Kol Nidre (also known as Kol Nidrei and Kal Nidre)(Aramaic: כָּל נִדְרֵי) is an Aramaic declaration recited in the synagogue before the beginning of the evening service on every Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Though not a prayer, this dry legal formula and its ceremonial accompaniment have been charged with emotional undertones since the medieval period, creating a dramatic introduction to Yom Kippur on what is often dubbed "Kol Nidrei night". It is written in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Its name is taken from the opening words, meaning "all vows".

Kol Nidrei has had an eventful history, both in itself and in its influence on the legal status of the Jews. Introduced into the liturgy despite the opposition of some rabbinic authorities, attacked in the course of time by some rabbis, and in the nineteenth century expunged from the prayer-book by many communities of western Europe.

The term Kol Nidrei refers not only to the actual declaration, but is also popularly used as a name for the entire Yom Kippur evening service.

Form of the Chant

Before sunset on the eve of Yom Kippur ("Day of Atonement"), the congregation gathers in the synagogue. The Ark is opened and two people take from it two Torah scrolls. Then they take their places, one on each side of the cantor, and the three (symbolizing a Beth Din or rabbinical court.) recite:

"In the tribunal of Heaven and the tribunal of earth, by the permission of God — praised be He — and by the permission of this holy congregation, we hold it lawful to pray with transgressors."

The cantor then chants the passage beginning with the words Kol Nidrei with its touching melodic phrases, and, in varying intensities from pianissimo (quiet) to fortissimo (loud), repeats twice (for a total of three iterations) (lest a latecomer not hear them) the following words (Nusach Ashkenaz):

"All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths."

The leader and the congregation then say together three times "May all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst, for all the people are in fault." The Torah scrolls are then replaced, and the customary evening service begins.

Philip Birnbaum, in his classic edition of the Mahzor (High holy day prayer book) comments on this passage: "It refers to vows assumed by an individual for himself alone, where no other persons or interests are involved. Though the context makes it perfectly obvious that no vows or obligations towards others are implied, there have been many who were misled into believing that by means of this formula all their vows and oaths are annulled. In the eleventh century Rabbi Meir ben Samuel (Rashi's son-in-law) changed the original wording of Kol Nidre so as to make the Nusach Ashkenaz version apply to the future instead of the past; that is, to vows that one might not be able to fulfill during the next year." The Nusach Sefard version still refers to the past year.

Some commentaries assert that Kol Nidrei is not so much a prayer as it is a declaration before the Yom Kippur prayers begin. This view is derived largely from the fact that the text of Kol Nidre appears to request that the declarant be not held liable for failing to live up to the promises the faithful will make over the next 25 hours.

Origin

The tendency to make vows to God was strong in ancient Israel; the Torah found it necessary to protest against the excessive estimate of the religious value of such obligations. "When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not be slack to pay it; for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it will be sin in thee. ... That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt observe and do; according as thou hast vowed freely unto the LORD thy God, even that which thou hast promised with thy mouth" (Deut. 23:21 & 23 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh)

Rash vows to God that for whatever reason were not fulfilled created painful religious and ethical difficulties for those who had made them; this led to an earnest desire for dispensation from them. Therefor, halakha allowed for the absolution from a vow ('hattarat nedarim') which might be performed only by a scholar, or an expert on the one hand, or by a board of three Jewish laymen on the other.

This rite declared that the petitioners, who were seeking reconciliation with God, solemnly retracted their vows and oaths they had made to God during the period intervening between the previous Day of Atonement and the present one; this rite made them null and void from the beginning, entreating in their stead pardon and forgiveness from God. This is in accordance with the older text of the formula as it is preserved in the Siddur of Amram Gaon.

Adoption into the prayer services

The readiness with which vows were made and the facility with which they were annulled by the scribes gave the Karaites an opportunity to attack rabbinic Jews. This may have encouraged the geonim (leaders of early medieval Babylonian Jewry) to minimize the power of dispensation. Rabbi Yehudai Gaon of Sura (760 CE), author of the Halakot Pesukot, forbade the study of the Nedarim, the Talmudic treatise on oaths. Thus the Kol Nidre was discredited in both of the Babylonian academies and was not accepted by them.

Amram Gaon in his edition of the Siddur calls the custom of reciting the Kol Nidre a foolish one ("minhag shetut"). According to others however, it was customary to recite the formula in various lands of the Jewish dispersion, and it is clear likewise from Amram's Siddur that the usage was widespread as early as his time in Spain. But the geonic practice of not reciting the Kol Nidre was long prevalent; it has never been adopted in the Catalonian or in the Algerian ritual.

Together with the Kol Nidre another custom was developed, which is traced to Meïr of Rothenburg (d. 1293). This is the recital before the Kol Nidre of the formula mentioned beginning "Bi-yeshivah shel ma'alah," which has been translated above, and which gives permission to transgressors of the Law or to those under a ban "to pray with the congregation", or, according to another version, to the congregation "to pray with the transgressors of the Law." From Germany this custom spread to southern France, Spain, Greece, and probably to northern France, and was in time generally adopted.

At one time it was believed that the Kol Nidre was composed by Spanish "Marranos", Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity, yet who secretly maintained their original faith. This idea has been shown to be incorrect, as the prayer pre-dates this era by many centuries. However, this prayer was indeed used by the Marranos.

Change of tense from past to future

An important alteration in the wording of the Kol Nidre was made by Rashi's son-in-law, Rabbi Meir ben Samuel, who changed the original phrase "from the last Day of Atonement until this one" to "from this Day of Atonement until the next." Thus the dispensation was not a posteriori, and concerned with unfulfilled obligations of the past year, but a priori and having reference to vows one might not be able to fulfill or might forget to observe during the ensuing year. Meir ben Samuel likewise added the words "we do repent of them all", since real repentance is a condition of dispensation. The reasons assigned for this change were that an "ex post facto" annulment of a vow was meaningless, and that, furthermore, no one might grant to himself a dispensation, which might be given only by a board of three laymen or by a competent judge.

It was Rabbenu Tam, however, who accounted for the alteration made by his father as already stated, and who also tried to change the perfects of the text, "which we have vowed," "have sworn," etc., to imperfects. Whether the old text was already too deeply rooted, or whether Rabbenu Tam did not correct these verbal forms consistently and grammatically, the old perfects are still retained at the beginning of the formula, although a future meaning is given to them.

The alteration made by Meïr ben Samuel, which agreed with Isaac ibn Ghayyat's view was accepted in the German, northern French, and Polish rituals and in those dependent on them, but not in the Spanish, Roman, and Provençal rituals. The old version is, therefore, usually called the "Sephardic." The old and the new versions are sometimes found side by side.

Language

In the Siddur of Amram and in the Roman Mahzor the Kol Nidrei is written in Hebrew, and therefore begins Kol Nedarim. The determination of the time in both versions is Hebrew. Currently, the prayer is recited in Aramaic. The words "as it is written in the teachings of Moses, thy servant," which were said in the old form before Num. xv. 26, were canceled by Meir of Rothenburg.

Method of recitation

As to the manner in which the hazzan (cantor) is to recite the Kol Nidrei, the Mahzor Vitry gives the following directions: "The first time he must utter it very softly like one who hesitates to enter the palace of the king to ask a gift of him whom he fears to approach; the second time he may speak somewhat louder; and the third time more loudly still, as one who is accustomed to dwell at court and to approach his sovereign as a friend."

The number of Torah-scrolls taken out for the Kol Nidrei varied according to different customs. In some places it was one; in others, two, three, seven, or even all. The first Torah-scroll taken out is called the Sefer Kol NidreI. Kol Nidrei should be recited before sunset, since dispensation from a vow may not be granted on the Sabbath or on a feast-day, unless the vow refers to one of these days.

