No matter what your beliefs may be,
we wish the very best holiday season,
full of family, friends and better health.
By CRISTINA SILVA, Associated Press Cristina Silva, Associated Press – Thu Nov 11, 3:00 am ET
Domingo, known to popular music audiences for his "Three Tenors" performances with Jose Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti, was honored as the Latin Grammy Person of the Year for his cultural and philanthrophic accomplishments during the celebration on the eve of the 11th annual awards show.
"This is a great honor for me," Domingo, 69, told the crowd, clutching a crystal trophy to his chest as his eyes teared up. "How many people seated in this room here today deserve to be the Person of the Year. I know there are many."
In previous years, presenters sang the top hits of the Person of the Year during the tribute concert. Domingo instead requested his favorite singers perform the songs that drew him to a life of music.
It was a night for every musical genre.
American harmony group The Lettermen crooned their 1968 hit, "Put Your Head on my Shoulder," while country singer Alexander Fernandez serenaded Domingo with the traditional Mexican ballad "Jurame." Jazz artist Patty Austin performed "Moon River" and Spanish performer Paloma San Basilio purred the lyrics to the Caribbean classic love song "Piel Canela."
Ricky Martin, a past recipient of the award, presented Domingo with his trophy.
But it was Domingo himself who stole the show when he stood on stage for a rousing performance of the opera standard "Granada" as images of the storied Spanish city flashed behind him on a screen. Domingo, dressed in a classic tuxedo, drew the only standing ovation of the night.
Domingo devoted his acceptance brief speech to his love for the Spanish-speaking world, deeming the connection between Spain and its former colonies "extraordinary."
"Our language, our music, our culture, our happiness is contagious and the world has been infected with that music," he said. "Every day more people listen to our music in the world."
Domingo also shared a tender moment with his son.
"If I had the choice to sing like you or be like you, I would prefer to be like you," said composer Domingo Placido Jr. before embracing his father.
On the red carpet, artists such as Spanish rapper La Mala, Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra and Mexican singer Aleks Syntek cited Domingo as a musical influence.
"He is an inspiration for all of us Latinos," said Syntek, who performed Puerto Rican pop star Luis Fonsi's "Aqui Estoy Yo" during the concert. "He is a legend."
Domingo moved at the age of 8 from Spain to Mexico City, where he studied at the National Conservatory of Music. In 1968, he debuted with The Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
He founded Operalia, a contest for opera singing, and raised million of dollars in benefit concerts for victims of disasters such as Mexico's 1985 earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.
The great maestro has made more than 100 recordings and has won nine Grammy Awards and two Latin Grammy Awards. He also maintains a busy schedule as a restaurateur and director of two opera companies, the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera.
Domingo underwent surgery to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon in March, but quickly returned to the stage.
Previous recipients of the Person of the Year honor include Gloria Estefan, Julio Iglesias and Carlos Santana.
The awards show is scheduled for Thursday at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas and will be broadcast live on Univision.
By MIKE SILVERMAN, For The Associated Press Mike Silverman, For The Associated Press
NEW YORK – Two 20th-century works that depict their composers' vastly divergent views of domestic life are on display for the New York City Opera's abbreviated fall season.
Leonard Bernstein's only full-length opera, "A Quiet Place," first performed in 1983, received its New York premiere last Wednesday night. On Sunday afternoon, the company revived Richard Strauss' "Intermezzo," which dates from 1923. They will alternate in repertory through Nov. 21.
Both performances showed the struggling City Opera at its best, with terrific casts, superb playing by the orchestra and high production values. But the Bernstein comes across as an earnest effort to resuscitate a work of limited merit, while the Strauss opus is an unexpected delight.
