11-29: Beatles Paris 1965 - Monteverdi Arie e Lamenti : Figueras / Koopman 1991 - Puccini Messa di Gloria : Carreras / Prey / Scimone 1994 - Barber | Korngold | Walton Violin Concertos : Ehnes 2008

I was unable to find a photo of Cary Scott Lowenstein.

1643 – Claudio Monteverdi (Italian composer, gambist & singer)
1775 – Lorenzo Somis (Italian violinist, composer & painter)
1843 – Marco Santucci (Italian composer & teacher)
1872 – Giovanni Tadolini (Italian composer, conductor & singing teacher)
1921 – Ivan Caryll (Belgian composer of operettas & musicals)
1924 – Giacomo Puccini (Italian composer)
1925 – Karl Flodin (Finnish composer & music critic)
1954 – Dink Johnson (American jazz pianist, clarinetist & drummer)
1957 – Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Austrian composer for concert, screen & stage, one of the founders of film music)
1959 – Fritz Brun (Swiss conductor & composer)
1963 – Ernesto Lecuona (Cuban composer & pianist, "Malagueña")
1970 – Robert Ruthenfranz (German composer & founder of Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik festival)
1971 – Heinz Tiessen (German composer & teacher)
1972 – Carl Stalling (American composer & arranger, Warner Bros. Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies)
1989 – Ann Burton [Johanna Rafalowicz] (Dutch jazz singer)
1992 – Cary Scott Lowenstein (American musical theater dancer, singer & actor)
1994 – Soulima Stravinsky (Swiss-born American pianist, composer & musicologist of Russian & Ukrainian descent, son of Igor)
2001 – George Harrison (English rock singer, songwriter & guitarist, The Beatles)
2001 – Mic Christopher (American-born Irish singer-songwriter & guitarist)
2007 – Tom Terrell (American jazz, rock & hip-hop journalist & promoter)

Well, I did it again. I missed a very important musician, who just died recently. On November 23rd, Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras passed away after a year-long battle with cancer. Figueras made many superb recordings of Renaissance and early Baroque music, especially that from the Iberian peninsula, along with her husband, Jordi Savall, with whom she formed the early-music groups Hespèrion XX (now Hespèrion XXI), La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Le Concert des Nations.

Jordi Savall & Montserrat Figueras

She will be greatly missed. We wish comfort to Sr. Savall and their two children, Arianna and Ferran, with whom the couple performed regularly. We hope to hear beautiful music from the three of them for many more years.

And so today we remember Montserrat and Monteverdi, together, and it seems like such a perfect fit... even if it only happened this way because my sources are not so good! And we remember Puccini, too... another great innovator of Italian opera. Korngold and Stalling, two very different innovators from the world of film music. All these, and George Harrison on the same day! It's a lot to take in.

08-15: Marin Marais Gamba - Brahms Szigeti Ormandy Schnabel Szell - Big Bill Broonzy One Beer One Blues - Dusty Springfield in Memphis

Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a tagged image.

1576 – Bálint Bakfark (Hungarian composer & lutenist)
1728 – Marin Marais (French composer & gambist)
1798 – Felice Alessandri (Italian composer & harpsichordist)
1848 – Timothy Olmstead (American composer, psalmodist & Revolutionary War fifer)
1853 – Giovanni Battista Polledro (Italian violinist & composer)
1907 – Joseph Joachim (Austro-Hungarian violinist, conductor & composer)
1918 – Peter Gast (German writer & composer, friend & colleague of Nietzsche)
1935 – Gerard von Brucken Fock (Dutch composer & painter)
1936 – Stanisław Niewiadomski (Polish composer, conductor & music critic)
1951 – Artur Schnabel (Austrian pianist & composer)
1958 – Big Bill Broonzy (American blues singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1968 – Edward Kilenyi, Sr. (Hungarian-born American film composer & violinist, teacher of Gershwin)
1972 – Alf Thorbald Hurum (Norwegian composer)
1978 – Harrison Kerr (American composer & music editor, co-founder of American Music Center)
1985 – Richard Yardumian (American composer)
1995 – Erbie Bowser (American blues pianist)
1995 – Jesse "Babyface" Thomas (American blues guitarist & singer)
2003 – Gösta Sundqvist (Finnish rock singer, songwriter & guitarist & radio personality)
2004 – Semiha Berksoy (Turkish soprano & painter, early Turkish opera singer)
2007 – Richard Bradshaw (English opera conductor, active in Canada)
2008 – Jerry Wexler (American studio producer & journalist, coined term "rhythm and blues")

Gerard von Brucken Fock and Bálint Bakfark. Gerard von Brucken Fock and Bálint Bakfark. I have nothing to say about these guys, I just think saying their names is fun.

Well, it was a blue day (not a Blue Monday, though - it was a Tuesday) in Texas on August 15th, 1995 when Dallas guitarist Jesse "Babyface" Thomas and Austin pianist Erbie Bowser passed away within hours of one another. Hm, maybe I got that wrong. They were bluesmen, right? So if they died, maybe Texas got less blue that day. The complementary color of blue is orange. Maybe that day was really an orange day in Texas. That's it. It was an Orange Tuesday in Texas. Hook 'em Horns, or whatever. However, August 15th is really a lot more orange than that, because Babyface & Erbie in fact passed away on the 37th anniversary of the day one of the true all-time legends of blues pooped. That was Big Bill Broonzy. But that didn't happen on a Tuesday. August 15th fell on a Friday in 1958, so I guess that day was an Orange Friday in Chicago. I think Babyface & Ernie would both have been pleased to know they went to the Lord on the same day Big Bill did. Unfortunately, they didn't live to see it. More about Big Bill after the jump across the open grave...