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      Fanny Waterman, Doyenne of the Leeds Piano Competition, Dies at 100

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFanny Waterman, Doyenne of the Leeds Piano Competition, Dies at 100A British pianist and teacher, she helped establish one of the world’s most important piano showcases and then presided over it for decades.Fanny Waterman in 2010. Convinced that Leeds, her native city, was worthy of an international piano competition, she pushed hard to establish one and served as its guiding force for more than half a century.Credit…Andy ManningDec. 26, 2020, 3:31 p.m. ETFanny Waterman, the British pianist and teacher who co-founded the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition and oversaw it as chairwoman and artistic director for more than five decades, died on Dec. 20 at a care home in Ilkley, Yorkshire. She was 100.Her death was announced by the Leeds competition.The idea of presenting an international music competition in 1960s Leeds, a gritty industrial city in northern England, seemed risky. But Ms. Waterman, a Leeds native who learned perseverance from her poor Russian immigrant father, believed in the vitality of her hometown and was certain she could draw support for the venture.“I dreamt it up one night, and I was so excited that I woke up my husband,” she said in a 2010 interview with The Jewish Chronicle. “He was born in London,” Ms. Waterman added, “and he said: ‘It won’t work in Leeds. It has to be in a capital city.’”But Ms. Waterman talked up the idea and raised funds from patrons, banks, businesses, the Leeds City Council and the University of Leeds. Her husband, Geoffrey de Keyser, a doctor, became a founder of the competition, along with her good friend Marion Harewood, a pianist who was then the Countess of Harewood (and was later married to the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe). The two friends also wrote “Me and My Piano,” a series of piano lesson books that remain top sellers in Britain.From the start, Ms. Waterman conceived of the Leeds competition, which is held every three years, as a means to foster musical values she had cultivated as a performer and teacher, placing musicianship, artistry and sensitivity over technical bravura.Music is a “wonderful discipline,” she said in the 2010 interview. “You can’t play a note without thinking, how loud, how soft, how soon, how late. It makes you think carefully and it gives you judgment.”Over the years the competition joined the ranks of the world’s elite contests, including the Van Cliburn, Tchaikovsky and Chopin. Such competitions are major springboards for careers in music, often an obligatory stop on a young performer’s progress; they have also come in for criticism for quashing creativity and individuality.As with all competitions, the administrators of the Leeds contest point not just to the list of their outstanding winners — among them Michel Dalberto, Jon Kimura Parker, Ian Hobson and Alessio Bax — as proof of success in identifying young talent, but also to finalists who became major artists. That group of luminaries includes Mitsuko Uchida, Andras Schiff, Lars Vogt and Louis Lortie.The first Leeds competition took place in 1963, with the composer and conductor Arthur Bliss as chairman of an eminent jury. It was an immediate success, with 94 entrants from 23 countries, though with one potentially embarrassing result: The winner was one of Ms. Waterman’s students, Michael Roll, raising the perception of favoritism. Ms. Waterman later said that he had deserved to win, and that the judges had strongly supported him.Ms. Waterman backstage with the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, left foreground, and the pianist Murray Perahia, right foreground, in 1972, the year Mr. Perahia won the Leeds competition.Credit…Leeds International Piano CompetitionFor the third competition, in 1969, Ms. Waterman asserted herself after the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu placed fourth in the second round, which meant he would not advance to the finals. Deeply impressed by Mr. Lupu’s playing, Ms. Waterman insisted that the number of finalists be increased from three to five and vowed not to organize another competition unless he made the cut. She got her way, and Mr. Lupu wound up winning and went on to a distinguished career.The competition garnered wide attention in 1972 when the American pianist Murray Perahia, then 25, won first prize.In the last round, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the other two finalists, Craig Sheppard and Eugene Indjic, also Americans, played Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, a work that many young pianists have used to prove their virtuosic mettle.Mr. Perahia, already an audience favorite from performances of works by Schumann, Mozart, Mendelssohn and others, instead chose to play Chopin’s intimate, elegantly brilliant Piano Concerto No. 1 in the finals. He prevailed despite suffering terrible anxiety under the pressure, earning a cash prize of $1,850 and numerous recital and concerto engagements.Ms. Waterman was born on March 22, 1920, in Leeds, the second child of Mary (Behrman) Waterman and Meyer Waterman (the family name was originally Wasserman). Her mother was an English-born daughter of Russian immigrant Jews. Her father, born in Ukraine, was a skilled jeweler.Though the family struggled financially, her parents came up with enough money to provide young Fanny with piano lessons once her talent became clear. She practiced on an old upright piano and studied with a local teacher, while her brother, Harry, took violin lessons.At 18, she became a scholarship student at the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Cyril Smith. She performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in 1941 with the Leeds Symphony Orchestra, the same year she met Dr. de Keyser, then a young medical student, whom she would marry in 1944. With the birth of her first child, Robert, in 1950, Ms. Waterman decided to devote herself to teaching.Robert de Keyser survives her, as do another son, Paul, a violin teacher, and six granddaughters. Her husband died in 2001.Once the Leeds Competition got going, Dr. de Keyser became intimately involved, both in recommending lists of repertory and in writing up rules. “He was a doctor, but his knowledge of music was second to nobody,” Ms. Waterman said in 2010.In 1966 Ms. Waterman and her husband bought Woodgarth, a magnificent eight-bedroom Victorian house in Oakwood, a suburb of Leeds. She kept two fine pianos in its spacious drawing room, where she taught, made plans for the competition and presided over lively musical soirees that included guests like the composer Benjamin Britten and the tenor Peter Pears, as well as Prime Minister Edward Heath. Ms. Waterman sold the house this year.She was appointed dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005. In 2015, at 95, she retired from the Leeds Competition. Yet in an interview with the BBC five years later, she revealed that she had stepped aside unwillingly.“I think they were misguided,” she said of the unnamed people who wanted her out, “because I had many, many years more to give of my own passion, my own knowledge and everything.”Still, she expressed pride over her accomplishments. “I do hope and pray,” she said, “that in another 100 years our competition will have the reputation it’s got now.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Roger Berlind, 90, Dies; Broadway Impresario Who Amassed 25 Tonys

