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Category: Birthdays

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Of Crooners and Princes: May Birthdays

Posted by: Pat Padua

Last week we celebrated birthdays of a diverse array of musical luminaries. Pianist Wladziu Valentino was briefly known as  Walter Busterkeys before using the name by which we all know him: Liberace was born May 16, 1919. Read about him in the Nevada section of the Local Legacies project in The American Folklife Center. Alexander Warrack’s Scots Dictionary …

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

Great Conversations in Music

Posted by: Pat Padua

This week marks the birthday of two of the participants in Great Conversations in Music, a series of interviews hosted by Eugene Istomin (1925-2003). Video clips from the entire series can be viewed on the Performing Arts Encyclopedia, and are organized by The Pianists,  The Composers,  Chamber Music,  The Virtuosos, and The Conductors. One of those conductors …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Happy Birthday Lady Day

Posted by: Pat Padua

Billie Holiday, one of the great jazz singers, was born April 7, 1915.  She recounted her hard life in the autobiography Lady sings the blues, but despite her suffering at the hands of family, a racist society, and her own addictions,  despite the smoky, world-weary voice of her later years, the joy her music brought to …

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

Happy Easter

Posted by: Pat Padua

The glorious weather we’re having in Washington gives us much to celebrate in both the secular and spiritual realms. See Easter hymns from the Coptic tradition in Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant & Hymnody in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Remember Passover with the Yiddish play,  The mother of the world, or, Children come home in The American …

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Ben Webster: Whispering in his Sweetheart’s Ear

Posted by: Pat Padua

Ben Webster, one of the great tenor saxophonists, was born March 27, 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri.  Along with bassist Jimmy Blanton, Webster helped form one of the most celebrated incarnations of the Duke Ellington orchestra. From 1940-1942,  the Blanton-Webster band recorded such Ellington classics as “Cotton Tail,” “Chelsea Bridge,” and, of course, “Take the ‘A’ …

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A little birthday music

Posted by: Pat Padua

His work has been interpreted by everyone from Barbara Streisand to Tim Burton. Lyricist-composer Stephen Sondheim, one of the great voices in American musical theater, was born on March 22,  1930. In 2000, The Library of Congress honored him with a Living Legend award, complete with an all-star 70th birthday concert in the Coolidge Auditorium. …