Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Bracing for Bad Days, Operas and Orchestras Batten Down Hatches
No clowns in Detroit, no pops in Pasadena.
Michigan Opera Theater has canceled a production of Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” because of the economy’s southward plunge. The Pasadena Symphony Orchestra has abandoned plans for three pops concerts.
As it has everywhere else these days, the economic crisis has hit classical music, a particularly fragile corner of the nonprofit world that depends as much on donations as on ticket sales. Most managers are only in the fretting stage, but the plunge in stock prices, the credit squeeze and feelings of diminished wealth among donors and ticket buyers have begun to have concrete effects in a few places.
Orchestras and opera companies are cutting costs, eliminating rehearsals and keeping a tighter rein on overtime. New York City Opera, already walloped by a canceled season because of renovations to its house, gave employees two days off this month because of a payroll crunch. The Metropolitan Opera is making cutbacks in its health insurance for administrative staff. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been hit by increased borrowing costs. The Pasadena Symphony Orchestra has also canceled its next symphony concert, which was to have taken place next month.
“It hurts a lot,” said Tom O’Connor, the executive director of the Orchestras of Pasadena, which includes the symphony and the pops. “But I’ve been in the business almost 40 years. You just have to think imaginatively: how can we make sure music is always available to people in one form or another?”
In the opera world, some companies have reduced the draw on their endowment that helps pay for operations, said Marc A. Scorca, the president and chief executive of Opera America, an association of 114 companies. And at some houses, donors are asking for more time to fulfill multiyear pledges.
“These are facts which are just flowing in,” Mr. Scorca said. “Everyone is examining every expenditure to see if there’s a more economical way to move forward. It’s so hard to know how it’s going to play out, because it’s so early in season.”
The situation is particularly dire in Detroit, where each season Michigan Opera usually presents five productions, with five or six performances each.
In addition to canceling “Pagliacci” next spring, the company is letting three employees go, giving up on a big Wagner production next year in favor of the less financially taxing “Don Giovanni” and doing without the final performance in an April run of Donizetti’s “Elixir of Love.” That performance had been scheduled to take place at the same time as a Final Four game of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, at nearby Ford Field. Management thinks it can make more money renting out its parking lot to fans.
“The community is hurting so badly, particularly the corporations, and also a lot of our individuals,” said David DiChiera, the company’s general director. “They’re not even quite sure of the value of their portfolio. It makes giving worrisome on their part.”
Mr. DiChiera said that the only fiscally prudent thing to do to keep the budget balanced was to cancel next spring’s “Pagliacci,” for a saving of up to $500,000. “I’d rather just not do a production rather than jeopardize the standard and quality of the production itself,” he said. That is the mantra of music administrators: Do not damage the musical product.
Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, said in a memorandum to his staff that the company was looking at many ways to control costs “without affecting the quality of productions.” The measures could include cutting travel and entertainment expenses and overtime, he said.
For now, Mr. Gelb said, ticket sales are slightly up over last year. “It is likely that ticket sales will be affected” by the financial crisis, he said. “We anticipate that our fund-raising will also suffer.”
In an interview last week, Mr. Gelb said the Met was still expecting to break even this season, after an $11 million deficit last year. He said most of that deficit had been expected under a five-year-old economic plan.
He added that the Met was trying to save money by scheduling rehearsals more efficiently and cutting production costs in ways unnoticeable to the audience, like using less expensive costume material or outsourcing the making of costumes.
The full picture of the effects on fund-raising will become clearer toward the end of the year, when many donations are made for tax planning reasons and after bonuses are bestowed.
In Pasadena, where there are about eight concerts a year, matters were all too clear this month. The orchestra’s endowment had dipped below the original $5.8 million gift that established it, so according to its rules no money could be drawn off to finance operations, Mr. O’Connor of the Orchestras of Pasadena said. The endowment’s high point a few years ago was $8.3 million. Several donors also said they could not give as much because of hits to their portfolios, he said.
Some of the larger orchestras are holding their own for now. The Philadelphia Orchestra recently said it had surpassed by $5 million its goal of raising $125 million for the endowment. But the endowment’s overall market value dropped to $160 million at the end of September from a recent peak of $220 million, the orchestra said.
Subscription sales are slightly down, but single-ticket sales remain strong, said the orchestra’s president and chief executive, James Undercofler. He said the orchestra had reduced spending as much as possible. “There are further cuts you can make, but they start to injure the mission of the organization,” he said.
In July, Mr. Undercofler said the orchestra had canceled a European tour in the summer of 2009 because of high costs and weak corporate support.
The New York Philharmonic’s endowment has also dropped, to $178 million on Sept. 30 from $205 million on June 30, the orchestra said. The endowment value that is used to calculate the draw is generally based on the average performance over three years, so the impact of the recent downturn is blunted.
Zarin Mehta, the Philharmonic’s president, said on Monday that no concrete steps had yet been taken to deal with the crisis, which he said was sure to have an effect. “We’re looking to see how we’re going to tighten our belts,” he said.
The Chicago Symphony last week disclosed its financial results for last season, reporting a modest surplus, strong fund- raising and increased ticket sales, but cited higher costs for outstanding bonds issued for the renovation of Symphony Center.
In contrast to the grim economic times, the Chicago Symphony’s news release had an exultant tone. It cited the orchestra’s “extraordinary artistic and financial successes,” its “remarkable achievements” and a “new era in the history of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”
Saturday, October 25, 2008
DISPUTE AT EBENEZER BAPTIST TAKES TO THE STREETS: Church members protested on Sunday the ouster of t
"And There Was Light"
Uzee Brown Jr. '72
Members of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church protest
DISPUTE AT EBENEZER BAPTIST TAKES TO THE STREETS: Church members protested on Sunday the ouster of their choir director.
The demonstrators held placards reading “Warnock Lies” and “Bring Back Dr. Uzee Brown,” a reference to the recently departed choir director who heads the Department of Music at Morehouse College.
One protester, former choir member Gloria Bell, was handcuffed and taken away and given a trespass warning by National Park Service rangers. Bell refused to leave the sidewalk saying it was city property. Park ranger Clark Moore said it was Park Service property.
Church leaders said Warnock, who preached his first sermon at Ebenezer three years ago, wasn’t available for comment Sunday morning at the modern Horizon Sanctuary, where services now are held, the paper reported. But shortly after the 11 a.m. service started, a dozen members of the church’s board of deacons walked across Auburn Avenue to the historic church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached his message of nonviolence. They voiced support for Warnock there.
“The current protest by seven members of Ebenezer’s more than 3,000 members clearly does not represent the consensus of the body,” said deacon chairman Phillip Finch, 55, a lifelong member.
Across the street, on a sidewalk outside the national park limits, protestors received a mixed reaction from parishioners leaving the early service.
The article states that the protestors included choir president Lydia Walker, who insisted that Warnock has shaken up the church staff without regard to the feelings of some longtime members and he is accused of not sharing the church’s finances with them.
Warnock addressed the protesters accusations during his 8 a.m. service saying that while they might not understand everything he does, they must trust in his plans for the future.
A handful of church members protested Sunday morning in front of Ebenezer Baptist Church, decrying the ouster of the historic church’s choir director and demanding the Rev. Raphael Warnock step down as senior pastor.
The six demonstrators held placards reading “Warnock Lies” and “Bring Back Dr. Uzee Brown,” a reference to the recently departed choir director who heads the Department of Music at Morehouse College.