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRoger Berlind, 90, Dies; Broadway Impresario Who Amassed 25 TonysHe played a role in producing more than 100 plays and musicals. And while he kept an eye on the bottom line, he could be seduced by sheer artistry.Roger Berlind in 1998 near the Cort Theater, where his production of “The Blue Room,” was playing. He was introduced to the theater world by friends and soon immersed himself in the process of putting on a show.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 24, 2020Roger Berlind, who produced or co-produced more than 100 plays and musicals on Broadway, including such critical and box-office hits as “The Book of Mormon,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “City of Angels” and revivals of “Guys and Dolls” and “Kiss Me, Kate,” died on Dec. 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His family said the cause was cardiopulmonary arrest.During a four-decade career in the theater, Mr. Berlind backed some of the most original work on Broadway and amassed an astonishing 25 Tony Awards, one of the largest hauls on record. (Hal Prince, another prodigious Tony-winning producer, collected 21.)Mr. Berlind helped bring buoyant musicals to the stage, like the smash 1992 revival of “Guys and Dolls” with Nathan Lane, as well as sophisticated literate dramas, like the original 1984 production of “The Real Thing,” Tom Stoppard’s dazzling exploration of the nature of love and honesty. “The Real Thing” swept the Tonys, winning for best play and best director (Mike Nichols) and garnering top acting awards for Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Christine Baranski.His route to Broadway was indirect. Able to play the piano by ear, he fancied himself a songwriter, but his dream of making a living that way fell flat and he went to work on Wall Street.He was a partner at a brokerage firm when tragedy struck: His wife and three of his four children were killed in an airliner crash at Kennedy International Airport. Within days, he resigned from his firm.“The whole idea of building a business and making money didn’t make sense anymore,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “There was no more economic motivation.”After a period in the wilderness, he found his way to Broadway, which helped him rebuild his life and establish a whole new career.“The significant thing about Roger is that he made an incredible turnaround,” Brook Berlind, his second wife, said in a phone interview.“His life was utterly bifurcated by the accident,” she said. “There was Act I and Act II. I don’t think many other people could have gone on to such success after such catastrophe.”Success on Broadway came slowly. Mr. Berlind’s first production, in 1976, was the disastrous “Rex,” a Richard Rodgers musical (with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick) about Henry VIII, which the Times theater critic Clive Barnes said “has almost everything not going for it.”James Davis and Ali Stroker in the pre-Broadway run of the 2019 revival of “Oklahoma!” Mr. Berlind was one of several producers on the show, for which Ms. Stroker won a Tony.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs it happened, the music of Mr. Rodgers bookended Mr. Berlind’s career. His last show, of which he was one of several producers, was the darkly reimagined Tony-winning 2019 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” (That show made Broadway history when the actress Ali Stroker became the first person who uses a wheelchair to win a Tony.)After “Rex,” Mr. Berlind co-produced six other shows before he had his first hit with the original 1980 production of “Amadeus,” in which a mediocre composer burns with jealousy over the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The play, written by Peter Shaffer, directed by Peter Hall and starring Ian McKellen and Tim Curry, took home several Tonys, including best play.Two more successes quickly followed: “Sophisticated Ladies,” a 1981 revue with music by Duke Ellington; and “Nine,” a 1982 musical based on the Fellini film “8½” about a tortured film director facing professional and romantic crises.Along the way were plenty of flops. Producing on Broadway is always risky, with no surefire formula for a hit. It became even more challenging in the late 20th century, as theater people migrated to Hollywood, labor and advertising costs soared and high ticket prices discouraged audiences. Getting shows off the ground required more and more producers to pool their resources, and even then they were unlikely to recoup their investments.One of Mr. Berlind’s achievements was staying in the game. Despite the challenges, he took chances on shows because he believed in them, and because he could afford to lose as often as he won.“I know it’s not worth it economically,” he told The Times in 1998. “But I love theater.”His successes included “Proof,” “Doubt,” “The History Boys,” the 2012 revival of “Death of a Salesman” with Philip Seymour Hoffman and the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!” with Bette Midler.Even as he experienced flops, Mr. Berlind had many successes, like the 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” starring Bette Midler. He had “enormous fortitude and persistence,” said Scott Rudin, one of his co-producers on this and many other shows.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesScott Rudin, who produced about 30 shows with Mr. Berlind, said that Mr. Berlind was propelled by “enormous fortitude and persistence.”“He was not dissuaded by the obstacles that dissuaded other people,” Mr. Rudin said in an email. “He had enormous positivity, which is much, much more rare than you might think.”That became evident after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when Broadway went dark for 48 hours, a sign of the economic uncertainty that hung over the city.At the time, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged theaters to reopen quickly, and they did. But a half-dozen shows closed, and one on the verge of doing so was “Kiss Me, Kate,” in which Mr. Berlind had been deeply involved and of which he was enormously fond. He was enthralled with Cole Porter’s music, and everything in the show had clicked. The winner of five Tonys, including best revival of a musical, “Kate” had been running for nearly two years and was not scheduled to close until Dec. 30, 2001.Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie in the 1999 revival of “Kiss Me, Kate.” The show had been scheduled to close early in 2001, but Mr. Berlind took to the stage on what was supposed to be its final night and declared, “The show will go on.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut because of a sharp drop in ticket sales, the production was going to close early. A closing date of Sept. 23 was announced.Just before the curtain rose on what was supposed to have been the final performance, Mr. Berlind, a modest man who evinced little of the showmanship typical in the theater, took to the stage. He held the closing notice in his hand and ripped it up.“The show will go on,” he declared, to an already emotional audience.The cast and crew had agreed to give up 25 percent of their pay and to donate another 25 percent to buy tickets to the show for rescue workers. The move allowed “Kate” to keep running until its scheduled Dec. 30 closing.“That was my Merrick moment,” Mr. Berlind later told The Guardian of London, referring to David Merrick, one of Broadway’s famously outsize showmen.The Guardian went on to praise Mr. Berlind’s exuberant London production of “Kate,” which opened that October, as “a symbol of the indomitability and grace under pressure of a community, indeed a city, that has been reeling since 11 September.”Roger Stuart Berlind was born on June 27, 1930, in Brooklyn to Peter Berlind, a hospital administrator, and Mae (Miller) Berlind, an amateur painter who gave painting lessons while raising her four sons.The family moved to Woodmere, on Long Island, when Roger was 3. He attended Woodmere Academy and went on to Princeton, where he majored in English.His campus life revolved around the theater. He joined the Triangle Club, which performs student-written comedies, and Theatre Intime, a student-run theatrical organization. Years later, in 1998, he donated $3.5 million to build the 350-seat Roger S. Berlind Theater as part of an expansion of Princeton’s McCarter Theater.After graduating in 1952, he joined the Army and served in the Counterintelligence Corps in Germany. At one point he was on a troop ship with Buck Henry, the comic actor and writer who died this year, and the two regularly created shows for the soldiers.When Mr. Berlind returned to New York in 1954, he was determined to become a songwriter.“He loved the big-band music of the ’40s, he could play almost any song from the American songbook and he had a great memory for lyrics,” his son William said in a phone interview. His own tunes ran to the simple and nostalgic, as reflected by their titles, “Lemon Drop Girlfriend” and “Isn’t It a Rainbow Day?” among them. But Tin Pan Alley was uninterested, and, needing a job, Mr. Berlind was pointed by friends to Wall Street.