Relation of all the winners of the prize chosen by the Readers
1952 **** Louis Armstrong
1953 **** Glenn Miller
1954 **** Stan Kenton
1955 **** Charlie Parker
1956 **** Duke Ellington
1957 **** Benny Goodman
1958 **** Count Basie
1959 **** Lester Young
1960 **** Dizzy Gillespie
1961 **** Billie Holiday
1962 **** Miles Davis
1963 **** Thelonious Monk
1964 **** Eric Dolphy
1965 **** John Coltrane
1966 **** Bud Powell
1967 **** Billy Strayhorn
1968 **** Wes Montgomery
1969 **** Ornette Coleman
1970 **** Jimi Hendrix
1971 **** Charles Mingus
1972 **** Gene Krupa
1973 **** Sonny Rollins
1974 **** Buddy Rich
1975 **** Cannonball Adderley
1976 **** Woody Herman
1977 **** Paul Desmond
1978 **** Joe Venuti
1979 **** Ella Fitzgerald
1980 **** Dexter Gordon
1981 **** Art Blakey
1982 **** Art Pepper
1983 **** Stéphane Grappelli
1984 **** Oscar Peterson
1985 **** Sarah Vaughan
1986 **** Stan Getz
1987 **** Lionel Hampton
1988 **** Jaco Pastorius
1989 **** Woody Shaw
1990 **** Red Rodney
1991 **** Lee Morgan
1992 **** Maynard Ferguson
1993 **** Gerry Mulligan
1994 **** Dave Brubeck
1995 **** J.J. Johnson
1996 **** Horace Silver
1997 **** Nat King Cole
1998 **** Frank Sinatra
1999 **** Milt Jackson
2000 **** Clark Terry
2001 **** Joe Henderson
2002 **** Antonio Carlos Jobim
2003 **** Ray Brown
2004 **** Keith Jarrett
2005 **** Herbie Hancock
2006 **** Jimmy Smith
Relation of all the winners of the prize chosen by the Critics
1961 **** Coleman Hawkins
1962 **** Bix Beiderbecke
1963 **** Jelly Roll Morton
1964 **** Art Tatum
1965 **** Earl Hines
1966 **** Charlie Christian
1967 **** Bessie Smith
1968 **** Sidney Bechet & Fats Waller
1969 **** Pee Wee Russell & Jack Teagarden
1970 **** Johnny Hodges
1971 **** Roy Eldridge & Django Reinhardt
1972 **** Clifford Brown
1973 **** Fletcher Henderson
1974 **** Ben Webster
1975 **** Cecil Taylor
1976 **** King Oliver
1977 **** Benny Carter
1978 **** Rahsaan Roland Kirk
1979 **** Lennie Tristano
1980 **** Max Roach
1981 **** Bill Evans
1982 **** Fats Navarro
1983 **** Albert Ayler
1984 **** Sun Ra
1985 **** Zoot Sims
1986 **** Gil Evans
1987 **** Johnny Dodds, Thad Jones, Teddy Wilson
1988 **** Kenny Clarke
1989 **** Chet Baker
1990 **** Mary Lou Williams
1991 **** John Carter
1992 **** James P. Johnson
1993 **** Edward Blackwell
1994 **** Frank Zappa
1995 **** Julius Hemphill
1996 **** Artie Shaw
1997 **** Tony Williams
1998 **** Elvin Jones
1999 **** Betty Carter
2000 **** Lester Bowie
2001 **** Milt Hinton
2002 **** John Lewis
2003 **** Wayne Shorter
2004 **** Roy Haynes
2005 **** Steve Lacy
2006 **** Jackie McLean
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Down Beat Hall Of Fame (1952 to 2006)
In memoriam for jazz bassist Keter Betts
This movie is part of the collection: Coffee House TV
Director: Tamara Neely and Mark Cohen
Producer: Mark Cohen
Production Company: MPD PRODUCTIONS, INC.
Sponsor: CoffeeHouseTV.org
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sonny's battle with Heroin
In his six-decade career, legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins has claimed many a triumph. But his greatest may have come during a quiet period in Chicago.- By Neil Tesser (Chicago Reader)
A decade ago, on September 9, 1998, the YMCA building at 3763 S. Wabash became an official Chicago landmark. Completed in 1913, it gained an annex in 1945, and today it remains a hub of neighborhood activity. Stately on its quiet and well-kept Bronzeville block, it bears a plaque describing it as “an important center of community life” that offered housing and job training for “new arrivals from the South during the ‘Great Migration’ of African-Americans in the first decades of the 20th century.” In a perfect world, there would be a second plaque below it: “Sonny Rollins slept here.”
Another such plaque might adorn the considerably less well-kept Central Arms Hotel at 520 E. 47th, just east of Vincennes. Still another could mark an empty lot on the 300 block of East Garfield, where the Rhumboogie Club once stood, but it wouldn’t say anything about sleeping: Rollins played at the Rhumboogie with the man who would become Sun Ra, and nobody slept with Sun Ra around.
In 1955 Rollins was already a veteran of studio groups led by Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and he would soon be acclaimed as the outstanding tenor saxophone voice of his generation. But for most of that year he lived in obscurity on Chicago’s south side, working menial jobs and barely gigging.
He still considers Chicago his second home, in part because the casual congeniality of the Bronzeville scene made such a deep impression on him. He also met his wife, Lucille, in Chicago; they got married in ’65 and stayed that way till she died in 2004. And it was here that Rollins joined the band led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach, one of the greatest jazz quintets of the 50s; when they passed through in late ’55, he left with them, returning to his native New York City. But the most important thing Sonny Rollins did in Chicago in 1955 was to reclaim his life from addiction.
Rollins, who’s a few days from his 78th birthday and makes his home in a small town in upstate New York, is often called the greatest living saxophonist in jazz. He opens this year’s Jazz Fest in spectacular style on Thursday, with a free concert in Millennium Park. In the 50s, like many of his peers, he extended and expanded upon the innovations of Charlie Parker, but it was Rollins who most clearly showed how bebop, a product of the 40s,
could respond to a new decade without losing its original soul. Like James Dean, his music spoke of cool rebellion; like Mort Sahl, it did so with wry commentary and wit. In the late 50s, working with such towering figures as Monk, Roach, and Coltrane, Rollins emerged as perhaps the genre’s most innovative structuralist.
