This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009)

Staccato.

Diatonic scale on C, staccato.  Play (help·info)

Staccato (Italian for detached) is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration,^[1][2] separated from the note that may follow by silence.^[3] It has been described by theorists and appeared in music since the 18th century.

Notation[link]

In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic staccatissimo. However, before 1850, dots, dashes, and wedges were all likely to have the same meaning, even though some theorists from as early as the 1750s distinguished different degrees of staccato through the use of dots and dashes, with the dash indicating a shorter, sharper note, and the dot a longer, lighter one. A number of signs came to be used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to discriminate more subtle nuances of staccato. These signs involve various combinations of dots, vertical and horizontal dashes, vertical and horizontal wedges, and the like, but attempts standardize these signs have not generally been successful.^[4] This does not, however, alter the rhythm of the music and the remainder of the time allotted for each staccato note is played as rest. The opposite musical articulation of staccato is legato, signifying long and continuous notes.^[5]

The scope of the staccato dot:

In the first measure, the pairs of notes are in the same musical part since they are on a common stem. The staccato applies to both notes of the pairs. In the second measure, the pairs of notes are stemmed separately indicating two different parts, so the staccato applies only to the upper note.

A dot indicating staccato articulation is not to be confused with a dotted note.

Playing staccato is the opposite of playing legato. A staccato passage for strings is by definition a bowed rather than a pizzicato technique, though pizzicato itself might be thought of as a kind of staccato effect. For example, Leroy Anderson's Jazz Legato/Jazz Pizzicato. There is an intermediate articulation called either mezzo staccato or non-legato.

Audio examples[link]

	Music played without staccato The same music played staccato
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

See also[link]

• Glissando
• Legato
• Portato
• Slur (music)
• Staccatissimo
• Marcato

References[link]

1. ^ Willi Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 708.
2. ^ Michael Kennedy, ed., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, third edition, (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 617.
3. ^ Geoffrey Chew, "Staccato", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
4. ^ Geoffrey Chew, "Staccato", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
5. ^ Kennedy, Michael, and Joyce Bourne. “Staccato.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

External links[link]

Look up staccato in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Basic Music Theory Neil V. Hawes, organist and choirmaster of St. Mary's Church, Osterley
• Staccato - video example of staccato playing

v t e Musical notation and development Staff Bar & bar line Clef Da capo Dal segno Key signature Ledger line Musical mode Musical scale Rehearsal letter Repeat sign Time signature Transposition Transposing instrument Notes Accidental Flat Natural Sharp Dotted note Grace note Note value Beam Note head Stem Pitch Rest Tuplet Interval Helmholtz pitch notation Letter notation Scientific pitch notation Articulation Dynamics Ornament Trill Mordent Grace note Portato Accent Legato Tenuto Marcato Staccato Staccatissimo Tie Slur Fermata Tonguing Development Cell Coda Exposition Figure Harmony Hook Lick Melody Motif Ossia Ostinato Period Phrase Recapitulation Repetition Rhythm Beat Meter Tempo Theme Tonality Atonality Related Braille music Chord chart Figured bass Graphic notation Lead sheet Eye music Neume Tablature List of musical symbols

Jascha Heifetz (/ˈhaɪfɪts/; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1901 – December 10, 1987) was a violinist, born in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.^[1][2][3][4]

Photo by Yousuf Karsh

Early life[link]

Heifetz was born into a Litvak family in Vilnius, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire.^[5] His father, Reuven Heifetz, son of Elie, was a local violin teacher and served as the concertmaster of the Vilnius Theatre Orchestra for one season before the theatre closed down. Jascha took up the violin when he was three years old and his father was his first teacher. At five he started lessons with Ilya D. Malkin, a former pupil of Leopold Auer. He was a child prodigy, making his public debut at seven, in Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania) playing the Violin Concerto in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn. In 1910 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to study under Leopold Auer himself.

He played in Germany and Scandinavia, and met Fritz Kreisler for the first time in a Berlin private house together with other noted violinists in attendance. Kreisler, after accompanying the 12-year-old Heifetz at the piano in a performance of the Mendelssohn concerto, said to all present, "We may as well break our fiddles across our knees." Heifetz visited much of Europe while still in his teens. In April 1911, Heifetz performed in an outdoor concert in St. Petersburg before 25,000 spectators; there was such a sensational reaction that police officers needed to protect the young violinist after the concert. In 1914, Heifetz performed with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Arthur Nikisch. The conductor was very impressed, saying he had never heard such an excellent violinist.^[6]

Career[link]

Heifetz and his family left Russia in 1917, traveling by rail to the Russian far east and thence by ship to the United States, arriving in San Francisco.

