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Neshamah
''Neshamah (Songs from the Jewish Diaspora)'' is the first solo recording by American guitarist Tim Sparks on the Tzadik Records label. "Neshamah" means "soul" in Hebrew. The arrangements adapt Ashkenazic klezmer, Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish music for the solo guitar. History Sparks had sent a copy of his earlier CD '' Guitar Bazaar'' to avant-garde composer, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist John Zorn who liked the Bartok "Rumanian Dances" arrangements on that CD. Sparks had previously played a lot of Jewish music with various Jewish musicians and became adept in the Klezmer style. Zorn suggested the solo guitar adaptations of traditional Jewish songs. Sparks blended the songs with his background in jazz, Latin American, Balkan and American roots music. Reception In his Allmusic review, music critic Steven Lowey praised ''Neshamah'' writing "Sometimes the guitar transforms a piece into something different than it was originally... parkssqueezes every ounce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Sparks
Tim Sparks (born October 31, 1954) is an American acoustic guitar player, singer, arranger and composer. Life Raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he was given his first guitar when a bout of encephalitis kept him out of school for a year. The music he heard around him was traditional country blues, and the gospel his grandmother played on piano in a small church in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so that's what he taught himself to play. He was nominated for a scholarship at the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts. There he studied the classics with Andrés Segovia protegee Jesus Silva. While recording three albums with the seminal vocal jazz ensemble Rio Nido, Sparks also became proficient in jazz styles from Brazilian to Bebop, which brought him several regional music awards including Best Acoustic Guitarist, Best Latin Jazz guitarist, and Best Jazz Guitarist in the Minnesota Music Awards. In 1993 he won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship at the Walnut Valle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanz
''Tanz'' is the second recording by American guitarist Tim Sparks on the Tzadik Records label, released in 2000. The word () is Yiddish for dance, cognate to the German word with the same meaning. History After the recording of traditional Jewish music arranged for solo guitar on ''Neshamah'', producer John Zorn combined Sparks with Masada alumni Greg Cohen and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. Music critic Ben Kettlewell called the combination of Sparks, Cohen and Baptisto "a wonderful adventure into the myriad of styles of music of the Jewish Diaspora." Cohen and Baptista would reunite with Sparks for two more releases on the Tzadik label. ''Tanz'' includes four arrangements of songs by Klezmer clarinetist Naftule Brandwein. Sparks would later record '' Little Princess'', an entire album of Brandwein arrangements. Reception Writing for Allmusic, critic Sean Westergaard wrote, "Sparks comes from a classical guitar background more than a fingerpicking folky backgr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One String Leads To Another
''One String Leads to Another'' is the third solo recording by American guitarist Tim Sparks, released in 1999. History The title is taken from a quote by John Renbourn. While speaking of Davey Graham's travels in Morocco "where he came across a tuning used on an exotic, North African string instrument. Davey tried to adapt this to his guitar. Well, one string leads to another and before you know it, he's come up with DADGAD guitar tuning." Sparks wrote the songs while spending time in Mexico. "I found myself exploring the sounds of where I grew up in North Carolina, you know, more native American sounds, and cross-pollinating them, if you will, with sounds from around the world. Sounds I have explored in music from other cultures". Reception Stacia Proefrock wrote for Allmusic "Tim Sparks has issued another winner. Rather than merely imitating one particular style throughout a certain song, he instead absorbs the techniques and melodies of many different cultures and fuses ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as All-Music Guide by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1999 Albums
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootings in the United States; the Year 2000 problem ("Y2K"), perceived as a major concern in the lead-up to the year 2000; the Millennium Dome opens in London; online music downloading platform Napster is launched, soon a source of online piracy; NASA loses both the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander; a destroyed T-55 tank near Prizren during the Kosovo War., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Death and state funeral of King Hussein rect 200 0 400 200 1999 İzmit earthquake rect 400 0 600 200 Columbine High School massacre rect 0 200 300 400 Kosovo War rect 300 200 600 400 Year 2000 problem rect 0 400 200 600 Mars Climate Orbiter rect 200 400 400 600 Napster rect 400 400 600 600 Millennium Dome 1999 was designated as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baal Shem Tov
Israel ben Eliezer (1698 – 22 May 1760), known as the Baal Shem Tov ( he, בעל שם טוב, ) or as the Besht, was a Jewish mystic and healer who is regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism. "Besht" is the acronym for Baal Shem Tov, which means "Master of the Good Name," a term for a magician who wields the secret name of God. The little biographical information about the Besht comes from oral traditions handed down by his students (Jacob Joseph of Polonne and others) and from the legendary tales about his life and behavior collected in ''Shivḥei ha-Besht'' (''In Praise of the Ba'al Shem Tov''; Kopys, Kapust and Berdychiv, 1814–15). A central tenet in the Baal Shem Tov's teaching is the direct connection with the Divine, the divine, "dvekut", which is infused in every human activity and every waking hour. Prayer is of supreme importance, along with the mystical significance of Hebrew letters and words. His innovation lies in "encouraging worshippers to follow their dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shalom Aleichem (liturgy)