One protester, former choir member Gloria Bell, was handcuffed and taken away by National Park Service rangers in front of the church where she was baptized more than 50 years ago.
However, the short quote from the pastor is what I find most troubling. From the AJC article:
Warnock addressed the controversy during the 8 a.m. service, telling worshipers that while they might not understand everything he does, they must trust in his plans for the future. “Any effort to plant the seeds of dissension in the church is by definition a demonic effort,” he said to cheers from the congregation. “I’m glad that the devil has no power here.”
Further, the implication that those who dare voice dissent are engaged in a "demonic effort" is ridiculous. The pastor of such a historic church should have more respect for the right to dissent.
I'm not sure that taking to the streets to protest your pastor is the best way to dissent. But at these large Baptist churches which are Pastor-Ruled or Staff-Ruled and less than transparent, what option are the members really left with?
Friday, October 24, 2008
Uganda: A Musician's Take On Jazz
Uganda: A Musician's Take On Jazz
The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
OPINION
22 October 2008
Posted to the web 23 October 2008
Tshaka Mayanja
Jazz is receiving a lot of time and space in both the print and electronic media in Uganda these days. This is a good thing if only that the stories were accurate. Although the saying goes that all publicity is good publicity I believe jazz has been marketed so badly in Uganda, so much so that it is being described as music for the expatriates, wannabes, show offs and the filthy rich. And it is quite far from the truth!
It only appears that way because the jazz events that have happened so far are priced so highly, that some real jazz fans cannot afford to attend. In the end, it's those that can afford to attend that do, and almost always they have no clue what's going on. Jazz has become a social event!
Jazz started in the 'Jook joints', shibeams and dark cheap bars where cheap and deadly booze like Moonshine was sold. The poor black people in America could not afford the expensive/posh high society places so out of the Blue; they created new music called jazz, where improvisation and skill were paramount. Isn't it ironic that this poor man's music is being marketed or wrongly tagged as the Elite's music?
What is jazz?
Let's first put this out of the way; Not every song that has no words/lyrics is jazz (do not forget, there is such a thing as Vocal Jazz - Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, Carmen McCrae etc).
For some reason, whenever an artist plays an instrument, most especially a horn, people call it jazz. Kenny G is the most successful instrumentalist of all time (going by sales), but he is not a recording jazz artist and he's never claimed to be one. Isaiah Katumwa is in the same mould, and in all fairness, he mentions KennyG as a mentor.
It is very impressive and commendable what Warid Telecom and others have done by starting or planting the seed for jazz festivals in Uganda. It would have been even better if what is being marketed as 'The First Jazz Festival' in Uganda had at least, 98% jazz musicians on the bill.
The Kampala Warid Jazz Festival only had two bonafide Jazz musicians/group, out of a whopping ten advertised artistes! That's only 2% of the artistes performing at the entire festival.
By bonafide, I mean those musicians who have both recorded and published jazz music, or those who make a living playing jazz.
The organisers went on to use talented artiste Joel Sebunjo (Sundiata) to do a jazz tour in Ugandan bars so as to promote The Jazz Festival no less! Does Sundiata play jazz? He's an Afro/World musician.
The event should have been called 'The Kampala World Music Festival'. That would have encompassed all the artistes that were advertised, including the minority advertised who actually play jazz.
The problem with naming such an event as a jazz festival where jazz purveyors are the minority and giving it such mainstream publicity is that those who do not know jazz will then start misplacing various artistes into various genres where they do not belong; calling other genres jazz!
The interest of big Ugandan companies sponsoring jazz in Uganda has brought the genre into the mainstream. That is not a bad thing if it is actually what is being marketed. The problem with mass media and promotion getting involved in such a complex genre is that they end up misinforming the general public due to their lack of research or even interest in the genre.
The definition
There is nothing like a quarter, an eighth, two thirds or half jazz! It's either jazz or it isn't. Jazz is probably the genre with the most sub-genres in it. There are various sub-genres within jazz, but, and this is very important; all these sub-genres have some things in common: Improvisation, Jazz scales and notes, Jazz chords and Jazz movement. The only thing where these sub-genres differ is usually rhythm and place of origin.
The sub-genres
We have Traditional Jazz, Bebop (believed to be one of the hardest sub-genres of Jazz to play), Big Band (this involves an Orchestra), Fusion Jazz (with elements of heavy Rock music), Progressive Jazz (very abstract and almost always played by Instrument virtuosos), Smooth Jazz (has a lot of elements from Soul & R 'n' B music), Nu-Jazz (with lots of elements of Funk music, with an emphasis on Groove), South African Jazz (a mixture of Traditional South African music and Traditional American Jazz), Afro Cuban Jazz ( a fusion of Traditional American Jazz and Traditional Afro Cuban music; the creation here is credited to Dizzy Gillespie [R.I.P] and Tito Puente [R.I.P] ), Bossa Nova (a fusion of Traditional American Jazz and Brazilian music - think of Stan Getz's Girl from Ipanema) and others that we shall list subsequently.
The way forward
Let us first agree on what constitutes Jazz music, before we market it to the public as such. Let us make the masses appreciate the genre as it is, without resorting to calling it what it isn't. Jazz is strong enough and solid enough to be appreciated. Jazz music was once mainstream music the world over, played at dances and parties. Indeed when the great Louis Armstrong toured Uganda in the Sixties, the show was in Nakivubo Stadium! We may not see that happen to Jazz in our lifetime, but we're sure going to try to make people appreciate this music by pricing it right and calling it what it actually is!
TShaka Mayanja is a Nu Jazz/Funk/Reggae musician
Uganda: Qwela Takes Jazz Gospel to Hotels
Uganda: Qwela Takes Jazz Gospel to Hotels
New Vision (Kampala)
23 October 2008
Posted to the web 24 October 2008
Tony Mushoborozi
Kampala
THERE is a new generation of artistes who are fast breaking away from the traditional definition of gospel music.
Take the Qwela Jazz Band, for instance, who perform every Friday at Emin Pasha Hotel in Nakasero.
This is something that was, until lately, unheard of. A gospel band performing in an A-class hotel!
The jazz show runs from 7:00pm to 10:00pm every Friday, and the youngsters do not disappoint. For the last two-and-a-half months, gospel jazz ardent lovers have had reason to dine out at Emin Pasha.
Earlier this year, the band performed alongside Kenyan sensation Wainaina at the same venue. After the show, the band signed a deal with the hotel.
Joseph Kahirimbanyi aka Joze, the band leader helped knit the eight-member band together. His dream started when he asked his friends to do a surprise show on his mother's 60th birthday.
The songs were all from the 60s and a few were his mum's teenage favourites. The guests were gleeful and clapping all through the show, which surprised Joze. And that was his turning point.
"After the show, people asked me where my friends and I performed. That is when I realised that I could form a band," Joze says.
Tanantana the group's most loved song was written by Joze. It oscillates between patriotism and praises to God for his blessing upon Uganda. It is the best song on the band's first album, Kidepo.
Uganda: St. Cecilia Choir Turns to Modern Gospel
Uganda: St. Cecilia Choir Turns to Modern Gospel
New Vision (Kampala)
23 October 2008
Posted to the web 24 October 2008
Mathias Mazinga
Kampala
FOR over 80 years, Rubaga Cathedral's St. Cecilia mass choir has held the legacy of singing solemn hymns accompanied with organs.