Use by Non-Jews

The Kol Nidrei prayer has been used by non-Jews as a basis for asserting that an oath taken by a Jew may not be trusted. Historically, this accusation was leveled so often and so persistently that many non-Jewish legislators considered it necessary to have a special form of oath administered to Jews ("Oath More Judaico"), and many judges refused to allow them to take a supplementary oath, basing their objections chiefly on this prayer. As early as 1240 in the Disputation of Paris, Yechiel of Paris was obliged to defend Kol Nidrei against these charges.

Contemporaries of the Jewish people today have claimed that the "Kol Nidre" prayer confirms their view that Jews are generally untrustworthy and harbor malicious intentions toward non-Jews. In The International Jew, Henry Ford wrote that "“[T]he Kol Nidre prayer is a holy advance notice, given in the secrecy of the synagogue, that no promise whatsoever shall be binding…." He concludes that "ordinary social and business relations are impossible to maintain" with Jews who recite the prayer. Rev. Ted Pike states that “[A] religious, Kol Nidre-reciting, Jewish businessman can cheat you without guilt for the next year” and even cites "Kol Nidre" as proof that Jews may have lied about the Holocaust. Following a description of "Kol Nidre," another non-Jew has written, "Can any person or people with this kind of mentality be trusted? It’s this kind of mindset that gives cause for normal decent people to hate jews down through the centuries…"

Counterpoint

Rabbis have always pointed out that the dispensation from vows in Kol Nidrei refers only to those an individual voluntarily assumes for himself alone and no other persons or their interests are involved in. The formula is restricted to those vows between man and God alone; they have no effect on vows made between one man and another. No vow, promise, or oath that concerns another person, a court of justice, or a community is implied in Kol Nidrei. According to Jewish doctrine, the sole purpose of this prayer is to give protection from divine punishment in case of violation of the vow.

Five geonim (rabbinic leaders of medieval Babylonian Jewry) were against while only one was in favor of reciting the prayer. Even so early an authority as Saadia Gaon wished to restrict it to those vows extorted from the congregation in the synagogue in times of persecution ("Kol Bo"), and he declared explicitly that the "Kol Nidre" gave no absolution from oaths an individual took during the year. The Karaite Judah Hadassi, who wrote the "Eshkol ha-Kofer" at Constantinople in 1148 (see Nos. 139,140 of that work), likewise protested against the Kol Nidrei. Among other opponents of it in the Middle Ages were Yom-Ṭob ben Abraham Isbili (d. 1350) in his "Ḥiddushim"; Isaac ben Sheshet, rabbi in Saragossa (d. 1406), Responsa, No. 394 (where is also a reference to the preceding); the author of the "Kol Bo" (15th cent.); and Leon of Modena (d. 1648 [see N. S. Libowitz, "Leon Modena," p. 33, New York, 1901]). In addition, nearly all printed maḥzorim contain expositions and explanations of the "Kol Nidre" in the restricted sense mentioned above.

Reform in the nineteenth century

Yielding to the numerous accusations and complaints brought against "Kol Nidrei" in the course of centuries, the rabbinical conference held at Brunswick in 1844 decided unanimously that the formula was not essential, and that the members of the convention should exert their influence toward securing its speedy abolition.

At other times and places during the nineteenth century emphasis was frequently laid upon the fact that "in the 'Kol Nidrei' only those vows and obligations are implied that are voluntarily assumed, and that are, so to speak, taken before God, thus being exclusively religious in content; but that those obligations are in no wise included that refer to other persons or to non-religious relations."

The decision of the conference was accepted by many congregations of western Europe and in all the American Reform Judaism congregations, which while retaining the melody substituted for the formula a German hymn or a Hebrew psalm, or changed the old text to the words, "May all the vows arise to thee which the sons of Israel vow unto thee, O Lord, ... that they will return to thee with all their heart, and from this Day of Atonement until the next," etc. Naturally there were many Orthodox opponents of this innovation, among whom M. Lehmann, editor of the "Israelit," was especially prominent.

According to many Jewish writers, the principal factor that preserved the religious authority of the Kol Nidrei is its plaintive melody.

The Ashkenazi Melody

Even more famous than the formula itself is the melody traditionally attached to its rendition in Ashkenazi congregations. This is so much prized that even where Reform Judaism has abolished the recital of the Chaldaic text, the air is often preserved, in association with some other passage.

And yet there are probably no two synagogues in which the melody is chanted note for note absolutely the same. So marked is the variation in the details of the melody that a critical examination of the variants shows an approach toward agreement in the essentials of the first strain only, with transformations of the greatest diversity in the remaining strains. These divergences, however, are not radical, and they are no more than are inherent in a composition not due to a single originator, but built up and elaborated by many in turn, and handed on by them in distinct lines of tradition, along all of which the rhapsodical method of the hazzanut has been followed.

The musical structure of the Ashkenazi Kol Nidrei is built upon a simple groundwork, the melody being an intermingling of simple cantillation with rich figuration. The opening of Kol Nidre is what the masters of the Catholic plain-song term a "pneuma", or soul breath. Instead of announcing the opening words in a monotone or in any of the familiar declamatory phrases, a hazzan of South Germany prefixed a long, sighing tone, falling to a lower note and rising again, as if only sighs and sobs could find utterance before the officiant could bring himself to inaugurate the Day of Atonement.

Similarities to Catholic plainsong

Nineteenth century pianist Emil Breslauer was the first to draw attention to the similarity of these strains with the first five bars of the sixth movement of Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet, op. 131, "adagio quasi un poco andante."

An older coincidence shows the original element around which the whole of Kol Nidre has been built up. The pneuma given in the Sarum and Ratisbon antiphonaries (or Catholic ritual music-books) as a typical passage in the first Gregorian mode (or the notes in the natural scale running from "d" to "d" ["re" to "re"]), almost exactly outlines the figure that prevails throughout the Hebrew air, in all its variants, and reproduces one favorite strain with still closer agreement.

The original pattern of these phrases seems to be the strain of melody so frequently repeated in the modern versions of Kol Nidre at the introduction of each clause. Such a pattern phrase, indeed, is, in the less elaborated Italian tradition, repeated in its simple form five times consecutively in the first sentence of the text, and a little more elaborately four times in succession from the words "nidrana lo nidre."

The northern traditions prefer at such points first to utilize its complement in the second ecclesiastical mode of the Church, which extends below as well as above the fundamental "re." The strain, in either form, must obviously date from the early medieval period, anterior to the eleventh century, when the practice and theory of the singing-school at St. Gall, by which such typical passages were evolved, influenced all music in those French and German lands where the melody of Kol Nidre took shape.

Thus, then, a typical phrase in the most familiar Gregorian mode, such as was daily in the ears of the Rhenish Jews, in secular as well as in ecclesiastical music, was centuries ago deemed suitable for the recitation of the Absolution of Vows, and to it was afterward prefixed an introductory intonation dependent on the taste and capacity of the officiant. Many times repeated, the figure of this central phrase was sometimes sung on a higher degree of the scale, sometimes on a lower. Then these became associated; and so gradually the middle section of the melody developed into the modern forms.

===Inspiration for other musical pieces=== The prayer and its melody has been the basis of a number of pieces of classical music, including a setting of the prayer by Arnold Schoenberg, a piece for solo cello and orchestra by Max Bruch, a string quartet by John Zorn, and others.

The Electric Prunes album Release of An Oath, subtitled and commonly called The Kol Nidre after the title of its first and thematically most central track, is based on a combination of Christian and Jewish liturgy.

Popular culture

Comedian Lewis Black frequently references the Kol Nidre in some of his shows and his first book, Nothing's Sacred, referring to it as the spookiest piece of music ever written, claiming that it may have been the piece to inspire all of Alfred Hitchcock's musical scores.

Kol Nidre plays a climactic role in The Jazz Singer (1927 film), where it is sung by notable Jewish entertainer Al Jolson, and by Jewish pop singer, Neil Diamond in The Jazz Singer (1980 film).