On October 27, 1917, Heifetz played for the first time in the United States, at Carnegie Hall in New York, and became an immediate sensation.^[7] Fellow violinist Mischa Elman in the audience asked "Do you think it's hot in here?", whereupon the pianist Leopold Godowsky, in the next seat, imperturbably replied, "Not for pianists."^[8] The reviews by the New York critics were rapturous.

In 1917, Heifetz was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. As he was aged 16 at the time, he was perhaps the youngest person ever elected to membership in the organization. Heifetz remained in the country and became an American citizen in 1925. When he told admirer Groucho Marx he had been earning his living as a musician since the age of seven, Groucho answered, "And I suppose before that you were just a bum."

Technique and timbre[link]

Heifetz is considered to be one of the finest violinists of all time. Heifetz's technical command of his instrument – his physical ability to play the violin with stunning precision – is regarded by many critics as unequaled. That physical control enabled Heifetz to produce a distinctive tone quality, intense and shimmering, that came to be regarded as his trademark. Yet, from time to time his near-perfect technique and conservative stage demeanor caused some critics to accuse him of being overly mechanical, even cold. Virgil Thomson called Heifetz's style of playing "silk underwear music", a term he did not intend as a compliment. Other critics argue that he infused his playing with feeling and reverence for the composers' intentions. His style of playing was highly influential in defining the way modern violinists approach the instrument. His use of rapid vibrato, emotionally charged portamento, fast tempos, and superb bow control coalesced to create a highly distinctive sound that make Heifetz's playing instantly recognizable to aficionados. The violinist Itzhak Perlman, who himself is noted for his rich warm tone and expressive use of portamento, describes Heifetz's tone as like "a tornado" because of its emotional intensity. Perlman also said that Heifetz preferred to be recorded relatively close to the microphone; as a result, one would perceive a somewhat different tone quality when listening to Heifetz during a concert hall performance as opposed to a recording.^[9]

In creating his sound, Heifetz was very particular about his choice of strings. He used a silver wound Tricolore gut g-string, plain gut unvarnished D and A strings, and a Goldbrokat steel E string medium including clear Hill brand rosin sparingly. Heifetz believed that playing on gut strings was important in rendering an individual sound.

Early recordings[link]

Jascha Heifetz around 1920

Heifetz made his first recordings in Russia during 1910–11, while still a student of Leopold Auer. The existence of these recordings was not widely known until after Heifetz's death, when several sides (most notably François Schubert's L'Abeille) were reissued on an LP included as a supplement to The Strad magazine.

Shortly after his Carnegie Hall debut on November 7, 1917, Heifetz made his first recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company; he would remain with Victor and its successor, RCA Victor, for most of his career. For several years, in the 1930s, Heifetz recorded primarily for HMV in the UK because RCA cut back on classical recordings during the Great Depression; these discs were issued in the US by RCA Victor. Heifetz often enjoyed playing chamber music. Various critics have blamed his limited success in chamber ensembles to the fact that his artistic personality tended to overwhelm his colleagues. Some notable collaborations include his 1941 recordings of piano trios by Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms with cellist Emanuel Feuermann and pianist Arthur Rubinstein as well as a later collaboration with Rubinstein and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, with whom he recorded trios by Maurice Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Felix Mendelssohn. Both formations were sometimes referred to as the Million Dollar Trio.

He recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto in 1940 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini, and again in stereo in 1955 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch. A live performance from April 9, 1944, of Heifetz playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, again with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, has also been released.

He performed and recorded Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto, at a time when many classical musicians avoided Korngold's music because they did not consider him a "serious" composer after he wrote many film scores for Warner Brothers.

Wartime[link]

Heifetz commissioned a number of pieces, perhaps most notably the Violin Concerto by William Walton. He also arranged a number of pieces, such as Hora Staccato by Grigoraş Dinicu, a Romanian whom Heifetz is rumoured to have called the greatest violinist he had ever heard. Heifetz also played and composed for the piano;^[7] he performed mess hall jazz for soldiers at Allied camps across Europe during the Second World War, and under the alias Jim Hoyl he wrote a hit song, "When You Make Love to Me (Don't Make Believe)", which was sung by Bing Crosby.

