Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Happy Birthday: Bobby, Tricky, Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born in Salzburg (which is now Austria), full baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at 17 he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate—the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute." His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart.

Some of his most noted pieces includes "The Magic Flute", "Marriage of Figaro", "Idomeneo", "Don Giovanni", and a host of other operas, symphonies, and concertos.





Bobby "Blue" Bland

Robert Calvin Bland, born January 27, 1930 in Rosemark, Tennessee, better known as Bobby “Blue” Bland, is an American singer of blues and soul. He is an original member of The Beale Streeters and is sometimes referred to as the "Lion of the Blues". Along with such artists as Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and Junior Parker, Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B.

Bobby Bland was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1981, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. You have also heard a few of his tunes sampled in Hip-Hop records.





Trip-Hop pioneer Tricky, born Adrian Nicholas M. Thaws on January 27,1968 in Knowle West, Bristol, England, is an English musician and actor. As a producer and a musician, he is noted for a dark, rich and layered sound and a whispering sprechgesang lyrical style. Culturally, Tricky encourages an intertwining of societies, particularly in his musical fusion of rock and hip hop, high art and pop culture. His debut album Maxinquaye [named after his mother] was nominated for the Mercury Prize and voted Album of the Year by NME Magazine.

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