However, during their fundraising show at Ggaba Beach last week, the choristers proved to their fans that they could venture into the arena of modern Gospel music with absolute success.
After singing a few Latin hymns, probably to preserve their identity, the choir performed several contemporary Gospel songs, which they accompanied with spectacular dance strokes.
The songs, which provoked the audience into dancing, included negro-spirituals like Ride the Chariot and local compositions of Andrew Nsubuga, a member of the choir, which included Yezu Okukujjukira, Njagala Mbe Mw'abo and Sinza, Tenda.
They also sang traditional songs by the legendary Joseph Kyagambiddwa, accompanied by the Ganda Bakisimba dance.
At the function, fans fundraised for the purchase of an omnibus for the choir, estimated at sh40m. Over sh10m was raised in cash and pledges.
Gospel and secular artistes who performed included Sweet Kid, Silver Kyagulanyi and Billy Kasodde.
Uganda: We Must First Know What Jazz is Before Marketing It
Uganda: We Must First Know What Jazz is Before Marketing It
New Vision (Kampala)
22 October 2008
Posted to the web 23 October 2008
Tshaka Mayanja
Kampala
JAZZ is receiving a lot of time and space in both the print and electronic media in Uganda these days.
This is a good thing only if the write ups are accurate. They are not; and contrary to the Entertainment Industry saying that all publicity is good publicity", I do not subscribe to that.
Jazz has been marketed so badly in Uganda, so much so that it is being described as music for the expatriates, 'wannabes', show- offs and the filthy rich. Nothing is so far from the truth! It only appears that way because 'Jazz' events that have happened so far are priced so highly, real Jazz fans cannot afford to attend. In the end, it is those that can afford to attend that do, and almost always they have no clue what is going on. Jazz has become a social event!
Jazz started in the 'Jook joints', shibeams and dark cheap bars where cheap and deadly booze like Moonshine was sold. The poor black people in America could not afford the expensive/posh high society places so out of The Blues; they created new music called Jazz, where improvisation and skill were paramount.
Isn't it ironic that this poor man's music is being marketed or wrongly tagged as the Elite's music? Let us define Jazz.
Ladies and Gentlemen: let us first put this out of the way; not every song that has no words/lyrics is Jaz (do not forget, there is such a thing as Vocal Jazz - Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, Carmen McCrae etc).
In addition, for some reason, whenever an artist plays an instrument, most especially a horn, people call it Jazz. Kenny G is the most successful instrumentalist of all time (going by sales), but he is NOT a recording Jazz artist and has never claimed to be one.
Isaiah Katumwa is in the same mould, and in all fairness, he mentions Kenny G as a mentor.
It is very impressive and commendable what Warid Telecom and others have done by starting or planting the seed for Jazz Festivals in Uganda. It would have been even better if what is being marketed as 'The First Jazz Festival' in Uganda had at least, 98% Jazz musicians on the bill.
The Kampala Warid Jazz Festival only has two bonafide Jazz musicians/group, out of a whopping 10 advertised artists!! That is only 2% of the entire festival. By bonafide, I mean those musicians who have both recorded and published Jazz music, or those who make a living playing Jazz.
The organisers went on to use talented artist Joe Sebunjo (Sundiata) to do a Jazz tour in Ugandan bars so as to promote The Jazz Festival no less! Does Sundiata play Jazz? He is an Afro/World musician.
The event should have been called The Kampala World Music Festival. That would have encompassed all the artists that have been advertised, including the minority advertised who actually play Jazz.
The problem with naming such an event as a Jazz Festival" where Jazz purveyors are the minority, and giving it such mainstream publicity is that those who do not know Jazz will then start misplacing various artists into various genres where they do not belong; calling other genres Jazz!
The 'interest" of big Ugandan Corporations and companies sponsoring Jazz in Uganda has brought the genre into the mainstream. That is not a bad thing if it is actually Jazz that is being marketed. The problem with mass media and promotion getting involved in such a complex genre is that they end up misinforming the public due to their lack of research or even interest in the genre.
There is nothing like a quarter, an eighth, two-thirds or half Jazz! It is either Jazz or it isn't. Jazz is probably the genre with the most sub-genres in it. There are various sub-genres within Jazz, BUT, and this is very important; all these sub-genres have some things in common: Improvisation, Jazz scales and notes, Jazz chords and Jazz movement.
The only thing where these sub-genres differ is usually rhythm and place of origin. We have Traditional Jazz, Bebop (believed to be one of the hardest sub-genres of Jazz to play), Big Band (this involves an Orchestra), Fusion Jazz (with elements of heavy Rock music), Progressive Jazz (very abstract and almost always played by Instrument virtuosos), Smooth Jazz (has a lot of elements from Soul & R 'n' B music), Nu-Jazz (with lots of elements of Funk music, with an emphasis on Groove), South African Jazz (a mixture of Traditional South African music and Traditional American Jazz), Afro Cuban Jazz ( a fusion of Traditional American Jazz and Traditional Afro Cuban music; the creation here is credited to Dizzy Gillespie (RIP) and Tito Puente (RIP), Bossa Nova (a fusion of Traditional American Jazz and Brazilian music - think of Stan Getz's Girl from Ipanema) and others that we shall list subsequently.
What is the way forward? Let us first agree on what constitutes Jazz music, before we market it to the public as such. Let us make the masses appreciate the genre as it is, without resorting to calling it what it isn't. Jazz is strong and solid enough to be appreciated. Jazz music was once mainstream music the world over, played at dances and parties. Indeed when the great Louis Armstrong toured Uganda in the 60s, the show was in Nakivubo Stadium!
We may not see that happen to Jazz in our lifetimes, but we are sure going to try to make people appreciate this music by pricing it right and calling it what it actually is!
The writer is a Nu Jazz/Funk/Reggae musician
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Rudy Ray Moore, 81, a Precursor of Rap, Dies
Rudy Ray Moore, whose standup comedy, records and movies related earthy rhyming tales of a vivid gaggle of characters as they lurched from sexual escapade to sexual escapade in a boisterous tradition, born in Africa, that helped shape today’s hip-hop, died Sunday in Akron, Ohio. He was 81.
Rudy Ray Moore as the title character in “Dolemite” (1975), a cult classic among aficionados of blaxploitation movies.
The cause was complications of diabetes, his Web site said.
Mr. Moore called himself the Godfather of Rap because of the number of hip-hop artists who used snippets of his recordings in theirs, performed with him or imitated him. These included Dr. Dre, Big Daddy Kane and 2 Live Crew.
Snoop Dogg thanked Mr. Moore in liner notes to the 2006 release of the soundtrack to Mr. Moore’s 1975 film, “Dolemite,” saying, “Without Rudy Ray Moore, there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that’s for real.”
Most critics refrained from overpraising “Dolemite,” with the possible exception of John Leland, who wrote in The New York Times in 2002 that it “remains the ‘Citizen Kane’ of kung fu pimping movies.” The film, made for $100,000, nonetheless became a cult classic among aficionados of so-called blaxploitation movies — films that so exaggerate black stereotypes that they might plausibly be said to transcend those stereotypes.
Very little of Mr. Moore’s work in any medium reached mainstream audiences, largely because his rapid-fire rhyming salaciousness exceeded the wildest excesses of even Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor. His comedy records in the 1960s and ’70s — most featuring nude photographs of him and more than one woman in suggestive poses — were kept behind record store counters in plain brown wrappers and had to be explicitly requested.