Decca recordings[link]

From 1944 to 1946, largely a result of the American Federation of Musicians recording ban (which actually began in 1942), Heifetz went to American Decca Records to make recordings because Decca settled with the union in 1943, well before RCA Victor resolved their dispute with the musicians. He recorded primarily short pieces, including his own arrangements of music by George Gershwin and Stephen Foster; these were pieces he often played as encores in his recitals. He was accompanied on the piano by Emanuel Bay or Milton Kaye. Among the more uncommon discs featured one of Decca's most popular artists, Bing Crosby, in the "Lullaby" from Benjamin Godard's opera Jocelyn and Where My Caravan Has Rested (arranged by Heifetz and Crosby) by Hermann Lohr (1872–1943); Decca's studio orchestra was conducted by Victor Young in the July 27, 1946, session. Recorded mostly in small studios, the digitally remastered performances (issued by MCA) have remarkably clear, high fidelity sound. However, Heifetz soon returned to RCA Victor, where he continued to make recordings until the early 1970s.^[10]

Later recordings[link]

Returning to RCA Victor in 1946, Heifetz continued to make a number of 78-rpm discs for the company, including solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings.

RCA Victor began releasing long-playing recordings in 1950, including concertos taken from 78-rpm masters. The company began to make new high fidelity recordings with Heifetz, primarily with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner. Beginning in early 1954, most of RCA's classical sessions were also taped on three-track tape machines. These were eventually issued in the "Living Stereo" series, which began in 1958. RCA later reissued the recordings on a series of CDs. While many earlier Heifetz recordings used close miking, which led to a dry sound, the post 1954 RCA concerto recordings have somewhat more distant and effective miking, creating a more effective concert ambience that shows Heifetz's tone to excellent advantage. In 2000, RCA released a double CD compilation entitled Jascha Heifetz – The Supreme which gives a sampling of Heifetz's major recordings, including the 1955 recording of Brahms's Violin Concerto with Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; the 1957 recording of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (with the same forces); the 1959 recording of Sibelius's Violin Concerto with Walter Hendl and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; the 1961 recording of Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the New Symphony Orchestra of London; the 1963 recording of Glazunov's A minor Concerto with Walter Hendl and the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra (drawn from New York musicians); the 1965 recording of George Gershwin's Three Preludes (transcribed by Heifetz) with pianist Brooks Smith; and the 1970 recording of Bach's unaccompanied Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor.

Third Israel tour[link]

Heifetz in Be'er Sheba, Israel, 1953

On his third tour to Israel in 1953, Heifetz included in his recitals the Violin Sonata by Richard Strauss. At the time, Strauss was considered by many to be a Nazi composer, and his works were unofficially banned in Israel along with those of Richard Wagner. Despite the fact that the Holocaust had occurred less than ten years earlier and a last-minute plea from the Israeli Minister of Education, the defiant Heifetz argued, "The music is above these factors ... I will not change my program. I have the right to decide on my repertoire." Throughout his tour the performance of the Strauss sonata was followed by dead silence.

Heifetz was attacked after his recital in Jerusalem outside his hotel by a young man who struck Heifetz's violin case, Heifetz resorting to using his right hand to protect his priceless violins from the crowbar. As the attacker started to flee, Heifetz alerted his companions, who were armed, "Shoot that man, he tried to kill me." The attacker escaped and was never found. The attack has since been attributed to the Kingdom of Israel terrorist group.^[11][12] The incident made headlines in the press and Heifetz defiantly announced that he would not stop playing the Strauss. Threats continued to come, however, and he omitted the Strauss from his next recital without explanation. His last concert was cancelled after his swollen right hand began to hurt. He left Israel and did not return until 1970.

