Stephen Magnusson
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Stephen Magnusson
Stephen John Magnusson (born 13 February 1969) is an Australian guitarist. He is known for his work as an improviser and has worked with the Australian Art Orchestra, and Elixir and Katie Noonan, Charlie Haden, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ricki Lee Jones, Sinéad O'Connor, John Cale, Gurrumul Yunupingu, Paul Grabowsky, Vince Jones, Christine Sullivan, Megan Washington, Paul Kelly, Mike Nock, Barney McAll, Enrico Rava and Arthur Blythe among others. In 2013, Magnusson was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Music Outstanding Musician Award. Career 1969-1990: Early years Magnusson began playing musical instruments at age three when he was given a ukulele. At age six he had his first guitar and began performing at the age of ten on an electric guitar that he borrowed from a school teacher. He started to formally study improvisation under Gordon Pendelton at Box Hill TAFE in 1985. In 1986, Magnusson began his formal training at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts. Here, he w ...
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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 ...
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Paul Kelly (Australian Musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly (born 13 January 1955) is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter and guitarist. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor Ratbaggy and Stardust Five. Kelly's music style has ranged from Bluegrass music, bluegrass to studio-oriented dub music, dub reggae, but his core output straddles folk music, folk, rock and country music, country. His lyrics capture the vastness of the culture and landscape of Australia by chronicling life about him for over 30 years. David Fricke from ''Rolling Stone Australia, Rolling Stone'' calls Kelly "one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise". Kelly has said, "Song writing is mysterious to me. I still feel like a total beginner. I don't feel like I have got it nailed yet." After growing up in Adelaide, Kelly travelled around Australia before set ...
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George Benson
George Washington Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing soul jazz with Jack McDuff and others. He then launched a successful solo career, alternating between jazz, pop, R&B singing, and scat singing. His album ''Breezin''' was certified triple-platinum, hitting no. 1 on the ''Billboard'' album chart in 1976. His concerts were well attended through the 1980s, and he still has a large following. Benson has won ten Grammy Awards and has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Biography Early career Benson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of seven, he first played the ukulele in a corner drug store, for which he was paid a few dollars. At the age of eight, he played guitar in an unlicensed nightclub on Friday and Saturday ...
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The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of all time and were integral to the development of counterculture of the 1960s, 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat music, beat and 1950s rock and roll, rock 'n' roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways; the band also explored music styles ranging from folk music, folk and Music of India, Indian music to Psychedelic music, psychedelia and hard rock. As Recording practices of the Beatles, pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era's Baby boomers, youth and sociocultural movements. Led by primary songwriter ...
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Bob Sedergreen
Bob Sedergreen (born 1943) is an Australian jazz pianist. Sedergreen has worked with John Sangster, Don Burrows, and Brian Brown and supported Nat Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie, and Milt Jackson. Biography Sedergreen was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1943 to Seamus "Jim" Sedergreen, a British Warrant Officer First Class, and Leah Erlichman, a milliner. In 1947, the British government sent the P&O steam ship ''Otranto'' to evacuate all British families, as the British Mandate was coming to an end and Palestine would become Israel. Bob, together with his mother, and his sisters Joyce and Millie, settled in London and his father followed in 1948. Bob moved to Australia in November 1951, where he lived in Melbourne and briefly attended Armadale State School before transferring to Haileybury College, a Presbyterian school for boys. Pianist Steve Sedergreen and saxophonist Mal Sedergreen are Bob’s sons. Bob played with the Fred Bradshaw Quartet (1962–70), Ted Vining Trio (1971 ...