"A Quiet Place" was conceived by Bernstein and librettist Stephen Wadsworth as a sequel to the composer's 1952 "Trouble in Tahiti." That earlier piece is a jazzy, tuneful series of glimpses into the troubled marriage of a prosperous suburban couple named Sam and Dinah. The later work opens at Dinah's funeral and asks us to care about a family for which the term dysfunctional seems inadequate. There's the gay, schizophrenic, draft-dodging son, Junior, his sister, Dede, and Francois, who was (or still is?) Junior's lover but is now married to Dede. Sam is estranged from all of them, but eventually — after three long acts — they reconcile.
Following an unsuccessful premiere in Houston, the authors revised the work so that "Trouble in Tahiti" now appears as a series of flashbacks in the second act. But the reworking can't hide the fact that the earlier work has far more vitality than the later score.
And if "Trouble in Tahiti," for which Bernstein wrote his own libretto, has a glibness to its satire, the sequel wears its heart on its sleeve, sometimes movingly, but often with an obviousness that borders on banality.
The large cast is uniformly strong, particularly baritone Joshua Hopkins as Junior and soprano Sara Jakubiak as Dede. As Dinah, mezzo-soprano Patricia Risley provides a vivid presence (appearing as a ghost except for the flashbacks), though her voice occasionally has trouble cutting through the orchestra. As Young Sam, baritone Christopher Feigum draws an incisive portrayal of an arrogant husband who neglects his wife and son, has sex with his secretary in the office, and humiliates his defeated opponent at handball. (In one of many inspired touches in Christopher Alden's staging, Sam brandishes his trophy like a giant phallus.)
Conductor Jayce Ogren shows a firm grasp of Bernstein's rhythmically challenging score and draws clear and crisp playing from the orchestra.
"Intermezzo," for which the composer wrote his own libretto, is a far more overtly autobiographical work than "A Quiet Place." Strauss (renamed Robert Storch) made himself the long-suffering hero, and his wife, Pauline, became the hot-tempered, self-indulgent Christine. He based the slender plot on a real incident from their marriage 20 years earlier when his wife had falsely accused him of infidelity.
Musically, "Intermezzo" is not quite top-drawer Strauss, but even off the second shelf, his genius for interweaving gorgeous strands of melody shines through. Written as an extended series of conversations, interspersed with spoken dialogue, "Intermezzo" has no big set pieces such as the arias or ensembles familiar from many of his other operas. But there are some stirring orchestral interludes, as well as a glorious closing passage for the reunited couple.
Any performance of "Intermezzo" must depend to a large extent on the soprano playing the role of Christine, since she is on-stage virtually throughout. City Opera is fortunate in having Mary Dunleavy in the part. Her vibrant voice and lively acting give a warm and sympathetic quality to a character that could easily be seen as merely vain and tiresome. Her tone occasionally turns glassy on high notes, but for the most part, she fills out the lines with grace and beauty.
Baritone Nicholas Pallesen avoids smugness as best he can as Storch, and tenor Andrew Bidlack displays a ringing, full-bodied sound as the young Baron Lummer, with whom Christine takes up an innocent flirtation.
The fast-paced production by Leon Major is a treat, greatly assisted by Andrew Jackness' sliding sets. There's even a simulated toboggan track for a snow scene. Music director George Manahan conducts a buoyant performance that brings out the delicacy of Strauss' orchestral textures.
With hard economic times limiting its fall productions to just two, the company presented Christine Brewer in an all-too-brief gala concert on Thursday.
It was a welcome chance to hear one of today's few true dramatic sopranos on the stage of a New York opera house. Brewer was supposed to star in the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Wagner's "Ring" cycle in spring of 2009, but withdrew because of a knee injury.
She opened with a dazzling "In questa reggia" from Puccini's "Turandot," then offered a moving "Liebestod" from Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," and closed with a group of songs by Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern. In the latter, she showed she can lighten her voice and move into popular mode without sounding the least bit arch or affected.
