Word: playing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...show will be given some time in the latter part of May in one of Boston's largest theatres and will run for four days. Written by Marcel Achard and produced in Paris last year by Louis Jouvet, the play was hailed as a definite succeeds...
Boston gets a real break with Alec Templeton coming to Symphony Hall tonight to play one of his justly famous piano concerts. Templeton, born an Englishman and blind from birth, is a true artist both in the field of classics and that of musical satire. If you have ever heard him play Chopin and then go on to imitate "an afternoon in a conservatory" with sundry whiskey basses, off-key Wagnerian sopranos, and amazing musical parodies from the piano, you will recognize what unusual talent the man possesses...
...peak of his feats is requesting somebody from the audience to pick five notes--any five notes on the piano--which he will weave into an original melody, and at further demand, play that melody in the style of Mozart, Bach, Gershwin, or anybody else handy. Try cooking up a melody sometime out of just a few notes with no preconceived notion of how they should fall, and Templeton's things become just a little baffling...
...regard to his blindness, it would seem that what hampers him is not being unable to see the piano; after all, most good pianists can play blindfolded with very little practice. And since Templeton has spent his entire life in darkness, he has developed a very sensitive touch that enables him to overcome this mechanical handicap. But what undoubtedly must have bothered him is the lack of visual perception of life around him. All musicians, whether they play swing or classical music, draw their inspiration from things that happen to them in life, that they can see and comprehend...
...Brigg's and McKenna's have them) and not only is there some excellent piano, but some of the wildest satire you've ever heard. The man deserves great credit, not only for having overcome a handicap, but for being an accomplished piano player (his latest trick being to play concertos after having heard them once), and for having carried on with a musical tongue in the check where Gilbert and Sullivan left...