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Article

9/11  

Jeffrey Melnick

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
04 October 2012

Almost immediately after four hijacked planes crashed on 11 September 2001 conversations started about how the tragedy should be understood in the context of popular culture. Discussions about violence and popular culture also arose, seemingly fed not only by the basic truth that 11 September was a day of terrible carnage but also by the notion that the mode of attack was inextricablae from visual codes developed by Hollywood. During the first weeks after 9/11, numerous commentators insisted that Americans would be shaken out of their consumer habits and refuse to pay to see violent movies: it quickly became clear that music would play a special role as a cultural first responder on this new landscape.

Along with widely-circulated photographs and the New York Times series of impressionistic biographical life stories (“Portraits of Grief”) popular song became the most widely-accepted “authentic” vehicle for commemorating American loss and expressing the grief and confusion that ensued after the attacks. For months and years after 9/11 popular musicians in the United States attempted to provide efficient articulations of American attitudes in the wake of the attacks. Two key television programs in the months following 9/11 capture the general outlines of the cultural industries’ responses to the tragedy. On ...

Article

à Becket, Thomas, Jr.  

Martha Furman Schleifer

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
26 May 2010

(b Philadelphia, PA, July 19, 1843; d Philadelphia, PA, 1918). American pianist, singer, educator, and composer. He studied music with his father Thomas à Becket Sr. (b 17 March 1808; d 6 Jan 1890) and in Philadelphia public schools. The father, a music teacher, actor and composer, wrote Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. In 1855 Thomas à Becket Jr. performed at the Walnut Street Theatre in a work written by his father. He developed into one of the finest, most sought after accompanists in the city, joining with leading artists and singing groups. Member and president of the Mendelssohn Club, he sang in a series of 35 light operas produced at the Amateur Drawing Room (1868–72) and accompanied the Orpheus Club (1877–98). An important educator, from 1873 until he died à Becket taught and played the organ at Girard College, a residential school for orphaned boys. À Becket became a member of a group of professional musicians who evaluated music teaching methods in the Philadelphia Public Schools. À Becket family archives at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts include diaries (...

Article

A&M  

David Buckley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
2001

American record company. It was founded in Los Angeles in 1962 by the former US army trumpeter Herb Alpert and the promoter-producer Jerry Moss. For its first few years, A&M depended largely on revenues from Alpert’s own recordings. His easy-listening instrumental music recorded with the Tijuana brass had sold over 20 million copies by 1968, when the company’s turnover was $50 million. In 1966 A&M also scored success with Sergio Mendes and the Sandpipers’ single, “Guantanamera.” Moss, however, was keen to broaden the appeal of A&M, and began recording such West Coast artists as Captain Beefheart and Dr John. In 1969 the label opened its first British office and by the early 1970s A&M also signed American recording deals with such artists as Procol Harum, The Move, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Cliff, and Cat Stevens.

By the 1970s A&M were established as the most successful independent record label in the United States. In March 1977 it signed the British punk group the Sex Pistols, but dropped it after six days after complaints from other A&M artists. A&M showed more commitment to the new wave by signing the radio-friendly act The Police. In ...

Article

A’g̈litit  

J. Richard Haefer

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2014
Published online:
03 September 2014

Suspension rattle of Iñupiat peoples of Alaska and Canada. Several dozen fin-shaped, 2-cm pieces of walrus tusk are sewn on a dancer’s arm wrapping made from a strip of sealskin about 25 to 30 cm long. Around the top of the wrapping is stitched a circle of polar bear fur. Some believe that the sound of the rattle represents the north wind....

Article

A-R Editions  

Jean M. Bonin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
11 February 2013

Firm of music publishers. It was founded in New Haven in 1962 by Gary J.N. Aamodt and Clyde Rykken to provide modern critical editions of music of historical interest and artistic integrity for scholars, students, and performers of Western art music. The “Recent Researches” series were launched in 1964 with volumes of music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods; it has since expanded to span the history of Western music. Another series is dedicated to oral traditions in music. The series Recent Researches in American Music was initiated in 1977 in collaboration with the Institute for Studies in American Music. In 1968 the firm moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and the same year took over the production and distribution of the Yale University Collegium Musicum series of historical editions. Starting in 1988, the company has served as publisher for Music of the United States of America (MUSA), a set of scholarly editions, in collaboration with the American Musicological Society and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Other projects have included A-R Special Publications (for performers) and a three book series co-published with the Music Library Assocation....

