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Archive: April 2010 (16 Posts)

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Happy Birthday Sir Duke

Posted by: Pat Padua

Otto. Cutey. Stinkpot. Wucker. Dumplin’. Maestro. Big Red. Head Knocker. Puddin’. These are some of the many nicknames given the man born Edward Kennedy, whom we all know as “Duke” Ellington. Born April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C., Ellington was one of the great jazz bandleaders, pianists, and composers. The Music Division is home to …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Brush up your Shakespeare

Posted by: Pat Padua

In the Muse has regularly featured photographs from the William P. Gottlieb Collection when commemorating the birthdays of jazz greats like Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt, and Ben Webster. But that’s not all that’s in the collection. Today, the observed birthday of William Shakespeare, enjoy this photograph, which originally appeared in Down Beat magazine in 1947 …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Meditations on Mingus

Posted by: Pat Padua

Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona on April 22, 1922.   The first instrument he played was the trombone, a sound he always liked –  trombonist Jimmy Knepper was one of the defining voices of many a  Mingus ensemble.  But it was with the bass that Mingus found his voice.  Inspired by Ellington bassist Jimmy …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Jazz in the Spring: Han Bennink

Posted by: Pat Padua

Next Monday, April 26th, the Mary Pickford Theater will screen Jellie Dekker’s Han Bennink: Hazentijd (2009),  the last in the film series Jazz in the Spring curated by Larry Appelbaum. Dutch Drummer and visual artist Han Bennink, who celebrated his 68th birthday on April 17th, is the subject of this stylized documentary, which follows Bennink’s …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Everybody’s Heard About the Bird

Posted by: Pat Padua

If you missed the news over on the Library of Congress Blog, the Library announced that they will digitally archive the public record of the latest iteration of the tin-can and wire:  Twitter. While we in the Music Division are still holding on to our telephone machines and pedalling to work on our velocipedes, this …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Dexter Gordon

Posted by: Pat Padua

“Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.”  Those are the words of tenor saxophone great Dexter Gordon, born in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 1923. Gordon performed with Lionel Hampton’s and Louis Armstrong’s bands in the 1940s, and …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

What do Dmitri Shostakovich, John Zorn, and fur accessories have in common?

Posted by: Pat Padua

Thanks to Tomas Hernandez, Senior Music Producer in the Music Division, for assistance with this post. Next Friday, April 16th,  the Coolidge Auditorium hosts the Alexander String Quartet and the Afiara String Quartet in a program that practically defines eclecticism.  Free tickets for this must-see event are still available, with a nominal service charge,  from Ticketmaster. …