See also

Yom Kippur

Jewish services

Siddur

Neder

References

External links

Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra by Max Bruch, Julian Lloyd Webber, soloist

Kol Nidre sung by Johnny Mathis

Kol Nidre sung by Perry Como

Source

Portions of this article have been imported from the 1906 public domain "Jewish Encyclopedia". They have been edited and Wikified, but may not necessarily incorporate modern scholarship. Please help by modifying as needed.

Category:Jewish services Category:Yom Kippur

Max Christian Friedrich Bruch (6 January 18382 October 1920), also known as Max Karl August Bruch, was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, one of which is a staple of the violin repertoire.

Life

Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he received his early musical training under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom Robert Schumann dedicated his piano concerto. Ignaz Moscheles recognized his aptitude. He had a long career as a teacher, conductor and composer, moving among musical posts in Germany: Mannheim (1862-1864), Koblenz (1865-1867), Sondershausen, (1867-1870), Berlin (1870-1872), and Bonn, where he spent 1873-78 working privately. At the height of his reputation he spent three seasons as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society (1880-83). He taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik from 1890 until his retirement in 1910. Bruch died in his house in Berlin-Friedenau.

Works

His conservatively structured works, in the German romantic musical tradition, placed him in the camp of Romantic classicism exemplified by Johannes Brahms, rather than the opposing "New Music" of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In his time, he was known primarily as a choral composer.

His Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1866) is one of the most popular Romantic violin concertos. It uses several techniques from Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor. These include the linking of movements, and a departure from the customary orchestral exposition and rigid form of earlier concertos. It is a singularly melodic composition which many critics have said represents the apex of the romantic tradition.

Other pieces which are also well-known and widely played include the Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra which includes an arrangement of the tune "Hey Tuttie Tatie", best known for its use in the song Scots Wha Hae by Robert Burns. Bruch also wrote Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, a popular work for cello and orchestra (its subtitle is "Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Violoncello and Orchestra"). This piece was based on Hebrew melodies, principally the melody of the Kol Nidre incantation from the Jewish Yom Kippur service, which gives the piece its name.

The success of this work has made many assume that Bruch himself had Jewish ancestry - indeed, under the National Socialist Party his music ceased to be programmed because of the possibility of his being a Jew; as a result of this, his music was completely forgotten in German speaking countries - but there is no evidence for his being Jewish. As far as can be ascertained, none of his ancestors were Jews, and Bruch himself was raised Protestant.

He wrote the Concerto in A flat minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 88a, in 1912 for the American duo-pianists Rose and Ottilie Sutro, but they never played the original version; they only ever played the work twice, in two different versions of their own. The score was withdrawn in 1917 and discovered only after Ottilie Sutro's death in 1970. The Sutro sisters also had a major part to play in the fate of the manuscript of the Violin Concerto No. 1. Bruch sent it to them to be sold in the United States, but they kept it and sold it for profit themselves.

Other works include two other concerti for violin and orchestra, No. 2 in D minor and No. 3 in D minor (which Bruch himself regarded as at least as fine as the famous first); and a Concerto for Clarinet, Viola and Orchestra. There are also 3 symphonies, which, while not displaying any originality in form or structure, nevertheless show Bruch at his best as a composer of fine melodic talent and a gift for orchestration, firmly in the tradition of the Romantics. He wrote a number of chamber works, including a set of eight pieces for piano, clarinet, and viola; and a string octet.

The violinists Joseph Joachim and Willy Hess advised Bruch on composing for strings, and Hess performed the premieres of a number of works by Bruch, including the Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 84, which was composed for him.

References

External links

Classical Net, Basic Repertoire: Max Bruch

[ Joseph Stevenson, "Max Bruch"]

Kol Nidrei"">"Max Bruch, Kol Nidrei"

Max Bruch String Quartet No.2, sound-bites and discussion of work

Site dedicated to Max Bruch (includes a list of works by opus number)

Free scores Mutopia Project

of Kol Nidrei

Max Bruch's Viola and Clarinet concerto op.88 (double concerto)

Category:1838 births Category:1920 deaths

Category:German composers Category:German conductors (music) Category:People from Cologne Category:People from the Rhine Province Category:Romantic composers * Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society

Coordinates	53°18′17″N15°16′46″N
Name	Perry Como
Img alt	Perry Como at Kraft Music Hall rehearsal, 1961
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Pierino Ronald Como
Born	May 18, 1912 Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	May 12, 2001 Jupiter Inlet Colony, Florida, U.S.
Instrument	Vocalist
Genre	Easy Listening, Adult Contemporary, Popular Vocal, Pop, Big Band, Jazz, Latin, Swing, Country, Rock and Roll, Religious music
Years active	1933–1998
Label	Decca, RCA Victor
Associated acts	Freddy Carlone Orchestra Ted Weems Orchestra

Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como (May 18, 1912 – May 12, 2001) was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with it in 1943. Como's appeal spanned generations and he was widely respected for both his professional standards and the conduct in his personal life. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Composer Ervin Drake said of him,"... [o]ccasionally someone like Perry comes along and won't 'go with the flow' and still prevails in spite of all the bankrupt others who surround him and importune him to yield to their values. Only occasionally."

One of the many factors in his success was Como's insistence on his principles of good taste; if he considered something to be in bad or poor taste, it wasn't in the show or broadcast. When a remark made by Julius La Rosa about television personality Arthur Godfrey on The Perry Como Show was misconstrued, Como offered an on-air apology at the beginning of his next show, against the advice of his staff. While his performance of "Ave Maria" was a tradition of his holiday television programs, Como refused to sing it at live performances, saying, "It's not the time or place to do it.", even though it was the number one request of his audiences. Another was his naturalness; the man viewers saw on the screen was the same person who could be encountered behind a supermarket shopping cart, at a bowling alley, or in a kitchen making breakfast. From his first Chesterfield Supper Club television show, if scripts were written at all, they were based on the way Como would say something.

Como received five Emmys from 1955 to 1959, a Christopher Award (1956) and shared a Peabody Award with good friend Jackie Gleason in 1956. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1990 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1987. Posthumously, Como received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002; he was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2007. Como has the distinction of having three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio, television, and music.

Personal life

Como was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, 18 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, seventh of the 13 children of Pietro Como (1877–1945), who both emigrated to the US in 1910 from the Abruzzese town of Palena, Italy. The family had a second-hand organ Pietro had bought for $3; as soon as Perry was able to toddle, he would head to the instrument, pump the bellows, and play music he had heard by ear. In a rare 1957 interview, Como's mother, Lucia, described how her young son also took on other jobs to pay for more music lessons; Como learned to play many different instruments, but never had a voice lesson. When Perry was 14, his father became unable to work due to a severe heart condition; Como and his brothers became the support of the household.

Perry showed more musical talent in his teenage years as a trombone player in the town's brass band, playing guitar, singing at weddings, and as an organist at church. He was a member of the Canonsburg Italian Band along with the father of singer Bobby Vinton, bandleader Stan Vinton, who was often a customer at his barber shop. They raised three children, Ronnie, David, and Terri, with traditional, non-show-business values.

In 1958, the Comos celebrated their silver wedding anniversary with a family trip to Italy. On the itinerary was an audience with Pope Pius XII. Upon returning home, Como was both puzzled and upset that photos from the visit made the newspapers throughout the world. A thorough check of both the Como and National Broadcasting Company (NBC) publicity offices found that neither was responsible for the release of the photos to the media; it was done by the Vatican's press department. When Perry and Roselle became Knight Commander and Lady Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in 1952, it was a news item only after Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who had been honored at the same ceremony, made mention of it some time later.

Como suffered a debilitating fall from a stage platform in 1971 while taping Perry Como's Winter Show in Hollywood. X-rays taken at a local hospital showed no serious injury to his knee, but by the next morning, it was twice normal size. The ailing Como chartered a jet back to his home and doctors in Florida, where a second exam showed it had been seriously broken. His knee was re-set and placed in a cast with a recuperation time of eight months. In 1993, he was successfully treated for bladder cancer.