Russian defector[link]

Soviet musicians considered Heifetz and his teacher Leopold Auer as traitors to their home country for emigrating to the US, and Heifetz especially because of his very young age. Meanwhile, musicians who remained, such as David Oistrakh, were seen as patriots. Heifetz greatly criticized the Soviet regime; he condemned the International Tchaikovsky Competition for being biased against Western competitors. During the Carl Flesch Competition in London, Oistrakh tried to persuade Erick Friedman, Heifetz's star student, to enter the Tchaikovsky Competition, of which he was the principal juror. Hearing of this, Heifetz strongly advised against it, warning Friedman, "You will see what will happen there." Consequently, the competition received international outrage after Friedman, already a seasoned performer and recording artist for RCA, who had performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, among many others, placed sixth behind players who had yet to establish themselves. Joseph Szigeti later informed Heifetz himself that he had given his student top scores.

Later life[link]

After an only partially successful operation on his right shoulder in 1972, Heifetz ceased giving concerts and making records. Although his prowess as a performer remained intact and he continued to play privately until the end, his bow arm was affected and he could never again hold the bow as high as before.

Rudolf Koelman (left) with Jascha Heifetz, 1979

Heifetz taught the violin extensively, holding master classes first at UCLA, then at the University of Southern California, where the faculty included renowned cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and violist William Primrose. For a few years in the 1980s he also held classes in his private studio at home in Beverly Hills. His teaching studio can be seen today in the main building of the Colburn School, where it is now used for masterclasses and serves as an inspiration to the students there. During his teaching career Heifetz taught, among others, Erick Friedman, Elaine Skorodin,^[13] Pierre Amoyal, Rudolf Koelman, Endre Granat, Eugene Fodor, Paul Rosenthal, and Ayke Agus.

It was rumored that Heifetz was such a strict disciplinarian that the main gate of his Beverly Hills home was closed exactly at the time his classes were to begin in order to shut out students who arrived late. Heifetz died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California in December 1987.

Heifetz owned the 1714 Dolphin Stradivarius, the 1731 "Piel" Stradivarius, the 1736 Carlo Tononi, and the 1742 ex David Guarneri del Gesù, the last of which he preferred and kept until his death. The Dolphin Strad is currently owned by the Nippon Music Foundation. The Heifetz Tononi violin used at his 1917 Carnegie Hall debut was left in his will to Sherry Kloss, Master-Teaching Assistant to Heifetz, with "one of my four good bows" (Violinist/author Kloss wrote "Jascha Heifetz Through My Eyes" and is a co-founder of the Jascha Heifetz Society). The famed Guarneri is now in the San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum, as instructed by Heifetz in his will, and may only be taken out and played "on special occasions" by deserving players. The instrument has recently been on loan to San Francisco Symphony's concertmaster Alexander Barantschik, who featured it in concertos with Andrei Gorbatenko and the San Francisco Academy Orchestra in 2006.^[14] In 1989, Heifetz received a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Family life[link]

Heifetz was married in 1928 to the silent motion picture actress Florence Vidor, ex-wife of King Vidor, whose seven year old daughter, Suzanne, Heifetz adopted. The couple had two more children, Josefa (born 1930) and Robert (1932–2001) before divorcing in 1945. In 1947, Heifetz took a sabbatical during which he married Frances Spiegelberg, with whom he had another son, Joseph (known as Jay). The second marriage ended in divorce in 1962.

Heifetz's son Jay is a professional photographer. He was formerly head of marketing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hollywood Bowl, and the Chief Financial Officer of Paramount Pictures' Worldwide Video Division. He lives and works in Fremantle, Western Australia. Heifetz's daughter, Josefa Heifetz Byrne, is a lexicographer, the author of the Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words.^[15]

Heifetz's grandson Danny Heifetz is an accomplished drummer/percussionist and has played with Mr. Bungle, Dieselhed, Secret Chiefs 3 and Link Wray.

His extended family was active in Los Angeles progressive political circles in addition to music.

Heifetz had a difficult personality, and has even been described as "misanthropic". He tended to drive away the very people who could have been his most trusted allies. His own childhood had been difficult; his father was an extremely stern man who, even after Jascha had become the family's sole breadwinner, would still roundly criticise every performance.^[16]

Notable Instruments[link]

• Dolphin 1714 Stradivarius
• Heifetz-Piel 1731 Stradivarius
• Antonio Stradivari 1734
• Carlo Tononi 1736
• ex-David 1742 Guarneri

Filmography[link]

