(Vocal/instrumental group, 1977–90) Studio engineer Parsons (b. 1948) had been involved with the engineering of The Beatles’ Abbey Road (1969) and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) before he became a producer and, briefly, artist in conjunction with songwriter Eric Woolfson. A string of immaculately played and produced concept albums featuring guest singers and musicians ...
(Me-shel’ Re’-share de La-län-de) 1657–1726 French composer During the mid-1660s Lalande, along with Marais, was a member of the choir at St Germain-l’Auxerrois in Paris and later, as an organist, he was the mentor of Couperin. In 1683 he was appointed one of four sous-maîtres of the Chapelle Royale, gradually acquiring all the other major musical positions ...
(Folklorists, John Avery Lomax 1867–1948; Alan Lomax 1915–2002) John Lomax was born in Goodman, Mississippi and raised near Fort Worth, Texas. Although his initial interest lay in cowboy songs, a pre-teen friendship with a servant named Nat Blythe sparked an interest in black music. With the 1910 publication of Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads, his ...
(Vocals, songwriter, guitar, b. 1958) Georgia-born Jackson moved to Nashville in 1985. His rise to fame came after a chance meeting between his wife, Denise, and Glen Campbell, and before long, he was a staff songwriter at Campbell’s music-publishing company. A traditionalist blue-collar act, he was the first signing to Arista’s Nashville branch ...
‘The Gallant Indians’ Composed in 1735, Les indes galantes is an opéra-ballet in which each act has its own setting and self-contained plot. Its four entrées include a scene set in a Turkish garden, Incas worshipping the sun in a Peruvian desert, a flower festival at a Persian market and a village ceremony in a North American forest. ...
(Disc jockey, 1922–65) Freed, the DJ who gave rock’n’roll its name, fronted Moondog’s Rock’n’Roll Party at Cleveland’s WJW radio station, where he programmed mainly black R&B plus some early white rock’n’roll records. His vocal jive delighted his audience, and he also appeared in several early rock’n’roll exploitation movies, including Rock Around The Clock, Rock ...
(Singer-songwriter, b. 1974) This Canadian singer recorded two teen-oriented albums that went nowhere in 1990 and 1992. Signed to Madonna’s Maverick label, major debut Jagged Little Pill (1995) was a multi-platinum success. Music aside, it was Morissette’s abrasive, honest, sharp lyrical concerns, ranging from anger at being jilted to confessional, that captivated. Singles like ...
(Vocals, b. 1971) Timbaland, alias Timothy Mosley, is a successful hip hop and R&B producer who had worked with such artists as Missy Elliott, Jay-Z and Aaliyah before releasing his first solo album in 1998; second LP, Timbaland Presents Shock Value went platinum in America in 2007, and narrowly missed out on the No. 1 ...
There can be few environments as challenging and exciting to the musician as the recording studio. Since the post-war introduction of the magnetic tape recorder, the technology used to capture musical performance has become an increasingly important part of our culture. The studio has long been more than simply an acoustically pleasing environment in which to capture and document a ...
(Multi-instrumentalist, b. 1953) A prodigiously talented musician, Oldfield played all the instruments on 1973’s Tubular Bells. This symphonic work was a transatlantic best-seller, helped by the use of its main theme in the movie The Exorcist (1973). Hergest Ridge (1974) was a British No. 1 whilst Ommadawn (1975) and Incantations (1978) displayed African and folk influences. Platinum (1979) ...
Almost no Texan musicians have ever herded cattle, but most like to think of themselves as cowboys nonetheless. They imagine themselves pulling out an acoustic guitar after dinner and singing a song about the adventures and frustrations they have known. And not just any old song – it has to be one they wrote and it has to be more ...
When Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family became country music’s first superstars in 1927, their audience was the farmers, miners, wives and other blue-collar workers of the rural South. It was an audience that left school early for a life of hard work in isolated communities. When those men and women gathered at a tavern or schoolroom on ...
After the 1960s heyday of the cultured Nashville sound, country music was all but swept aside. It had survived the lasting effect of 1950s rock – rock’n’roll and traditional old-timey music and bluegrass, especially – but it was now the turn of a musical hybrid, country rock, to lead the way for almost a decade. Country rock ...
As the worldwide success of artists such as Shakira, Björk and Baha Men proves, world music is not antithetical to pop music, or to dance music, or to any other music form. For artists like India’s Ravi Shankar, the music of their world is classical music; for many Latin musicians, it is jazz; for others ...
First performed at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden on 1 December 1951, this adaptation of Herman Melville’s short story saw E. M. Forster writing large portions of prose while Eric Crozier focused on the dramatic execution. Accordingly, Billy Budd was one of the most meticulously researched and well-written librettos of any Benjamin Britten opera. Typically for ...
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An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.