Shalom Aleichem ( he, שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם, 'Peace be upon you') is a traditional song sung by many Jews every Friday night upon returning home from synagogue prayer. It signals the arrival of the Shabbat, welcoming the angels who accompany a person home on the eve of the Shabbat. The custom of singing "Shalom Aleichem" on Friday night before Eshet Ḥayil and Kiddush is now nearly universal among religious Jews. Sources This liturgical poem was written by the kabbalists of Safed in the late 16th or early 17th century. A complete survey of extant manuscripts, compiled by Chaim Leiberman, is available in Kirjath Sepher vol. 38–9. According to a homiletic teaching in the Talmud, two angels accompany people on their way back home from synagogue on Friday night—a good angel and an evil angel. If the house has been prepared for the Shabbat ("the lamp has been lit, the table set, and his couch spread"), the good angel utters a blessing that the next Shabbat will be the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Klezmer
Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman (especially Greek and Romanian) music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker. After the destruction of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the Holoca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naftule Brandwein
Naftule Brandwein, or Naftuli Brandwine, ( yi, נפתלי בראַנדװײַן, 1884–1963) was an Austrian-born Jewish American Klezmer musician, clarinetist, bandleader and recording artist active from the 1910s to the 1940s. Along with Dave Tarras, he is considered to be among the top klezmer musicians of the twentieth century, and has a continuing influence on musicians in the genre a century later. Along with Tarras and other contemporaries like Israel J. Hochman, Max Leibowitz and Harry Kandel, he also helped forge the new American klezmer sound of the early twentieth century, which gradually gravitated towards a sophisticated big-band sound. Biography Early life Brandwein was born on September 20, 1884 in Przemyslany, Austro-Hungarian Galicia (now Ukraine). He was born into a dynasty of klezmer musicians, part of the Stretiner Hasidic dynasty founded by Rabbi Yehuda Hirsch Brandwein of Stratin. His father Peysekhe (Paul) played violin, clarinet, and was an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flory Jagoda
Flory Jagoda (born Flora Papo; December 21, 1923January 29, 2021) was a Bosnian Jewishborn American guitarist, composer and singer-songwriter. She was known for her composition and interpretation of Sephardic songs, Judeo-Espanyol (Ladino) songs and the Bosnian folk ballads, sevdalinka. Biography Flory Jagoda was born Flora Papo on December 21, 1923, to a Bosnian Jewish family. She grew up in the Bosnian towns of Vlasenica and her birth city of Sarajevo. She was raised in the Sephardic tradition in the musical Altarac family. Her mother, Rosa Altarac left her first husband and returned to the town of Vlasenica. There she met and married Michael Kabilio, and they settled in Zagreb, Croatia, where Kabilio owned a tie-making business. When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, her step-father (whom Flory referred to as her father) put 16-year-old Flory on a train to Split using false identity papers and removing the Jewish star from her coat. On the train she played her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adrian Legg
Adrian Legg (born 16 May 1948) is an English guitar player who has been called "impossible to categorize". He plays custom guitars that are a hybrid of electric and acoustic, and his fingerstyle picking technique has been acknowledged by the readers of ''Guitar Player'' who voted Legg the "best acoustic fingerstyle" player four years in a row (1993–1996). From his early start as a bench technician customising electric guitars, Legg moved into guitar instruction, publishing books and videos on guitar technique. In 1996 and 1997, Legg shared the stage with acclaimed guitar experts Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai as part of the G3 tour. Vai called Legg "Uncle Adrian" and Satriani said of Legg's musicianship, "He's simply the best acoustic guitar player I've ever heard. I don't know anyone else who can create such a cascade of beautiful notes... Adrian plays like he's got hammers for fingers." Early career Legg was born in Hackney, London, England. He studied the obo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke (born September 11, 1945) is an acoustic guitarist. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He overcame a series of personal obstacles, including partial loss of hearing and a nearly career-ending bout with tendon damage in his right hand, to emerge as a widely recognized master of his instrument. He resides in the Minneapolis area with his family. Focusing primarily on instrumental composition and playing, Kottke also sings sporadically, in an unconventional yet expressive baritone described by himself as sounding like "geese farts on a muggy day". As a youth living in Muskogee, Oklahoma, he was influenced by folk and delta blues music, notably that of Mississippi John Hurt. Kottke learned to play trombone and violin before trying the guitar and developing his own unconventional picking style. A mishap with a firecracker permanently damaged the hearing in his left ear, a condition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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