Bing Crosby once described Como as, "the man who invented casual". His preference for casual clothing did not keep him from being named one of the Best Dressed Men beginning in 1946, and continuing long after Como stopped appearing on weekly television. Como also had his own line of sports/casual men's clothing made by Bucknell circa early 1950s.

Perry was an enthusiastic and accomplished golfer; there was always time to try getting in a game of golf. "Perry Como Putters" were sold by MacGregor, each stamped with a Como facsimile autograph. His colleagues held an annual Perry Como Golf Tournament to honor him and his love for the game. In what must have been one of his favorite shows of his weekly series, Como's guests on the October 3, 1962 broadcast were Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player. The four golfers played 18 holes for the cameras at Sands Point, New York, where the Comos made their home in the television years. Como also enjoyed fishing and could be found out on his boat almost every day after the family moved to Florida. Perry's "catches" would turn out to be the Como family's dinners. Como also used his boat as a rehearsal hall with pre-recorded instrumental tapes sent to him by RCA Victor. Perry would work on material while he was waiting for the fish to bite. Having enjoyed golfing and fishing in the North Carolina mountains for a number of years, Como built a vacation home in the small town of Saluda, North Carolina in 1980. He allowed no photos of the home, as it was his private place to get away from the celebrity whirl.

Professional singer

Freddy Carlone and Ted Weems

In 1932, Como left Canonsburg, moving about 100 miles away to Meadville, Pennsylvania, where his uncle had a barber shop in the Hotel Conneaut. About 80 miles from Cleveland, it was a stop on the itinerary for dance bands who worked up and down the Ohio Valley. Como, Roselle, and their friends had gone to nearby Cleveland; their good times took them to the Silver Slipper Ballroom where Freddy Carlone and his orchestra were playing. Carlone invited anyone who thought he might have singing talent to come up and sing with his band. Young Como was terrified, but his friends urged him onto the stage. The young man was not certain if he should accept the offer Freddy Carlone made, so he returned to Canonsburg to talk the matter over with his father. Perry expected he would tell him to stay in the barber business, but to his surprise, the senior Como told him if he did not try this, he would never know whether or not he could be a professional singer. Roselle was willing to be a wife on the road, traveling with her husband and the band, but the salary could not support two people like this. Roselle returned home to Canonsburg; her new husband would be on the road for the next 18 months.

Three years after joining the Carlone band, Como moved to Ted Weems' Orchestra and his first recording dates. Como and Weems met in 1936 while the Carlone orchestra was playing in Warren, Ohio. Perry initially did not take the offer. Apparently realizing it was the best move for his young vocalist, Freddy Carlone urged him to sign with Weems. Art Jarrett had just left the Weems organization to start his own band. Weems was in need of a vocalist; Como got a raise (Weems paid $50 per week), and his first chance for nationwide exposure. Ted Weems and his orchestra were based in Chicago, and were regulars on radio shows such as The Jack Benny Program and Fibber McGee and Molly. The Weems band also had its own weekly radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1936 – 1937.

Como's first recording with the Weems band was a novelty tune called "You Can't Pull the Wool Over My Eyes", recorded for the Decca Records label in May, 1936. Another problem cropped up during one of Como's early Decca recording sessions with the Weems orchestra. Weems was told to get rid of "that kid" (Como) because he sounded too much like Bing Crosby. Before Como could reply, Ted Weems did, saying that Como was part of the session or it was over. The weekly radio show, Beat the Band, which ran on NBC from 1940 – 1944, was a "stump the band" type musical quiz show where Weems and his orchestra were the featured band from 1940 – 1941.

RCA Victor and radio

The Como's first child, Ronnie, was born in 1940 while the Weems band was working in Chicago. Como left the performance to be at his wife's side even though he was threatened with dismissal if he did so. Como received an offer to become a Frank Sinatra imitator, but chose to keep his own style. While Perry was negotiating for a store lease to re-open a barber shop, he had a call from Tommy Rockwell at General Artists Corporation, who also represented Ted Weems. Como had many other calls bringing offers; what was different was that he knew and trusted Rockwell, who was offering him his own sustaining (non-sponsored) Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio show and to get him a recording contract. It also mattered that the offers meant staying in New York with no more road tours. As Perry pondered the offer, Roselle Como told him, "You can always get another barber shop if it doesn't work out!" Until the radio show and recording contract offers, he did not really view singing as his career, believing the years with Carlone and Weems had been enjoyable, but now it was time to get back to work. Como said in an 1983 interview, "I thought I'd have my fun and I'd go home to work."

Perry went on the air for CBS on March 12, 1943. Rockwell's next move was to book Como into the renown Copacabana night club for two weeks beginning on June 10, 1943. It was the beginning of a 44 year professional relationship; no major artist has been with a recording company longer. The crooning craze was at its height during this time and the "bobby soxer" and "swooner" teenage girls who were wild about Sinatra added Como to their list, a "swooners" club voting him "Crooner of the Year" in 1943. The line for a Perry Como Paramount performance was three deep and wound around the city block. Como's popularity also extended to a more mature audience when he played the Versailles and returned to the Copacabana, where the management placed "SRO-Swooning Ruled Out" cards on their tables. On December 11, 1944, he moved from CBS to NBC for a new radio program, Chesterfield Supper Club. There were two "Supper Club" broadcast flights that evening: at 6 PM and again at 10 PM for the West Coast broadcast of the show. In addition to the instruments for the band, the plane also carried a small piano. Because the stand-held microphones weren't very useful on the plane, hand-held mikes were then used, but due to the cabin pressure, they became extremely heavy to hold after a few minutes. This mid-air performance caused the American Federation of Musicians to consider this a new type of engagement and issue a special set of rates for it.

Como in concert

After 26 years of not making night club appearances, Como accepted an engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in June 1970, which also resulted in his first "live" album, Perry Como in Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas. Conductor, composer, and Como associate since 1948, Ray Charles, formed a special edition of The Ray Charles Singers, (heard with Como for over 35 years), for his Las Vegas opening. Prior to this he had last appeared at New York's Copacabana in 1944. Como continued to do periodic engagements in Las Vegas, limiting his night club appearances to that city.

Performing live again brought Como a new sense of enjoyment. In May 1974, he embarked on his first concert appearance outside of the United States, a show at the London Palladium for the Variety Club of Great Britain to aid children's charities. It was here where he discovered what he had been missing when the audience cheered for ten minutes after he walked onstage. At the show's end, Como sat in a chair, delightedly chatting back and forth with his equally delighted fans. Como was invited to visit Buckingham Palace the day after the show. Since the invitation did not extend to his associates traveling and working with him, Como politely declined. Soon after, he announced his first concert tour that began in the UK in the spring of 1975. In 1982, Como and Frank Sinatra were invited to entertain Italian President Sandro Pertini at a White House State dinner when he made an official visit. President Pertini enjoyed their performance enough to join them in singing "Santa Lucia". The pair reprised this routine the next year in California as part of the entertainment for Queen Elizabeth's Royal visit. Perry was on the program by special request of the Queen. 1984 found Como traveling the US with his 50th Anniversary tour. Having spent most of his professional life in radio or recording studios and on television soundstages, he was enjoying doing live performances. Even after his 80th birthday, Perry continued the concert tours. Gone however, were the cardigan sweaters which were a staple of his weekly television shows. Como now performed in a tuxedo, saying, "It shows respect for the audience." The return to live appearances also provided Como with an opportunity to have a little fun with his "Mister Nice Guy" image in a song Ray Charles and Nick Perito wrote for him:

It doesn't take a guy equipped with ESP, to see what's cookin' with your curiosity!
Is "Mister Nice Guy" just a press agent's pitch? his dearest friends say he's a . . .
You never thought you'd see me in Las Vegas 'live' I haven't played a "club" since 1885!
It's spelled out in dollar signs ( you better believe it! ) I can almost read your minds!