But Mr. Moore could be said to represent a profound strand of African-American folk art. One of his standard stories concerns a monkey who uses his wiles and an accommodating elephant to fool a lion. The tale, which originated in West Africa, became a basis for an influential study by the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.”
In one of his few brushes with a national audience, Mr. Moore, in a startlingly cleaned-up version, told the story on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in the early 1990s. Other characters he described were new, almost always dirtier renderings in the tradition of trickster stories represented by Brer Rabbit and the cunning slave John, who outwitted his master to win freedom.
Mr. Moore updated the story of an old minstrel show favorite, Peetie (which he changed to “Petey”) Wheatstraw, a k a the Devil’s Son-in-Law and the High Sheriff of Hell. Others in his cast were Pimpin’ Sam and Hurricane Annie. Mr. Moore became a master at “toasting,” a tradition of black rhymed storytelling over a beat in which the tallest tale — or most outlandish insult — wins.
Rudolph Frank Moore was born on March 17, 1927, in Fort Smith, Ark., where he was soon singing in church. He moved to Cleveland at 15, found work peeling potatoes and washing dishes and won a talent contest. He was drafted in 1950 and performed for his fellow soldiers as the Harlem Hillbilly, singing country songs in R&B style.
After his discharge, he resumed his pre-Army act as the turbaned dancer Prince Dumarr. He made some records as a singer under the name Rudy Moore, doing songs like “Hully Gully Papa,” who liked to “coffee grind real slow.”
His life changed in 1970 when he found himself listening to the stories of Rico, a regular at the record store in Hollywood, Calif., where Mr. Moore worked.
He was particularly captivated by Rico’s rude, rollicking stories of Dolemite, a name derived from dolomite, a mineral used in some cements. Mr. Moore perfected the Dolemite stories in comedy routines, most of which he recorded, then spent all his record earnings to make the movie “Dolemite.” A sequel, “The Human Tornado,” followed. A second sequel, “The Dolemite Explosion,” also starring Mr. Moore, may be released later this year.
Fallout Entertainment bought the rights last year to remake the original movie. Bill Fishman of Fallout said some of Mr. Moore’s famous lines would be used.
Mr. Moore is survived by four siblings; his daughter, Yvette Wesson, known as Rusty; and his 98-year-old mother, Lucille.
Violent scenes in Mr. Moore’s movies included a man’s guts being ripped out by another character’s bare hands in “Dolemite.” Almost none of the dialogue in any of his movies can be printed in a family newspaper, not to mention the language of his more than 16 comedy albums — or even many of their titles.
But what is probably his most famous line is also his most typical:
Dolemite is my name
And rappin’ and tappin’
That’s my game
I’m young and free
And just as bad as I wanna be.
Richard D’Abreu, Jr LOOK AND LIVE AVAILABLE IN E-STORES EVERYWHERE NOVEMBER 4, 2008!!
New music for people who desire to make a difference
Preview the lead-off single at www.airplaydirect.com/richarddabreujr
LOOK AND LIVE
Richard D’Abreu, Jr
From the upcoming album <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
JAZZ IN THE SPIRIT
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Richard D'Abreu's "Jazz in the Spirit"
"Jazz in the Spirit is about building community," D'Abreu emphasized. Whether it was under the jazz stage tent or within Richmond city limits, the 2nd Street Festival ensured that community was intact and thriving.
*The food was easily my second favorite part of the festival. The amazing sights and smells of foods and drinks were everywhere, and the food that I did have easily stood up to the great music.
| Sights from the 2nd Street Festival | |||||||
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The Jackson Ward community came alive this weekend with the 18th annual 2nd Street Festival. The festival kicked off on Friday night with a dance party featuring Johnny Houston & The Legends, but it wasn't until Saturday that all four performance stages would show some of Richmond's best musicians.
I started off early Saturday afternoon at the Waverly R. Crawley Main Stage to catch a little bit of Saturday's first performers, the Johnny Peyton Renaissance Big Band. Slightly unimpressed by their first tune, “In A Mellow Tone," (although an hour later I would hear them from a block away playing “one more time" and “one more once" from Count Basie's arrangement of “April in Paris," which heightened my impression of the band) I made my way over to the Joe Kennedy Jr. Jazz Stage. The Jazz Stage tent would become my home base for the festival.  The Kip Williams Quartet (Williams: drums; James “Saxsmo" Gates: saxophone; Steve Kessler: keyboard; Matt Hall: bass) launched things off at the jazz stage. Gates played with impressive tone that would not be out of place on R&B and smooth jazz recordings, but he still managed to sound just as inspired by Maceo Parker as he is by Charlie Parker.  QuintEssential Jazz (William Prentiss: flute, tenor saxophone; Christopher Moseley: trumpet, flugelhorn; Keith Wallace: keyboard; Sam Craddock: bass; Keith Henderson: percussion; Jacob Price: drums) had a great smooth sound, perfectly equipped with polished solos. Seeking something a little more earthy, I walked over to the Bistro Stage.  Ban Caribe calls its music “clave soul." Singer and steelpan drummer Kevin Davis led his band of three vocalists, electric guitar and bass, drums, congas, and flute in music clearly influenced by Afro-Cuban and Caribbean musics. Leading a cute sing-along about a “signifyin' monkey," Davis taught the children (and the rest of us) about the music's underpinning heart of the clave and about the art of storytelling through music.     Jason Gay's SoulArmy (Gay: tenor saxophone; Brian Mahne: keyboards; Alan Parker: guitar; Derrick Englert: bass; Kevin Gaines: drums) was Saturday's highlight for me. With every solo, Gay got the audience hollering for more, and Parker was equally as electrifying. An original entitled “Barack Obama" got the Obama supporters in the crowd (what seemed like every one of the festival's attendees) into the music. Covering The Police's “Walking on the Moon," Gay began with a solo, using overtones and percussive effects. A light one-drop reggae came into play and the piece eased into an extended jam of great soloing.   Sunday began in the afternoon with the Jason Jenkins Quartet (Jenkins: bass; Kevin Simpson: tenor saxophone; Anthony Dowd: keyboard; Keith Willingham: drums) on the jazz stage. Remembering the amazing lunch I had eaten the day before from Hidden Treasure restaurant, I came hungry*. I sat down with lunch from Hawk's BBQ and listened to the quartet go through standards like “Tune Up" and “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise." Simpson and Dowd both delivered exciting and climactic solos.  Vocalist Jim Branch sat in on a couple tunes and wooed the crowd.  Voices of Virginia, led by Will Griffin, felt like a church service right on 2nd Street. The youth gospel choir, accompanied only by drums and keyboards, sang and rejoiced. A young girl in the front row of the choir sang with enthusiasm and movements that were contagious. I walked away from the Community Stage uplifted.     Richard D'Abreu's “Jazz in the Spirit" (D'Abreu: alto sax, soprano sax, keyboards, vocals; Weldon Hill: keyboards; Mike Hawkins: bass; Billy Williams: drums) continued Sabbath celebrations at the festival back on the Joe Kennedy Jr. Jazz Stage. D'Abreu described his group as a “combination of gospel and jazz," noting that the two “really spring from the same root." The very first tune, “By and By," took the same energy I had just seen from Voices of Virginia and ran with it. Three female singers joined the group for “Count Your Blessings." The infectious reggaeton with a sing-along chorus felt just like a seaside party, although at times D'Abreu's alto saxophone playing sounded right out of Mardi Gras. “Jazz in the Spirit is about building community," D'Abreu emphasized. Whether it was under the jazz stage tent or within Richmond city limits, the 2nd Street Festival ensured that community was intact and thriving. *The food was easily my second favorite part of the festival. The amazing sights and smells of foods and drinks were everywhere, and the food that I did have easily stood up to the great music. | |||||||
Dolemite' Actor Rudy Ray Moore Dies
Dolemite is a 1975 blaxploitation feature film, and is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore, who co-wrote the film and its soundtrack.