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Tony Gould
Tony Gould is an Australian jazz musician, pianist, composer and educator. Gould's many recordings and performances reveal his harmonic view of music and his love of music from both African-American and European jazz traditions, as well as the classical works of Bach, Mahler, Stravinsky and Messiaen. Discography Albums Bibliography *''Essays on Music and Musicians in Australia'' *''The Art of Musical Improvisation: Thoughts and Ideas'' Awards and nominations ARIA Music Awards The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987. ! , - , 2014 , ''The Hunters & Pointers'' (with Graeme Lyall John Hoffman & Ben Robertson) , Best Jazz Album , , ARIA Award previous winners. , - Australian Classical Music Awards ! , - , 2005 , Tony Gould , Classical Music Award for "Outstanding Contribution to Australian Music in Education" , , , - , 2009 , "The ...
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University Of Melbourne Faculty Of VCA And MCM
The Faculty of Fine Arts and Music (formerly known as the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne Conservatorium of Music) is a faculty of the University of Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia. It is located near the Melbourne City Centre, with its main campus at Southbank on St Kilda Road, housing the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (The Conservatorium). Part of Music also operates from the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne. History The Faculty was created in 2009 from the amalgamation of the university's Faculty of Music (founded as the University Conservatorium in 1895) and Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts. Founded in 1972, the VCA integrated into the University of Melbourne in 2007 as a separate faculty. Due to dissatisfaction – particularly from students of the old VCA – with the structural changes imposed by the university, in November 2009 former Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski w ...
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Box Hill Institute
Box Hill Institute is a provider of vocational and higher education located in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in Victoria. The Box Hill Institute has three locations in Box Hill (Elgar, Nelson & Whitehorse), two in Lilydale (John St and Jarlo Dve), and one in Melbourne CBD, where it is co-located with the Centre for Adult Education. History Box Hill Institute is the descendant of two Box Hill area technical schools. "Box Hill Technical School for Girls and Women" was opened on the 4th of September 1924, having welcomed 65 Junior pupils some six months before. The girls primary studied domestic subjects like housewifery, cookery, millinery and dressmaking. Some girls also took courses like accounting and secretarial work. On the 2nd of February 1943 the "Box Hill Technical School for Boys" was established because many boys in the eastern suburbs were being turned away from Swinburne Technical School. They studied subjects like sheetmetal work, technical drawing and car ...
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Improvisation
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation. Improvisation also exists outside the arts. Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand. Improvised weapons are often used by guerrillas, insurgents and criminals. Engineering Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand. Examples of such improvisation was the re-engineering of carbon dioxide scrubbers with the materials on hand during the Apollo 13 space mission, or the use of a knife in place of a screwdriver to turn a screw. Engineering improvisations ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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Ukulele
The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and construction. Ukuleles commonly come in four sizes: soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone. History Developed in the 1880s, the ukulele is based on several small, guitar-like instruments of Portuguese origin, the ''machete'', '' cavaquinho'', ''timple'', and ''rajão'', introduced to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants from Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde. Three immigrants in particular, Madeiran cabinet makers Manuel Nunes, José do Espírito Santo, and Augusto Dias, are generally credited as the first ukulele makers. Two weeks after they disembarked from the SS ''Ravenscrag'' in late August 1879, the ''Hawaiian Gazette'' reported that "Madeira Islanders recently arrived here, have been delighting the ...
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Arthur Blythe
Arthur Murray Blythe (May 7, 1940 – March 27, 2017) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. He was described by critic Chris Kelsey as displaying "one of the most easily recognizable alto sax sounds in jazz, big and round, with a fast, wide vibrato and an aggressive, precise manner of phrasing" and furthermore as straddling the avant garde and traditionalist jazz, often with bands featuring unusual instrumentation. Biography Born in Los Angeles, Blythe lived in San Diego, returning to Los Angeles when he was 19 years old. He took up the alto saxophone at the age of nine, playing R&B until his mid-teens when he discovered jazz. In the mid-1960s, Blythe was part of the Underground Musicians and Artists Association (UGMAA), founded by Horace Tapscott, on whose 1969 ''The Giant Is Awakened'' he made his recording debut. After moving to New York in the mid-1970s, Blythe worked as a security guard before being offered a place as sideman for Chico Hamilton (1975–77) ...
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