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Summertime (George Gershwin Song)
"Summertime" is an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera ''Porgy and Bess''. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel '' Porgy'' on which the opera was based, and Ira Gershwin. The song soon became a popular and much-recorded jazz standard, described as "without doubt ... one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote ... Gershwin's highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of blacks in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century". Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim characterized Heyward's lyrics for "Summertime" and "My Man's Gone Now" as "the best lyrics in the musical theater". ''Porgy and Bess'' Gershwin began composing the song in December 1933, attempting to create his own spiritual in the style of the African American folk music of the period. Gershwin had completed setting DuBose Heyward's poem to music by February 1934, and spent the next 20 months completing a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections. Written words created specifically for music, or for which music is specifically created, are called lyrics. If a pre-existing poem is set to composed music in classical music it is an art song. Songs that are sung on repeated pitches without distinct contours and patterns that rise and fall are called chants. Songs composed in a simple style that are learned informally "by ear" are often referred to as folk songs. Songs that are composed for professional singers who sell their recordings or live shows to the mass market are called popular songs. These songs, which have broad appeal, are often composed by professional songwriters, composers, and lyricists. Art songs are composed by trained classical compose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abbie Mitchell
__NOTOC__ Abriea "Abbie" Mitchell Cook (25 September 1884 – 16 March 1960), also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer. She performed the role of Clara in the premiere production of George Gershwin's ''Porgy and Bess'' in 1935, and was also the first to record " Summertime" from that musical. Biography Mitchell was the mixed-race daughter of an African-American mother and a Jewish-German father from New York City's Lower East Side.D. C. Hine, ed., ''Black Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia''. Carlson Publishing Inc., 1993. . She was reared by a maternal aunt, Alice Payne, in Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended a Catholic convent school.Abbie Mitchell , in ''Notable Black American Women'', Book 1. Gale Research, 1992. Mitchell never completed her formal schooling in Baltimore. Following the dea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out conce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. The brainchild of Sir Hugh Beaver, the book was co-founded by twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter in Fleet Street, London, in August 1955. The first edition topped the best-seller list in the United Kingdom by Christmas 1955. The following year the book was launched internationally, and as of the 2022 edition, it is now in its 67th year of publication, published in 100 countries and 23 languages, and maintains over 53,000 records in its database. The international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in ''Guinness World Records'' becoming the primary international authority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joe Nocera
Joseph Nocera (born May 6, 1952) is an American business journalist, and author. He has written for The New York Times since April 2005, writing for the Op-Ed page from 2011 to 2015. He was also an opinion columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Early life and education Nocera was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He earned a B.S. in journalism from Boston University in 1974. Career In the late 1970s he was an editor at ''The Washington Monthly''. In the 1980s, he was an editor at ''Newsweek''; an executive editor of ''New England Monthly''; and a senior editor at ''Texas Monthly''. Nocera was the "Profit Motive" columnist at '' Esquire'' from 1988 to 1990 and wrote the same column for '' GQ'' from 1990 to 1995. He worked at ''Fortune'' from 1995 to 2005, in a variety of positions, finally as editorial director. He became a business columnist for ''The New York Times'' in April 2005. In March 2011, Nocera became a regular opinion columnist for ''The Timess Op-Ed page, writing on Tues ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Jazz Discography
''The Jazz Discography'' is a print, CD-ROM, and online discography and sessionography of all categories of recorded jazz — and directly relevant precursors of recorded jazz from 1896. The publisher, Lord Music Reference Inc., a British Columbia company, is headed by Tom Lord and is based in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. The initial 26 of 35 print volumes, which comprise the discography, were issued from 1992 to 2001 in alphabetic order. In 2002, ''The Jazz Discography'' became the first comprehensive jazz discography on CD-ROM. Scope ''The Jazz Discography'' covers all categories of jazz and other creative improvised music, including traditional, swing, bebop, modern, avant-garde, fusion, third stream, and others. As of January 2008, the database contained 34,861 leaders, 181,392 recording sessions, 1,030,109 musician entries, and 1,077,503 tune entries. Early listings There is an ongoing debate over when and where the word "jazz" became a common, commercial ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", also "Motherless Child", is a traditional Spiritual. It dates back to the era of slavery in the United States. An early performance of the song was in the 1870s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. "Blue Gene" Tyranny, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" article ''Allmusic'' Commonly heard during the Civil rights movement in the United States, it has many variations and has been recorded widely. Description The song is an expression of pain and despair as the singer compares their hopelessness to that of a child who has been torn from their parents. Under one interpretation, the repetition of the word "sometimes" offers a measure of hope, as it suggests that at least "sometimes" the singer ''does not'' feel like a motherless child."Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals" [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Minor
A minor is a minor scale based on A, with the pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has no flats and no sharps. Its relative major is C major and its parallel major is A major. The A natural minor scale is: : Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The A harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are: : : Well-known compositions in A minor *Johann Sebastian Bach ** Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041 *Ludwig van Beethoven ** Violin Sonata No. 4, Op. 23 ** String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132 ** Bagatelle in A minor, "Für Elise" * Johannes Brahms **Double Concerto, Op. 102 * Frédéric Chopin ** Étude Op. 10, No. 2 ** Étude Op. 25, No. 4 ** Étude Op. 25, No. 11, ''Winter Wind'' ** Mazurka Op. 17, No. 4 ** Mazurka Op. 59, No. 1 ** ''Boléro'', Op. 19 ** Prelude No. 2 in A minor, Op. 28/2 ** Waltz in A minor, Op. 34, B. 150 * Franz Liszt ** Transcendental Étude No. 2, ''Fusà ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentatonic Scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient civilizations and are still used in various musical styles to this day. There are two types of pentatonic scales: those with semitones (hemitonic) and those without (anhemitonic). Types Hemitonic and anhemitonic Musicology commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either ''hemitonic'' or ''anhemitonic''. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic scales do not contain semitones. (For example, in Japanese music the anhemitonic ''yo'' scale is contrasted with the hemitonic ''in'' scale.) Hemitonic pentatonic scales are also called "ditonic scales", because the largest interval in them is the ditone (e.g., in the scale C–E–F–G–B–C, the interval found between C–E and G–B). (This should not be confu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Jablonski
Edward Jablonski (March 1, 1922 – February 10, 2004) was the author of several biographies on American cultural personalities, such as George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Alan Jay Lerner, and Irving Berlin, as well as books on aviation, aviation history. Early life Jablonski was born in Bay City, Michigan to a family of Polish-American journalists and writers. His father had been a writer for Sztandar Polski and another relative, Paul F. Jablonski, wrote for the Bay City Times. Early on he fell in love with the music of George and Ira Gershwin. A fan letter he wrote to Ira while in school quickly turned into regular correspondence and eventually a lasting friendship with the lyricist. While Jablonski was interested in music, his true fascination was with aviation. Supposedly, he spent much of his time watching the planes at the James Clements Airport near the South End of Bay City. Later on in his life, he became interested in aerial warfare. Telling an interviewer in 1986, "Avia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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