Word: musicians
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DIED. LARRY ADLER, 87, blacklisted musician who elevated the harmonica to concert-hall status; in London. When a local store owner gave the young Adler a harmonica, he taught himself to play by ear, won a harmonica-playing contest and left his home in Baltimore for New York City at 14. By the late 1930s he was performing in Carnegie Hall, still playing by ear; Ingrid Bergman, with whom he had an affair, was said to have persuaded him to pursue formal music training. In 1947, his liberal politics led to printed charges of communist sympathies; after suing unsuccessfully...
Antonio Stradivari, one of the greatest craftsmen the world has known, would shudder if he were to read what follows. It concerns a cello he made three centuries ago, in 1701, that today some musicians consider the best in the world. It is named after one of its various owners, Adrien-François Servais, and for the past 20 years has been kept in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington. Occasionally a musician of renown is allowed to play the Servais: in 1992 Dutchman Anner Bylsma made a beautiful recording of Bach...
...Servais exemplifies this intangible value we call individuality. Stradivari's cello found its way into the possession of the Russian court. There Servais, a young Belgian musician, contrived to play it before Czar Nicholas I. The Princess Yusupova, the story goes, had fallen for Servais in a big way and lent him the Stradivarius. The Czar praised the performance, and the Belgian modestly replied that it was surely due to the loan of the great cello. Whereupon the enamored princess exclaimed: "Oh, it wasn't a loan, it was a gift!" The Czar's court was said to be distinctly...
DAUGHTER OF INVENTION: Moon Unit Zappa says that her first novel, "America the Beautiful" (Simon & Schuster Trade Paperbacks) is "17.2 percent autobiographical." The heroine, America Throne, has an unusual name, is the daughter of a famous person, and has a musician brother. "Obviously there are some similarities there," she says wryly. To say the least. Moon, as she is known to her friends, is the daughter of the late Frank Zappa, a bandleader, guitar hero, composer, satirist, and political commentator whose creativity is legendary. She admits that Growing Up Zappa was complicated business. "I?ve had enough excitement...
Recording artists sardonically observe that in their business, nothing succeeds like death. For better or worse, a musician's demise often means more sales. Record companies are hoping that trend holds for three giants who have died in the past six weeks. Music Club has released John Lee Hooker...Is Hip: His Greatest Hits by the legendary Mississippi blues guitarist. Country guitar god Chet Atkins' new release, A Master and His Music, is on the BMG/RCA label. No postmortem releases by trumpeter and Latin-jazz innovator Chico O'Farrill have been announced, but his greatest stuff is on Cuban Blues...