From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101101/ap_en_mu/us_city_opera
1788 ~ Sarah Hale, Poet, magazine editor, wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb
• 1904 ~ Moss Hart, Tony Award-winning director of My Fair Lady (1957), playwright, married to actress Kitty Carlisle
• 1911 ~ "Sonny" Terry (Saunders Terrell), American blues singer and harmonica player
• 1929 ~ George Crumb, American composer and teacher
• 1929 ~ The Rudy Vallee Show was broadcast for the first time over NBC radio. Actually, the Rudy Vallee show had several different titles over the years, all of which were referred to by the public as The Rudy Vallee Show. Megaphone-toting Rudy and his Connecticut Yankees band were mainstays on radio into the late 1940s.
• 1930 ~ J.P. (Jiles Perry) Richardson (The Big Bopper), singer, songwriter More about The Big Bopper
• 1936 ~ David Nelson, Actor, son of entertainers Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, brother of singer Ricky Nelson
• 1936 ~ Bill Wyman, Musician with The Rolling Stones, songwriter, London restaurant owner of Sticky Fingers
• 1937 ~ Santo Farina, Steel guitar with Santo & Johnny
• 1939 ~ F. Murray Abraham, Academy Award-winning actor for his portrayal of Salieri in "Amadeus" (about Mozart), 1984.
• 1939 ~ Let’s Dance was recorded on Columbia Records. It became the theme song for the band that recorded it, the Benny Goodman Band.
• 1946 ~ Jerry Edmonton, Drummer with Steppenwolf
• 1960 ~ Brenda Lee hit #1 for the second time in the year with I Want to Be Wanted. 1960 was a very good year for the young (age 15) songstress. In addition to her first #1 smash, I’m Sorry (July 18), Lee had two other songs on the charts: Sweet Nothin’s (#4, April 18) and That’s All You Gotta Do (#6, July 4).
• 1975 ~ Looking to name your own greatest hits album something other than Greatest Hits? Do what former Beatle John Lennon did, with his package of the best. Lennon called it, "Shaved Fish".
• 1977 ~ Gary Busey began filming The Buddy Holly Story. The star was a ringer for the rock idol.
• 1999 ~ Phillip Glass' "Dracula" score makes news.
• 2001 ~ Kim Gardner, a bassist who played with several bands, including the British rock group Ashton, Gardner & Dyke, died. He was 53. Gardner, born in London, joined fellow teen-age musicians Ron Wood, Ali McKenzie, Tony Munroe and Pete McDaniels to form the Thunderbirds. Shortening their name to the Birds, the band released four singles, including Leaving Here and No Good Without You Baby, both in 1965. Gardner's next group was Ashton, Gardner & Dyke with Tony Ashton and Roy Dyke in 1968. The trio, whose albums featured a light, jazz-rock style, scored a top-three hit in Britain with Resurrection Shuffle in 1971. The group broke up a year later. Gardner also toured with Pacific Gas and Electric and other bands in the 1970s. He played bass with everyone from Eric Clapton to Bo Didley, and worked on 27 albums. Gardner also was a successful pub master and restaurateur. Gardner toured the United States regularly before settling in Los Angeles in 1973. In 1982, he started the original, 50-seat Cat & Fiddle Restaurant and Pub. Over the years, Cat & Fiddle has been a favorite destination for British rockers such as Keith Moon, Robert Plant and Rod Stewart, as well as Hollywood celebrities.
1878 ~ The opera Carmen, by Bizet, had it's first American performance but it was sung in Italian. It took another fifteen years before audiences could hear it in French, the language in which it was written.
• 1891 ~ Albert Lortzing, German composer
• 1906 ~ Miriam Gideon, American composer
• 1927 ~ Sonny (William) Criss, Saxophonist
• 1939 ~ Charlie Foxx, Singer with sister, Inez
• 1940 ~ (Eleanor) Ellie Greenwich (Ellie Gay, Ellie Gee), Songwriter
• 1941 ~ Clarinet a la King was recorded by Benny Goodman and his orchestra on Okeh Records.