“I had never had an economics course in college,” he told Playbill in 2005, “and I had 26 or 28 interviews before anyone would hire me.”Mr. Berlind, center, in 1968, during his Wall Street days, with his partners Arthur L. Carter, left, and Sanford I. Weill.Credit…Edward Hausner/The New York TimesHe worked for four years at an investment house, then in 1960 co-founded a brokerage firm, Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill, which went through various iterations until it was acquired by American Express in 1981. His partners along the way included Sanford I. Weill, who became chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, and Arthur Levitt Jr., the future chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.It was a heady time for Mr. Berlind. But on June 24, 1975, his world stopped.He had gone to the airport that day to meet his wife, Helen Polk (Clark) Berlind, and three of their children — Helen, 12; Peter, 9; and Clark, 6 — who were returning to New York from New Orleans after visiting Helen Berlind’s mother in Mississippi.While on approach to Kennedy in a severe storm, the Boeing 727, Eastern Air Lines Flight 66, was swept down by a wind shear and crashed, killing 113 of the 124 people on board, including Mr. Berlind’s family.Their son William, 2, was at home in Manhattan with his nurse at the time. As he grew up, he had unresolved issues around what had happened.“Roger was so damaged by the accident that he didn’t spend as much time with William on this subject as he could have,” Ms. Berlind, who married Mr. Berlind in 1979, said.Finally, a psychiatrist told Mr. Berlind that he needed to answer William’s questions, even if he asked the same thing over and over. Eventually, this proved therapeutic for both father and son.“He was present and strong for me,” said William Berlind, a former reporter at The New York Observer and writer for The New York Times Magazine, who followed his father to Broadway and collaborated with him on several shows.“He was marked by the tragedy,” he added, “but it didn’t consume him, and he persevered.”Mr. Berlind in 1993. He had originally wanted to be a songwriter, but his dream of making a living that way fell flat.Credit…Fred Conrad/The New York TimesIn addition to his wife and son, Mr. Berlind is survived by two granddaughters and a brother, Alan.In time, friends connected Mr. Berlind with people in the theater, and he was soon immersing himself in the entire process of putting on a show. He had a reputation for generally being more mindful than many producers about not interfering with the creative process.But Mr. Berlind always insisted that the work he backed have merit. While he kept a cold eye on the bottom line, he could be seduced by sheer artistry.“He had been a tough and successful businessman, but in his theater life he was besotted by talent, and that’s what he invested in,” Rocco Landesman, who produced “Guys and Dolls,” “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Proof” with him, said in an email.“He loved his flops almost as much as his hits,” Mr. Landesman added. “And whenever one of his shows closed, Roger was ‘available’ again.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Leslie West, ‘Mississippi Queen’ Rocker, Is Dead at 75

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLeslie West, ‘Mississippi Queen’ Rocker, Is Dead at 75He rose to fame with Mountain, which Rolling Stone called a “louder version of Cream” — a band Mr. West idolized. One of the group’s first gigs was Woodstock.Leslie West with his band West, Bruce and Laing at the Rainbow in London in 1973. “I wanted to have the greatest, biggest tone,” he said of his guitar playing, “and I wanted vibrato like somebody who plays violin in a hundred-piece orchestra.”Credit…Fin Costello/RedfernsDec. 23, 2020Leslie West, whose meaty guitar riffs and snarling lead lines powered the hit band Mountain through “Mississippi Queen” and other rock anthems of the 1970s, died on Wednesday in Palm Coast, Fla. He was 75.The cause was cardiac arrest, said a spokesman, Steve Karas.Mr. West had battled various health problems over the years. In the early 2000s he had bladder cancer. In 2001 he had his lower right leg amputated because of complications of diabetes.Mr. West, who struggled with his weight for most of his life, used his ample size to his advantage onstage. In an era ruled by rail-thin rock stars, his physique stood out. His guitar tone matched it in girth: It was uncommonly thick, with a vibrato that could shake with earthquake force.“I didn’t play fast — I only used the first and the third finger on the fingering hand,” Mr. West told the website Best Classic Bands in 2011. “So I worked on my tone all the time. I wanted to have the greatest, biggest tone, and I wanted vibrato like somebody who plays violin in a hundred-piece orchestra.”His singing style mirrored his guitar playing, marked by barking declarations that at their most stentorian could pin a listener to the wall. The weight of Mr. West’s sound has been cited as an early example of heavy metal, though Mountain offered a striking contrast to its more forceful songs with other numbers that displayed the prettier vocals and more elegant melodies of the band’s bassist, co-lead singer and producer, Felix Pappalardi.When Mountain first appeared, Rolling Stone called the band “a louder version of Cream,” a comparison underscored by Mr. Pappalardi’s role as the producer of many of that British band’s best-known recordings.One song he produced for the first solo album by Cream’s bassist and singer, Jack Bruce, “Theme for an Imaginary Western,” became far better known in the version cut by Mountain for its debut album, “Climbing!,” released in 1970. “I idolized Cream,” Mr. West told Guitar World magazine in 1987, “and here was a chance to play with one of the best musicians in rock ‘n roll and one of the best writers, too,” referring to Mr. Pappalardi.Mr. West with the drummer Corky Laing, with whom he worked in the bands Mountain and West, Bruce, and Laing, at a festival in Vienna, Va., in 2007.Credit…Stephen J. Boitano/LightRocket, via Getty ImagesDeepening the bond between the two bands, Mr. Bruce joined Mr. West and Mountain’s drummer, Corky Laing, to form the power trio West, Bruce and Laing after Mr. Pappalardi left Mountain in 1972. That amalgam reached No. 26 on the Billboard chart with their debut album, “Why Dontcha.” But Mountain sold better, earning two gold albums, “Climbing!” and its follow-up, “Nantucket Sleighride,” which each broke Billboard’s Top 20 in the early ’70s.Leslie West was born Leslie Weinstein on Oct. 22, 1945, in New York City to Bill and Rita Weinstein. His mother was a hair model, his father the vice president of a rug shampoo company. He grew up in the suburbs.When Leslie was 8, his mother bought him his first instrument, a ukulele, but he became entranced with the guitar after seeing Elvis Presley play one on television. He bought his first guitar with the money given to him for his bar mitzvah.After his parents divorced, he changed his name to West, and upon graduating high school he decided to go directly into the music business. “I went to N.Y.U. — New York Unemployment,” he jokingly told The News-Times of Danbury, Conn., in 2005.His professional career began in a band he formed in the mid-1960s with his brother Larry, who played bass. The band, the Vagrants, was a blue-eyed soul group inspired by a hit act from Long Island, the Rascals. The two bands played the same local clubs, as did Billy Joel’s early group, the Hassles.Improbably, Vanguard Records, better known for folk, jazz and classical artists, signed the Vagrants. Their first single, “I Can’t Make a Friend,” a garage rocker, became a minor hit in 1966. Mr. Pappalardi, who produced some of the Vagrants’ songs, helped them obtain a new contract with Atco Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, for which they cut a cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” that earned East Coast airplay in 1967.But Mr. West yearned to record something heavier, so he left to make a solo album in 1969 whose title, “Mountain,” was a reference to his imposing size. Produced by Mr. Pappalardi, it featured many songs co-written by the two, including “Long Red,” which, in a live version backed