But then he withdrew. In 1959, at home in New York City, he took a couple years off to woodshed and rethink his music. He was getting very famous very quickly, he says, and felt he needed to brush upon certain aspects of his craft. Though he returned to great fanfare in 1962, by ’66 he was chafing at the demands of the music business and dropped out again. Eager to study Eastern religion, he traveled to Japan and then India, where he lived in a monastery until reentering the public arena in ’72 with Sonny Rollins’ Next Album.
Since then he’s released nearly two dozen records; in 2006 he started his own label, Doxy, to put out his latest, Sonny, Please. In the past decade he’s won two Grammys, and last year the Royal Swedish Academy of Music awarded him the Polar Music Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of music.
For all that, his greatest triumph may have come when he left the narcotics hospital at the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, and came to Chicago in the first weeks of 1955. “I’m not proud of many things in my life,” he says, “but I’m proud of that—of defeating the dragon.” The dragon, of course, was heroin; like many jazzmen of the 40s and 50s, Rollins had followed Charlie Parker’s example in more than music. Chicago was where Rollins proved—to his friends, to the authorities, but mostly to himself—that he could stay clean.
The feds had been experimenting since the 30s with treating addiction as a medical problem instead of simple villainy; by the 50s, Rollins says, the program in Lexington had become famous among musicians. “It was a big departure from the usual way drug addicts were treated at that time,” he says. “Different from the penitentiary. It was sort of like the Betty Ford clinic, a real hospital-like atmosphere.” He speaks in a sort of northern drawl, and its timbre comes as a shock if you’ve only heard his deep, dry tenor tone—his voice is thick and relatively high-pitched, with a touch of the “Fat Albert” character that Bill Cosby (a big Rollins fan) used to do in his routines. “I think the cure took four and a half months,” he continues. “You could leave before then, but most of the people wanted to get off drugs and stayed the whole time.”
Determined to make the cure stick, Rollins left Lexington and went not to his New York stomping grounds but directly to Chicago, which had appealed to him on previous visits. In fact he’d been here just before entering Lexington. “I was ‘carrying the stick,’” he says. “You know what that means? It means you’re homeless, like a hobo; I was sleeping in parked cars during the winter and all this stuff. I was doing very nefarious things.” But despite all that, Rollins says, “I loved Chicago. It was so earthy. There were a lot of musicians, a lot of music going on—24-hour jam-session clubs, all this kind of thing. I found a home there.”
Chicago, and Bronzeville in particular, had much to offer an African-American artist in the 50s, but what Rollins liked best was that it wasn’t New York. He sums up the reason with a story: “There was a place on 63rd and Cottage Grove, the Circle Inn, where you could just look in
through the window and see the proceedings. One morning when it was just getting light, I walked by and Lester Young”—the influential saxist whose style presaged the cool-jazz school—“was on the bandstand, with a rhythm section, just jamming.
“You see, New York was more ‘sophisticated’; that was the difference. To have a club be open 24 hours, where you could look in and see people playing, that was not sophisticated enough for New York. But I gravitated toward that. It was so homey—it was terrific. And I wasn’t really ready to go back to New York. I had left a trail of destruction behind me there, in my personal relationships, in stealing—addict behavior. So I wanted to be clean from drugs and return victorious. I was clean when I left Lexington, but I had to sort of work my way back into society.”During his time here Rollins stayed first at the Central Arms, then for a spell with a fellow Lexington alum who lived at 69th and Marquette, trumpeter Robert Gay, nicknamed Little Diz—the brother of gospel star Geraldine Gay. Eventually the YMCA on South Wabash became his home and practice space. To pay the rent he took a series of blue-collar jobs. On the north side, most likely Ohio Street, he says, “I worked as a custodian at a typewriter repair shop. They had, you know, ten or fifteen people working there—it was more of a little factory than a repair shop. I don’t think they knew I was a musician. I worked at another place, on Madison west of Halsted, that was a restaurant-supply house. I worked on the trucks, delivering this stuff to Hammond, all over. And at that place I did get close enough to people to tell them I was a musician; in fact, when I came to Chicago to play some years later, a guy who had worked there came by to see me.”
Toward midsummer, Rollins says, “I finally thought, ‘I’m strong enough to go into the Bee Hive.’ And that’s where another vignette of my life was enacted.” No club’s name sparks more memories among Chicago musicians of the era than that of the Bee Hive. Located at Harper and 55th in Hyde Park, it was open from 1948 to ’56 and hosted not just locals—from traditionalists like Miff Mole to modernists like Ira Sullivan—but visiting stars like Charlie Parker, who played his last Chicago engagement there in February ’55.
“When I got there, I saw a lot of old friends, a lot of the guys: ‘Hey Sonny, let’s go get high,’” Rollins says. “I had to be strong enough to withstand that. And that’s where I faced my Goliath. It was hard, man, because some of these guys knew I was not that far from using drugs. It was one of these
biblical-like temptations. I resisted—my palms got sweaty and everything, but I resisted. I went back to my custodial job, but I thought, ‘I gotta get back into music.’ It was very difficult, because to tell the truth, I just escaped that first time; I just was able to resist all my friends offering these free drugs. But I thought, ‘I’m a musician and I have to be strong enough to be around drugs,’ because that was the scene.”
Rollins made his second trip to the Bee Hive in early September, when Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were headlining—a risky move because addiction, according to pianist Horace Silver, was “prevalent” in the band. “Bassist Doug Watkins and I were the only ones that didn’t have a drug habit,” Silver writes in his autobiography.
“I just remember sitting in the car with Horace, and then I went inside to pal around with Art and everybody, and I was able to withstand the temptation again,” says Rollins. “And eventually, I was able to go back and be less tempted each time I went.”
Confident he could stay clean, Rollins started gigging again, accumulating memories of people and places that are still strong today. He remembers players who are faint ghosts to most of us, like tenor men Linwood Brown and Alec Johnson, as well as better-known figures like Harold Ousley and John Gilmore, who would become a superstar soloist in Sun Ra’s Arkestra—Rollins figures he met Gilmore when they both played with Ra at the Rhumboogie, back when the soon-to-be-cosmic keyboardist was still known as Sonny Blount. He talks about pianist Norman Simmons and bassist Victor Sproles, both of whom would soon establish themselves in New York. “Eddie Harris and I used to drive out to the Selmer factory in Indiana,” Rollins says, “and bug those guys about what they should be doing on the horns.”