–Nick Perito and Ray Charles, "If I Could Almost Read Your Mind"

Vocal characteristics

Perry Como credited Bing Crosby for influencing his voice and style. Perry Como's voice is widely known for its good-natured vocal acrobatics as portrayed in his highly popular novelty songs such as "Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)", but there was another side to Perry Como. Music critic Gene Lees describes it in his sleeve note to Como's 1968 album Look To Your Heart:

Despite his immense popularity, Como is rarely given credit for what, once you stop and think of it, he so clearly is: one of the great singers and one of the great artists of our time.

Perhaps the reason people rarely talk about his formidable attributes as a singer is that he makes so little fuss about them. That celebrated ease of his has been too little understood. Ease in any art is the result of mastery over the details of the craft. You get them together to the point where you can forget about how you do things and concentrate on what you are doing. Como got them together so completely that the muscles don’t even show. It seems effortless, but a good deal of effort has gone into making it seem so. Como is known to be meticulous about rehearsal of the material for an album. He tries things out in different keys, gives the song thought, makes suggestions, tries it again, and again, until he is satisfied. The hidden work makes him look like Mr. Casual, and too many people are taken in by it — but happily so.

I have of necessity given a good deal of thought and study to the art of singing, and Como's work consistently astonishes me. He is a fantastic technician. Listen in this album to the perfection of his intonation, the beauty of the sound he produces, the constant comfortable breath control. And take notice of his high notes. Laymen are often impressed by the high note you can hear for five blocks. Professionals know that it is far more difficult to hit a high note quietly. Como lights on a C or D at the top of a tune as softly as a bird on a branch, not even shaking it.

And then there's his phrasing. A number of our best singers phrase well. The usual technique is to rethink the lyrics of a song to see how they would come out if you were saying them, and then approximate in singing the normal speech inflections and rhythms. This often involves altering the melody, but it is a legitimate practice and when done well can be quite striking. But Como is beyond that. He apparently does not find it necessary to change the melodic line in order to infuse a song with emotion. A great jazz trumpeter once told me, "After fifteen years of playing, I’ve come to the conclusion that the hardest thing to do is to play melody, play it straight and get feeling into it." Como has been doing this from the beginning.

Stylistically, he comes out of the Bing Crosby–Russ Colombo school. That was all a long time ago. Como has been his own man for many years now. He sounds like nobody else. And nobody sounds like him, either. He is hard to imitate precisely because his work is so free of tricks and gimmicks. There are no mannerisms for another singer to pick up from him. All one can do is try to sing as well and as honestly as Como, and any singer who does that will end up sounding like himself, not Como.

–Gene Lees-sleeve note, Look To Your Heart

From 1989 until his death in 2001, Como co-hosted a weekly syndicated radio show with John Knox, called Weekend With Perry.

Films

Como's Hollywood type good looks earned him a seven year contract with 20th Century-Fox in 1943. He made five films: Something for the Boys (1944), March of Time (1945), Doll Face (1946), If I'm Lucky (1946), and Words and Music (1948), but he never appeared to be truly comfortable with the medium, feeling his roles didn't match his personality.

Some misguided advisers sought to alter Como's life story by changing his previous occupation from barber to coal miner, claiming it would make for better press. In 1985, Como related the story of his first film role experience in Something for the Boys. He sat ready to work in his dressing room for two weeks without being called. Perry spent the next two weeks playing golf, still not missed by the studio. It was five weeks before he was actually called to the set, despite the studio's initial urgent report for work notice. When Como finally appeared, the director had no idea who he was. Though his last movie, Words and Music, was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, Como fared no better. Less than two weeks before the film's release, Walter Winchell printed in his syndicated column, "Someone at MGM must have been dozing when they wrote the script for Words and Music. In most of the film Perry Como is called Eddie Anders and toward the end (for no reason) they start calling him Perry Como." Como asked for and received a release from the remainder of his movie contract in the same year. Quoting Como, "I was wasting their time and they were wasting mine." Como received some movie offers that pleased him while he was doing the weekly television shows, but there was just never enough time to pursue the film work. The show was the usual Friday night Chesterfield Supper Club with an important exception—it was also being broadcast on television. The experimental simulcast was to continue for three Friday "Supper Club" shows, but had gone so well, NBC decided to extend the televised version through August 1949. Said Como, "You can't act on TV. With me, what you see is what you get." While still in its experimental phase, Como and the television show survived a "road trip" for an on location broadcast in Durham, North Carolina, on April 15, 1949. In 1950, Perry moved to CBS and the show's title was changed to The Perry Como Chesterfield Show, again sponsored by Liggett & Myers' Chesterfield cigarettes. By 1952, it was evident that television would replace radio as the major entertainment medium. Gary Giddins, the biographer of Bing Crosby, said in 2001, "He (Como) came from this whole generation of crooners--Crosby and Sinatra, but he was the only one of them who figured out TV." The year before, he had been asked to be the master of ceremonies and narrator of the NBC Radio 35th anniversary special. That April, Perry Como signed a 12 year "unbreakable" contract with NBC.

Sing to me, Mr. C.

He moved back to NBC with a weekly hour long variety show featuring additional musical and production numbers, comedy sketches and guest stars called The Perry Como Show, premiering Saturday, September 17, 1955. became the show's opening theme song, and it was here where he began wearing his trademark cardigan sweaters. The "Sing to me, Mr. C." segment of the Como shows with Perry seated on a stool singing viewer requested songs had its roots in the first television broadcasts of Chesterfield Supper Club. When cameras entered the "Supper Club" radio studio, they found Como and his guests sitting on stools behind music stands. There was as much fun at rehearsals as on the show itself. Como's relaxed and fun-loving manner at rehearsals put many nervous guests at ease. Perry thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing, saying in a 1989 interview, "I got a kick out of live television. The spontaneity was the fun of it." On September 15, 1956, the season premiere of The Perry Como Show was broadcast from NBC's new color television studios at the New York Ziegfeld Theatre, making it one of the first weekly color TV shows. In addition to this season premiere as a color television show, there was also a royal visit from Prince Rainier of Monaco and his bride of six months, Grace Kelly.

Como competed with Jackie Gleason in what was billed as the "Battle of the Giants" and won. This is now rarely mentioned, in part because Como commonly downplayed his own achievements, At the height of this television competition, Como asked Gleason a favor: to visit his home when his mother-in-law, a big Gleason fan, was there. Though Mrs. Belline spoke no English and Gleason no Italian, Roselle's mother was thrilled. Como's words to Gleason after the visit, "Anything you want, you got it. In fact, I'll even do one of your shows so the ratings will be better." Como was among those who filled in for Gleason on The Jackie Gleason Show in 1954 when the entertainer suffered a broken ankle and leg in an on-air fall.

An example of Como's popularity came in 1956, when Life conducted a poll of young women, asking them which man in public life most fit the concept of their ideal husband: it was Perry Como. At one point, his television show was broadcast in at least 12 other countries.

Kraft Music Hall

In 1959, Como moved to Wednesday nights, hosting Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall for the next eight years, the last four seasons (1963 – 1967) as monthly specials alternating with Kraft Suspense Theatre, The Andy Williams Show, and finally The Road West. Como became the highest-paid performer in the history of television to that date, earning mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. Como himself took part in none of this; the family production company, Roncom (named for son Ronnie Como), handled the transaction along with all other Como business matters. Como also had control of the show which would replace his during the summer television hiatus. While "Mr. C." was having a holiday, viewers would see Perry Presents, beginning in 1959.

In late 1962, after the Cuban Missile Crisis had settled well enough to permit the evacuated servicemen's families to return to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was eager to do more for morale there. He asked Perry Como to bring his television show to the Naval base. Perry and his cast and crew were at Guantanamo when the loved ones began their return. The first entertainers to visit the base since the crisis, the Como show filmed there for eight days. Some highlights of the program, which was seen in the US on December 12, 1962, included Como's shaving a serviceman with a Castro-like beard and the enthusiastic participation when Perry asked for volunteers to come on stage to do the Twist with the lovely ladies who were part of the visiting dance troupe.