• 1947 ~ Greg Ridley, Bass with Spooky Tooth
• 1950 ~ Al Jolson passed away
• 1956 ~ Dwight Yoakam, Songwriter, singer
• 1959 ~ ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic, Singer, comedian, parodies
• 1970 ~ ‘Lady Soul’, Aretha Franklin, won a gold record for Don’t Play that Song.
• 1975 ~ Elton John's Los Angeles concert was sold out at Dodger Stadium. It was the finale to his concert tour of the western U.S.
• 1978 ~ Mother Maybelle Carter (Addington) passed away
• 1978 ~ CBS Records hiked prices of many vinyl albums by one dollar to $8.98. Other labels soon joined in.
• 2001 ~ Russell "Rusty" Kershaw, a guitarist and recording artist, died of a heart attack at the age of 63. Over the course of a long career, Kershaw, the younger brother of Cajun recording star Doug Kershaw, performed with Neil Young, Chet Atkins, J.J. Cale and Charlie Daniels. Kershaw's musical career began with a small family band, Pee Wee Kershaw and the Continental Playboys. The band joined the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport in 1955 and moved on the following year to the Wheeling Jamboree on a West Virginia radio station. Doug and Rusty Kershaw went on to perform as a duo and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1957. In 1964, Rusty Kershaw started performing on his own, and worked on numerous albums with other artists. Kershaw had lived in New Orleans since 1980 when then-Gov. Edwin Edwards asked him to join the Louisiana Music Commission.
• 2003 ~ Nico Snel, conductor of the Port Angeles Symphony for 18 years, died after a battle with cancer. He was 69. Port Angeles, with a population of about 19,000, is one of the smallest cities in the nation to support a full orchestra. A search committee will spend the next two seasons looking for a new permanent conductor to succeed him. Born in Alkmaar, Holland, Snel began studying music with his father, an accomplished musician and conductor. He started with piano and then moved on to violin, and began performing when he was about 8. The family immigrated to the United States after World War II, when Snel was 15. An accomplished violinist, he went to Germany as a young man and served with the Seventh Army Symphony, becoming the organization's conductor in 1958. In the 1960s and early '70s, he worked as a conductor for the Oakland, Calif., Light Opera and the Diablo Light Opera and as director of the Oakland Temple Pageant chorus and orchestra. He moved to the Northwest in the late 1970s and conducted the Everett Youth Symphony for three years. He was named conductor of the Seattle Philharmonic in 1980, a position he held until 1995. He became conductor of the Port Angeles Symphony in 1985, for a time serving both orchestras.
• 1885 ~ Giovanni Martinelli, Opera singer, tenor with Metropolitan Opera for 30 seasons
• 1904 ~ Paul Arma, Hungarian composer and theorist
• 1917 ~ Leopold Stokowski led the Philadelphia Orchestra in its first recording session, for Victor Records.
• 1930 ~ Dory Previn, Songwriter with André Previn
• 1939 ~ Ray Jones, Bass with Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas
• 1943 ~ Paul Zukofsky, American violinist
• 1943 ~ Bobby Fuller, Singer, guitarist with Bobby Fuller Four
• 1945 ~ Leslie West (Weinstein), Singer, musician, guitarist with Mountain
• 1945 ~ Eddie Brigati, Singer, musician with The (Young) Rascals
• 1959 ~ "Take Me Along" opened on Broadway and quickly became an American classic. Walter Pidgeon starred along with Jackie Gleason.
• 1966 ~ The Supremes rocketed to the top of the pop"album charts with "Supremes A’ Go-Go". They were the first all-female vocal group to hit the top of the LP chart.
• 1969 ~ Giovanni Martinelli passed away
• 1969 ~ Michael Tilson Thomas, the 25-year-old assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, took over for ailing conductor William Steinberg in the symphony’s appearance in New York City.
• 1971 ~ Folk singer Joan Baez received a gold record for her hit, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. It turned out to be her biggest hit, peaking at #3 on the charts on October 2, 1971.