by the drummer N.D. Smart, featured a drum break that inspired one of the most popular samples in hip-hop history, heard on more than 700 recordings, including ones by Public Enemy, Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar.By the time “Mountain” appeared, Mr. West had persuaded Mr. Pappalardi to form a band with him named for the album. “I said, ‘There’s never been a fat and a skinny guy onstage,’” Mr. West told Guitar World. “‘We can’t miss.’”Mr. West with his first band, the Vagrants, at the Village Theater in Manhattan in 1967. The drummer is Roger Mansour.Credit…Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesOne of Mountain’s first gigs was at the Woodstock festival, a booking the band received because it shared an agent with Jimi Hendrix. The band’s debut album was released the next spring, with Steve Knight, who came aboard for the Woodstock performance, on keyboards, and Mr. Laing on drums.The addition of Mr. Knight’s surging organ added warmth to the band’s sound and differentiated Mountain from Cream’s power-trio format. The album’s lead track, “Mississippi Queen,” had what became one of the most famous cowbell intros in rock, though it was originally used by Mr. Pappalardi simply as a way to count the band into the song. The song reached No. 21 on the Billboard singles chart and became an FM radio staple.The final studio album by the original Mountain, “Flowers of Evil,” was released in late 1971. One side had material, recorded in the studio, fashioned around an anti-drug theme; the other side had music recorded live at the Fillmore East.The next year the group split, a result of various band members’ drug abuse and Mr. Pappalardi’s decision to quit touring. While he continued to work as a producer, Mr. West, Mr. Bruce and Mr. Laing recorded two studio albums and a live set before Mr. Bruce bowed out in 1973. That same year, Mr. West and Mr. Pappalardi reformed Mountain with a new drummer and keyboardist for a double live album, “Twin Peaks,” and a studio album, “Avalanche,” both issued in 1974. But months later, the group imploded.In 1983, Mr. Pappalardi was fatally shot by his wife, Gail Collins, who had co-written songs for Mountain and designed their famous album covers.Mr. West continued to record and perform, billed either under his own name or as leader of Mountain, sometimes with Mr. Laing. He collaborated on albums with star guitarists like Joe Bonamassa and Peter Frampton and recorded with top metal singers like Ian Gillan of Deep Purple and Ozzy Osbourne.His last album with Mountain, “Masters of War,” released in 2007, featured covers of Bob Dylan songs. In 2009, he toured with a band billed as West, Bruce Jr. and Laing, with Mr. Bruce’s son, Malcolm, on bass. (Jack Bruce died in 2014.) He appeared with Mountain at an all-star concert for the 40th anniversary of Woodstock in 2009. His most recent solo release, “Soundcheck,” reached No. 2 on Billboard’s blues chart in 2015.Mr. West in performance at the Jammy Awards at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in 2008. He continued to record and perform, billed either under his own name or as leader of Mountain, well into the 21st century.Credit…Jason DeCrow/Associated PressMr. West is survived by his brother and his wife, Jenni Maurer, whom he married onstage after his Woodstock performance in 2009.Throughout his career, Mr. West remained committed to his uniquely punchy guitar style.“I’m not a great guitarist, technically,” he told Guitar World in 1987. “But you know why people remember me? If you take a hundred players and put them in a room, 98 or 99 of ’em are gonna sound the same.“The one who plays different,” he said, “that’s the one you’re going to remember.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Blue’ Gene Tyranny, Whose Music Melded Genres, Dies at 75

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Blue’ Gene Tyranny, Whose Music Melded Genres, Dies at 75A creator of modern music as a teenager, he later juggled a breezy pop sensibility with conceptual rigor. He was an important collaborator with the composer Robert Ashley.The pianist and composer “Blue” Gene Tyranny in performance at La MaMa in Manhattan in 2004.Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020, 5:58 p.m. ETRobert Sheff, a composer and pianist who worked under the name “Blue” Gene Tyranny as a solo performer and a collaborator with artists including Iggy Pop, the composer Robert Ashley and the jazz composer and arranger Carla Bley, died on Dec. 12 in hospice care in Long Island City, Queens. He was 75.The cause was complications of diabetes, Tommy McCutchon, the founder of the record label Unseen Worlds, which released several albums by Mr. Tyranny, said in an email.His memorable pseudonym, coined during his brief stint with Iggy and the Stooges, was derived partly from Jean, his adoptive mother’s middle name. It also referred to what he called “the tyranny of the genes” — a predisposition to being “strongly overcome by emotion,” he said in “Just for the Record: Conversations With and About ‘Blue’ Gene Tyranny,” a documentary film directed by David Bernabo released in September.Music, Mr. Tyranny explained in the film, was a source of solace, but also a means “of deeply informing myself that there’s another world. Music is my way of being in the world.”A master at the keyboard and an eclectic composer who deftly balanced conceptual rigor with breezy pop sounds, Mr. Tyranny was active in modern music as early as his teenage years.From curating contemporary-music concerts in high school, he went on to participate in the groundbreaking and influential Once Festival of New Music in Ann Arbor, Mich., during the 1960s. He taught classes and worked as a recording-studio technician at Mills College, an experimental-music hotbed in Oakland, Calif., from 1971 to 1982. Arriving in New York City in 1983, Mr. Tyranny worked with Mr. Ashley, Laurie Anderson and Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra, while also composing his own works.Mr. Tyranny, who had been living in Long Island City since 2002, is survived by a brother, Richard Sheff, and three half siblings, William Gantic Jr., Vickie Murray and Justa Calvin.He was born Joseph Gantic to William and Eleanor Gantic on Jan. 1, 1945, in San Antonio. When Mr. Gantic, an Army paratrooper, was reported missing in action in Southeast Asia during World War II, Mr. Tyranny related in “Just for the Record,” his wife gave up their infant child for adoption.He was adopted 11 months later by Meyer and Dorothy Jean Sheff, who ran a clothing shop in downtown San Antonio, and renamed Robert Nathan Sheff. He began piano studies early in his childhood and took his first composition lessons at 11. By high school, he was performing avant-garde works by composers like Charles Ives and John Cage in an experimental-music series he jointly curated with the composer Philip Krumm at the McNay Art Institute in San Antonio.Invited by the Juilliard School to audition as a performance major, he demurred, insisting even then on being viewed as a composer. Instead he went to Ann Arbor, where he lived and worked from 1962 to 1971 and participated in the Once Festival. Mr. Tyranny’s works from this period, like “Ballad” (1960) and “Diotima” (1963), were abstract and fidgety, chiefly concerned with timbral contrast.Mr. Tyranny preparing for a concert at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., in 2006.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIn 1965, Mr. Tyranny helped found the Prime Movers Blues Band, whose drummer, James Osterberg Jr., would achieve fame as the proto-punk singer-songwriter Iggy Pop. Another founder, Michael Erlewine, later created AllMusic, which became a popular reference website to which Mr. Tyranny contributed, occasionally writing about his own work.In the late 1960s, Mr. Osterberg transformed himself into Iggy Pop and formed the Stooges. After releasing the album “Raw Power” in 1973, he invited his former bandmate to join him on tour. Mr. Tyranny accepted, performing with red LED lights woven into his hair.He also played in the bands of jazz composers like Bill Dixon and Ms. Bley, and in 1976 explored the intersections of contemporary classical music and rock with Mr. Gordon in a groundbreaking concert series in Berkeley, Calif., documented on a 2019 Unseen Worlds release, “Trust in Rock.”An association with Mr. Ashley, whom Mr. Tyranny had met in Ann Arbor and then followed to Mills College, flourished into a close, enduring collaboration. Mr. Tyranny’s best-known work likely was the role he created in “Perfect Lives (Private Parts)” (1976-83), Mr. Ashley’s landmark opera, conceived and eventually presented as a television series: Buddy, the World’s Greatest Piano Player. Their relationship was deeply collaborative. Presented by Mr. Ashley with a blueprint indicating keys and metric structures, Mr. Tyranny filled in harmonies and supplied playfully ornate piano writing.