Filming for the Kraft Music Hall Christmas show that was aired on December 17, 1964 began at the Vatican November 7. By special permission of Pope Paul VI, Como and his crew were able to shoot segments in the Vatican gardens and other areas where cameras had never been permitted previously. The show featured the first television appearance of the Sistine Chapel Choir, and also the first time a non-choir member (Como) sang with them. The choir performed a Christmas hymn in Latin written by their director, Domenico Bartolucci, called "Christ Is Born", as part of their presentation. Como asked his associate, Ray Charles, to write English lyrics for the song, using it many times on both television shows and his Christmas albums. The Carpenters also recorded the song on their first Christmas album, Christmas Portrait. Como had numerous Christmas television specials, beginning on Christmas Eve 1948, and continuing to 1994, when his final Christmas special was recorded in Ireland. They were recorded in many countries, including the Holy Land, Mexico, and Canada, as well as many locations throughout the United States. The 1987 Christmas special was cancelled at the behest of Como; American Broadcasting Company (ABC) was willing to offer him only a Saturday 10 PM time slot for it 3 weeks before the holiday. Perry filled the yearly gap for his fans with live Christmas concerts in various locations.

A farewell concert from Ireland

Como's final Christmas special was filmed in Dublin's Point Theatre before an audience of 4,500 people, including Irish President Mary Robinson. Perry Como's Irish Christmas was a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) production. Como appeared to be in less than the best of health; though the show as broadcast, was less than ninety minutes long, its recording took over four hours. The performance is heartbreaking as it was evident he was unwell, but at the same time, heart-warming, because despite all that, Como persevered and sang those songs for his fans this one last time. At the show's conclusion, Como apologized to his Dublin audience for a performance he felt was not up to his usual standards. The borough honored him three times over the course of his life; the first of these events took place September 14, 1946, when Third Street, where Perry worked in the barber shop of Steve Fragapane,

A second ceremony marking Perry Como Day took place August 24, 1977, The planned statue had the blessing of Como's wife, Roselle, who died the year before it was unveiled on May 15, 1999. A smaller version of the statue was taken to Palena by the mayor of Canonsburg, Anthony Colaizzo. Perry's son, David, and his wife were also in attendance when the town of Palena renamed a street for Como.

In 2007, the local McDonald's was totally rebuilt. The new building decor features memorabilia of Como along with that of fellow singer and Canonsburg native, Bobby Vinton. A children's playground in Canonsburg on Giffin Avenue is also named for Como. In downtown Canonsburg, all of the tree grates are marked with information about the records that sold a million copies and the town clock hourly plays one of the hits of Como (141), Vinton (44), or the Four Coins (7), also from Canonsburg.

Perry Como never forgot Canonsburg either. One of the things he did to give a helping hand to his home town was to convince RCA to open a record-pressing plant there. Those who needed to raise funds for local projects like Boys' and Girls' Clubs found him always ready to do whatever was needed.

Death

Como died in his sleep on May 12, 2001 at his home in Jupiter Inlet Colony, Florida, six days before his eighty-ninth birthday. He was reported to have suffered from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease during the final two years of his life. His funeral Mass took place at St. Edward's Catholic Church in Palm Beach, Florida; Perry and Roselle are buried at Riverside Memorial Park, Tequesta (Palm Beach County), Florida.

See also

Perry Como discography

Perry Como-Radio, Television, Films

List of songs recorded by Perry Como

Perry Como albums

Best selling music artists

List of popular music performers

References

External links

A Perry Como Discography & CD Companion

The Perry Como Home on the Internet

Perry Como Collection 1955–1994-University of Colorado at Boulder Archives created by Perry Como, Mickey Glass, and Nick Perito

Complete List of Perry Como Shows–1948–1955

Complete List of Perry Como Shows–1955–1959

Complete List of Perry Como-Kraft Music Hall Shows–1959–1963

On Tour with Perry Como 1990, 1991, 1992

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Category:1912 births Category:2001 deaths Category:People from Washington County, Pennsylvania Category:American crooners Category:American baritones Category:American male singers Category:American pop singers Category:American radio personalities Category:American television personalities Category:American Roman Catholics Category:Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:American jazz musicians of Italian descent Category:American musicians of Italian descent Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Musicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Peabody Award winners Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Traditional pop music singers Category:Performers of religious music Category:Emmy Award winners

Coordinates	53°18′17″N15°16′46″N
Name	Neil Diamond
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Neil Leslie Diamond
Alias	The Jewish Elvis
Born	January 24, 1941
Origin	New York City, United States
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano
Genre	rock, pop, folk, country
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
Voice type	Baritone
Years active	1958–present
Label	Bang, Uni, MCA, Columbia
Url	neildiamond.com

Neil Leslie Diamond (born on January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. As a successful pop music performer, Diamond scored a number of hits worldwide in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. According to David Wild, common themes in Diamond's songs are "a deep sense of isolation and an equal desire for connection. A yearning for home – and at the same time, the allure of greater freedom. The good, the bad and the ugly about a crazy little thing called love."

As of 2001 Diamond has 115 million records sold worldwide, including 48 million records in the U.S. In terms of Billboard chart success, he is the third most successful Adult Contemporary artist ever, ranking behind only Barbra Streisand and Elton John. sang in the All City choir with Barbra Streisand. Neil Diamond attended Surprise Lake Camp as a youth.

At Lincoln, the school from which he received his high school diploma, he was a member of the fencing team. He later attended NYU on a fencing scholarship, specializing in épée, and was a member of the 1960 NCAA men's championship team; into his adult life he maintained his swordsmanship skills and continued to warm up with fencing exercises before his concerts. In a live interview with TV talk show host Larry King, Diamond explained his decision to study medicine by pointing out: "I actually wanted to be a laboratory biologist. I wanted to study. And I really wanted to find a cure for cancer. My grandmother had died of cancer. And I was always very good at the sciences. And I thought I would go and try and discover the cure for cancer." However, during his senior year in NYU, a music publishing company made him an offer he could not refuse: an offer to write songs for $50 a week. This started him on the road to stardom.

1960s

Diamond’s first recording contract was billed as "Neil and Jack", an Everly Brothers-type duo comprising Diamond and high school friend Jack Packer *(Jack Parker). They recorded two unsuccessful singles, "You Are My Love At Last" b/w "What Will I Do" and "I'm Afraid" b/w "Till You've Tried Love", both released in 1962. Later in 1962, Diamond signed with the Columbia Records label as a solo performer. Columbia Records released the single "At Night" b/w "Clown Town" in July, 1963. Despite a tour of radio stations, the single failed to make the music charts. Billboard gave an excellent review to "Clown Town" in their July 13, 1963, issue, predicting it would be a hit. However, sales were disappointing, and Columbia dropped Diamond. Soon after, Diamond was back to writing songs on an upright piano above the Birdland Club in New York City.

Diamond spent his early career as a songwriter in the Brill Building. His first success as a songwriter came in November, 1965, with "Sunday and Me", a Top 20 hit for Jay and the Americans on the Billboard Charts. Greater success as a writer followed with "I'm a Believer", "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)", and "Love to Love," all by the Monkees. There is a popular misconception that Diamond wrote and composed these songs specifically for the made-for-TV quartet. In reality, Diamond had written and recorded these songs for himself, but the cover versions were released before his own. The unintended, but happy, consequence was that Diamond began to gain fame not only as a singer and performer, but also as a songwriter. "I'm a Believer" was the Popular Music Song of the Year in 1966. Other notable artists who recorded early Neil Diamond songs were Elvis Presley, who interpreted “Sweet Caroline” as well as “And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind”; Mark Lindsay, former lead singer for Paul Revere & the Raiders, who covered "And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind"; the English hard-rock band Deep Purple, which interpreted “Kentucky Woman”; Lulu, who covered “The Boat That I Row”, and Cliff Richard, who released versions of “I’ll Come Running”, “Solitary Man”, "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon", “I Got The Feelin’ (Oh No No)”, and “Just Another Guy.”

