Word: pianistics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Powell's progress from jazz to the avant-garde followed an improbable path. He married Actress Martha Scott after World War II, then decided to leave the insecure jazz life and settle in Hollywood as a studio pianist for MGM. One of his major assignments was recording backgrounds for Tom and Jerry cartoons. At first, the constant glissandos of cartoon music put blisters on his knuckles, but a fellow studio pianist, Andre Previn, showed him how to play them with a comb. Meanwhile, Powell pursued his studies in serious music. In 1948 he moved east to study composition with...
...show that he was a versatile and experienced man, he wanted to show the nation a fresh Nixon. So his initial speech was taken up with an explanation of how he had been on the Johnny Carson show and had spoken of his childhood desire to be a concert pianist at which point Mr. Carson suggested that he play the piano for the people now, an offer which was taken up, and then how he felt a thrill of excitement as he played and then more of a thrill as the people in the audience applauded him louder than...
...loss. He did not cite Humphrey's brilliant "folksiness" on the debates. Instead he quoted from a scholarly work by a Harvard professor which documented in 700 pages America's unkind feelings towards musicians (long-haired, sexual deviates...) and announced that he was entering a career as a concert pianist...
...which the father, grandfather, two uncles and three cousins all played the bass, he took up the instrument at nine "without even knowing there were other instruments." He made such rapid progress that he soon ranged beyond the conventional approach to the bass. He studied with a cellist, a pianist and even with Singer Jennie Tourel ("the greatest influence on my phrasing and musical ideas"). After a 1962 appearance in one of Leonard Bernstein's televised Young People's Concerts, he started on a career of recitals and solo stints with major orchestras. This required...
...musical drama. His concerto is full of mellow drama as well-racing scales, rushing rhythms and suspenseful pauses, after which, sometimes, nothing much follows. Nevertheless, orchestral color is beautifully provided by the Boston Symphony under Erich Leinsdorf, and flashy keyboard fireworks are brilliantly set off by the young Brazilian pianist Joáo Carlos Martins...