In November 1955, the group led by veteran bebop drummer Max Roach and spectacular young trumpeter Clifford Brown—a band that rivaled the Jazz Messengers as the leading hard-bop quintet of the day—came to the Bee Hive. But once they arrived in Chicago, the quintet’s tenor player, Harold Land, continued on to Los Angeles to deal with a family emergency. Someone remembered that Rollins was in town; he sat in with the band and clicked immediately. Roach offered to hire him before the band headed back to New York. “I was pretty close to going back anyway,” Rollins says. “I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I could have gone back to New York on my own, but it was great playing with Max and Clifford, and that was a great opportunity. So I thought, ‘Why not?’”
The next time Rollins came to Chicago, in the summer of 1956, it was as a member of the Brown-Roach quintet. Clifford Brown and the band’s pianist, Richie Powell, were driving in from Philadelphia with Powell’s wife, Nancy, but they never made it; Rollins, Roach, and bassist George Morrow had already arrived here when they learned that the car carrying the others had gone over an embankment in the rain, killing all three. Rollins briefly stayed on in Roach’s band, then left to lead his own groups.
In short order, the clubs Rollins had frequented in Chicago—the Rhumboogie, the Bee Hive, McKee’s Disc Jockey Lounge at 63rd and Cottage Grove—all disappeared. Over the years many of the musicians he’d known here moved away: Sun Ra to Philadelphia, Ira Sullivan to Miami, Eddie Harris to Los Angeles. Most of his friends from back then have died. Contemporaries like Joe Segal, proprietor of the venerable Jazz Showcase, remember that Rollins spent time in Chicago in the 50s, but unless they lived in Bronzeville their paths didn’t cross.
Of all the people, places, and things from that era that have gone, though, one inspires no mourning. In 1955, Sonny Rollins buried his addiction to heroin on the south side of Chicago, once and for all.
Front Cover Album Serie - 11
Título: Amy Winehouse, Belfort Eurockéennes Pro Shot TV Broadcast
Artista: Amy Winehouse
Gênero: Soul, Jazz, R&B
Duração: 52mint
Lançamento: 2007
Tamanho: 481,39Mb´s
Resolução: 688 x 440
Frame Rate: 23Fps
Formato: DVDRip
Idioma: Inglês
Tracklist:
01. Intro
02. Addicted
03. Just Friends
04. Tears Dry On Their Own
05. He Can Only Hold Her
06. Back To Black
07. Wake Up Alone
08. Love Is A Losing Game
09. Cupid
10. Hey Little Rich Girl
11. Monkey Man
12. Rehab
13. Valerie
14. You Know I´m No Good
15. Me & Mr Jones
Monday, October 27, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Jazz Publicist and Biographer Peter Levinson dies at 74
Among Levinson’s clients during his near half-century in the business were such artists as Stan Getz, Peggy Lee, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Mel Tormé, Count Basie, Erroll Garner, Johnny Mathis, Art Garfunkel, Charlie Byrd, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Artie Shaw and Rosemary Clooney. He was the author of Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James, September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle and Tommy Dorsey: Livin’ in a Great Big Way. His biography of Fred Astaire, Puttin’ On the Ritz, will be published next year.
Born in Atlantic City, N.J. in 1934, Levinson began writing about jazz while in college. He worked for Columbia Records in the late ’50s and then moved into publicity, working at MCA and John Springer Associates before forming his own Peter Levinson Communications. In addition to musical artists, he also represented a number of TV and film projects and personalities.
Written By: Jeff Tamarkin - Jazz Times Magazine
Birthdays in Jazz - Oct. 25
Reuben Reeves (1905-1975),
Chubby Jackson (1918-2003),
Jimmy Heath (1926),
Terumasa Hino (1942),
Robin Eubanks (1955)
Clint Eastwood - Mise En Swingby
If jazz had a few more champions like Clint Eastwood, the music’s status in America’s cultural firmament would be much less tenuous. Then again, as an iconic actor and Oscar-winning director and producer, Eastwood is sui generis. And so is his broad commitment to using the various resources at his disposal to keep jazz in the foreground of the country’s consciousness. Whether artfully weaving jazz into his films, exploring the life of Charlie Parker in the searing biopic Bird, sitting on the board of the Monterey Jazz Festival or serving as a rainmaking executive producer for jazz documentaries, Eastwood has been as dogged in his support for the music as Dirty Harry Callahan was in pursuit of a bad guy.
In many ways, 1988 was the watershed year for Eastwood’s evolution from devoted fan to singular jazz supporter. It was the year he released Bird, and through his work on the film came into contact with Bruce Ricker, who was struggling to finish his Thelonious Monk documentary, Straight, No Chaser. A day after he learned about the budget shortfall, Eastwood lined up an investor who supplied the film’s finishing funds. It’s turned into a fruitful relationship, with Eastwood serving as executive producer on several of Ricker’s documentaries, including Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends, which is slated to air as part of the PBS American Masters series on Sept. 12, and a work in progress on Dave Brubeck (for more about Ricker’s Rhapsody Films, see sidebar).
“They wouldn’t be financed if Clint wasn’t involved,” says Ricker. “He’s become the cinematic Norman Granz, a cultural impresario. But the reason why these projects happen is that he’s in the ebb and flow, listening to music all the time. He’s out there going to clubs, helping with Monterey, and checking out new sounds.”
Born in San Francisco on May 31, 1930, and raised mostly in the Oakland area, Eastwood witnessed the rise of the West Coast jazz scene firsthand. His knowledge of the music is clearly extensive, flowing from more than 60 years of avid club-going, and his taste is catholic, encompassing a broad range of jazz currents. What’s most evident when he talks about the music is the pleasure he’s gleaned from being part of the scene.