Moore, who started his career as a stand-up comedian in the late 1960s, heard around that time a rhymed toast by a local homeless man about an urban hero named Dolemite, and decided to adopt the persona of Dolemite as an alter-ego in his act. He included the character on his 1970 debut album, Eat Out More Often, which reached the top 25 on the Billboard charts. He released several more comedy albums using this persona. In 1975, Moore decided to create a film about Dolemite, using many of his friends and fellow comedians as cast and crew.[1] The film was directed by D'Urville Martin, who appears as the villain Willie Green.
The film has attained something of a cult status, earning it a following and making it more well known than many of its counterparts.
Master Class: An Honor Roll in Action
A group portrait from the Jazz Masters evening: standing, from left, the host, Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; and the award winners George Benson, Toots Thielemans and Jimmy Cobb; seated, from left, Snooky Young, Lee Konitz and Rudy Van Gelder.
The alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, on receiving his 2009 NEA Jazz Masters award at the Rose Theater on Friday night, tried to disarm the pomp with wordplay.
Mr. Konitz performing at the Rose Theater on Friday after being named a Jazz Master.
“ ‘Master’ sounds a little presumptuous,” he said. “So I looked it up in the dictionary.” Arriving at “eminent,” he said, he kept looking. Then he came to a definition that felt right: “noteworthy.” Mr. Konitz dropped that word as a punch line, eliciting groans as well as applause.
It was an endearingly goofy moment in an evening girded with serious intentions. Sponsored and bestowed by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jazz Masters awards have been a rare public accolade for jazz since they began in 1982.
The ceremony, presented this year in affiliation with Jazz at Lincoln Center, celebrated the “incoming” class of inductees: along with Mr. Konitz, they were the trumpeter Snooky Young, the harmonica and guitar player Toots Thielemans, the recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, the drummer Jimmy Cobb and the guitarist and singer George Benson.
Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, served as host of the program, which included laudatory biographical films. All but a couple of the recipients performed, winningly, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. (Mr. Young and Mr. Van Gelder instead received dedications.) The introductions were the provenance of past Jazz Masters, chosen by the honorees.
That last element helped make a formal occasion feel warm and welcoming. When the trumpeter Gerald Wilson (class of 1990) and the saxophonist Frank Wess (2007) recalled meeting Mr. Young some 70 years ago, they brought reserves of old-guy wit and bluster to the stage. The trombonist Tom McIntosh (2008) welcomed Mr. Benson in avuncular fashion, as an elder making room at the table. The alto saxophonist Phil Woods (2007) saluted Mr. Konitz as a peer, but with a touch of awe: “If anyone was ever overqualified to be a Jazz Master, it’s Lee Konitz.”
There’s credible weight behind “the central significance of jazz to our nation’s history and values,” as Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, put it in his opening comments. But the evening showed how the greatest testament to jazz’s power might simply be the lifelong commitment of its practitioners.
None of the performances were perfunctory. Mr. Benson, who has spent more of his career in the pop spotlight than in jazz, seemed grateful for the chance to glide confidently through “Stella by Starlight” with the band. Mr. Cobb used his stage time as a demonstration of subtlety rather than ego, behind a quartet. And Mr. Thielemans applied the full measure of his sensitivity and charisma to a version of “What a Wonderful World,” in an unspoken but heartfelt nod to Louis Armstrong.
“How do you follow that?” Mr. Konitz mock-lamented as he took the stage. But his take on “Body and Soul” was a quiet astonishment, both inventive and respectful. He paired searching insights with an unhurried feeling, creating the impression of casual discovery.
Near the evening’s close, Mr. Gioia reflected on his tenure with the endowment, which began in 2003 and will soon come to a close. (Mr. Gioia, a poet, has resigned his post to refocus on writing.) “Nothing has been closer to my heart than the investment that we have made in jazz,” he said. The record supports his claim: in the last few years, the Jazz Masters program has expanded, with new touring and educational initiatives. One can only hope that his successor, to be appointed by the next president, will keep the faith.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Dave McKenna, Pianist Known for Solo Jazz Work, Dies at 78
Dave McKenna, a jazz pianist who began his career as a big-band sideman but became best known for his distinctive solo playing, with a powerful left hand that made a bass player seem unnecessary, died Saturday in State College, Pa. He was 78.
Dave McKenna in 1990.
The cause was lung cancer, said his companion, Liz Muir of Brookline, Mass.
Widely admired by his fellow musicians, Mr. McKenna acquired a devoted following over the years even though he rarely left the East Coast. He spent most of the last four decades of his life in Massachusetts, after moving from New York City to Cape Cod in 1966. Most listeners in other parts of the world knew his work primarily from his recordings, of which there were many.
David McKenna was born on May 30, 1930, in Woonsocket, R.I. His father, William, was a postman who played drums as a hobby; his mother, Catherine, was a pianist who gave him his first lessons on the instrument.
He first performed with local groups in Boston as a teenager before moving on to the big bands of Charlie Ventura and Woody Herman.
After serving in the Army and rejoining Ventura for a while, he worked with small ensembles led by Stan Getz and others and began long associations with two mainstays of the traditional jazz scene, the cornetist Bobby Hackett and the clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber.
After his move to Cape Cod, Mr. McKenna worked mostly as a solo pianist, occasionally in New York but more often in New England. For much of the 1980s he was the pianist in residence at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston.
Mr. McKenna made a solo album for ABC Paramount in 1955 but otherwise rarely recorded until signing with Concord Records in the late 1970s. He recorded frequently after that, as bandleader, accompanist and, most notably, unaccompanied soloist.
It was in that role, in performance and on albums with titles like “My Friend the Piano” and “Left Handed Complement,” that he gave full vent to his distinctive style. That style, rooted in the jazz piano tradition of an earlier era, was built around powerful bass lines, elegantly voiced chords and a loving approach to melodies, especially those of the Tin Pan Alley standards that were the foundation of his vast repertory. He liked to spin out long medleys united by a theme, like famous and obscure songs with “You,” “Stars” or “Spring” in the title.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was more likely to ornament a tune with elegant embellishments than to use it as a springboard for elaborate improvisations that left the melody behind.
“I don’t know if I qualify as a bona fide jazz guy,” he once said. “I play saloon piano. I like to stay close to the melody.”
Survivors also include his wife, Frances Wiggins McKenna, of Oak Island, N.C.; his sons Stephen, of State College, and Douglas, of Dennis, Mass.; a brother, Donald, of Woonsocket; two sisters, Jean O’Donnell of Woonsocket and Patricia Savard of Barrington, R.I.; and one granddaughter
Sunday, October 19, 2008
THE BIG ONE!: Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama for president.
Powell said both Obama and Republican John McCain are qualified to be commander in chief. But he said Obama is better suited to handle the nation's economic problems as well as help improve its standing in the world.
"It isn't easy for me to disappoint Sen. McCain in the way that I have this morning, and I regret that," Powell, interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," said of his longtime friend, the Arizona senator.