Heifetz in They Shall Have Music

Heifetz played a featured role in the movie They Shall Have Music (1939) directed by Archie Mayo and written by John Howard Lawson and Irmgard von Cube. He played himself, stepping in to save a music school for poor children from foreclosure. He later appeared in the 1947 film, Carnegie Hall, performing an abridged version of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, with the orchestra led by Fritz Reiner, and consoling the star of the picture, who had watched his performance. Heifetz later recorded the complete Tchaikovsky concerto with Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as one of RCA Victor's "Living Stereo" discs.^[17] In 1951, he appeared in the film Of Men and Music. In 1962. he appeared in a televised series of his master classes, and, in 1971, Heifetz on Television aired, an hour-long color special that featured the violinist performing a series of short works, the "Scottish Fantasy" by Max Bruch, and the Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 by Bach. Heifetz even conducted the orchestra, as the surviving video recording documents.

The most recent film featuring Heifetz, Jascha Heifetz: God's Fiddler, premiered on April 16, 2011 at the Colburn School of Music. It is "The only film biography of the world's most renowned violinist, featuring family home movies in Los Angeles and all over the world."^[4]

In popular culture[link]

• In season 5 episode 11 of Mad About You Fran tells Jamie that Ryan's violin teacher says he is a regular Jasha Heifetz.
• Heifetz was often mentioned by Jack Benny in his long-running radio program. Benny often cited his violin playing as being on par with Heifetz.
• Heifetz is referenced in The Muppet Show (1977) where Rowlf the Dog opposite George Burns mentions "Oh listen, I can play any key. I'm another Jascha Heifetz", to which George replies, "Jascha Heifetz played the violin." Rowlf then replies, "Nobody will know the difference, George".
• Heifetz is later mentioned in The Muppet Movie (1979) when Rowlf the Dog, after being praised by Kermit the Frog for playing an impressive piece of music on the piano, shrugged modestly and replied, "I'm no Heifetz, but I get by."
• Heifetz is mentioned by Woody Allen in Broadway Danny Rose (1984). As one of Danny Rose's clients plays a glass harmonica Danny remarks "She's the Jascha Heifetz of her instrument!"
• In Season 3, Episode 5 of The Golden Girls, "Nothing Left To Fear But Fear Itself" (1987), Sophia Petrillo (played by Estelle Getty) makes reference to Jascha Heifetz in sarcastic retort, when her daughter Dorothy (Bea Arthur) asks an obvious question: "Ma, are you going to tell a story?" Sophia: "Please! Does Heifetz rosin a bow?"
• He was mentioned by the character, Data, on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Ensigns of Command" (1989) as one of the violinists he studied prior to his concert in Ten-Forward aboard the USS Enterprise.
• From Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending (2002): "If there's a brownout, Heifetz will still be on key, but your guitarist won't be."
• The character of Yasha the violinist in Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock is a reference to Jascha Heifetz.
• In the book The Jordan Rules, then-Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson made a reference to Heifetz by saying that, just as the musician was the featured performer no matter where he played in a performance, Michael Jordan would be the center of the Bulls' triangle offense, even when its design provided greater offensive opportunities for Jordan's teammates.
• Heifetz is one of the subjects of George Gershwin's 1922 song "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha" recorded by the Funnyboners.^[18]

See also[link]

• Lithuanian Jews
• Strauss and the Nazis

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jascha Heifetz

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jascha Heifetz

Wikisource has the text of a 1921 Collier's Encyclopedia article about Jascha Heifetz.

• Jascha Heifetz official website
• Jascha Heifetz fan website
• Prominent People – Jascha Heifetz
• Jascha Heifetz at Sony BMG Masterworks
• NPR Classical Music: Heifetz at War: Behind the Scenes, Near the Front
• "The Violinist of the Century" – 3-part series on AdventuresInMusic.biz
• Jascha Heifetz at Find a Grave
•  "Heifetz, Jascha". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. 

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Tower of Power. (Discuss) Proposed since August 2009.

This article is a rough translation from Spanish. It may have been generated by a computer or by a translator without dual proficiency. Please help to enhance the translation. If you have just labeled this page as needing such attention, please add {{subst:Duflu | pg= Rocco Prestia | Language = Spanish | Comments = }} ~~~~ to the bottom of the WP:PNTCU section on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. The original article is under "Spanish" in the "languages" sidebar.

Francis «Rocco» Prestia (born March 7, 1951) is an American musician, the bassist of the legendary funk band Tower of Power and one of the most important figures in electric bass' history.