“Blue and Bob had this symbiotic relationship from back in Ann Arbor,” Mr. Gordon, who also participated in the creation of “Perfect Lives,” said in a phone interview. “The character Buddy is like the avatar for the music of ‘Blue’ Gene.”“What we commonly recognize as music in ‘Perfect Lives’ was ‘Blue’ Gene’s,” Mr. Gordon explained, “but the overall composition was Bob’s.” Mr. Tyranny would contribute in different ways to later Ashley operas, including “Dust” (1998) and “Celestial Excursions” (2003).In his own music, much of which he recorded for the Lovely Music label, Mr. Tyranny moved from early efforts with graphic notation and magnetic tape to compositions that drew from popular styles. Some selections on his debut solo album, “Out of the Blue” (1978), like “Leading a Double Life,” were essentially pop songs. “A Letter From Home,” which closed that album, mixed found sounds and dreamy keyboards with an epistolary text, spoken and sung, ranging from the mundane to the philosophical.He worked extensively with electronics and labored throughout the 1990s on “The Driver’s Son,” which he termed an “audio storyboard.” A realization of that piece, a questing monodrama set to lush timbres and bubbly rhythms, will be included in “Degrees of Freedom Found,” a six-CD boxed set of unreleased Tyranny recordings due on Unseen Worlds in the spring. Mr. Tyranny, who lost his eyesight in 2009 and gave up performing after 2016, helped to compile the set, hoping to give his disparate canon a coherent shape.Mr. Tyranny’s compositions divided critical response. “To this taste, Mr. Tyranny’s work too often skirts the trivial,” John Rockwell wrote in a 1987 New York Times review. But Ben Ratliff, in a 2012 Times review of the last new recording issued during Mr. Tyranny’s life, “Detours,” offered a different view: “Mr. Sheff represents a lot of different American energies.”He added, “He does not stint on beautiful things — major arpeggios, soul-chord progressions, lines that flow and breathe — and his keyboard touch is rounded and gorgeous, a feeling you remember.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Rebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59Her Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her Tony Award nominations for “Show Boat,” “The Music Man” and “Mary Poppins.”Rebecca Luker as Maria, surrounded by the von Trapp children, in the 1998 Broadway revival of “The Sound of Music.” She also starred in hit revivals of “Show Boat” and “The Music Man.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Rebecca Luker, the actress and singer who in a lauded three-decade career on the New York stage embodied the essence of the Broadway musical ingénue in hit revivals of “Show Boat,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Music Man,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in Manhattan. She was 59. The death was confirmed by Sarah Fargo, her agent. Ms. Luker announced in February that she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s disease.Ms. Luker’s Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her three Tony Award nominations. The first was for “Show Boat” (1994), in which she played Magnolia, the captain’s dewy-fresh teenage daughter, whose life is ruined by marriage to a riverboat gambler. The second was for “The Music Man” (2000), in which she was Marian, the prim River City librarian who enchants a traveling flimflam man who thinks — mistakenly — that he’s just passing through town.In between, Ms. Luker delighted critics by playing against type in a 1997 Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” As Adriana, the neglected wife who gets her groove back (with her husband’s long-lost twin brother), she wore slinky 1930s gowns and exuded what Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times, called “a disarmingly confectionary sexiness.”Ms. Luker, center, with Debbie Gravitte, left, and Sarah Uriarte Berry in the 1997 Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPlaying Adriana was fun, Ms. Luker admitted. “For the first time in my life, I got to do a bit,” she told The Times in 1998. “Learning to turn to the audience, learning to hold for laughs — I ate it up with a spoon.”But by the end of that year, she was deep into ingénue territory again, playing Maria, the undisciplined novice nun turned live-in governess of seven, in “The Sound of Music.”When she earned her third Tony nomination, this one for best featured actress in a musical, it was for playing Winifred Banks, a married Englishwoman with two children and a gifted nanny, in “Mary Poppins” (2006).For all her success in musicals, Ms. Luker did not identify as a show-tunes type. “I am so not a musical theater person,” she told Playbill in 2003. “I love rock music and jazz. I love the ’70s stuff I grew up with.”Rebecca Joan Luker was born on April 17, 1961, in Birmingham, Ala., and grew up in Helena, a small town nearby. She was one of four children of Norse Doak Luker Jr., a construction worker, and Martha (Baggett) Luker, the local high school’s treasurer. Rebecca sang in her church choir (First Baptist of Alabaster) and was a member of the Thompson High marching band.In high school, she entered a beauty pageant. Singing “Much More,” the ballad of girlish dreams and determination from “The Fantasticks,” she won a college scholarship as first runner-up to Alabama’s Junior Miss.That took her to the University of Montevallo, just 14 miles from her parents’ home, where she was a music major and received her diploma in 1984. Graduation was a year later than planned because she took a break to work with Michigan Opera Theater, where she met her future New York agent. Just five years after college, she was on the Broadway stage, assuming the lead female role in “The Phantom of the Opera”— Christine, the chorus girl who is the object of the phantom’s affections.“Phantom” was her Broadway debut; she began as the understudy to the original star, Sarah Brightman; became an alternate; and took over as Christine in 1989. She remained with the show until 1991.Ms. Luker moved on immediately to another Broadway show: She played a ghost, the little orphan girl’s dead Aunt Lily, in “The Secret Garden.” In his review in The Times, Frank Rich singled out “I Heard Someone Crying,” Ms. Luker’s haunting trio with Mandy Patinkin and Daisy Egan, for special praise.Ms. Luker in performance at the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2005. In addition to her theater work, she had a thriving cabaret career.Credit…Rahav Segev for The New York TimesIn several of her later Broadway roles, Ms. Luker replaced the original actress in a long-running hit. She took over as Claudia, the director-protagonist’s movie-star muse, in “Nine” (2003); Marie, the temperamental fairy godmother, in “Cinderella” (2013); and Helen, the frustrated wife and mother who misses being an actress — just as Mrs. Banks had in “Mary Poppins” — in “Fun Home” (2016).She grew older gracefully in a number of her later Off Broadway roles. Twenty years after starring in a 1996 revival of “Brigadoon” as Fiona, a Scottish lass so rare she really does come along only once a century, she played a droll Buffalo matron in A.R. Gurney’s comic drama “Indian Blood” (2006). In 2011, she was an Italian duchess grieving her son’s death in Maury Yeston’s musical “Death Takes a Holiday.”Ms. Luker also had a thriving cabaret career, appearing at intimate venues like Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s/54 Below, but she professed a special love for “the live experience in front of an orchestra.”The stage was always her first home, but she did finally make her screen acting debut in her late 30s when she appeared in “Cupid and Cate” (2000), a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie in which she played the heroine’s perfect and perfectly sensible sister. Between 2010 and 2020, she had guest roles on series including “Boardwalk Empire” and “N.C.I.S. New Orleans” and appeared in three feature films, including “Not Fade Away” (2012), a drama about a teenage rock band.Her final stage role was as a small-town minister’s narrow-minded wife in a 2019 Kennedy Center production of “Footloose.” She performed at a concert in honor of the lyricist Sheldon Harnick in March 2020.Ms. Luker at home in 2015 with her husband, the actor Danny Burstein.