Andrew Gilbert Jazz Times Magazine - Complete Interview (sep 07)
Nikki Yanofsky - Airmail Special
See more on "my YouTube playlist"
wonderful Younger Singer (14 years old)
Nikki Yanofsky (born February 8, 1994), is a young jazz-pop singer from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She has performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, at various events alongside well-known artists such as Oliver Jones, Wyclef Jean, Celine Dion, James Birch and performing the national anthems for the Montreal Canadiens three times and the LA Lakers.
Nikki has recorded Airmail Special for Verve Records, released on June 5, 2007 on the album We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song. The track was recorded at Bill Schnee Studios by Al Schmitt and was produced by Tommy LiPuma. It was mixed at the famous Capital Studios.
strange musical partitions Serie 1
Attention great musicians! Challenge to read and to play with the partitions of this series.
HA...hA...ha...
http://www.figmento.blogspot.com/search/label/Music?max-results=1000
Friday, October 24, 2008
Front Cover Album Serie - 10
Cab Calloway was a gloriously outsized manifestation of all that was frantic in the first full flowering of prohibition-era jazz. Dressed with all the flash of a brand new Cadillac, leading a crack band who could swing and sway with both abandon and precision, and spinning demi-monde tales of wild good times complete with illegal party favors, Calloway was a joyous personification of America's id at a time when such celebrations were hardly the stuff of common currency. Calloway's most popular music was recorded during the early to mid-'30s, but when more polished swing sounds supplanted his earlier style, Cab wasn't afraid to move with the times and led a top-notch big band capable of playing more contemporary music while still delivering the free-wheeling punch Calloway's personality demanded. Are You Hep to the Jive? is a great compilation from Columbia's Legacy series that brings together 22 sides Calloway waxed for Vocalion, Okeh, and Columbia between 1939 and 1947, and shows beyond a doubt Cab's muse was still in fine fettle at this point in his career. Calloway's band was filled with first-class talent, and the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Chu Berry, Milt Hinton, and Jonah Jones can be heard on the selections included here, but as great as the band is (and they swing with potent, joyous force throughout this disc), it's Calloway's 100-proof charisma, his unabridged lexicon of jive speak and his top-shelf scatting skills that bring this collection to life, and the fine madness of "Are You All Reet?," "A Chicken Ain't Nothin' But a Bird," "Tarzan of Harlem," and "Who's Yehoodi?" is as satisfying as a cold drink on a warm day. If this isn't quite the definitive Cab Calloway disc, Are You Hep to the Jive? is an excellent overview of his work in the '40s, and it's solid fun from first note to last.
by Mark Deming
On This Day: The Film ‘The Jazz Singer’ is Released
On Oct. 6, 1927, “The Jazz Singer” debuted; it was the first full-length film to feature the voices of its actors.
You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet
On October 6, 1927, the curtain rose in the Warner Brothers New York Theater, and the members of the audience heard the voice of one of their favorite actors.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin' yet,” Al Jolson called to the orchestra in the movie, “The Jazz Singer.”
During the 88-minute film, Jolson captivated the audience in his role as Jakie Rabinowitz, singing six tunes and speaking for several minutes. It was the first time synchronized sound with singing and dialogue had been used in a full-length film, and it was a hit.
The Early Sound of the film industry
When Thomas Edison conceived of moving pictures, he always planned there to be sound as well. Inventors spent the next few decades searching for a technology to synchronize sound with image. Meanwhile, the era of the silent film was in full swing.
In 1925, Warner Bros. recorded a film with music and sound effects, “Don Juan,” using a system called the Vitaphone. The studio released it in 1926 along with a series of shorts with sound. Studio executive Jack Warner remained unconvinced of the technology’s promise: “They fail to take into account the international language of the silent pictures, and the unconscious share of each onlooker in creating the play, the action, the plot and the imagined dialogue for himself.”
Nevertheless, the studio chose to produce a second film with a recorded soundtrack. Although Jolson was only hired to sing for the film, many considered his improvised speaking parts, which comprised fewer than 300 words, the reason the movie was such a smash. Although it wasn’t the first time sound was synchronized with film, nor was it the first film with speaking throughout—that came a year later—“The Jazz Singer” broke new ground with the way it captured the attention of the movie industry and got producers to focus on sound in films.
The Story of Jazz Singer
Descended from five generations of cantors, Jakie Rabinowitz decides to break with tradition and funnel his singing talent into a career in show business. He loves jazz music and is inexplicably drawn to the stage.
After fighting with his father over this choice, Rabinowitz leaves home, changes his name to Jack Robin and quickly becomes very successful. However, he misses his family, who has disowned him. When his father is on his deathbed, he offers to accept Jakie back into the family if he will sing as cantor.
Variety dubs the film “the best thing Vitaphone has ever put on the screen.” In 1927, it received one of the first-ever Academy Awards for being a “pioneer talking picture.” However, while they loved the technology that brought them Jolson’s voice, some early audiences were lukewarm on the sappy story of “The Jazz Singer.”
Al Johnson
Born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania on May 26, 1886, Al Jolson was brought to the United States at an early age. His father, a cantor in a local synagogue, discouraged Jolson’s love of the entertainment industry, which blossomed early. To his family’s chagrin, Jolson and his brother began performing in vaudeville shows.
Jolson changed his name and began performing in blackface in minstrel shows in his twenties. By 1911, his larger-than-life personality drew audiences who would pay to see him in whatever stage production he appeared. From 1912 to 1930, Jolson also worked as a recording artist; 23 of his 85 recorded songs were considered hits.
After meeting Jolson, playwright Samson Raphaelson wrote a play about the performer’s life entitled, “Day of Atonement.” It was adapted into a screenplay and later made into “The Jazz Singer.” Despite the fact that Jolson was the inspiration for the main character, he was not the first choice for the role. He was offered it after another actor declined.
by Jennifer Ferris
Chanel Mobile Art Exibition
by Gerit Quealy
Five Essential Jazz Trumpet Solos
Although Louis Armstrong wasn’t exclusively a jazz musician, his contributions to the genre are immense, and arguably unparalleled. Last.fm calls “West End Blues” “the most emulated jazzwork of all time.” The site offers an early recording of the piece. After hearing Armstrong’s solo at the beginning of the much-imitated, timeless work, trumpet player Max Kaminsky said that, “I felt as if I had stared into the sun's eye.”