Biography[link]

Born in Sonora, California, Prestia started playing electric guitar as an adolescent. When he auditioned for Emilio Castillo's band Tower of Power, Castillo persuaded him to switch to electric bass.

Prestia remembers an "immediate and incendiary" connection with the band's drummer, David Garibaldi, with whom he would establish one of the most original and influential rhythm sections of all time. The drummer's fast, nervous style blended perfectly with the bassist's dry, percussive approach. The resultant combination, along with the band's powerful horn section, defined the band's distinctive sound.

Prestia worked with the band for the next three decades, then he became seriously ill in 2001. His fans and friends created a foundation in order to help pay the artist's medical costs. In 2002 Prestia underwent successful liver transplant surgery and since then he has gradually resumed his professional activity.

Technique and evaluation[link]

Francis "Rocco" Prestia has built one of the pillars which support the modern electric bass. He is a master of fingerstyle funk, a technique that he interprets in a very personal way. Prestia lightly mutes the strings with his left hand to gets a percussive sound with the pitch remaining clear and accurate. That characteristic sound, in combination with a highly inventive melodic approach to bass lines makes Prestia's sound unmistakable.

With James Jamerson, Stanley Clarke, Anthony Jackson and Alphonso Johnson, "Rocco" Prestia belongs to the generation of bassists that, a few years before, made possible the great revolution on the electric bass that Jaco Pastorius entailed with his innovations on mid-1970s. The influence of Prestia over the great bassist, that Jaco recognized openly, is clear on classic Tower of Power tracks as the 1973 hit "What is Hip". On the other hand, Rocco cites James Jamerson and the different musicians who worked for James Brown (particularly Bootsy Collins) as his main influences.^[1]

Prestia's primary instruments are his Fender Precision basses (a purple transparent American Deluxe and a natural ash-bodied short-lived signature model with a reverse split pickup and a 2-band EQ). In recent years he has maintained an association with the Conklin^{[disambiguation needed ]} company that provided him a custom built four-string instrument, one of the few in the company's catalog.

Discography with Tower of Power[link]

• East Bay Grease (1970)
• Bump City (1972)
• Tower of Power (1973)
• Back to Oakland (1974)
• In The Slot (1975)
• Urban Renewal (1975)
• Live and in Living Color (1976)
• Ain't Nothin' Stoppin' Us Now (1976)
• We Came to Play (1978)
• Back on the Streets (1979)
• Power (1988)
• Monster On A Leash (1991)
• T.O.P. (1993)
• Souled Out (1995)
• Rhythm & Business (1997)
• Direct Plus (1997)
• Soul Vaccination Live (1999)
• Dinosaur Tracks (2000)
• Oakland Zone (2003)
• The Great American Soul Book (2009)

Discography as soloist[link]

• Everybody on the Bus! (1999)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Francis "Rocco" Prestia official web Page
• 5 Essential Rocco Prestia Bass Lines

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the Spanish Wikipedia.

Allen Vizzutti. Rostov-on-Don, 2010

Allen Vizzutti (born September 13, 1952) is an American trumpeter, composer and music educator.^[1]

Biography[link]

Vizzutti was born in Missoula, Montana.^[2] Equally at home in a multitude of musical idioms, Allen Vizzutti has visited 60 countries and every state in the USA to perform with artists and ensembles including Chick Corea, 'Doc' Severinsen, the NBC Tonight Show Band, the Airmen Of Note, the Army Blues and Army Symphony Orchestra, Chuck Mangione, Woody Herman, Japan’s NHK Orchestra and the New Tokyo Philharmonic, the Budapest Radio Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Leipzig Wind Symphony and the Kosei Wind Orchestra.

Performing as a classical and a jazz artist, often in the same evening, he has appeared as guest soloist with symphony orchestras in Tokyo, Germany, Slovenia, St. Louis, Seattle, Rochester N.Y., Syracuse, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Phoenix, Edmonton, Vancouver and Winnipeg to name a few. Music lovers in Germany, Poland, England, Sweden, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Australia and the United States have heard his sound over the airwaves of national television. Allen's status as an artist has led to solo performances at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, Newport Jazz Festival, Banff Center for the Performing Arts, Montreaux Jazz Festival, the Teton, Vail, Aspen and Breckenridge Music Festivals, the Charles Ives Center and Lincoln Center in New York City.