In 1966 Diamond signed a deal with Bert Berns's Bang Records, then a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. His first release on that label, "Solitary Man", became his first hit. Prior to the release of "Solitary Man," Neil had considered using a stage name; he came up with two possibilities, "Noah Kaminsky" and "Eice Chary". But when asked by Bang Records which name he should use, Noah, Eice, or Neil, he thought of his grandmother, who died prior to the release of "Solitary Man". Thus he told Bang, "...go with Neil Diamond and I'll figure it out later". Diamond later followed with "Cherry, Cherry", "Kentucky Woman", "Thank the Lord for the Night Time", "Do It", and others. Diamond's Bang recordings were produced by legendary Brill Building songwriters Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, both of whom can be heard singing background on many of the tracks.

His first concerts saw him as a "special guest" of, or opening for, everyone from Herman's Hermits to, on one occasion, The Who, which he confirmed on an installment of VH1's documentary series program Behind The Music.

Diamond began to feel restricted by Bang Records, wanting to record more ambitious, introspective music. Finding a loophole in his contract, Diamond tried to sign with a new label, but the result was a series of lawsuits that coincided with a dip in his professional success. Diamond eventually triumphed in court, and secured ownership of his Bang-era master recordings in 1977.

1970s

After Diamond had signed a deal with the MCA Records label of Universal Pictures' parent company, MCA Inc., whose label was then called the Uni Records label in the late 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970. His sound mellowed, with such songs as "Sweet Caroline", "Holly Holy", "'Cracklin' Rosie", and the country-tinged "Song Sung Blue", the last two reaching No. 1 on the Hot 100. "Sweet Caroline" was Diamond's first major hit after his slump. Diamond admitted in 2007 that he had written "Sweet Caroline" for Caroline Kennedy after seeing her on the cover of Life Magazine in an equestrian riding outfit. It took him just one hour, in a Memphis hotel, to write and compose it. The 1971 release "I Am...I Said" was a Top 5 hit in both the U.S. and UK, and was his most intensely personal effort to date, taking upwards of four months to complete.

In 1972, Diamond played 10 sold-out concerts at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. During the performance on Thursday, August 24, which was recorded and released as the live double album Hot August Night. A few weeks later, in the fall of 1972, Diamond performed a series of concerts on 20 consecutive nights at the Winter Garden Theater in New York. Every one of these reportedly sold out, and the small (approximately 1,600-seat) Broadway theater provided an intimate concert setting not common at the time.

Hot August Night demonstrates Diamond's skills as a performer and showman, as he reinvigorated his back catalogue of hits with new energy. Many consider it his best work; critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls Hot August Night “the ultimate Neil Diamond record ... [which] shows Diamond the icon in full glory.”

The album has become a classic. It was remastered in 2000 with three additional selections: “Walk on Water”, “Kentucky Woman” and “Stones”. In Australia, the album spent a remarkable 29 weeks at No. 1; in 2006, it was voted #16 in a poll of favourite albums of all time in Australia. Also, Diamond's final concert of his 1976 Australian Tour (The "Thank You Australia" Concert) was broadcast to 36 television outlets nationwide on March 6 and remains the country's most-watched music event. It also set a record for the largest attendance at the Sydney Sports Ground. The 1977 concert Love At The Greek, a return to the Greek Theatre, includes a version of "Song Sung Blue" with duets with Helen Reddy and Henry Winkler, a.k.a. Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli of Happy Days.

In 1973, Diamond hopped labels again, returning to the Columbia Records for a lucrative million-dollar-advance-per-album contract. His first project, released as a solo album, was the soundtrack to Hall Bartlett's film version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The film received hostile reviews and did poorly at the box office. The album grossed more than the film did. Richard Bach, author of the best-selling source story, disowned the film. Both Bach and Diamond sued the film’s producer. Though the movie was not a hit, the soundtrack spawned three Top 10 singles, "Love on the Rocks", "Hello Again" and "America". For his role in the film, Diamond became the first-ever winner of a Worst Actor Razzie Award, even though he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for the same role.

Another Top 10 selection, "Heartlight", was inspired by the blockbuster 1982 movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Though the film's title character is never mentioned in the lyrics, Universal Pictures, which had released E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and was the parent company of the Uni Records label, by then referred to as the MCA Records label, for which Diamond had recorded for years, briefly threatened legal action against both Diamond and Columbia Records.

Diamond’s record sales slumped somewhat in the 1980s and 1990s, his last single to make the Billboard’s Pop Singles chart coming in 1986. However, his concert tours continued to be big draws. Billboard Magazine ranked Diamond as the most profitable solo performer of 1986. In January 1987, Diamond sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl. His "America" became the theme song for the Michael Dukakis 1988 presidential campaign. That same year, UB40’s reggae interpretation of Diamond’s ballad Red Red Wine would top the Billboard’s Pop Singles chart and, like the Monkees' version of “I’m a Believer”, become better known than Diamond’s original version.

1990s to present

During the 1990s Diamond would produce six studio albums. He would cover many classics from the movies and from famous Brill Building-era songwriters. He also released two Christmas albums, the first peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard’s Album chart. Keeping his songwriting skills honed, Diamond also recorded two albums of mostly new material during this period. In 1993, Diamond opened the Mark of the Quad Cities (now the iWireless Center) with two shows on May 27 and 28 to a crowd of 27,000-plus.

The 1990s and 2000s saw a resurgence in Diamond’s popularity. “Sweet Caroline” became a popular sing-along at sporting events, starting with Boston College football and basketball games. Most notably it is the theme song for Red Sox Nation, the fans of the Boston Red Sox, although Diamond noted that he has been a lifelong fan of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers. The song is also played during the 8th inning of every New York Mets home game and at Washington Nationals home games. The New York Rangers have also adapted it as their own, and play it when they are winning at the end of the 3rd period. The Pitt Panthers football team also plays it after the third quarter of all home games, with the crowd cheering, "Let's go Pitt". Urge Overkill recorded a memorable version of Diamond’s “Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" for Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, released in 1994. In 2000, Johnny Cash recorded the album Solitary Man, which included that Diamond classic. Smash Mouth covered Diamond’s “I’m a Believer” for their 2001 self-titled album. In the 2001 comedy film Saving Silverman, the main characters play in a Neil Diamond cover band, and Diamond made an extended cameo appearance as himself. During this period, Will Ferrell did a recurring Diamond impersonation on Saturday Night Live, with Diamond himself appearing alongside Ferrell on Ferrell's final show as a "Not Ready For Prime Time Player" in May 2002. “America” was used in promotional ads for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The Finnish band HIM covered “Solitary Man” on their album, And Love Said No: The Greatest Hits.

at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park]]

Diamond has always had a somewhat polarizing effect, best exemplified by the 1991 film What About Bob? There the protagonist posits, "There are two types of people in the world: those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't". The character of Bob attributes the failure of his marriage to his fiancee's fondness for Diamond. Another example of this love/hate relationship: the Becker episode "It had to be Ew" is largely devoted to ridiculing Diamond and his fans.

Diamond continues to tour and record. 12 Songs, produced by Rick Rubin, was released on November 8, 2005, in two editions: a standard 12-song release, and a special edition with two bonus tracks, including one featuring backing vocals by Brian Wilson. The album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard chart, and has received generally positive reviews; Earliwine describes the album as "inarguably Neil Diamond's best set of songs in a long, long time". 12 Songs also became noteworthy as one of the last albums to be pressed and released by Sony BMG with the infamous Extended Copy Protection software embedded in the disc. (See the 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal.)

On December 31, 2005 Diamond appeared on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2006.

In 2007, Diamond was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame.