NPR’s Jazz Library reports that Herbie Hancock’s 1965 album “Maiden Voyage” sought to capture the essence of the sea: “the flow of the current; the creatures, great, small and mythical, who live in the water; the response of voyagers, who experience it for the first time.” The trumpet solo on the title track marvelously captures that sense of newfound independence. On NPR’s site, you can listen to Freddie Hubbard’s trumpet solo in the piece, as well as another sea-themed track from the album, “Dolphin Dance.”“Maiden Voyage” was one of the albums that marked the beginning of Hancock’s solo career. His partnership with the record label Blue Note had just begun, and would only improve over the years.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
.... need? Is love and social justice
She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.
The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees.
The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew her name.
In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn't her.
No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her.
It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her.
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.
Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. "She's had a hard life," said McCurry. "So many here share her story." Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.
Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away.
By Cathy Newman
National Geographic
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Musical Instrument Serie - 9
Trumpet
Written Range
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. [1] Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,[2] dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common being a transposing instrument pitched in B flat. The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz; some notable trumpet players in the latter field include Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bix Beiderbecke, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Chet Baker, and Maynard Ferguson.
Credit > wikipedia
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
In conversation with Jim Hall
By Patrick Spurling
Were family members an influence on your early interest in music and jazz?
I didn’t really know my father, who split when I was about seven. And my mom’s family was hillbilly WASPS from around Ohio on the Great Lakes. Somebody once put together a bootleg record of some of my stuff and the liner notes said my mother was a pianist, my uncle was a guitarist and my grandfather was a conductor -- which is all true. But my mom played a kind of horrible church piano, my uncle Ed, probably a very bright guy, played country music and drank himself to death; and my grandfather was a conductor. He was a conductor . . . but on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.
Can you remember the reason for choosing guitar?
I heard Charlie Christian on a record when I was 13. I didn’t know what that was but … I realized then that that was my calling. A guitar teacher who was really important to me was Fred Sharp, who played with Red Norvo and others. I stayed in touch until he died about a year ago. He really opened up the guitar for me.
You earned an undergraduate degree in music theory and worked on a master’s degree in composition. Why not guitar performance over theory and composition?
That was in the 1950’s. I graduated in 1955 and there was no jazz at the school. If you were not killed in the service there were GI schools that taught jazz but that was not ‘serious’ music. I had a marvelous teacher for composition and theory, but I was this hillbilly kid and he scared the hell out of me somehow -- Marcel Dick. He played viola in the Kolisch String Quartet and was a good friend of Arnold Schönberg.
Did you play other instruments early on?
In high school there were never enough bass players for the orchestra so I played string bass. At the Cleveland Institute I played bass again in the orchestra, but when we’d have a concert they’d get some real bass players and I’d move down to the end. I would intentionally not practice because I didn’t want to mess up my hands. Fortunately I hear the bass now as a lower extension to the guitar.
Was there a good reason for your leaving the Cleveland Institute without completing the graduate degree in composition?
Ray Graziano, a good friend and I had talked about going to Los Angeles. Finally he said one day I’m leaving Saturday if you want to go. It was an impulse I guess. I don’t know if it’s still possible but you could deliver a car –- say Cleveland to L.A. -- and just pay for the gas. We sort of delivered it.
How do you feel about your honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music?
I thought about saying where were you when I needed you? But it was great. Ray Brown was there, Milt Jackson and my friends. … [Presented at the Umbria Jazz Festival - at the Sala del Notari in Perugia, Italy - July 16th, 2005]. Sometimes I’ll read, ‘this is Down Beat award winner and honorary doctorate Jim Hall.’ I could understand if I were involved with some kind of medical profession. Okay, I’m a doctor, that sort of thing. But It depends how far you go with that. I dislike titles.
When Jane and I got married [in 1965] -- which was great -- I needed to get off the road. We were looking around for work so I made the trip up to the Berklee ‘School’ of music for an interview. I assumed having worked with Sonny Rollins and Ella Fitzgerald that [I would be offered a job] but I didn’t get hired. Instead I ended up doing the Merv Griffin show for three and a half years. Good guests but some pretty putrid music.
Little by little Berklee did offer the Jim Hall Scholarship [Fund for guitarists]. Sometimes I’d be so broke I’d want to apply for it.
Your experiences with Ella Fitzgerald and that tour of South America – memorable moments?
Everything with Ella was pretty amazing. Going to South American was incredible for me, especially the first stop. We played at the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. We played three weeks in this great hotel right on the water. The bossa nova was just starting up and the music was just kind of coming out of the air. I couldn’t believe it. We went to São Paulo after that, Montevideo and then on to Buenos Aires. I heard Astor Piazzolla’s music for the first time. I’d never heard tango music and it was an ear-opening experience.
Ella was just stunningly good. I think I heard her miss one note. Working with Gus Johnson we once played an arrangement by Nelson Riddle at the Academy Awards. There was a quick key change and she missed one note. She was amazing.
And you stayed on a while in South America after that tour?
I did. We were supposed to go to Chile but Santiago had had a bad earthquake so that part of the tour was cancelled. I borrowed some money from Norman Granz and stayed in Buenos Aires for about a month.
Norman Granz also managed Jimmy Giuffre so I was able to work with Ella Fitzgerald because of him -- took Herb Ellis’s place. I felt like Lou Gehrig without the disease -- always in the right place at the right time.
About Ron Carter -- both of you had classical backgrounds. Did that have an impact on your work together as a duo?
I am not sure it did -- maybe unconsciously. I met Ron through Art Farmer though I’ve not worked with Art Farmer. His group at that time included Ron Carter and Walter Perkins. Ron hadn’t been in New York too long and we were working together on 7th Avenue one night, and Miles Davis came in and was skulking around. He asked Ron about working with him, but Ron said you’d have to talk to Art. Anyway Ron went to work with Miles Davis and Steve Swallow took his place. That happened a lot in those days.
Later I somehow got a job at this place called The Guitar where Kenny Burrell was part owner. I called Ron and we started doing these duets together in the mid and late sixties. About 15 years later we hooked up again and played the Blue Note in New York and then three Blue Notes in Japan.
Did you have opportunities to play with Eddie Gomez?