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesHer last performance was in June, via Zoom, in a prerecorded benefit performance, “At Home With Rebecca Luker.”“When I sing,” she told The Times shortly before that show, “I think it heals me. It helps me feel like I’m still a part of something.”Ms. Luker married Gregory Jbara, an actor, in 1993; they divorced in 1996. In 2000 she married the actor Danny Burstein, whom she met when they starred together in “Time and Again” in San Diego.Mr. Burstein survives her, as do two stepsons, Zachary and Alexander Burstein; a brother, Roger; a sister, Suzanne Luker; her mother, Martha Hales; and her stepfather, Lamar Hales. Another brother, Stephen, died last year.Looking back on her career in a 2016 Theater People podcast, Ms. Luker expressed gratitude for the roles she’d had but admitted that she probably should have broken out of the leading-lady mold — studied acting longer and more seriously, appeared in more plays, done more comedy.“I wish I had branched out a little more,” she said cheerily. “Maybe played a bitch or something.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chad Stuart, of the Hit British Duo Chad & Jeremy, Dies at 79

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChad Stuart, of the Hit British Duo Chad & Jeremy, Dies at 79Mr. Stuart’s wistful tunes of summer romance brought him and Jeremy Clyde an intense but brief burst of stardom during the British Invasion of the 1960s.Chad Stuart in 1965. He and Jeremy Clyde had seven Top 40 singles from 1964 to 1966.Credit…Sony MusicDec. 22, 2020Updated 6:52 p.m. ETChad Stuart, who found stardom as the chief musical force of the duo Chad & Jeremy during the British Invasion in the mid-1960s, died on Sunday at his home in Hailey, Idaho. He was 79.The cause was pneumonia, his daughter, Beth Stuart, said.Singing in lock-step harmony, Mr. Stuart and Jeremy Clyde wrung all they could from the theme of a fondly recalled summer romance. “I loved you all the summer through,” “lovely summer dream,” “sweet soft summer nights,” “soft kisses on a summer’s day” — these phrases come from four different Top 40 Chad & Jeremy hits. They had seven of them in total, all love songs, between 1964 and 1966.Their gentle voices and acoustic guitars conveyed intimacy, but tracks like “A Summer Song” and “Yesterday’s Gone” took on a grander scale from the sweeping strings, plaintive horns and booming drums of Mr. Stuart’s arrangements. The orchestration had neither the spare authenticity of purist folk nor the electric attitude of rock. Mr. Stuart’s pop tunes made wistfulness upbeat; they were less invasion than invitation.Nevertheless, Chad & Jeremy capitalized on the British Invasion phenomenon. As their fame took off, close on the heels of Beatlemania, alongside other British bands like Herman’s Hermits and a fellow duo, Peter and Gordon, Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde found themselves serving as archetypal mop-top crooners on “Batman” and other TV series.Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde in 1966. Becoming rock stars in America, Mr. Clyde said, “was a young man’s dream come true.”Credit…Sony MusicOn “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” for instance, Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde played the Redcoats, a heartthrob British rock duo in skinny black ties and bowl cuts with “every teenager in America looking for them.” After some teenage girls learn that the handsome young Brits had stayed in the suburban home of Mr. Van Dyke’s character, they emit a collective shriek and begin looting his living room, every object in it suddenly a sacred memento.That hysteria was not far from Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde’s actual experience of the mid-’60s.Mr. Clyde, in a phone interview, recalled a trip to Los Angeles in 1964 when throngs of screaming girls greeted him and Mr. Stuart at the airport. On their way to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, they found themselves tailed by the girls, who reached out and tried to touch their limousine. Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde were pursued into the hotel. One girl jumped out of a laundry basket.Mr. Clyde said the sound of girls’ screams remained among his most palpable memories from the era.“A wall of sound, a blast, like a jet engine — screeching like a jet engine,” he said. “Never letting up. No pause for breath. It keeps on going.”He and Mr. Stuart, he added, found this moment enthralling.“It was a young man’s dream come true,” Mr. Clyde said. “You’re a star, and America’s at your feet.”Mr. Stuart on an episode of “Batman” in 1966, one of a number of television appearances Chad & Jeremy made in their heyday.Credit…ABC TV/Time WarnerChad Stuart was born David Stuart Chadwick on Dec. 10, 1941, in Windermere, England. (He was called Chad as a teenager and changed his name legally in 1964.) His father, Frank Chadwick, worked as a foreman in the lumber industry, and his mother, Frieda (Bedford) Chadwick, was a nurse.His family moved to the town of West Hartlepool, but Chad grew up largely at the Durham Cathedral Chorister School, a boarding school for choirboys that gave him a scholarship. He would later use his musical training to construct the hooks of Chad & Jeremy’s catchy tunes.“They hit them until they learned music theory,” Mr. Clyde said. “He could harmonize anything. For years and years, I’d just say, ‘What’s my part?’ and he’d tell me, and I’d sing it.”Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde met as undergraduates at the Central School of Speech and Drama (now the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) in London. Mr. Clyde, an aspiring actor, also played rudimentary folk guitar. A rumor went around that a guitar-playing new boy had mastered “Apache,” an instrumental by the beloved British rock group the Shadows. Mr. Clyde introduced himself, and he and Mr. Stuart became instant friends.Mr. Stuart in 1959 as a student at the Durham Cathedral Chorister School, a boarding school for choirboys, where, Mr. Clyde said, “They hit them until they learned music theory.”Credit…via Stuart familyMr. Stuart “came from a grimy little town in Northern England,” he told the blog Music Web Express 3000. Mr. Clyde, conversely, was the grandson of the Duke of Wellington.“It was kind of a mutual fascination society,” Mr. Stuart said. “It was a good trade-off, really.” Mr. Stuart taught Mr. Clyde about music, and Mr. Clyde introduced Mr. Stuart to a new social world. Thanks to Mr. Clyde’s family connections, the two young men stayed at Dean Martin’s house in Los Angeles and hung out with Frank Sinatra.Their fame had the brevity of a firework. Mr. Clyde wanted to be an actor, and by 1965 he had already returned to London to appear in a play, leaving Mr. Stuart to perform with a cardboard cutout of Mr. Clyde under his arm. They kept putting out records until “The Ark,” a 1968 album for which Mr. Clyde wrote most of the songs, but lagging commercial interest and Mr. Clyde’s other career ambitions broke up the band.“It always amazed me that after being so prolific in the ‘Ark’ period, he just walked away,” Mr. Stuart told Music Web Express 3000.Mr. Stuart continued to perform, but with a greatly reduced pop-cultural stature. At one point he opened for the hard-rock band Mountain in a bowling alley in Hartford, Conn. He made a living producing radio jingles and, toward the end of his life, giving private music lessons. Mr. Clyde had a successful career as an actor onstage and on television in Britain.Mr. Stuart’s two previous marriages, to Jill Gibson and Valerie Romero, ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter, from his second marriage, he is survived by his wife, Judy Shelly; two children from his first marriage, Andrew and Patrick Stuart; another child from his second marriage, Beau, and two stepchildren from that marriage, Hallie Kelly and Devin Kelly; two stepchildren from his current marriage, Cassi Shelly and Owen Shelly; five grandchildren; and a sister, Jen Histon.Mr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde in 2014. They toured annually from 2004 to 2016 and were surprised by how much they enjoyed the experience.Credit…Alma PitchfordMr. Stuart and Mr. Clyde did several reunion tours in the 1980s and annually from 2004 to 2016, surprising themselves by how much they enjoyed the experience. Fans asked them to sign photographs they had taken with the duo decades ago, and to take new photographs together.“We want to keep going until we drop,” Mr. Stuart said in an interview with the blog ClassicBands.com. “This is the best fun either one of us has had in decades.”Mr. Stuart “jumped right in” to “hugging the audience,” Mr. Clyde said. “He loved being loved.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      K.T. Oslin, Country Singer Known for ‘80’s Ladies,’ Dies at 78

