Danielle Boykin Duke Ellington is known as one of the greatest jazz composers ever lived. He was born Edward Kennedy Ellington in Washington D.C. in 1899. By the age of 17 was playing professionally. In 1923 he moved to New York City where he started recruiting people for his orchestra. He started off with an average jazz band of ten people but through the thirties and forties that number greatly expanded.
In 1963, he had a relationship with Joan Baez, an American folk singer and songwriter known for her soprano style and three-octave vocal range, that lasted two years. However, this relationship was favorable to both because it promoted them with more fans; Bob Dylan wrote songs that Baez composed whereas Joan Baez introduced Dylan to most of her admirers. Because of her, by 1964, he was already playing about 200 concerts a year (RealNetworks). In 1965, most of his fans were shocked with the new album “Bringing It All Back Home” with two distinct genres: acoustic and electric (A&E). When he played his electrical songs in the Newport Folk Festival for the first time in his life on July 25, the audience ridiculed him surprisingly (A&E).
Radio exposure brought him to the attention of bandleader Harry James, with whom Sinatra made his first recordings, including "All or Nothing at All." In 1940, Sinatra joined Tommy Dorsey’s band. After two years of chart-topping success with Dorsey, Sinatra decided to strike out on his own (Frank Sinatra: the Boudoir Singer, 2011). In the 1940s Sinatra embarked on a solo career and became the idol of “bobby-soxers,” teenage girls who swooned over his crooning, soft-voiced singing. He appeared in such film musicals as Anchors Aweigh (1945), Till the Clouds Roll By (1947), and On the Town (1949).
Alen Menken Alen Menken was born on June 22, 1949 in New Rochelle, New York. He was the son of Judith and Norman Menken. At an early age Alen showed a talent in music. He began taking piano and violin lessons and would get so bored he would make up his own versions of the song after his parents left the room. You could say that was the start of his career as a composer.
(PBS.org) There, he took a music class which made him fall in love with music. In 1914, he was released from the shelter, and (for several years) he made money selling newspapers on the street, hauling coal, and street performing (song and dance). When he was 17 years old, Armstrong began playing at dive bars around town. This public exposure earned him invitations to play in local jazz bands, gaining him a lot of popularity. By 1920, Armstrong had left New Orleans.
His first musical inspirations were by such talents as: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. He formed several bands in high school like Shadow Blasters which was short-lived, but his next band, The Golden Chords, lasted longer and played covers of popular songs. After Dylan graduated from high school, he joined University of Minnesota in early 1959. University was where the thought of becoming a musical artist formed. Dylan begun to listen to folk and rock pioneers: Hank Williams, Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie.
This year’s other two finalists came with their own notable credentials. Justin Brown, 28, originally from Richmond, Calif., is a member of acclaimed groups led by the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and the pianist Gerald Clayton, who have been finalists in previous Monk Competitions. Colin Stranahan, 26, originally from Denver, Colo., has likewise become an active part of the New York jazz scene. (He’ll be at the Village Vanguard this week, starting Tuesday, with Kurt Rosenwinkel’s Standards Trio.) As the winner of this year’s competition, Mr. Ross will receive a $25,000 scholarship and a recording contract with the Concord Music Group.
At the age of 18 and after gaining more experience than most adult musicians can claim, Holiday was spotted by John Hammond and cut her first record as part of a studio group led by Benny Goodman, who was then just on the verge of public notoriety. In 1935 Holiday's career got a big push when she recorded four sides that went on to become hits, including "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Miss Brown to You." This landed her a recording contract of her own, and then, until 1942, she
Mozart’s father, “a violinist at the court of the prince of Salzburg,” taught him how to play the clavier and encouraged him in his art (“Wolfgang” World History). His parents had seven children, although only two of them, Mozart and his sister Maria Anna Mozart, survived to adulthood. Mozart first showed off his innate abilities in music at age four, when “he began playing his pieces from his elder sister’s clavier lessons” and astonished his entire family (“Wolfgang” World History). After his father heard him play such arduous pieces, he started giving him lessons. Mozart’s sister was also a talented musician.
By the age of 12 Liszt traveled to Paris where he learned advanced composition by Ferdinando Paer. By this time Liszt was touring widely as a well-regarded concert pianist. Liszt father, who had first been the one to teach him how to play the piano, took Liszt to Vienna; he was trained in composition free of charge. In 1826 his father had passed away. This made Frantz Liszt exhausted and traumatized at the young age of 15.