Yes, though I didn’t play with Eddie a lot. Of course he is entirely different from Ron Carter. He is a cool friend and actually lives in my neighborhood in New York City. We each have a dog so we talk about dogs. I think I recommended him once for the Bill Evans trio.
It was a "turning point" when playing with Sonny Rollins in the early sixties?
Sounds corny but I felt accepted somehow by the jazz community. In spite of everything that was happening, I got this note in my mailbox one day from Sonny Rollins. I remember the first performance in an upper west side club. God, everybody came in. Max Roach, John Lewis and Wes Montgomery used to come to hear me play -- because of Sonny. It is amazing the camaraderie among musicians. Of course, Sonny was and is one of my heroes. I still can’t believe the way he can play.
Who has something to say among the younger players?
People like Bill Frisell get my attention because I never know what the hell is going to come out. We’ve been working on a duet recording for a while. I kind of like young people who surprise me and keep pushing the envelope. I love Chris Potter’s playing. He composes as he plays rather than plays what is under his fingers. He is surprisingly good. Dave Binney is another but not as well known as Chris. I love Tom Harrell’s playing, especially considering what he’s been going through. Joe Lovano of course, I love Joe’s playing. Tenor saxophone has always been just about my favorite instrument. I had the honor of working once with Ben Webster before working with Sonny.
What attracts you to Sergei Rachmaninoff and Béla Bartok?
Béla Bartok was my hero more than Rachmaninoff. Some things are pretty obvious, like the melodies he uses in his orchestral pieces, but his interest in folk music is part of it. In school I loved his quartets. When I first got into the Cleveland Institute of Music [Paul] Hindemith was a favorite because he reminded me of Stan Kenton. I knew nothing about Mozart and thought he was elementary, but in five years he got so much better. I don’t listen to music very much now because it tends to influence what I am doing. I look more at paintings and that sort of thing. If somebody asked what recording I would take on a desert island, "4’33” of silence by John Cage would be my choice.
‘Clarity is the thing you are after.’ What is clarity in improvisation?
It means listening to what you just played then reacting to that and making something out of it -- which is not to say that you can’t push the envelope a lot too.
You once said the guitar is still a mystery to you.
Absolutely. You get all of these awards like the Chevalier from the French Government [2007] -- which is startling -- or the NEA award [Jazz Masters Fellowship, 2004] and then I’ll be doing an interview on the telephone with someone and the guy says, ‘Mr. Hall, you played with Beethoven…blah … blah.’ And the guitar sits there in the corner and says ‘yeah big deal. Try to tune me today.’ Yeah it is a mystery. Which is good too, I think.
You live in Greenwich Village?
We’re across from the New School for Social Research.
So you’re in the good neighborhood?
Yeah, well, yeah it is. But it’s not my fault. It’s a fascinating neighborhood. Meryl Streep had a building right down the street and Ramsey Clark is a neighbor. We got to know each other by grimacing at one another over the years. He was going all over on genocide trials when I first knew him. Some people I know from just being out there with my dog Django.
After the first election –- what ever you call that thievery -- I never heard so much cursing as on our block. And the second election, it was so blatant with all the Supreme Court meddling. I was in mourning for months after that second election and had to tune everything out for a while. Somehow it was mildly amusing, but I wonder what is going to happen now?
Do you vote?
Yeah. But I’m in a quandary about what to do this next time. It’s going to take us 50 years to recover no matter who takes power. We [Americans] feel badly about cigarettes, McDonald’s, Americana, George Bush and fascist governments.
Why have you not done more composing?
In a way I regret not doing more with composition. But its sort of come full circle since I got with Telarc Records. The first record I did for Telarc was just me and over dubs. They were understandably leery of investing in that, so I said okay, I’ll do it for free. Then later at the Village Vanguard I did another one and that Helped. Telarc has been great.
Did you consider conducting the compositions By Arrangement (1998) and Textures, (1996)?
No, but funny you should ask. André Previn asked me the same thing. I said I couldn’t conduct electricity.
How did you feel about your recordings with Itzhak Perlman and André Previn?
It was great being around Itzhak Perlman. André Previn had called Shelly Manne to play drums and Red Mitchell to play bass –- both old friends of mine. I had known André Previn in California from years before. My favorite part of it was as soon as Itzhak and Shelly were introduced their eyes met and that was it -- the Jewish jokes started. Anyway, I don’t think they are very good records, but it was a lot of fun.
How did you feel about performing at the new Jazz at Lincoln Center venue?
It’s not like the Village Vanguard, but then why should it be. On one hand I am not a huge fan of Wynton Marsalis, but on the other I could never have done anything like what he has accomplished. They’ve created a lot of interest in jazz, though it’s not particularly forward-looking.
Then you feel there is a bias there toward older jazz?
Exactly. Duke Ellington or Art Tatum certainly wouldn’t have felt like that. I heard a piece that Wynton recorded on some classical concert and he sounded terrific, but it was like the preservation society. I dislike the term classical jazz. I do like Stanley Crouch and Wynton too but, in spite of himself, Stanley and I always get into these kinds of arguments.
For young musicians interested in playing jazz what do you say to them?
What I usually say is a long distance quote from John Lewis. John had this School for jazz at the end of summer for three weeks up in Lenox Massachusetts. At the end of one three week session he was talking to the graduates and a couple of guys asked if there were any gigs out there? John said: “Wait, wait, you got it backwards.”
What he was saying was that music gives you so much already. What the hell else do you want? This is your reward right here just being involved. And it is really just stunning what you can get out of music. It’s unique; it’s yours and its something to be cherished. Making a living is an added bonus occasionally, but I think you already have quite a bit if you can play. . ..
Would you like to see a picture of my dog Django? He is very demanding but he has a calming affect.
Credit > http://jazz.com/features-and-interviews/2008/9/12/in-conversation-with-jim-hall
Trumpeter and TV Composer Neal Hefti Dies
October 15, 2008 - Neal Hefti reached a wide audience through the theme songs he composed for TV's Batman and The Odd Couple. But he was also a talented jazz arranger who got his start with the Charlie Barnett and Woody Herman big bands.
Hefti died Saturday at his home in California, just shy of his 86th birthday. He was born on Oct. 29, 1922, in Hastings, Neb. His mother was a music teacher, so her son learned music theory early. He got a trumpet when he was 11 and began writing arrangements when he was in high school, picking up ideas from the music he heard on the radio.