Article

Aaron, Abe  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

[Alvin]

(bToronto, Jan 27, 1910; dCanada, Nov 1970). Americanreed player. He played alto saxophone and in 1942 recorded with Jack Teagarden. After moving to Hollywood he performed and recorded with the bandleaders Horace Heidt (1943–5, 1948–9) and Skinnay Ennis (1945–8), then toured Europe and Asia and recorded with Les Brown, first on clarinet and alto saxophone (...

Article

Aarons, Al(bert N.)  

Thomas Owens

revised by Barry Kernfeld

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

(b Pittsburgh, March 23, 1932; d Laguna Woods, CA, Nov 17, 2015). American trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He studied music in Pittsburgh (1947–50), in Evanston, Illinois (with Renold Schilke of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 1951–3), and at Wayne State University, Detroit (mid-1950s), where he worked for seven nights a week in the band at the Flame Show Bar. From 1956 to 1957 he played at Klein’s Showbar with Yusef Lateef, Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell, Louis Hayes, and Tommy Flanagan, after which he was a member of Barry Harris’s band at the Bluebird Inn. He performed with Wild Bill Davis (1961), then joined Count Basie while working in a club in Washington, DC. He toured and recorded with Basie from August 1961 to July 1969; he appears as a soloist with the group on Back to the Apple on the Swedish television broadcast One O’Clock Jump...

Article

Abadá  

John M. Schechter

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2014
Published online:
01 July 2014

Obscure drum, presumably of African origin, of the Babasué (Babassuê) syncretic sect of Belem, Pará, Brazil. It might be related to the atabaque. The body is slightly conical and the single head is secured by a hoop that is laced to four iron hooks that jut from the body below the upper rim. ...

Article

Abate, Greg  

Gary W. Kennedy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

(b Fall River, MA, May 31, 1947). American alto saxophonist. He attended the Berklee School of Music (1966–71), after which he moved to Hollywood and worked in various local bands. He later toured internationally as a member of Ray Charles’s orchestra (1973–5), in which he succeeded David “Fathead” Newman, and then settled in Providence, Rhode Island, where he led a fusion group, Channel One (1979–84). He was a regular member of Artie Shaw’s orchestra from 1985 to 1987, and continued to work with him intermittently until 1994; during this time he also co-led a quintet with the leader of Shaw’s band, Dick Johnson. Abate performed in California, Quebec, and Spain with Jerome Richardson, and appeared with Red Rodney at Town Hall, New York, in a tribute concert to Charlie Parker. In 1991 he made his first recording as a leader and by the late 1990s he was working mainly on the East Coast and in Europe. An effective bop soloist, he has often worked in groups incorporating two saxophones. He also plays tenor and soprano saxophone, and flute....

Article

Abbate, Carolyn  

Paula Morgan

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(b New York, Nov 20, 1955). American musicologist. She studied at Yale University (BA 1977), and subsequently at Munich and Princeton, where she took the doctorate in 1984 with a dissertation on Wagner's Parisian Tannhäuser. She joined the faculty at Princeton in 1984, and was appointed professor there in 1991. She has also held visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the Free University of Berlin and Harvard University. She was awarded the Dent medal in 1993. Abbate's primary interests are the history of opera, particularly Wagner, music and language and the metaphysics of musical performance. Her work centres on systematic criticism of methods in operatic interpretation, musical semiotics and narrative, the concept of voice in music, and music and gender. Her later research involves operatic performance and vocal power as a motif in music, philosophy and literature from the Enlightenment to the 20th century.

‘Tristan in the Composition of Pelleas’, ...

