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Fame (Irene Cara Song)
"Fame" is a song written by Michael Gore (music) and Dean Pitchford (lyrics) and released in 1980, that achieved chart success as the theme song to the ''Fame'' film and TV series. The song was performed by Irene Cara, who played the role of Coco Hernandez in the original film. It was also her debut single as a recording artist. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1980, and the Golden Globe Award the same year. In 2004, it finished at number 51 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. History Irene Cara played the role of Coco Hernandez in the movie ''Fame'' and sang the vocals for the theme song. The music for the song was by Michael Gore and the lyrics were by Dean Pitchford. The song earned Cara a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The movie became an "overnight sensation". The song won an Oscar for best film theme song in 1981. In July 1982, it was re-released on the back of the successful TV s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irene Cara
Irene Cara Escalera (March 18, 1959 – November 25, 2022) was an American singer and actress who rose to prominence for her role as Coco Hernandez in the 1980 musical film '' Fame'', and for recording the film's title song " Fame", which reached No. 1 in several countries. In 1983, Cara co-wrote and sang the song " Flashdance... What a Feeling" (from the film '' Flashdance''), for which she shared an Academy Award for Best Original Song and won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1984. Before her success with ''Fame'', Cara portrayed the title character Sparkle Williams in the original 1976 musical drama film '' Sparkle''. Cara died as a result of hypertensive heart disease after hypercholesterolemia at age 63. Early life Irene Cara Escalera was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, the youngest of five children. Her father, Gaspar Cara, a steel factory worker and retired saxophonist, was Puerto Rican, and her mother, Louise Escalera, a movie thea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erica Gimpel
Erica Fawn Gimpel (born June 25, 1964) is an American actress, singer, dancer, and composer. She is best known for her roles on television shows '' Fame'' as Coco Hernandez and on '' Profiler'' as Angel Brown. She is also known for her recurring roles on the television shows '' ER'' as Adele Newman and on ''Veronica Mars'' as Alicia Fennel. From 2018 to 2020, Gimpel had a series regular role as Trish on the series '' God Friended Me''. Gimpel was a judge on RTÉ One's '' Fame: The Musical'', an Irish TV talent show seeking a boy and a girl to play Nick and Serena respectively in the Irish touring production of '' Fame''. In January 2010, Gimpel released her first CD, ''Spread your Wings and Fly''. Personal life Gimpel was born in Manhattan, New York City in 1964. She graduated from New York's High School of Performing Arts a few months after she started filming her role as a student at the same school for the television show '' Fame''. She had toured the United States and E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar Solo
A guitar solo is a melody, melodic passage, instrumental section (music), section, or entire piece of music, pre-written (or improvised) to be played on a classical guitar, classical, electric guitar, electric, or acoustic guitar. In 20th and 21st century traditional music and popular music such as blues, Swing music, swing, jazz, jazz fusion, rock music, rock and heavy metal music, heavy metal, guitar solo (music), solos often contain virtuoso techniques and varying degrees of improvisation. Guitar solos on classical guitar, which are typically written in musical notation, are also used in classical music forms such as chamber music and concertos. Guitar solos range from unaccompanied works for a single guitar to compositions with accompaniment from a few other instruments or a large ensemble. The accompaniment musicians for a guitar solo can range from a small ensemble such as a jazz quartet or a rock musical ensemble, band, to a large ensemble such as an orchestra or big ban ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elliott Randall
Elliott Randall (born June 15, 1947) is an American guitarist, best known for being a session musician and performing with popular music artists. Randall played the well-known guitar solos on Steely Dan's song " Reelin' in the Years" and Irene Cara's song " Fame". The former solo was ranked as the 40th best guitar solo of all time by the readers of ''Guitar World'' magazine and the eighth best guitar solo by Q4 Music. Career Randall began taking piano lessons at age five. At nine, in 1956, he switched to guitar. He attended New York City's High School of Music & Art, where he was classmates with Laura Nyro and Michael Kamen. In 1963, at sixteen, Randall met Richie Havens in Greenwich Village and began gigging. Randall did some early work behind the Capris and the Ronettes, and by 1964 was recording "small-time" demos. Between 1966 and 1967, he taught music in Ohio. Returning to New York, he began working as a staff musician for the Musicor record company. During 1968, he r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass Guitar
The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer neck (music), neck and scale length (string instruments), scale length. The electric bass guitar most commonly has four strings, though five- and six-stringed models are also built. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music due to its lighter weight, smaller size, most models' inclusion of Fret, frets for easier Intonation_(music), intonation, and electromagnetic pickups for amplification. Another reason the bass guitar replaced the double bass is because the double bass is "acoustically imperfect" like the viola. For a double bass to be acoustically perfect, its body size would have to be twice as that of a cello rendering it unplayable, so the double bass is made smaller to make it playable. The elect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neil Jason