Arrangers are the people who take all of those little black dots on the sheet music and turn them into parts for saxophones, trumpets and strings. But it was Hefti's trumpet that got him into Charlie Barnett's big band in New York in 1942. Two years later, he joined Woody Herman's trumpet section and began writing tunes and arrangements. He wrote "The Good Earth" for the band and co-wrote "Wild Root" with Herman. Hefti wound up marrying Herman's singer, Frances Wayne.
Hefti went on to write large group arrangements for two pioneers of the new music called bebop: Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown. But it was with another big band that Hefti really made his mark.
In the early 1950s, he began a 10-year relationship writing and arranging for Count Basie that produced some of Basie's most memorable music, including the Hefti original that became a jazz standard, "Li'l Darlin'." Hefti's deceptively simple arrangements were a perfect fit for the Basie band, and helped extend its popularity through most of the decade.
Basie recorded two albums of Hefti's compositions in the late '50s. Then, Hefti wrote arrangements for two acclaimed Frank Sinatra albums, Sinatra-Basie and Sinatra and Swingin' Brass.
Hefti also arranged for Tony Bennett and Judy Garland, among many others. But he began to devote most of his time to writing for film and television. He composed the scores for film versions of two Neil Simon plays, Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. His score for the 1965 movie Harlow produced one of his most popular tunes, "Girl Talk."
The Odd Couple theme became ubiquitous after the play-turned-movie made the transition to the small screen. But Hefti had already infected TV viewers with his theme to Batman. It became a Top 40 hit in 1966.
In 1976, Neal Hefti decided to stop writing music. His wife, Frances, died in 1978. He retired on ample royalties, mostly from his film and television work, and he spent his last years managing his many song copyrights.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95748800&ft=1&f=10002
The Show Goes On For Iraqi Conductor
September 11, 2008 · Karim Wasfi, director and co-conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, discusses the integral role music and culture play in the ongoing rehabilitation of Iraq.
It's difficult gathering all the musicians for rehearsals, but Wasfi and the orchestra have drawn crowds of more than 600 people in war-torn Bagdhad.
Also, Melik Kaylan, culture contributor for The Wall Street Journal, talks about the cultural exchange going on between Iraqis and Americans in Baghdad
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94511956
Short Dee Dee Bridgewater, NPR Biography
Born in Memphis and raised in the Midwest, host Dee Dee Bridgewater moved to New York and – as Glinda the Witch in The Wiz on Broadway – won a 1975 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical. Monday nights, she sang jazz with the popular Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra downtown at the Village Vanguard. Her LP's from that era include Dee Dee Bridgewater, Just Family, and Bad for Me, about which a consumer reviewer wrote thirty years later, "This upbeat disco album encapsulates all that was right about the Disco Era."
In the 1980s, Bridgewater settled in Paris to perform in Sophisticated Ladies and Lady Day, a one-woman portrayal of Billie Holiday in French, which earned her a Sir Laurence Olivier Award nomination.
In 1995, her self-produced CD Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver brought Bridgewater's voice back to the United States. Dear Ella, dedicated to Ella Fitzgerald, won two Grammy Awards in 1998. Subsequently, Bridgewater has produced This Is New with music of Kurt Weill, and J'ai Deux Amours/Two Loves Have I. Her current self-produced, Grammy-nominated album, Red Earth – A Malian Journey, features Bridgewater with her trio, guest vocalists and a balaphon/kora/flute/percussion/vocal ensemble from the small west African nation she embraces as her ancestral home.
Bridgewater became the host of JazzSet in October 2001, on the retirement of the original host, saxophonist Branford Marsalis.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100295
Marian McPartland's - 90th Birthday Concert: Set II
Marian McPartland's 90th-birthday celebration continues with more one-of-a-kind performances from a special concert at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in Jazz at Lincoln Center. (Hear the first set.)
McPartland and her trio open the second set with a sweetly swinging version of "I'll Remember April," followed by a solo piano version of a tune from her latest CD (Twilight World), called "Blackberry Winter." The song, which has become one of McPartland's signatures, is special to her because it was written by her friend, the composer and music historian Alec Wilder. Wilder always insisted that jazz artists should stay true to the melody, and McPartland follows his admonition, though she does take the tune into several different keys before all is said and done.
Regina Carter is back in set two, joining the trio for "Lady Be Good" before inviting trumpeter Jeremy Pelt on stage for a soulful rendition of "Georgia on My Mind." Carter coaxes notes out of the Southern ether, while the young Pelt sounds equally sweet and reflective. In a playful mood, Carter closes a solo with the melody to "Happy Birthday."
Two of today's piano masters take the stage next in order to pay homage to the birthday girl. Jason Moran performs the rarely heard McPartland composition "Time and Time Again." Piano Jazz alumnus Kenny Barron follows, and he recalls some of his experiences with McPartland before performing "Memories of You" in her honor.
Norah Jones returns in set two for one more ballad, joining McPartland and the trio on "The Nearness of You." The concert concludes with a surprise appearance by the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis. The trumpeter strolled about the stage, bouncing notes off McPartland's piano strings as the two jammed on "All the Things You Are."
As a Web-only exclusive, this page features the surprise performance of the night — the McPartland Trio's take on "Turnaround," written by avant-garde jazz legend Ornette Coleman. It was the bluesiest cut on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sound Grammar. In her rendition, McPartland hit jagged piano chords and abstract figures with an energy that defied her much-celebrated age.
Credit > http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95823082
Monday, October 20, 2008
About the USA Library's Musical Instrument Collections
The mission of the Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, is to serve Congress and preserve its resources for the future. In 1815 Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson’s library, a rich collection universal in scope, knowledge, and creativity. Jefferson, a keen admirer of music, was also a violinist. His library collection held 13 books on music literature and theory, thus laying the foundation for the future music division.
