Music
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Days with Kaikhosru Sorabji
During the second week of July, leading up to the 14th of the month, we celebrated the work of Ingmar Bergman, watching six of his films, and discussing them daily on Clubhouse. Before embarking again in the world of cinema, though from a very different space and time to celebrate the offerings of Pedro Almodovar…
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Geddy Lee *VII 29 1953 / The Life You Give
Few hard rock bassists have been as influential as Rush’s Geddy Lee. Born Gary Weinrib on July 29, 1953, in Toronto, his parents migrated from Europe to Canada and got his nickname “Geddy” from when his mother would try to pronounce “Gary” in her accent. Taking up bass as a teenager and influenced by the…
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Enrique Granados *VII 27 1867 / La Vida Que Das
See the biography in English below Enrique o Enric Granados y Campiña nacido en Lérida, 1867, en el canal de la Mancha, fue pianista y compositor español, hijo de padre cubano y de madre gallega. Su disposición para la música se reveló ya en su niñez; estudió los primeros elementos de solfeo y teoría, en…
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“Parsifal” (Wagner) premiered today in 1882
The Poem Parzival, an epic poem, is one of the masterpieces of the Middle Ages, written between 1200 and 1210 in Middle High German by Wolfram von Eschenbach. This 16-book, 25,000-line poem is in part a religious allegory describing Parzival’s painful journey from utter ignorance and naïveté to spiritual awareness. The poem introduced the theme…
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Brian May *VII 19 1947 / The Life You Give
Few rock guitarists possess a playing style as instantly recognizable as Queen’s Brian May. With his orchestrated guitar armies (multi-tracked guitar lines overdubbed on top of each other) and instantly memorable, well-constructed melodic leads, May is in a class all by himself. Born in Hampton, Middlesex, in July 1947, May showed an interest in music…
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Evelyn Glennie *VII 19 1965 / The Life You Give
Evelyn Glennie is the world’s foremost, and first full-time, solo percussionist. She has been pivotal to the expansion of percussion as solo instruments, personally having commissioned over 200 new works. The recipient of enormous media attention due to her deafness, Glennie is likewise noteworthy for the variety of her repertoire and recording projects. Glennie was…
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Carlos Santana *VII 18 1947 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
– Lea la biografía en español abajo – Carlos Santana, born Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán, July 20, 1947, in Autlán de Navarro, Mexico), is the musician whose popular music combined rock, jazz, blues, and Afro-Cuban rhythms with a Latin sound. Santana began playing the violin at age five; by age eight, however, he had switched…
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The Life a you Give: Linda Ronstadt *VII 15 1946
Linda Ronstadt, born Linda Marie Ronstadt, July 15, 1946, in Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A., is the singer with a pure, expressive soprano voice and eclectic artistic tastes, whose performances called attention to a number of new songwriters and helped establish country rock music. After winning attention with a folk-oriented trio, the Stone Poneys, in California in…
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Vinko Globokar *VII 7 1934 / The Life You Give
The music of this Yugoslavian composer and trombonist is unique and very difficult to classify. Globokar made his debut as a jazz tombone soloist in Yugoslavia, where he lived from 1947 to 1955. While living in Ljubljana, he studied at the music school and conservatory and graduated in 1954. Upon returning to France, he continued…
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The Life You Give: Gustav Mahler *VII 7 1860
Gustav Mahler, born July 7, 1860, in Kaliště, Bohemia, Austrian Empire, is the composer and conductor, noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely ignored for 50 years after his death, Mahler was later regarded as an important forerunner of…
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Symphony Number Nine — Mahler (VI 26 1912 premiere)
Listening to the 9th Symphony of Mahler With the Ninth Mahler returns to a purely orchestral Symphony, after having succeeded in integrating chorus and orchestra in his Eighth, and the genres of the song cycle and Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler turns his attention to the purely abstract orchestral music of his…
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Harry Partch *VI 24 1901 / The Life You Give
Harry Partch, born June 24, 1901, in Oakland, Calif., U.S.A., is the visionary and eclectic composer and instrument builder, largely self-taught, whose compositions are remarkable for the complexity of their scores (each instrument has its own characteristic notation, often involving 43 tones to each octave) and their employment of unique instruments of his invention. Partch’s…
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Barbara *VI 9 1930 — The Life You Give
Although Barbara certainly didn’t like the thought of it, she actually was part of the legendary club formed by her friend Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, and Edith Piaf. A truly generous and humble woman, Barbara insisted on living up to her audience’s expectations and was constantly questioning her success. As an artist, she…
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The Life You Give: Aleksandr Pushkin *1799
Aleksandr Pushkin, born Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, May 26 [June 6, New Style], 1799, Moscow, Russia, is the poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer, often considered his country’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin’s father came of an old boyar family; his mother was a granddaughter of Abram Hannibal, who, according to…
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Thomas Mann *VI 6 1875 / The Life You Give
Thomas Mann, (born June 6, 1875, Lübeck, Germany—died August 12, 1955, near Zürich, Switzerland), German novelist and essayist whose early novels—Buddenbrooks (1900), Der Tod in Venedig (1912; Death in Venice), and Der Zauberberg (1924; The Magic Mountain)—earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Early literary endeavoursMann’s father died in 1891, and Mann moved…
Sila Blume 