Neil Jason, is an American musician, songwriter, producer and composer. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he has worked with some of the biggest recording artists, including John Lennon, Billy Joel, Roxy Music, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Kiss, Gene Simmons, Michael Jackson, Brecker Brothers, Hall & Oates, Cyndi Lauper, Harry Chapin, Joe Jackson, Charlie Watts, Dire Straits, Bryan Ferry, Diana Ross, Grace Slick, John McLaughlin, Gladys Knight, Debbie Harry, Michael Franks, Bob James, David Sanborn, Brigitte Zarie, Carly Simon, Janis Ian, Nils Lofgren, Eddie Van Halen, Mike Oldfield and tenor Luciano Pavarotti. He also writes for TV and film. Neil was a member of the Saturday Night Live house band from 1980 to 1983 and has made over a hundred appearances with Paul Shaffer’s band on The Late Show With David Letterman. He has also worked on countless hit commercials and movies as a composer in New York City. Early life Neil Jason was born and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthesizer
A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI. Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Bichel
Ken Bichel is an American actor, composer, conductor, pianist, and synthesizer musician. Musical career Bichel attended the Juilliard School where he graduated with a master's degree in piano performance in 1969. While at Juilliard he met Gershon Kingsley and Robert Moog, the inventor of the music synthesizer. He became a founding member of Kingsley's First Moog Quartet, a live performance synthesizer ensemble, and was recognized as the preeminent synthesizer authority in the New York recording industry from that time on. Although Bichel is a classically trained pianist, he has spent most of his career playing and recording jazz, rock, and other forms of contemporary music on the piano and the synthesizer. Bichel became a member of the New York-based band Stories is the early 1970s with whom he recorded several hit songs on three different albums until the band broke up in 1973. Bichel also played and/or conducted several Broadway shows. In 1975, he was hired as the musical di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arrangements
In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing Composition (music), composition. Differences from the original composition may include Harmony (music), reharmonization, Musical phrasing, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or Musical form, formal development. Arranging differs from Orchestration#Orchestration as adaptation, orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new Theme (music), thematic material for Introduction (music), introductions, Transition (music), transitions, or Modulation (music), modulations, and Conclusion (music), endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety".(Corozine 2002, p. 3) In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a ''head arrangement''. Classical music Arrangement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Pendarvis
Leroy Leon Pendarvis (born 1945) is an American session musician. He plays keyboards and is a background vocalist. He is also an occasional guitarist. Early life The son of a first-grade primary school teacher, Pendarvis grew up in South Carolina. In addition to teaching, his mother was also pianist at their church. She also gave piano lessons to make extra money. The young Pendarvis graduated from climbing up on the bench to hit the keys to being taught by his mother. He also learned to play trumpet and saxophone. He also was a bass player when he came to New York. Personal life Pendarvis was previously married to Janice Gadsden, whom he had known since she was 13. They married some time after she left her parents place and moved in with her cousin Andrew Gadsden, who was Pendarvis's roommate. He was also previously married to former Los Jovenes del Barrio singer Jillian Armsbury, who died in January 2009 from mesothelioma. He married a woman named Josephine in 2018. Pendar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a chromatic scale in equal temperament. A musician who specializes in piano is called a pianist. There are two main types of piano: the #Grand, grand piano and the #Upupright piano. The grand piano offers better sound and more precise key control, making it the preferred choice when space and budget allow. The grand piano is also considered a necessity in venues hosting skilled pianists. The upright piano is more commonly used because of its smaller size and lower cost. When a key is depressed, the strings inside are struck by felt-coated wooden hammers. The vibrations are transmitted through a Bridge (instrument), bridge to a Soundboard (music), soundboard that amplifies the sound by Coupling (physics), coupling the Sound, acoustic energy t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers that are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers and arrangers as well as work-stations. These keyboards typically work by translating the physical act of pressing keys into electrical signals that produce sound. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Modern keyboards, especially digital ones, can simulate a wide range of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