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyK.T. Oslin, Country Singer Known for ‘80’s Ladies,’ Dies at 78Her song, the first of many hits, heralded the arrival of a songwriting voice whose sharply drawn miniatures conveyed domestic humor and pathos.The singer and songwriter K.T. Oslin in Central Park in 1987. Her song “80’s Ladies,” released that year, became an anthem for a generation of women.Credit…Oliver Morris/Getty ImagesDec. 22, 2020Updated 4:49 p.m. ETNASHVILLE — K.T. Oslin, the pioneering country singer-songwriter whose biggest hits gave voice to the desires and trials of female baby boomers on the cusp of middle age, died on Monday at an assisted-living facility here. She was 78.The country music historian Robert K. Oermann, a longtime friend, said that the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease. He said she had also tested positive for Covid-19 last week.“80’s Ladies,” Ms. Oslin’s breakthrough single, became an anthem for a generation of women. Released in 1987, it heralded the arrival of a songwriting voice whose sharply drawn miniatures conveyed domestic humor and pathos reminiscent of the songs of Loretta Lynn two decades earlier.“We’ve been educated/We got liberated/And had complicating matters with men,” Ms. Oslin sang in a rich, throaty alto to open the song’s second stanza, looking back over four decades of living.Oh, we’ve said “I do”And we’ve signed “I don’t”And we’ve sworn we’d never do that again.Oh, we burned our brasAnd we burned our dinnersAnd we burned our candles at both ends.Its rock-leaning arrangement might have had more in common with the piano-based ballads of the California singer-songwriter Jackson Browne than with the standard Nashville fare of the era, but “80’s Ladies” was down to earth and catchy enough to make the country Top 10 in 1987. The next year, it also made Ms. Oslin the first female songwriter to earn song of the year honors from the Country Music Association.Ms. Oslin performing at the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville in 1987. A year later, she was named female vocalist of the year.Credit…CMA“Do Ya,” her next single, proved that “80’s Ladies” was no fluke; rather, it was the first in a series of poignant meditations from Ms. Oslin on the ebb and flow of midlife vulnerability and desire.“Do you still get a thrill/When ya see me coming up the hill?/Honey now do ya?” she entreats her lover, the coarse timbre in her voice redolent of some of Janis Joplin’s more intimate performances.Do ya whisper my nameJust to bring a little comfort to ya?Do ya?Do ya still like the feel of my body lying next to ya?“Do Ya” was the first of Ms. Oslin’s four No. 1 country hits, cementing her place among a distinguished circle of thoughtful, independent female songwriting contemporaries that included Pam Tillis, Gretchen Peters and Matraca Berg. In contrast to their plucky rural forebears Dolly Parton and Ms. Lynn, Ms. Oslin and her peers attended college and openly embraced feminism, weaving its insights into their lyrics.A late bloomer, Ms. Oslin was 45 when “80’s Ladies” ignited her recording career. Before that she had worked as a folk singer, appeared in traveling productions of Broadway shows like “Hello, Dolly!” (with Carol Channing) and recorded television commercials for soft drinks and household cleaning products.She might have languished in obscurity had Joe Galante, the longtime president of RCA Nashville, not taken a chance on her when she was at an age when many recording artists were contemplating retirement.“I thought it was my last chance at doing anything in this business, which was all that I knew how to do,” Ms. Oslin said in a 2015 interview with Billboard. “I would have ended up selling gloves at Macy’s if it weren’t for Joe Galante. I was so naïve about the business.”Ms. Oslin’s first two albums for RCA, “80’s Ladies” and “This Woman,” were certified platinum for sales of more than one million copies. She had 11 Top 40 country hits in all, most of them collected on the brashly titled 1993 compilation “Greatest Hits: Confessions of an Aging Sex Bomb.”Ms. Oslin also won three Grammy Awards, as well as female vocalist of the year honors from the Country Music Association in 1988. She was later inducted into both the Texas and Nashville songwriter halls of fame.Kay Toinette Oslin was born on May 15, 1942, in Crossett, Ark. Her father, Larry, died of leukemia when she was 5. Her mother, Kathleen (Byrd) Oslin, worked as a lab technician for the Veterans Administration.Ms. Oslin and her brother, Larry, who died several years ago, spent much of their childhood with their mother in Mobile, Ala., and their teenage years in Houston, where Ms. Oslin studied drama at Lon Morris College and sang in a folk trio with the singer-songwriter Guy Clark.In the mid-’60s she moved to New York, where she worked in the theater and as a jingle singer.Ms. Oslin made New York her home for much of the next two decades, appearing in, among other productions, the Broadway musical “Promises, Promises” and the Lincoln Center revival of “West Side Story.”She also started writing songs and was encouraged by Diane Petty, an executive with the performing rights organization SESAC, to pitch her country-leaning material to song publishers in Nashville.She eventually was signed, as Kay T. Oslin, by Elektra Records, but neither of the singles she released for the label went anywhere. It was not until other singers started having success with her songs that her career began to gain momentum, ultimately leading to the showcase at which she performed for Mr. Galante.Her acting experience served her well, resulting in several memorable music videos, including the “Bride of Frankenstein”-inspired staging of her final No. 1 single, “Come Next Monday” (1990).Dusty Springfield, the Judds and the soul singer Dorothy Moore are among those who have recorded Ms. Oslin’s material. Latter-day country singers like Chely Wright and Brandy Clark have cited her as an influence.Ms. Oslin in concert in 2012.Credit…Rick Diamond/Getty ImagesMs. Oslin began to focus more on acting than singing as the 1990s progressed, appearing most notably as a Nashville nightclub owner in Peter Bogdanovich’s country music-themed 1993 movie, “The Thing Called Love,” starring Sandra Bullock and River Phoenix.She also appeared frequently on the TV talks shows of Johnny Carson, Arsenio Hall and Joan Rivers and was profiled on the ABC program “20/20.”She had quadruple heart bypass surgery in 1995 and recorded only sporadically after that, embracing her Americana influences on “My Roots Are Showing” in 1996 and releasing a dance-floor mix of the 1951 Rosemary Clooney hit “Come On-a My House” in 2000.No immediate family members survive.In 2015, two years after celebrating its 25th anniversary, Ms. Oslin recorded a new version of “80’s Ladies” for her final album, “Simply.”“That’s the one I still hear the most about, and that’s great,” she said of “80’s Ladies” in her 2015 Billboard interview. “I still love that song. It spoke to a lot of people. I don’t know how I managed to write it, but it was a great song.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stanley Cowell, Jazz Pianist With a Wide Range, Dies at 79