"But I firmly believe that at this point in America's history, we need a president that will not just continue, even with a new face and with the changes and with some maverick aspects, who will not just continue basically the policies that we have been following in recent years," Powell said.
"I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change and that's why I'm supporting Barack Obama, not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Sen. John McCain."
Powell's endorsement has been much anticipated because he is a Republican with impressive foreign policy credentials, a subject on which Obama is weak. At the same time, he is a black man and Obama would be the nation's first black president.
Powell also expressed disappointment in the negative tone of McCain's campaign, his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate and McCain's and Palin's decision to focus in the closing weeks of the contest on Obama's ties to 1960s-era radical William Ayers.
He said McCain's choice of Palin raised questions about judgment.
"I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States," Powell said
Powell, as secretary of state, helped make the case before the United Nations for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, launched in March 2003. A retired general, he also was the nation's top military commander, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the first Gulf war under President George H.W. Bush.
McCain disagreed with Powell's decision and said he has been endorsed by four other former secretaries of state, all veterans of Republican administrations: Henry Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Lawrence Eagleburger and Alexander Haig.
"Well, I've always admired and respected Gen. Powell. We're longtime friends. This doesn't come as a surprise," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday."
Asked whether Powell's endorsement would undercut his campaign's assertion that Obama is not ready to lead, McCain said: "Well, again, we have a very, we have a respectful disagreement, and I think the American people will pay close attention to our message for the future and keeping America secure."
Powell said he does not plan to campaign for Obama.
The Baroness of Jazz
The Baroness of Jazz
The saxophonist Sonny Rollins, photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter.
IF the mysterious Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter is at all remembered today, it is for her proximity to the deaths of two legendary jazz musicians. In 1955 Charlie Parker died on a sofa in her Fifth Avenue home; 27 years later Thelonious Monk died after secluding himself for years in her New Jersey house.
Thelonious Monk was among the many jazz musicians befriended (and photographed) by Pannonica de Koenigswarter, right.
Both deaths made the baroness an immediate target of tabloid headlines and a long-term subject for scurrilous gossip. Almost no one, though, beyond the insular jazz world, could possibly know her whole story: how, until her death in 1988, she championed jazz as both a friend and a generous, if rather unlikely, benefactor.
A Rothschild heiress, she offered her home to countless jazzmen as a place to work and even live, while quietly paying their bills when they couldn’t find work. She chauffeured them to gigs around New York, toured with them as a kind of racial chaperon, and was even known to confront anyone she felt was taking advantage of her friends because they were black.
“I always likened her to the great royal patrons of Mozart or Wagner’s day,” the saxophonist Sonny Rollins said in a telephone interview. “Yet she never put the spotlight on herself. I try not to talk publicly about people I knew in jazz. But I have to say something about the baroness. She really loved our music.”
The baroness first materialized in New York jazz clubs in the early 1950s like some film noir siren, right down to the raven hair and long cigarette holder. She seduced the music’s greatest figures with her friendship, the revolutionists of the bebop era: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and many others. Her illustrious family has long refused to discuss her. But now a new book, “Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats” (Abrams Image), offers a window into her personal life, providing details even her jazz intimates were probably unaware of.
The book is primarily a collection of candid photographs of the musicians taken by the baroness, and a compilation of their varied responses to a favorite question: “What are your three wishes?” On Oct. 30 an exhibition of her original notebooks collecting these snapshots and wish lists will open at the Gallery at Hermès in New York.
“Three Wishes” arrives with the implicit sanction of the Rothschild family, including a six-page introduction by a granddaughter, Nadine de Koenigswarter. The book offers more concrete information about the baroness than has ever before appeared between covers. But the source of her extraordinarily deep bond with jazz musicians remains elusive.
She was born, her granddaughter writes, in London on Dec. 10, 1913. Her full name was Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild, according to her 1935 wedding announcement in The New York Times. She was the granddaughter of Nathan Mayer, the first Lord Rothschild, and the great-granddaughter of Mayer Amschel, the Rothschild patriarch who, from the Frankfurt ghetto, orchestrated his family’s rise. Her father was Nathaniel Charles Rothschild, a partner in the family bank, whose greater passion was entomology, a hobby at which he was both gifted and exceedingly accomplished. According to a great-niece, Hannah Rothschild, who is completing a documentary about her for the BBC, the baroness’s father was plagued by clinical depression that sometimes led the family to hospitalize him. He killed himself in 1923, at 46.
Nica Rothschild, as she was known, became an aviation enthusiast and an accomplished pilot. At 21 she met a kindred spirit at Le Touquet airfield in France. Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, 31, was a French mining engineer, banker and pilot. He was also a widower with a young son, and like Nica, he was Jewish. The baron quickly proposed after just three months; her response was flight to New York. They were married at City Hall in October 1935.
The couple took up residence in Abondant, a 17th-century chateau not far from Normandy. Their first-born child, Patrick de Koenigswarter, recalled in May in an interview published in The National, an Abu Dhabi newspaper, that when the Nazis invaded France, the baron, a lieutenant in the reserves, was called up. His father “left my mother a map, with instructions: If the Germans get to this point, take the children and escape any way you can to your family in England.” Shortly thereafter, his mother did, accompanied by a nanny and a maid, on what proved to be the last train out of Paris. The baron’s mother dismissed her son’s entreaties and instructions. She died at Auschwitz.
The baron joined de Gaulle’s Free French forces and was assigned to the Congo. At his instigation his wife next moved their two children to the United States, placing Patrick de Koenigswarter and his younger sister, Janka, with the Guggenheim family on Long Island. The baroness then somehow rejoined her husband in Africa with the Free French, serving in various capacities including ambulance driver and ending the war as a decorated lieutenant.
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One little-known wartime detail lends a different sense to her later arrival in the New York jazz world. Her husband’s extended family, as well as her Hungarian-born mother’s, were nearly all killed in the Holocaust. The baroness’s adoption of New York’s predominantly black jazz family in the war’s aftermath thus seems less the act of a louche dilettante than of a survivor bent on resurrection and rebirth.
Lex Humphries
Thelonious Monk
“I believe that she could no longer live in any ivory tower after what she saw in the war,” Hannah Rothschild said in a telephone interview. “Privilege offered no protection. The fate of her own mother-in-law proved that. She had experienced the very depths of prejudice herself firsthand.”
The baron entered the French diplomatic service after the war, settling his wife and children first in Norway and then in Mexico. “My father was a very controlling person,” Patrick de Koenigswarter said. “He was adamant about punctuality, while Nica was notorious for being late. She missed appointments, sometimes by days.” He continued, “It didn’t help that my father had no particular interest in the subjects that fascinated her: art and music.”
The baroness always credited her brother, Victor, a jazz fan and amateur pianist who studied with Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson, with introducing her to jazz. Shortly before her death, though, she revealed in a rare interview for the Monk documentary "Straight, No Chaser" the moment when her interest in jazz music escalated into something more.
“I was in the throes of the diplomatic life in Mexico,” she remembered of the years 1949 to 1952, “and I had a friend who got hold of records for me. I used to go to his pad to hear them. I couldn’t have listened to them in my own house, with that atmosphere. I heard them and really got the message. I belonged where that music was. This was something I was supposed to be involved in in some way. It wasn’t long afterwards that I cut out.”
