|
Maggie Nicols
Maggie Nicols (or Nichols, as she originally spelled her name as a performer) (born 24 February 1948), is a Scottish free-jazz and improvising vocalist, dancer, and performer. Early life and career Nicols was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, as Margaret Nicolson. Her father was from the Isle of Skye, and her mother was half-French, half-Berber, from North Africa. In her mid-teens she left school and started to work as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre. Her first singing engagement was in a strip club in Manchester in 1965. At about that time she became obsessed with jazz, and sang with bebop pianist Dennis Rose. From then on she sang in pubs, clubs, hotels, and in dance bands with some of the finest jazz musicians around. In the midst of all this she worked abroad for a year as a dancer (including a six-month stint at the Moulin Rouge in Paris). In 1968, she went to London and joined (as Maggie Nichols) an early improvisational group, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, with John St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh had a population of in , making it the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, second-most populous city in Scotland and the List of cities in the United Kingdom, seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The Functional urban area, wider metropolitan area had a population of 912,490 in the same year. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament, the Courts of Scotland, highest courts in Scotland, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarch in Scotland. It is also the annual venue of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The city has long been a cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) was a loose collection of free improvising musicians, convened in 1965 by the late South London-based jazz drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts. SME performances and recordings could range from Stevens–Watts duos to gatherings of more than a dozen players. Ethos As critic Brian Olewnick writes, the SME emphasised an "extremely open, leaderless aspect where a premium was placed on careful and considered listening on the part of the musicians. Saxophonist Evan Parker observed that Stevens had two basic rules: (1) If you can't hear another musician, you're playing too loud, and (2) if the music you're producing doesn't regularly relate to what you're hearing others create, why be in the group? This led to the development of what would jocularly become known as 'insect improv' – music that tended to be very quiet, very intense, arrhythmic, and by and large atonal." History The SME began an intensive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Skidmore
Alan Richard James Skidmore (born 21 April 1942) is an English jazz tenor saxophonist, and the son of saxophonist Jimmy Skidmore. Career He was born in London, England. Skidmore began his professional career in his teens, and early in his career he toured with comedian Tony Hancock. In the 1960s, he began frequently appearing with the BBC Radio Big Band, then worked with Alexis Korner, John Mayall, and Ronnie Scott. Commissioned by the BBC in order to represent the UK at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Skidmore formed a group with Harry Miller, Tony Oxley, John Taylor, and Kenny Wheeler. This group won three of six awards at Montreux, following which Skidmore was invited to record an album of the group's performances, forming the basis for ''Once Upon a Time''. In the early 1970s, he started a saxophone-only band with John Surman and Mike Osborne. He has also worked with Mose Allison, Kate Bush, Elton Dean, Georgie Fame, Mike Gibbs, George Gruntz, Elvin Jones, Van Morrison, Stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dudu Pukwana
Mthutuzeli Dudu Pukwana (18 July 1938 – 30 June 1990) was a South African saxophonist and composer. Early years in South Africa Dudu Pukwana was born in Walmer, Port Elizabeth, Walmer Township, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He grew up studying piano in his family, but in 1956 he switched to alto saxophone after meeting tenor saxophone player Nikele Moyake."Mtutuzeli Dudu Pukwana" South African History online. In 1962, Pukwana won first prize at the Johannesburg Jazz Festival with Moyake's Jazz Giants (1962 Gallo/Teal). In his early days he also played with Kippie Moeketsi. Chris McGregor then invited him to join the pioneering The Blue Notes, Blue Notes sextet, where he played along with Mongezi Feza, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo. Although the Blue Notes are often consider ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt (born Robert Wyatt-Ellidge, 28 January 1945) is an English retired musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming paraplegic following an accidental fall from a window in 1973, which led him to abandon band work, explore other instruments, and begin a 40-year solo career. A key player during the formative years of British jazz fusion, psychedelia and progressive rock, Wyatt's own work became increasingly interpretative, collaborative and politicised from the mid-1970s onwards. His solo music has covered a particularly individual musical terrain ranging from covers of pop music, pop single (music), singles to shifting, amorphous song collections drawing on elements of jazz, folk music, folk and nursery rhyme. Wyatt retired from his music career in 2014, stating "there is a pride in [stopping], I don't want [the music] to go off." He is married to English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phil Minton
Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde jazz/ free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'' with his own ensemble. He sings on a Jimi Hendrix tribute album, belting out the lyrics in over-the-top fashion. Between 1987 and 1993 Minton toured Europe, North America, and Russia with Lindsay Cooper's '' Oh Moscow'' ensemble. He is perhaps best known, however, for his completely free-form work, which involves "extended techniques" that can be as unsettling as they can be mesmerising. His vocals often include the sounds of retching, burping, screaming, and gasping, as well as childlike muttering, whining, crying and humming; he also has an ability to distort his vocal cords to produce two notes at once. As the DJ/poet Kenne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julie Tippetts
Julie Driscoll Tippett (born 8 June 1947) is an English singer and actress, known for her work with Brian Auger and her husband, Keith Tippett. Career Driscoll is known for her 1960s versions of Bob Dylan and Rick Danko's " This Wheel's on Fire", and Donovan's " Season of the Witch", both with Brian Auger and the Trinity. Along with the Trinity, she was featured prominently in the 1969 television special '' 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee'', singing "I'm a Believer" in a soul style with Micky Dolenz. She and Auger had previously worked in Steampacket, with Long John Baldry and Rod Stewart. "This Wheel's on Fire" reached number five in the United Kingdom in June 1968, number 13 in Canada, and Bubbled Under the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in the United States at #106 that August. With distortion, the imagery of the title and the group's dress and performance, this version came to represent the psychedelic era in British rock music. Driscoll recorded the song again in the early 1990s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Centipede (band)
Centipede were an English jazz/progressive rock/big band with more than 50 members, organized and led by the British free jazz pianist Keith Tippett. Formed in 1970, it brought together much of a generation of young British jazz and rock musicians from a number of bands, including Soft Machine, King Crimson, Nucleus and Blossom Toes. Centipede performed several concerts in England, toured France, and recorded a double album, '' Septober Energy'' (produced by Robert Fripp), before disbanding at the end of 1971. They reformed briefly in 1975 to play at a few French jazz festivals. History Centipede was formed by Keith Tippett in 1970 to perform an extended composition, ''Septober Energy'', that he had been working on. The members were drawn from his own band at the time, The Keith Tippett Group; several British progressive rock, jazz-rock and avant-garde jazz groups, including Soft Machine (Robert Wyatt, Elton Dean, Nick Evans, Mark Charig), Nucleus (Karl Jenkins, Ian Carr, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Tippett
Keith Graham Tippetts (25 August 1947 – 14 June 2020), known professionally as Keith Tippett, was a British jazz pianist and composer. According to AllMusic, Tippett's career "...spanned jazz-rock, progressive rock, improvised and contemporary music, as well as modern jazz for more than half-a-century". He held "an unparallelled place in British contemporary music," and was known for "his unique approach to improvisation". Tippett appeared and recorded in many settings, including a duet with Stan Tracey, duets with his wife Julie Tippetts (née Driscoll), solo performances, and as a bandleader.Duncan Heining. And Did Those Feet … Six British Jazz Composers' (2023) Early life Born in Southmead, Bristol, England, Tippett was the son of an English father who was a policeman and an Irish mother named Kitty. He wrote music dedicated to her after she died. He was the oldest of three siblings and went to Greenway Secondary Modern school in Southmead. As a child he played piano, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oval House Theatre
Ovalhouse, formerly called Oval House Theatre, was an Off-West End theatre in the London Borough of Lambeth, located at 52–54 Kennington Oval, London, SE11 5SW. It closed in 2020, and moved to Brixton, becoming the Brixton House theatre (located at 385 Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8GL). History The roots of Ovalhouse can be traced back to the 1930s and its foundations, as Christ Church (Oxford) Clubs, by the graduates of Christ Church, Oxford. Young people from disadvantaged areas in South London were able to access sports activities, skills training and supervised leisure activities through membership of the club. Ovalhouse's reputation as one of the most important centres for pioneer fringe theatre groups dates from the 1960s, when the club underwent a radical change in the policy of the club with the arrival of newly appointed warden, Peter Oliver. Oliver refocused the club's activities from sport to drama and became the artistic founder of Oval House Theatre. Oliver staged the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an ''advance guard'' identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times. As a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825), Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues's political usage of ''vanguard'' identified the moral obligation of artists to "ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, highest population within its city limits of any city in the European Union. The city is also one of the states of Germany, being the List of German states by area, third smallest state in the country by area. Berlin is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and Brandenburg's capital Potsdam is nearby. The urban area of Berlin has a population of over 4.6 million and is therefore the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region, as well as the List of EU metropolitan areas by GDP, fifth-biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