From his home in Seattle Washington, Allen’s career activities embody a schedule of recitals, concerts, recording and composing. His commitment to music education and the value of music in everyday life results in a schedule of guest appearances at universities throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Allen's solo jazz recordings include CDs such as “Trumpet Summit” and “Skyrocket” from Summit Records. Classical CDs available from DeHaske Music Publishing Recordings are “The Emerald Concerto and Other Gems”, with the Budapest Radio Orchestra, “Vizzutti Plays Vizzutti” and “Vizzutti and Soli On Tour”. His “High Class Brass”, (also DeHaske Recordings), is a classical and jazz blend co-produced, co-written and performed with fellow trumpet artist, composer and conductor, Jeff Tyzik along with a 90-piece studio orchestra. Also of interest are “Baroque and Beyond”, from Sony, “The Carnival of Venice”, (Summit Records), and “A Trumpeter’s Dream, (Ludwig Music Publishing).

As Artist in Residence, Allen has taught at the Eastman School of Music, the Banff Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas State University, Ohio State University, West Texas State University, the Skidmore Jazz Institute, and the Trompeten Akademie of Bremen Germany. His extensive treatise, “The Allen Vizzutti Trumpet Method” and his “New Concepts for Trumpet”, (Alfred Music Publishing), have become standards works for trumpet study worldwide. Many more of Allen’s jazz and classical books, play along recordings, and student and recital compositions are published by DeHaske/Hal Leonard, Southern Music, and Ars Nova. His writing includes solo pieces for flute, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, tuba, and harp, chamber groups, wind ensemble, jazz ensemble, and symphony orchestra.

Allen’s love of expression through composition has led to premier performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Budapest Radio Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic of London, the Nuremberg Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Syracuse Symphony, London Symphony, Summit Brass and others.

While growing up in Montana, Allen was taught by his father, a self taught musician and trumpet player, until he left home to attend the Eastman School of Music on full scholarship. There he earned the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees, a Performer’s Certificate, a chair in the Eastman Brass Quintet faculty ensemble, and the only Artist’s Diploma ever awarded a wind player in Eastman’s history.

While living in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Allen performed on over 100 motion picture sound tracks, (such as Back To The Future and Star Trek), as well as TV shows, commercials and recordings with such artists as Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Chick Corea, the Commodores and Prince. His sound can be heard on projecs including the movies “Furry Vengeance”, “40 Days and 40 Nights”, “Unfaithfully Yours”, “Gridiron Gang”, “Scary Movie Four”, “The Hulk” and the “Medal of Honor” ,“Gears of War 3” and “Halo” video games.

References[link]

• Music Guide
• New West Symphony

External links[link]

• Official website
• Allen Vizzutti official fan page
• Biography from his publisher, Ars Nova

Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922 – August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions. His most popular works include the scores to The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ghostbusters.

Bernstein won an Oscar for his score to Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and was nominated for fourteen Oscars in total. He also won two Golden Globes and was nominated for two Grammy Awards.

Early life[link]

Bernstein was born in New York City, the son of Selma (née Feinstein) and Edward Bernstein.^[1] He was not related to the celebrated composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity.^[2] Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard).^[3]

During his childhood, Bernstein performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, in the latter case playing the part of Caliban in The Tempest on Broadway, and he also won several prizes for his painting. He gravitated toward music at the age of twelve, at which time he was given a scholarship in piano by Henriette Michelson, a Juilliard teacher who guided him throughout his entire career as a pianist. She took him to play some of his improvisations for composer Aaron Copland, who was encouraging and selected Israel Citkowitz as a teacher for the young boy.^[4] Bernstein's music has some stylistic similarities to Copland's music, most notably in his western scores, particularly sections of Big Jake, in the Gregory Peck film Amazing Grace and Chuck, and in his spirited score for the 1958 film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre.

Throughout his life, Bernstein demonstrated an enthusiasm for an even wider spectrum of the arts than his childhood interests would imply and, in 1959, when he was scoring The Story on Page One, he considered becoming a novelist and asked the film's screenwriter, Clifford Odets, to give him lessons in writing fiction.

Career[link]

Bernstein wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments (1956), The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robot Monster, and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials.^[4] His theme for The Magnificent Seven is also familiar to television viewers, as it was used in commercials for Marlboro cigarettes. Bernstein also provided the score to many of the short films of Ray and Charles Eames.