It is well known in jazz circles that the great project of the baroness’s life was the torturously unstable Monk, whom she served as a surrogate wife right alongside Monk’s equally devoted actual wife, Nellie. The baroness paid Monk’s bills, dragged him to an endless array of doctors, put him and his family up in her own home and, when necessary, helped Nellie institutionalize him. In 1958 Monk and the baroness were stopped by the police in Delaware. When a small amount of marijuana was discovered, she took the rap for her friend and even served a few nights in jail.
People have always asked why. What drew her to him so intensely? Was it sex, drugs or groupie-esque infatuation? Clearly her steadfast devotion to Monk’s music propelled their relationship, which both maintained was platonic. In light of her father’s history, though, it seems possible that the underlying bond was love and childhood loss. In Monk, she may have been drawn to the same anguished brilliance that had consumed her father, whom she could not save.
The introduction to “Three Wishes” still leaves unanswered many questions that pursued the baroness throughout her life. Did she abandon her children in her headlong embrace of the jazz life, or were they taken from her? Did she enable addiction in the musicians she loved? Did she buy them drugs? Did she use drugs herself?
These questions once loomed large in her mystique. As her back story deepens, however, their sense of enormity recedes. The baron divorced his wife in 1956 after the scandalous publicity surrounding Charlie Parker’s death in her home. Shaun de Koenigswarter, the couple’s youngest son, recently confirmed that the baron also got custody of the three younger children, Berit (born in 1946), Kari (1950) and himself (1948). “I am the only child who never lived with my mother after she settled in New York in 1953,” he said in an e-mail message, adding that his four siblings lived with her during different periods.
That the baroness in fact lost custody of her three youngest children as a consequence of her love of jazz further illuminates the maternal quality of her presence on the scene. Is it any wonder that she clung to her musicians like family?
“She realized that jazz needed any kind of help it could get,” Mr. Rollins said, “especially the musicians. She was monetarily helpful to a lot who were struggling. But more than that, she was with us. By being with the baroness, we could go places and feel like human beings. It certainly made us feel good. I don’t know how you could measure it. But it was a palpable thing. I think she was a heroic woman.”
It has taken the actual family she left behind a long time to arrive at a similar conclusion. “Not all members of our family were enthused about the life she chose to lead (especially our father!),” Shaun de Koenigswarter wrote. “But over the years, many of those who had initially disapproved — particularly in light of the many viciously biased and racist press reports about her — came to understand and appreciate what she was all about.”
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Tuning In to the Organ, and Not Just in Church
If anyone had told J. Michael Barone a quarter-century ago that the radio program about organ music that he was starting would still be going strong today, he might have dismissed the idea.
J. Michael Barone, a celebrity in the world of organ music, at the St. Paul studio that produces his “Pipedreams” radio program.
'Pipedreams' Program Archive. 
J. Michael Barone playing at Wooddale Community Church in Eden Prarie, Mn.
But this month is the 25th anniversary of “Pipedreams” as a weekly national show, distributed to public and commercial stations by American Public Media of St. Paul. Even Mr. Barone sometimes has trouble believing it.
“I feel as if I had walked down a corridor past an open door, gone in and started doing the show, and been waiting ever since for someone to return and kick me out,” he said the other day on a short visit to New York to attend a concert by the young virtuoso Cameron Carpenter (on a digital organ).
The radio audience is not huge but it is devoted and steady. Appearing on more than 150 stations (down from a peak of 180) across the country, the show draws about 250,000 listeners, Mr. Barone says, and more worldwide who listen on the program’s Web site, pipedreams.org.
“Interestingly, my two largest listening audiences are on commercial classical music stations,” he said, with those stations drawing an average quarter-hour audience of about 9,000 each in Chicago and Dallas, where the 90-minute program is broadcast on Sunday evenings. He hopes to pick up a few more stations after January by making the program available in one- and two-hour formats.
In some places it is hard to find. In New York in recent years, devotees have had to chase it across the lower end of the FM spectrum, where at 10 on Saturday nights it can now be found on two Long Island stations, WLIU (88.3) and WCWP (88.1); in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, it has no radio home at all. XM Satellite Radio Channel 133 carries “Pipedreams” on Sundays — at 5 a.m. Eastern time.
“I suspect organ music will always be a niche,” Mr. Barone conceded. “If a million people listened to ‘Pipedreams,’ I’d be thrilled. I don’t think there’s anything about the organ that should get in the way of its being embraced by many more people than it is today.”
To people who care about the instrument and its music, Mr. Barone, 62, is a celebrity, his rich bass-baritone voice as instantly recognizable as his long, gray (and thinning) ponytail and full beard.
Among his regular listeners is Alan Koole, a truck driver from Wyoming, Mich., who until he retired in May used to record “Pipedreams” on Sunday mornings and then play it over and over on the road in his tractor-trailer rig. “Traveling, I really appreciated what he’s doing,” Mr. Koole said in a telephone interview. “I had no idea there was so much music specifically for organ.”
Neither did Mr. Barone before his early teens, when he began listening to recordings of organ music and then playing at his Presbyterian church in Kingston, Pa. He was encouraged by a friend there, Robert Wech, who later attended Oberlin College and persuaded Mr. Barone to follow in 1964.
“He suggested it would be a good place for me, even though he knew I wasn’t going to go into music as a profession, because of the limits of my executive skill as a player,” Mr. Barone said. He went on to earn a degree in music history at Oberlin and took courses at the conservatory there, but it was by working at the 10-watt student-run radio station that he stumbled into his profession.
“When I realized I was going to get out after four years, I thought maybe I could announce classical music,” he said. He was offered the job of music director at a new radio station at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., after answering an advertisement, and drove from Ohio to take a look.
“So on the 20th of August, 1968, I showed up, and I believe my intent was to work for a year or two, pay back some of my student loans, take a deep breath and jump on the academic bandwagon again,” he recalled. “Forty years later, I’m still here, trying to figure out what I’ll do when I grow up.”
St. John’s University Radio eventually became Minnesota Public Radio, a nonprofit private corporation that, as American Public Media, also distributes “A Prairie Home Companion,” among other programs.
As Minnesota Public Radio’s classical music director for 25 years, Mr. Barone could acquire and listen to as many recordings as he wanted, starting with the notable organists of his youth: E. Power Biggs, Virgil Fox, Richard Elsasser, Catherine Crozier. He has kept listening and discovering instruments and organists from all over the world.
Tuning In to the Organ, and Not Just in Church Published: October 17, 2008
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He started a weekly Sunday night organ program there in 1970; that eventually led to a pilot series of 14 programs starting in January 1982 with performances recorded at the 1980 national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Nicholas D. Nash, the station’s program director at the time, suggested calling the series “Pipedreams.”
It was so well received that “Pipedreams” came back as a weekly program in October 1983, and has been on the air ever since. Mr. Nash’s brother-in-law and sister, credited in every broadcast as Mr. and Mrs. Wesley C. Dudley, have provided financial support from the beginning.
Mr. Barone still plays the organ occasionally, and is a co-founder of the Chamber Music Society of St. Cloud. He also collects Citroën cars, including two of those 2CV’s that look as if it would take a can opener to peel the sunroofs back, and is president of the Citroën Club of Minnesota. One thing he never expected was to become “Michael Barone of ‘Pipedreams.’ ”
That persona led him to an advisory role in pipe organ installation projects like those at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. At an organ recital marathon at the Kimmel two years ago, he was master of ceremonies when the newly installed instrument (by Dobson Pipe Organ Builders of Lake City, Iowa) developed a couple of stuck notes after Mr. Carpenter played his transcription of the last movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony on it.