• 1983 ~ Celebrating its 100th anniversary, New York’s Metropolitan Opera featured a daylong concert with some of the world’s greatest opera stars. On stage at the Met were Dame Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.
• 2001 ~ Tom Baker, one of Australia's most respected jazz musicians, died of a heart attack while touring in the Netherlands. He was 49. Baker, a native of California, took up residence in Australia 30 years ago. He was a regular at Sydney's famous jazz club, The Basement. Willie Qua, drummer and co-founder of one of Australia's best-known jazz bands, Galapagos Duck, said Baker had often played as "a part-time member" of the band and was an icon of the Sydney jazz scene. Baker formed his first band, Tom Baker's San Francisco Jazz Band, in 1975, earning himself a reputation as one of Australia's very best jazz musicians. Recently he toured extensively through Europe and America.
• 1885 ~ Egon Wellesz, Austrian composer and musicologist
• 1907 ~ The "Merry Widow" opened in New York. The play starred Ethel Jackson and Donald Brian. The operetta had been introduced in Europe two years before.
• 1908 ~ A Saturday Evening Post advertisement offered a chance to buy, for the first time, a two-sided record. It was on Columbia.
• 1912 ~ Sir Georg Solti, Hungarian-born British conductor, Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the first complete recording of Wagner’s "Der Ring des Nibelungen".
More information about Gillespie
• 1921 ~ Sir Malcolm Arnold, Composer of screen scores: "David Copperfield", "The Chalk "Garden", "Suddenly, Last Summer", "Solomon and Sheba", "Island in the Sun", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Trapeze", "I Am a Camera", "The Belles of St. Trinian’s" "the Eye Witness series"
• 1924 ~ It was a big night for a big band in New York’s Cinderella Ballroom. The crowd loved the Wolverine Orchestra from Chicago and the guy on the cornet, Bix Beiderbecke, the ‘young man with a horn’.
• 1938 ~ Quaker City Jazz was recorded on the Bluebird label by Jan Savitt’s orchestra. The tune would become the theme of the band. It was not, however, recorded in the Quaker City of Philadelphia. The song was waxed in New York City.
• 1940 ~ Manfred Mann (Michael Lubowitz), Singer with Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers
• 1941 ~ Steve Cropper, Guitarist with the groups: Blues Brothers as well as Booker T and The MG’s
• 1942 ~ Elvin Bishop, Guitarist, singer with Paul Butterfield Blues Band
• 1943 ~ Ron Elliott, Guitarist with Beau Brummels
• 1946 ~ Lee Loughnane, Brass with Chicago
• 1953 ~ Charlotte Caffey, Guitar, singer with The Go-Gos
• 1955 ~ Eric Faulkner, Guitarist with Bay City Rollers
• 1957 ~ Julian Cope, Bass, guitar, singer
• 1957 ~ Steve Lukather, Guitarist with Toto
• 1958 ~ Orchestral strings were used for the first time in a rock and roll tune. Buddy Holly recorded It Doesn’t Matter Anymore, written by Paul Anka. Sadly, it would be Holly’s last studio session. The song wasn’t released until after his death in February of 1959.
• 2001 ~ George Feyer, a pianist and entertainer who played at some of New York's top hotels, died at the age of 92. Feyer, who was known for setting pop lyrics to classical music, entertained the sophisticated Manhattan cafe society for three decades. He played for decades at the Carlyle, the Stanhope and the Waldorf-Astoria. He made many recordings, including his Echoes album series, which featured Echoes of Paris and Echoes of Broadway. Born in Budapest on Oct. 27, 1908, Feyer attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where he studied with composer Sir Georg Solti. One of his first jobs was playing for silent movies. During World War II, the Nazis put Feyer on forced labor details, then imprisoned him in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp for the final year of the war. Feyer and his family moved to New York in 1951. He stopped working full time in 1982.
