Four cellists, Eicca Toppinen, Paavo Lotjonen, Max Lilja, and Antero Manninen formed Apocalyptica in 1993 at Sibelius Acadamy. The band released their debut studio album, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos, in 1996. The album consisted of only Metallica covers. The band was featured on two songs on the Waltari album Space Avenue in 1997. Apocalyptica […]
Barbara Thompson
Last week I posted about Dutch jazz saxophonist Candy Dulfer and it put me in mind of our very own virtuoso of the sax, Barbara Thompson and so today we will sample her music which although played on the same instrument is very different in texture to that of Dulfer. Barbara was born in Oxford […]
Carla Bruni
Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, Italy. Bruni is legally the daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi. In 2008, however, Bruni told Vanity Fair that her biological father is Italian-born Brazilian grocery magnate Maurizio Remmert. When Remmert met Marisa Borini at a concert in […]
The Fair Rain
A year or two back when Katy and I were on holiday in Northumberland, we went several times to the theatre in Alnwick. The first night was a live streamed Shakespeare, but sadly the weather was so bad that the signal was lost so we never found out how it ended! However we reurned the […]
Spem In Alium
Spem in alium (Latin for “Hope in any other”) is a 40-part motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. It is considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. H. B. Collins described it in 1929 as Tallis’s “crowning achievement”. The work’s […]
Candy Dulfer
Candy Dulfer was born in September, 1969 in Amsterdam. She began playing the drums at the age of five. As a six-year-old, she started to play the soprano saxophone. At age seven, she switched to alto saxophone and later began playing in a local concert band Jeugd Doet Leven (“Youth Brings Life”) in Zuiderwoude. Dulfer […]
Beth Rowley
Beth Rowley was born in Peru to British parents who moved back to Bristol when Rowley was two years old. She was influenced by her family’s love for many different musical styles, and Latin American music. She attended St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School in Bristol. Incidently, a school at which David spent a year. […]
Amazing Blondel
John Gladwin (guitar and vocals) and Terrance (Terry) Wincott (guitar and vocals) formed a band called The Dimples along with Stuart Smith (drums) and Johnny Jackson (bass guitar). Signed to the Decca label they recorded a single, the “A” side “Love of a Lifetime” and the “B” side written by John Gladwin titled “My Heart […]
Cindi Lauper
Lauper was born in Brooklyn to a Catholic family. Her father, Fred, was of German and Swiss descent. Her mother, Catrine, is of Italian descent. Lauper’s siblings are younger brother Fred and older sister, Ellen. Lauper’s parents divorced when she was five. Her mother remarried and divorced again. Lauper grew up in the Ozone Park […]
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. His music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook. Born in Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy”, in 1907, receiving […]