“Cameron, you broke it,” Mr. Barone observed. “This is very expensive. Are you insured?”
The organ wasn’t broken, of course, and unlike some of its counterparts in concert halls elsewhere, it has a sizable endowment and is often heard. Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York do not have pipe organs, a situation that worries Mr. Barone, though they use digital instruments when they need them.
“The digital or electronic or synthetic organs of the 21st century have made remarkable advances in their ability to give a convincing impression of the pipe organ’s effect,” Mr. Barone said, “but the very best pipe organ is still able to create an experience and an impression that has not found a synthetic equivalent.”
Organists like Mr. Carpenter disagree, and Mr. Barone — like Paul Jacobs and Hector Olivera, two other contemporary organists he admires — does not dismiss digital substitutes as “toasters,” as many pipe organists do. Mr. Barone also admires Barbara Dennerlein’s jazz improvisations on the electronic Hammond B3 organ and thinks that theater organists could teach their classical counterparts a lot about technique.
On Sunday, which the American Guild of Organists and other associations have designated as a day for organ spectaculars around the country to celebrate the International Year of the Organ, Mr. Barone will help to lead the festivities in Minneapolis, a multiorganist concert on the Casavant Frères pipe organ at Central Lutheran Church.
“I’m just trying to open a door in an inviting way to provide access to this marvelous realm of thoughtful, passionate, soothing, exciting, delicious, brainy and blissful music,” he said of “Pipedreams.” “It can tell its own story, or stimulate our curiosity to discover it, if we will simply listen.”
Hearing an instrument he has not heard before, he said, “is like meeting new people and finding out how interesting they really are.”
Levi Stubbs, 72, Powerful Voice for Four Tops, Dies
Levi Stubbs, 72, Powerful Voice for Four Tops, Dies
The Four Tops, from left, in 1990: Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Levi Stubbs, Abdul "Duke" Fakir and Lawrence Payton.
DETROIT — Levi Stubbs, the gravelly-voiced, imploring lead singer of the Motown group the Four Tops, who stood out in 1960s pop classics like “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” and “Bernadette,” died on Friday at his home here. He was 72.
The Four Tops in the mid-’60s. Clockwise from bottom left, Levi Stubbs, Obie Benson, Abdul Fakir and Lawrence Payton.
The Four Tops' 50th Anniversary
Lawrence Payton's Obituary
Obie Benson's Obituary
"It's The Same Old Song" (youtube.com)
1974 medley, including "Reach Out" (youtube.com)
The Four Tops' Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Citation
Back Story With The Times’s Micheline Maynard (mp3)
The Four Tops, from left, in 1990: Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Levi Stubbs, Abdul "Duke" Fakir and Lawrence Payton.
His death was confirmed by the office of the Wayne County Medical Examiner. No cause was given. Mr. Stubbs had had a series of illnesses, including a stroke and cancer, that forced him to stop performing in 2000, although he briefly participated in the Four Tops’ 50th-anniversary concert in 2004, which was broadcast on public television.
Formed while its original members were in high school, the Four Tops were one of the most successful groups of the 20th century. They had more than 40 hits on the Billboard pop charts, including their first No. 1 single, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” in 1965.
Hugely popular abroad as well as in the United States, the group became a linchpin of Motown Records, the Detroit label started by Berry Gordy Jr., and was second only to the Temptations, with whom it was often compared, in popularity among its male artists. In 1990 the Four Tops were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Unlike the Temptations, whose members regularly changed, the Tops exhibited extraordinary loyalty, with the original four remaining together for more than 40 years. In fact, they began their singing career almost a decade before joining Motown in 1963.
In 1953 Mr. Stubbs, a student at Pershing High School in Detroit, and his friend Abdul Fakir, known as Duke, attended a birthday party at which they met two other founding members of the group, Renaldo Benson, known as Obie and Lawrence Payton, who were students at Northern High School.
(Mr. Fakir, who continues to perform with the Tops’ current lineup, is now the last surviving member.)
Originally calling themselves the Four Aims, they were rechristened the Four Tops in 1954 and signed with Chess Records, the Chicago rhythm and blues label, in 1956.
It was clear from the beginning that Mr. Stubbs, with his booming, rough-edged baritone, would be the lead singer, Mr. Fakir said in a 2004 interview. Yet many of his songs were written in a tenor range that pushed his voice higher and made it sound urgent and pleading.
Mr. Stubbs and the group did not plan a pop career, but began as jazz singers. Leaving Detroit in the mid-1950s, they headed for New York, bouncing around the nightclub circuit.
The four singers shared a studio apartment and rotated three daytime suits among them; whoever had the more important appointment got first pick, Mr. Fakir recalled.
The Tops added choreography to their act, but were advised to drop it when they toured with the jazz balladeer Billy Eckstine, who told them to master their singing. In 1963 Mr. Stubbs and the other Tops appeared on the “Tonight” show, then hosted by Jack Paar, singing a jazz arrangement of “In the Still of the Night.”
Mr. Gordy, who saw their performance, told his staff to sign them up, and assigned the songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland to shape their sound and deliver them a hit song.
It took a year before the group recorded “Baby, I Need Your Loving,” followed by their first No. 1 hits, “I Can’t Help Myself” in 1965 and “Reach Out” in 1966.
“We didn’t know what bag to put them in,” Mr. Dozier said in 2004. The three songwriters concluded that Mr. Stubbs’s booming voice should be most prominent, backed by the Tops’ harmonies; layered with vocals by a female group, the Andantes; and supported by the Motown studio band known as the Funk Brothers.
The combination worked.
“Stubbs’s bold, dramatic readings of some of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s choicest material set a high standard for contemporary soul in the mid-’60s,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said when the Tops were inducted.
Snappily dressed, even offstage, the Tops toured extensively throughout the United States and around the world, recording more hits like “It’s the Same Old Song” and “Standing in the Shadows of Love.”
In 1971 the group joined the Supremes to record a cover version of the Ike and Tina Turner song “River Deep — Mountain High.” But by then, relations with Motown were strained, and the group left the label after Mr. Berry moved it to Los Angeles.
The Tops continued to record during the 1970s and ’80s, often touring with the Temptations. Their biggest post-Motown hit was “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got,” in 1973.
Levi Stubbles was born in Detroit on June 6, 1936, a cousin of the soul singer Jackie Wilson. His younger brother, Joe, sang with the Falcons and the Contours, two rhythm and blues groups.
Mr. Stubbs is survived by his wife of 48 years, Clineice; five children, Deborah, Beverly, Raymond, Kelly and Levi Jr.; and 11 grandchildren.
Mr. Stubbs took on a side project to become the voice of a man-eating plant, Audrey II, in the 1986 musical film “Little Shop of Horrors,” and also was the voice of Mother Brain, an evil character on the cartoon show “Captain N: The Game Master,” from 1989 to 1991.
By 1995, Mr. Stubbs’s health had begun to fail, forcing him to curtail his performances. Mr. Payton died in 1997, and Mr. Benson in 2005. Mr. Fakir has continued singing with Mr. Payton’s son Roquel; a former Temptation, Theo Peoples; and Ronnie McNair, a veteran Motown singer.
Before his death, Mr. Benson said in an interview that he was saddened by performing without Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Payton.
“It’s like having one body with two limbs missing,” he said.