Article

Abbey, Leon  

Rainer E. Lotz

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

(Alexander)

(bMinneapolis, May 7, 1900; dMinneapolis, Sept 15, 1975). Americanbandleader and violinist. He began his career playing light and classical music as a member of J. Rosamond Johnson’s orchestra (1920–25). In 1925 he recorded as a soloist with Clara Smith (If you only knowed, Col. 14058D, and You better keep the home fires burning, Col. 14062D) and began to lead his own band. The following year he directed the Savoy Bearcats, and in 1927 he reorganized the group for a tour of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay; he also took a band to England. Between 1928 and 1939 he toured extensively in Europe and visited India twice. After returning to the USA he organized a band in 1940 for Ethel Waters, toured with a small group, and then settled in Chicago, where he played regularly with a trio until 1964. Although he was not a jazz soloist, Abbey employed excellent sidemen, including Fletcher Allen, Emile Christian, Bill Coleman, Peter DuConge, and Crickett Smith. His jazz recordings as a leader remain unissued except for ...

Article

Abbott, Emma  

H. Wiley Hitchcock

revised by Katherine K. Preston

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(b Chicago, Dec 9, 1850; d Salt Lake City, Jan 5, 1891). American soprano and impresario. She studied first with her father and by the age of nine was performing professionally. She joined an itinerant concert troup in 1866 and after it disbanded went to New York to study with Achille Errani; her concert début there was in December 1871. In 1872 she went abroad to study with Sangiovanni in Milan and Marchesi, Wartel and Delle Sedie in Paris. Her operatic début at Covent Garden was as Marie in La fille du régiment (2 May 1876), but her contract was cancelled when she refused to sing Violetta on moral grounds.

Abbott secretly married Eugene Wetherell (d 1889); in 1876 they returned to the USA, where she gave concerts. Her American operatic début was in New York on 23 February 1877, again as Marie. In ...

Article

Abbott, George  

Sylvia Stoner-Hawkins

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
04 October 2012

(b Forestville, NY, Jan 25, 1887; d Miami Beach, FL, Jan 31, 1995). American stage director, producer, playwright, and actor. During a 92-year career in the theater Abbott influenced the development of musical comedy and helped launch many important careers. He made his Broadway acting debut in 1913 and continued to act during the 1920s. He also began working as both a playwright and director. After his first hit, The Fall Guy, Abbott began to write and stage fast-paced melodramas. In 1932 he co-produced a farce called 20th Century; it was in this genre that he defined a fast-paced theatrical style that became known as the Abbott Touch. He was the leading director of musical comedies. Abbott also wrote the books for On your Toes (1936), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), and Pal Joey (1940), the scores of which were composed by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. In ...

Article

ABC-Paramount  

Christopher Doll

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
11 February 2013

[ABC]

Record company. Founded in 1955 in New York by American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, it was coeval with the birth of rock and roll, although a couple of years passed before the label produced hits in that genre, with such songs as Danny and the Juniors’ “At the Hop” (1957) and “Rock and roll is here to stay” (1958). It achieved sustained success with less boisterous pop music, particularly the work of Paul Anka (“Diana,” “Put your head on my shoulder,” and “Puppy Love”). The rest of the company’s output comprised children’s, spoken word, ethnic, jazz, and rhythm-and-blues records.

From the late 1950s the label attracted many successful African-American artists, including Fats Domino and B.B. King; after signing in 1959 Ray Charles scored his first number one pop single in 1960 with “Georgia on my Mind” and his first number one album in 1962 with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music...

Article

Abdul-Malik, Ahmed  

John Curry

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

(bNew York, Jan 30, 1927; dNew York, Oct 2, 1993). Double bass and ‘ūd player. His early influences included the music played and sung by his father, who was Sudanese, and the Middle Eastern and East European music he heard growing up in Brooklyn’s multiracial community. He began learning violin at the age of seven and later studied double bass, piano, and tuba and attended the High School of the Performing Arts in New York. At this time he played Greek, Syrian, and Gypsy music professionally at weddings and other occasions. After playing double bass with Art Blakey (1945–8), Don Byas (1946), Sam “the Man” Taylor (1954), and Randy Weston (1954–7) he worked with Thelonious Monk (1957–8), with whom he recorded in performance at the Five Spot in New York and appeared on television in the CBS series “The Seven Lively Arts,” as well as on “The Sound of Jazz” (both ...