Broadway[link]

In addition to his film music, Bernstein wrote the scores for two Broadway musicals, How Now, Dow Jones, with lyricist Carolyn Leigh, in 1967 and Merlin, with lyricist Don Black, in 1983.^[5]

Politics[link]

Along with many in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. He was "gray-listed" (not banned, but kept off major projects) due to sympathy with left-wing causes, and had to work on low-budget science fiction films such as Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon.^[4]

Comedies[link]

John Landis grew up near Bernstein, and befriended him through his children. Years later, he requested Bernstein do the music for National Lampoon's Animal House, over the studio's objections. He explained to Bernstein that he thought that Bernstein's score, playing it straight as if the comedic Delta frat characters were actual heroes, would emphasize the comedy further. The opening theme to the movie is based upon a slight inversion of a secondary theme from Brahms' Academic Festival Overture. Bernstein accepted the job, and it sparked a second wave in his career, where he continued to do high-profile comedies such as The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, Stripes, and Airplane!, as well as most of Landis's films for the next 15 years.

[edit] Cape Fear

When Martin Scorsese announced that he was re-making Cape Fear, Bernstein adapted Bernard Herrmann's original score to the new film. Bernstein leapt at the opportunity to work with Scorsese, and to pay homage to Herrmann. Scorsese and Bernstein subsequently worked together on two more films, 1993's The Age of Innocence and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Bernstein had previously conducted Herrman's original unused score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1966 Torn Curtain.^[6]

Classical[link]

Having studied composition under Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe, Bernstein also performed as a concert pianist between 1939 and 1950 and wrote numerous classical compositions, including three orchestral suites, two song cycles, various compositions for viola and piano and for solo piano, and a string quartet. As president of the Young Musicians Foundation, Bernstein became acquainted with classical guitarist Christopher Parkening and wrote a Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which Parkening recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Bernstein's baton for the Angel label in 1999. In addition, Bernstein was a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.^[7]

Awards[link]

Over the course of his career, Bernstein won an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.^[8] In addition, he was nominated for the Tony Award three times^[5] and a Grammy Award five times.

He received 14 Academy Award nominations and was nominated at least once per decade from the 1950s until the 2000s, but his only win was for Thoroughly Modern Millie for Best Original Music Score. Bernstein was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with Golden Globes for his scores for To Kill a Mockingbird and Hawaii. In 1963, he won the Emmy for Excellence in Television for his score of the documentary The Making of The President 1960. He is the recipient of Western Heritage Awards for The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Hallelujah Trail (1965).^[8]

He received five Grammy Award nominations from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and garnered two Tony Award nominations for the Broadway musicals How Now Dow Jones and Merlin.

Additional honors included Lifetime achievement awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, the USA, Woodstock, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach and Flanders International Film Festivals and the Foundation for a Creative America.

In 1996, Bernstein was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard.^[9] In 1999, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Five Towns College in New York and was honored by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Bernstein again was honored by ASCAP with its marquee Founders Award in 2001^[9] and with the NARAS Governors Award in June 2004.

His scores for The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird were ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth and seventeenth greatest American film scores of all time, respectively, on the list of AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, and Jerry Goldsmith are the only composers to have two scores listed, and are therefore in second place for the most scores on the list, behind John Williams, who has three. Other Bernstein scores for the following the films were nominated for the list:

• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Far from Heaven (2002)
• The Great Escape (1963)
• Hawaii (1966)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
• Summer and Smoke (1961)
• Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
• The Ten Commandments (1956)
• Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

Death[link]

Bernstein died of cancer in his sleep at his home in Ojai, California, on August 18, 2004.^[10]

Filmography[link]

Broadway theatre[link]

• Peter Pan (1954) - Incidental music composer
• How Now, Dow Jones (1967) - Composer - Tony Co-Nomination for Best Musical, Tony Co-Nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist
• Merlin (1982) - Composer and Incidental music composer - Tony Co-Nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Official website
• Elmer Bernstein at the Internet Movie Database
• Elmer Bernstein at the Internet Broadway Database
• Elmer Bernstein at the TCM Movie Database
• SWF movie with soundtracks
• Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks
• Fan website
• BernsteinWest.com
• Meatballs Movie Website