Strings
The Library’s Music Division was established by 1896. From 1924 to 1935, aided by the philanthropy of two remarkable women, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Gertude Clarke Whittall, the mission of the Music Division included musical performance and music commissions. The unprecedented generosity and foresight of these two patrons furthered the Library’s musical activities. There were chamber music concerts (which included the legendary Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein, the Budapest String Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio, and the Juilliard String Quartet), a broadcast series, commissions, lectures, festivals, and the gift of musical instruments, commencing with Whittall’s gift, in 1935, of a quartet of stringed instruments by Antonio Stradivari. This quartet of instruments, most likely the first such quartet held by a public institution in the United States, along with the subsequent addition of a fifth Whittall Stradivari violin, formed the cornerstone of the Library’s “Cremonese” collection, as it is now sometimes called.
Gertrude Clarke Whittall (1867-1965, born Gertrude Littlefield Clarke, of Belleview, Nebraska) moved to Washington, D.C., in 1934 after the death of her husband, Matthew John Whittall, a dealer in fine carpets. Apparently affected by a vivid memory of the Flonzaley String Quartet playing a private concert for her family in 1908, she became well known for the soirées held in her Washington apartment. Mrs. Whittall’s choice to donate to a library, and not to a museum, assured her that the instruments would not become mere relics. According to her bequest, they would be played from time to time, as they were intended. To that end, she established the Whittall Foundation, an endowment to finance professional in-house use of the instruments and concerts for the public.
Mrs. Whittall’s enthusiastic support of the Music Division continued for another thirty years until her death in 1965. The first “Strad” concert was played in the Library in January 1936. A few years later, in 1941, she purchased portions of the Jerome Stonborough (of Vienna) collection, thus expanding the Whittall Foundation activities to include the acquisition of original 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century music manuscripts and correspondence (with European composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Berg, Brahms, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Schoenberg, Schubert, and Wagner). The manuscripts and correspondence complemented and completed her gifts of musical instruments.
The five Strads, under the care of then Honorary Curator Henry Blakiston Wilkins, were soon joined by the early stringed instruments of his own collection. Originally offering five instruments (the Guersan Pardessus de Viole, a 7 String Bass Viol attributed to Rombouts, a Gagliano Viola d’Amore, a German Viola d’Amore, and a Quinton by Le Jeune,) a Bass Viol attributed to Tielke was later added to the gift from Wilkins. They were, like the five Strads, offered to provide a practical performance group and focus attention on the musical literature at the Library of Congress.
The growing musical instruments collections were enriched in 1937 by the addition of a fifth Stradivari (the “Ward”) with bow, again from Mrs. Whittall. Rudolph H. Wurlitzer, president of the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio, presented the collection with a pochette and bow (or kit, or dancing master’s fiddle) with label “…a paris 1685,” a miniature (fixed frog) bow, and a period leather-covered wooden case.
In 1938, Mrs. Whittall sent a check to the Librarian to construct a specially designed room, a Stradivari sanctuary, adjacent to the Coolidge Auditorium. According to her wishes, the Whittall Pavilion would be designed with furnishings from her home, or other custom-made furniture specifically purchased for the room, and ornamented by iron grillwork with a violin motif. The room was two stories high, fireproofed, and had a roof and floor of steel and reinforced concrete. Finished in 1939, it was informally introduced to the public with a concert of violin and piano sonatas played by Adolph Busch and Rudolph Serkin.
In February 1938, Mrs. Robert Somers Brookings presented the Library of Congress with a 1654 violin made by Nicolò Amati. It had been owned and used for many years by her husband, Robert Somers Brookings, founder of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Brookings accompanied the gift with the stipulation that the violin was for “useful service at the Library.”
Robert Somers Brookings had obtained the violin through the mediation and advice of the great violinist Joseph Joachim. Fascinated by music, Brookings went to Berlin in 1884 to study, and was allured by the weekly soirées that he attended in Joachim’s apartment. The two men recognized that Brookings’ talent was not as a violinist, however, but in his future as an economist. Joachim, knowing that the Amati was for sale, suggested that Brookings return to America with a souvenir, his own musical gift. Thus, another musical instrument was added to a burgeoning performance and research collection of musical instruments.
Winds
In 1941, the Library received a large collection of flute and other wind instruments from Dayton C. Miller to add to its instrument collections. Dayton C. Miller, who received his doctorate in physics from Princeton University, was a consummate collector. He gave his collections of wind instruments and related items to the Library of Congress to encourage scholarly interest in the flute. He had planned to come to the Library as curator of the collection, but died suddenly on February 22, 1941. His bequest arrived at the Library three months later, on May 22, 1941.
At the time of his bequest, Miller’s collection of materials relating to the flute comprised more than 1,426 instruments (flutes and other wind instruments). Of approximately 3,000 books about music, there were more than 10,000 titles of music, as well as numerous patents, trade catalogs, news clippings, autographs, articles, correspondence files, and drawers of iconography. There also were many bronzes, ivories, statuary, and figures, all depicting flutists, fife, or pipe players.
Starting in the 1920s, Miller deliberated for many years over where his collections could find a permanent home. He considered donating his collections to the then National Museum (now the Smithsonian Institution), but had also been in touch with the Library of Congress as a reader, advisor, and potential donor.
In 1933 Miller wrote to Dr. Carleton Sprague Smith of the New York Public Library that he had catalogs of musical instruments from 50 museums. He had visited most of these museums, as well as many of the music libraries in the United States and abroad. Miller was very interested in having his collections in one location, but had not yet found a suitable home in America. He was especially impressed with the Deutsches Museum of Munich, but found that it lacked a great collection of music to supplement the instruments.
By 1934 Miller felt that his collection was too large to maintain in Cleveland. He wrote to Frances Densmore, an ethnomusicologist, that he feared that his collection would be dispersed and his efforts wasted. Finally, Miller made his decision; his will, drafted in 1939, gave his entire collection to the Library. He further stipulated that his collections be preserved intact as a whole, and not subdivided, so as to illustrate directly the history of the flute.
Recent instrument additions to the Miller collections include an early 20th-century silver Boehm system flute by William Meinell, New York, with its original case; and a pair of silver clarinets (A- and B-flat) by William S. Haynes, Boston, with original case. Robert Sheldon, former instrument curator at the Library of Congress, donated to the Miller collections an important early clarinet in A-flat, by Jakob Anthony of Philadelphia (DCM 1662). Two additional Anthony instruments (a concert flute and a walking stick flute) also are preserved in the Miller collections.