Article

Abdullah, Ahmed  

Gary W. Kennedy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

[Bland, Leroy ]

(b New York, May 10, 1947). American trumpeter and leader. He began on trumpet at the age of 13, studying formally while in college. In the 1960s he took up Islam and adopted his Muslim name. After working briefly with the Master Brotherhood he toured with rhythm-and-blues bands. In 1972 he formed his group Abdullah, which often included Vincent Chancey, and worked as music director for the dancer Diane McIntyre (1973–83). Having been involved with Sam Rivers’s Studio Rivbea from 1972, he appeared at the studio’s opening with the group Melodic Art-tette, with Charles Brackeen, Ronnie Boykins, and Roger Blank. Most notably he performed and recorded with Sun Ra’s Arkestra from 1975 until 1978, and again regularly from c1988, continuing with the band after the leader’s death in 1992.

Abdullah worked as a sideman with Rivers’s big band (1977–8), Hamiet Bluiett, Arthur Blythe (...

Article

Abeles, Harold F(red)  

Jere T. Humphreys

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
23 February 2011

(b New York, March 10, 1945). American music educator and scholar. He received degrees from the University of Connecticut (BS 1966, MA 1968) and the University of Maryland, College Park (PhD 1971). He served on the faculties of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (1972–5), Indiana University (1975–82), and Teachers College, Columbia University (1982–). At Teachers College he served as coordinator of music education, chair of the Arts and Humanities Department, and director of the Division of Instruction. He is coauthor (with C.R. Hoffer and R.H. Klotman) of Foundations of Music Education (1984, 2/1994) and coeditor (with L. Custodero) of Critical Issues in Music Education: Contemporary Theory and Practice (2010). He wrote chapters for the Handbook of Music Psychology (1980, 2/1996) and The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning...

Article

Abenaki  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
22 September 2015

Article

Abene, Mike  

Gregory E. Smith

revised by Barry Kernfeld

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2002
Published online:
2003

[Michael Christian Joseph, Jr.]

(bNew York, July 2, 1942). American pianist, arranger, and composer. His father was a guitarist and bandleader. Abene performed and recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in Marshall Brown’s International Youth Band (1958) and studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music (1959–61), though he is primarily self-taught. After working with Clark Terry, Jimmy Nottingham, and others at the Cork ’n Bib on Long Island (1960) he played piano with Don Ellis (1960–61), Maynard Ferguson (1961–5), for whom he also wrote arrangements, Buddy Rich, Harry Edison, and Georgie Auld (in Las Vegas, 1963). From the mid-1960s he performed regularly in New York at the Half Note (with the quintets led by Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and by Bill Berry and Richie Kamuca, 1965–7), Bradley’s (1972–5), Sweet Basil (1978), and Freddy’s (with the singer Barbara Rankin, ...

Article

Abercrombie, John  

Barry Long

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
04 October 2012

(b Port Chester, NY, Dec 16, 1944; d Cortlandt Manor, NY, Aug 22, 2017). American jazz guitarist, composer, and bandleader. He grew up in Greenwich, CT, and began playing guitar at the age of 14. He was primarily self taught until he studied at the Berklee College of Music (1962–6) and with Jack Petersen. Abercrombie joined Johnny Hammond’s touring band after the blues organist had spotted him performing with other Berklee students at Paul’s Mall in Boston. After studying briefly at the University of North Texas, in 1969 he moved to New York where he performed and recorded in Billy Cobham’s jazz-rock band Dreams (1970), joined Chico Hamilton’s group, and recorded with Gato Barbieri (1971), Barry Miles (1972), and Gil Evans (1974). Abercrombie attracted wider attention performing with Cobham’s fusion band Spectrum from 1974. He also toured with Jack DeJohnette and recorded his debut album, ...