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStanley Cowell, Jazz Pianist With a Wide Range, Dies at 79His playing consolidated generations of musical history. He was also a composer, an educator and the founder of an important artist-run record label.The pianist and composer Stanley Cowell in performance at the Beacon Theater in New York in 2017. He was known for his adaptability and his vast command of the jazz language.Credit…Dia Dipasupil/Getty ImagesDec. 20, 2020, 3:06 p.m. ETStanley Cowell, a pianist, composer, record-label impresario and educator who brought a technician’s attention to detail and a theorist’s sophistication to his more than 50-year career as a jazz bandleader, died on Friday in Dover, Del. He was 79.Sylvia Potts Cowell, his wife, said that the cause of his death, at a hospital, was hypovolemic shock, the result of blood loss stemming from other health issues.Mr. Cowell’s playing epitomized the piano’s ability to consolidate generations of musical history into a unified expression, while extending various routes into the future. And when he needed to say more than the piano allowed, he expanded his palette. He was among the first jazz musicians to make prominent use of the kalimba, a thumb piano from southeastern Africa. In his later decades he worked often with a digital sound-design program, Kyma, that allowed him to alter the pitch and texture of an acoustic piano’s sound.In 1971, together with the trumpeter Charles Tolliver, Mr. Cowell founded Strata-East Records, a pioneering institution in jazz and the broader Black Arts Movement. It would release a steady run of pathbreaking music over the coming decade, becoming one of the most successful Black-run labels of its time.Mr. Cowell and Mr. Tolliver met in the late 1960s, as members of the drummer Max Roach’s ensemble. After recording a now-classic album with Roach, “Members, Don’t Git Weary,” in 1968, they formed a quartet called Music Inc., which released its debut LP, “The Ringer,” on Polydor in 1970. But Mr. Cowell and Mr. Tolliver found themselves unable to find a label that would pay what they considered a fair advance for their next album, at a time when jazz’s commercial appeal was fading.Inspired by the Black musicians’ collectives that had recently sprouted up in cities across the country, and by the artist-run Strata label in Detroit, Mr. Cowell and Mr. Tolliver founded Strata-East. Their second album together, “Music Inc.,” with the quartet fleshed out into a large ensemble, was the label’s first release.“The aesthetic ambition was to compose, play and extend the music of our great influences, mentors and innovators, while keeping the distinguishing features of the jazz tradition,” Mr. Cowell said in a 2015 interview for the Superfly Records website.Over the coming decade, Strata-East would release dozens of albums with a similar goal at heart, including some gemlike LPs by Mr. Cowell: “Musa: Ancestral Streams” (1974), a solo album of understated breadth; “Regeneration” (1975), an odyssey equally inspired by pop music and pan-Africanism; and a pair of singular albums with the Piano Choir, a group of seven pianists, “Handscapes 1” (1973) and “Handscapes 2” (1975).Mr. Cowell was also becoming one of New York’s most in-demand side musicians, known for his adaptability and his vast command of the jazz language. In the coming decade he would play an integral role in the Heath Brothers band and groups led by the saxophonists Arthur Blythe and Art Pepper and the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson.After becoming a full-time music professor in the 1980s, Mr. Cowell eventually stepped back from public performances and recordings.His quartet’s appearance at the Village Vanguard in 2015 was his first weeklong engagement in New York in nearly two decades. Reviewing one of those shows for The New York Times, Ben Ratliff wrote, “Mr. Cowell can create impressive momentary events, but what’s best about him is his broad frame of reference and the general synthesis he is proposing.”Mr. Cowell leading a quartet at the Village Vanguard in New York in 2015. It was his first weeklong engagement in New York in nearly two decades, after many years in academia.Credit…Michael Appleton for The New York TimesIn addition to his wife, Mr. Cowell is survived by their daughter, Sunny Cowell Stovall; a sister, Esther Cowell; another daughter, Sienna Cowell, from a previous marriage; and two grandchildren. He had homes in Maryland and Delaware.Stanley Allen Cowell was born in Toledo, Ohio, on May 5, 1941, to Stanley Cowell and Willie Hazel (Lytle) Cowell, who kept a wide variety of music playing in the house at all times. The couple ran a series of businesses, including a motel that was among the only places in Toledo where touring Black musicians could stay. Many artists became friends of the family, including the stride piano master Art Tatum, himself a Toledo native.During a visit to the family home when Stanley was 6, Tatum played a version of the show tune “You Took Advantage of Me” that Mr. Cowell would never forget. When he recorded his first album as a leader in 1969, “Blues for the Viet Cong,” he included a dazzling stride rendition of “You Took Advantage of Me” alongside his own forward-charging originals.As a child, Mr. Cowell played and composed constantly. By the time he arrived at the Oberlin College Conservatory in Ohio at age 17, he had already written a number of pieces, including “Departure,” which would become the opening track on “Blues for the Viet Cong.” He studied for a time in Austria, then went on to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a graduate degree in classical piano while working six nights a week in a jazz trio.Mr. Cowell at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall in 2011.Credit…Ruby Washington/The New York TimesHe also fell in with the experimental improvisers and poets of the nearby Detroit Artists Workshop. That experience opened his mind to new artistic possibilities, while planting a seed of passion for artist-led organizing.His connections in Detroit led him to the saxophonist Marion Brown, who helped him land on his feet after moving to New York City in the mid-1960s. Mr. Brown brought the young pianist to his first recording session, in 1966, for the album “Three for Shepp.”Mr. Cowell recorded “Blues for the Viet Cong” with a trio in 1969, and followed it with “Brilliant Circles,” a sextet date. He went on to make over a dozen albums in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, including a run for the Steeplechase label while in his 40s and 50s that, while generally unsung, represents one of that era’s most consistently brilliant stretches of jazz recordings.In the 1980s, Mr. Cowell began to focus more heavily on his work as an educator — first at the City University of New York’s Lehman College and later at Rutgers. He expanded his inquiries into electronic instrumentation and orchestral composing, becoming adept at Kyma and teaching courses on electronic music. He composed a lengthy “Juneteenth Suite” for chorus and orchestra, inspired by the celebrations of Black Americans after the Emancipation Proclamation.After retiring from teaching in 2013, Mr. Cowell revved up his performing career again. He reconnected with his old cohort, including Mr. Tolliver and other former members of the Strata-East roster, touring under the name the Strata-East All Stars. And in 2015, Mr. Cowell released the album “Juneteenth,” featuring what he called “a solo piano reduction” of the suite.In an echo of his experiences almost 50 years earlier, he had been unable to find a record label willing to invest in recording the suite with a full orchestra. Eventually a small French label, Vision Fugitive, offered to put out the solo-piano version.He often noted the irony of his inability to find an American label for the record, which celebrates a suppressed legacy of American music. But he was proud to have put it out anyway, upholding his understanding of the musician’s role.“We are not just artists, we are citizens of our respective nations, and ultimately citizens of the world,” he told Superfly Records. “In our own personal ways, and when necessary, in unity with others, we should add our ‘fuel’ to the cleansing fire against injustice.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More