Word: pianists
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GEORGE GERSHWIN--EVERYONE remembers him. But Edward Elzear ("Zez") Confrey? Pauline Alpert? John Green? Dana Suesse? Today no one can even pronounce some of these names, yet once upon a time--back in the 1920s and '30s--all four of these pianist-composers thrilled large audiences with a scintillating mix of ragtime, jazz and classical sounds that became known as novelty piano. Lost in the shadows cast by Gershwin's brilliance, they have been forgotten, and undeservedly...
...eight-CD project on the Pearl label called Keyboard Wizards of the Gershwin Era aims to change that. So too does a contemporary pianist named Peter Mintun, who is working to restore novelty piano to its rightful place in the history of our popular culture. He recently opened a four-month engagement playing novelty compositions and pop classics at the posh Carlyle Hotel in New York City...
...Concerto in D Major for Combo and Orchestra--she certainly wore her influences on her record sleeve--deserve a place in musical history alongside such crossover classics as Gershwin's Concerto in F, Igor Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto and Aaron Copland's clarinet concerto. "Dana Suesse was a marvelous pianist," says Mintun, who wrote the liner notes for Pearl's Suesse album. "Her piano solos painted vivid tonal pictures of exciting urban life. You hear little hints of Debussy or Ravel in her work, yet you also hear the elements of something new in that period that they called jazz...
DIED. SHURA CHERKASSKY, 84, classical concert pianist; in London. The Odessa-born prodigy brought emotional fire and interpretive panache to the Romantic repertoire of Chopin and Rachmaninoff...
...takes such an intriguingly indirect approach to its subject. The three young jazzmen record some of the tunes Bird made his own but with one key difference--there is not a saxophone to be heard on any of these songs (Hargrove is a trumpeter, McBride a bassist, Scott a pianist). The result of their duplication by subtraction is an album that instead of being haunted by Bird's ghost is infused with his spirit...