leroy Jenkins, Phill Niblock, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Jonas Hellborg, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Curran, and Ivan Wyschnegradsky. They also performed and recorded with many rock, pop, and jazz acts including Guided by Voices, Van Dyke Parks, Jesse Harris, Butch Morris, Tony Williams, Lambchop, Bob Neuwirth, Bill Laswell, Ric Ocasek, Amina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
String Quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. The string quartet was developed into its present form by composers such as Franz Xaver Richter, and Joseph Haydn, whose works in the 1750s established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. Since Haydn the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form; writing for four instruments with broadly similar characteristics both constrains and tests a composer. String quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert each wrote a number of them. Many Romantic and early-twentieth-century composers composed string quartets, including Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Jan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van Dyke Parks
Van Dyke Parks (born January 3, 1943) is an American musician, songwriter, arranger, and record producer who has composed various film and television soundtracks. He is best known for his 1967 album ''Song Cycle (album), Song Cycle'' and for his collaborations with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys (particularly the album ''Smile (The Beach Boys album), Smile''). In addition to producing or arranging albums by Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Phil Ochs, Little Feat, Happy End (band), Happy End, Ry Cooder and Joanna Newsom, Parks has worked with performers such as Syd Straw, Ringo Starr, U2, Grizzly Bear (band), Grizzly Bear, Inara George, Kimbra, Suzy Williams, and Silverchair. Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Parks spent his childhood studying clarinet, piano, and singing at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. He started his professional career as a child actor. During the 1950s, he worked steadily in movies and television, and in the early 1960s, he majored in mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sussan Deyhim
Sussan Deyhim (born December 14, 1958) is an Iranian American composer, vocalist, performance artist and activist. She is internationally known for her invention of a unique sonic/vocal language. LA Times quotes her as "One of Iran's most potent voices in exile". Early life Sussan Deyhim was born into a liberal Iranian family on December 14, 1958, in Tehran, Iran. She was the youngest of eleven children and her house was filled with every conceivable style of music, old and new. Growing up, Deyhim spent her summers at a special dance and arts camp at the Caspian Sea and at the Shirazz Festival. At the age of 13, she joined the Iranian National Ballet Company and was offered a scholarship to attend School of Performing Arts in Brussels. Deyhim won coveted admission into the Bejart Ballet in 1976 and moved to New York (1980) to pursue music. Her music remains true to the spirit of her ancient heritage while pointing to the future with a very personal and poetic dramatic sensibility ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Myra Melford
Myra Melford (born January 5, 1957) is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for." Early life and education Melford was born in Evanston, Illinois and was raised in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. At 3, she started playing the piano on her own, climbing onto the piano bench and improvising. She began taking lessons when she was in kindergarten. She developed a strong relationship with her teacher, Erwin Helfer, a classically trained boogie-woogie player. Helfer introduced her to classical composers such as Bach before moving on to contemporary composers, such as Bartók, and later taught her to play the blues. Melford attended blues festivals, and because of her relationship with Helfer, she was often invited backstage, where s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joanne Brackeen
Joanne Brackeen (born Joanne Grogan; July 26, 1938) is an American jazz pianist and music educator. Music career Brackeen was born in Ventura, California, United States, and attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. She was a fan of pop pianist Frankie Carle before she became enamored with the music of Charlie Parker. In the 1950s she performed with Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, and Charles Brackeen. She and Brackeen married and moved to New York City in 1965. She performed with Chick Corea, Freddie McCoy, and Ornette Coleman. She played with Joe Henderson (1972–75) and Stan Getz (1975–77) before leading her own trio and quartet. She established herself as a cutting-edge pianist and composer through her appearances around the world, and her solo performances also established her reputation as an innovative and dynamic pianist. Her trios featured such noted players as Clint Houston, Eddie Gómez, John Patitucci, Jack DeJohnette, Cecil McBee and Billy Hart. She served o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lee Ranaldo
Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth (guitar and vocals). In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked Ranaldo at number 33 on its "Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list. In May 2012, '' Spin'' published a staff-selected top 100 guitarist list, ranking Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore together at number 1. Biography Ranaldo was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, studied art and graduated from Binghamton University. He has three sons, Cody, Sage and Frey, and is married twice, first with Amanda Linn in 1981 but later divorced, and now with experimental artist Leah Singer. Ranaldo started his career in New York in several bands, including The Flucts, and by playing guitar in ''Guitar Trio'' with Rhys Chatham before joining the electric guitar orchestra of Glenn Branca. In Branca's orchestra he played mainly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plastic People Of The Universe
The Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) is a Czech rock band from Prague. They are considered the foremost representatives of Prague's underground culture (1968–1989), which defied the Czechoslovakia's Communist regime. Members of the band often suffered serious repercussions, including arrests and prosecution, because of their non-conformist ideals. The group continues to perform, despite the death in 2001 of its founder, main composer, and bassist, Milan Hlavsa. To date (2022), they have released nine studio albums and over a dozen live albums. In 2016, the group split in two because of internal differences. The original group is composed of bandleader Josef Janíček, Vratislav Brabenec, Jaroslav Kvasnička, Johnny Judl Jr, and David Babka. The second splinter group, which performs under the name The Plastic People of the Universe/New Generation, is composed of Jiří Kabeš, Josef Karafiát, Jakub Koláček, Wenca Březina, and Vojtěch Starý. History Formation and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amina Claudine Myers
Amina Claudine Myers (born March 21, 1942) is an American jazz pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, and arranger. Biography Born in Blackwell, Arkansas, "Myers was brought up largely by her great-aunt, a schoolteacher, and her great-uncle, a carpenter by trade who played the clarinet, piano, and flute". She "started taking piano lessons around the age of four, and when she was seven, her family moved to Roosevelt, a black community outside Dallas. Myers took piano and violin lessons, but eventually, partly for financial reasons, settled on the piano, taking weekly lessons of fifteen minutes each." She began to learn some European classical music at high school, but this was interrupted when she and the family moved back to Blackwell. Myers majored in music education at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. In her second year, she was invited to play at The Safari Room in Memphis, Tennessee. This engagement, however, was very brief, as her musical repertoire was too ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ric Ocasek
Richard Theodore Otcasek (March 23, 1944 – September 15, 2019), known as Ric Ocasek, was an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He was the primary co-lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, songwriter, and frontman for the rock band the Cars. In addition to his work with the Cars, Ocasek recorded seven solo albums, and his song " Emotion in Motion" was a top 20 hit in the United States in 1986. Ocasek also worked as a record producer for artists such as Motion City Soundtrack, Suicide, Bad Brains, Weezer, Nada Surf, Guided by Voices, and No Doubt. In 2018, Ocasek was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Cars. Early life Ocasek was born on March 23, 1944,Following Ocasek's death, there was some confusion about his date of birth. He had claimed to be five years younger than he actually was. and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. When he was 16 years old, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a systems analyst with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Laswell
William Otis Laswell (born February 12, 1955) is an American bass guitarist, record producer, and record label owner. He has been involved in thousands of recordings with many collaborators from all over the world. His music draws from funk, world music, jazz, dub, and ambient styles. According to music critic Chris Brazier, "Laswell's pet concept is 'collision music' which involves bringing together musicians from wildly divergent but complementary spheres and seeing what comes out." The credo of one record label run by Laswell which typifies much of his work is "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted". Although his bands may be credited under the same name and often feature the same roster of musicians, the styles and themes explored on different albums can vary dramatically. Material began as a noisy dance music band, but later albums concentrated on hip hop, jazz, or spoken word readings by William S. Burroughs. Most versions of the band Praxis have included guitarist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Neuwirth
Robert John Neuwirth (June 20, 1939May 18, 2022) was an American folk singer, songwriter, record producer, and visual artist. He was noted for being the road manager and associate of Bob Dylan, as well as the co-writer of Janis Joplin's hit song "Mercedes Benz". Early life Neuwirth was born in Akron, Ohio, on June 20, 1939. His father, Robert, was employed as an engineer; his mother, Clara Irene (Fischer), worked as a design engineer. Neuwirth first started painting when he was seven years old. He initially studied at Ohio University, before moving to Boston in 1959 when he was awarded an arts scholarship to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. After dropping out of college, he briefly relocated to Paris and took up the banjo, guitar, and harmonica during this time. This eventually paved the way to the folk scene of the early 1960s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also went busking with Ramblin' Jack Elliott during his sojourn in the French capital. Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lambchop (band)
Lambchop, originally Posterchild, is an American band from Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee. AllMusic referred to them as "arguably the most consistently brilliant and unique American group to emerge during the 1990s". Description and history Never a band with a "core" lineup, Lambchop has consisted of a large and fluid collective of musicians focused around its creative centre, frontman Kurt Wagner (musician), Kurt Wagner. Lambchop is loosely associated with the alternative country genre. Initially indebted to traditional country music, country, the music has subsequently moved through a range of influences including post-rock, soul music, soul and lounge music. Whatever the style, the characteristic mood of Lambchop's music is evoked by Wagner's distinctive songwriting: lyrically subtle and ambiguous, the vocals melodic but understated. ''American Songwriter'' described Wagner's lyrics as "witty and deeply insightful." They were the backing band for Vic Chesnutt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