In December 2007, a 2008 UK tour was announced, calling at Manchester on June 7 and 8, Birmingham on June 10 and 11, and London on June 21, 23 and 24. A month later, further UK dates were added, including Hampden Park in Glasgow on the 5th of June, Rose Bowl, Southampton on the 17th of June, and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on the 19th of June.

On March 19, 2008, it was announced on the TV show American Idol that Diamond would be a guest mentor to the remaining Idol contestants who would be singing Diamond songs broadcasts of April 29 and 30, 2008. On April 8, 2008, Diamond made a surprise announcement in a big-screen broadcast at Fenway Park, that he would be appearing there "live in concert" on August 23, 2008 as part of his World Tour. The announcement, which marked the first official confirmation of any 2008 concert dates in the U.S., came during the traditional eighth-inning sing-along of his "Sweet Caroline," which has become an anthem for Boston fans.

On April 28, 2008, Diamond appeared on the roof of the Jimmy Kimmel building to sing "Sweet Caroline" after Kimmel was jokingly arrested trying to sing the song. This was followed on April 30, 2008, with an appearance on American Idol when he sang "Pretty Amazing Grace" from his new album, Home Before Dark. On May 2, 2008, Sirius Satellite Radio started Neil Diamond Radio.

Diamond's album Home Before Dark was released on May 6, 2008. On May 15, 2008, the Billboard Hot 200 listed the album at No. 1. This marked the first chart-topping album of Diamond's storied career. On May 18, 2008, "Home Before Dark" also entered the UK charts at No. 1, his second British No. 1 album, after hitting the summit in 1992 with a compilation album. His 2008 tour was the most successful of any of his previous tours since 1966.

On August 25, 2008, Diamond performed at Ohio State University while suffering from laryngitis. The result disappointed him as well as his fans and on August 26 he offered refunds to anyone who applied by September 5.

Diamond was honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year on February 6, 2009, two nights prior to the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.

According to posts on Neil's Twitter page, he is currently working on a new album, his third with Rick Rubin. He says he plans to play electric guitar on the album, a first for him. In 2009, Diamond stated that he prefers Gibson and Martin acoustic guitars and confirmed that recently he had been playing Gibson electric guitars.

Long-loved in Boston, Diamond was invited to sing at the July 4 holiday celebration.

Through his Diamond Music Company, Diamond now belongs to that small group of performers whose names are listed as copyright owners on their recordings.

In August 2008, Neil Diamond allowed cameras to record his entire four-night run at New York's Madison Square Garden and released it in the United States on August 14, 2009, on DVD, one year to the day of the first concert. 'Hot August Night/NYC' debuted at No. 2 on the charts and is exclusively available at Wal-Mart and has sold out at many locations all over the country. Also on the same day the DVD was released, CBS (the former parent of his label, Columbia Records) aired an edited version of the DVD, which won the ratings hour with 13 million viewers. The next day, the sales of the DVD surged and prompted Sony to order more copies to meet the high demand.

On October 13, 2009, he released A Cherry Cherry Christmas, his third album of holiday music.

On September 28, 2010, Diamond was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

On November 2, 2010, he released the album 'Dreams', a collection of 14 interpretations of his favorite songs by other artists from the rock era.

On December 14, 2010, it was leaked by numerous sites that Diamond had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Alice Cooper, Darlene Love, Dr. John, and Tom Waits. The induction ceremony will be March 14, 2011 at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City.

On December 20, 2010, Diamond made an appearance on NBC's 'The Sing-Off', performing "Ain't No Sunshine" along with the A Cappella groups featured on the show.

Personal life

Diamond married high school sweetheart, school teacher Jayne "Posey" Posner, in 1963. They had two daughters, Marjorie and Elyn, before they divorced in 1969. In December 1969, Diamond married Marcia Murphey, a production assistant; they also had two children, both sons, Jesse and Micah. Diamond's second marriage ended in 1995. Diamond was in a relationship with Australian Rachel Farley, whom he met while she handled marketing during his 1996 Australian tour. The album Home Before Dark is largely based on Farley's struggles with severe chronic pain from a back injury she suffered (very similar to Diamond's own in 1979), surgery and ongoing recovery. Diamond said that "She had back surgery and it wasn’t going well. She was in extreme pain for a year and the surgery did not really work. If anything, it made it worse. And I never left her side. I was within 20ft of her for the entire year that I took writing this album."

In 1979 Diamond had a tumor surgically removed from his spine and underwent a long rehabilitation process just prior to beginning principal photography for his 1980 film The Jazz Singer.

Discography

References

External links

Official website

Neil Diamond's Band's Official Site

Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Grammy Award winners Category:American male singers Category:American pop rock singers Category:American rock singer-songwriters Category:American musicians of Russian descent Category:American musicians of Polish descent Category:Jewish American composers and songwriters Category:Jewish singers Category:Jewish actors Category:Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn, New York) alumni Category:Erasmus Hall High School alumni Category:Singers from New York City Category:People from Brooklyn Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

Moishe Oysher (Yiddish: משה אוישר, born 1907 in Lipkany, Bessarabia, Imperial Russia – died 27 November 1958, New Rochelle, New York, USA). He is considered one of the most entertaining chazanim (cantors) ever recorded. It is said that there were chazanim in his family going back six generations.

In 1921, he traveled to Canada with his family and joined a traveling Yiddish theatrical company. In 1932, he started his own company and traveled to South America. After returning from South America to the U.S., he took a job as a chazan for the High Holidays at the First Roumanian-American congregation, in Manhattan, New York, on the Lower East Side.

Some say that Oysher's voice was like the "roaring of the lion." He liked the jazz style, popular at that time, and he used similar rhythmic melodies in his prayers, respecting always the traditional Bessarabian "Doinas" and "Nussach" moods of the prayers.

He starred in three Yiddish films and also made many recordings. He also was on Radio in the New York City area during the 1950s.

Filmography

The Cantor's Son (Dem Khazn's Zindl) 1937, USA, B&W;, 90 min, Yiddish with English subtitles. ISBN 1-56082-079-9

Directed by Ilya Motyleff and Sidney Goldin. Other actors: Judith Abarbanel and Florence Weiss. Based on Moishe Oysher's life. A very poor young immigrant lands a job as a custodian, where he is "discovered" and becomes famous immediately. However, his success seems meaningless as he yearns for home.

*The Singing Blacksmith (Yankl der Shmid; the Yiddish title literally means "Yankel the Smith") 1938, USA, B&W;, 95 min, Yiddish with English subtitles. ISBN 1-56082-085-3 Directed by Edga G. Ulmer. Also with Miriam Riselle and Florence Weiss. This is a classic story of a blacksmith that is a womanizer and almost an alcoholic. One day, he meets a beautiful lady called Tamare and his life changes.

*Overture to Glory (Der Vilner Shtot Khazn; the Yiddish title literally means "The Vilnius City Cantor") 1940, USA, B&W;, 85 min, Yiddish with English subtitles. ISBN 1-56082-063-2 Directed by Max Nosseck. Starring Helen Beverly and Florence Weiss. Oysher is the "Vilner Balabesl", a cantor in Vilnius, with a renowned voice. Two men come from the Warsaw Opera to hear him sing the "Kol Nidre" on Yom Kippur and are so impressed that they introduce him to European classical music and to reading sheet music; they convince him, against the wishes of much of his family (and especially his father-in-law) to become an opera singer in Warsaw.

He leaves his job as the Vilnius cantor, and seems at first to be on the path to fame and fortune as an opera star in Warsaw, when the news arrives that his son has died. Grief-stricken, he stumbles over the aria he is supposed to sing, starting instead into a lullaby he used to sing to his son. In disgrace, he also loses his voice; he tries to return to his life in Vilna; finally, his voice comes briefly back to him on Yom Kippur. He sings the first few lines of the "Kol Nidre", then dies of a heart attack.

See also

List of Jewish Romanians

Notes and references

External links

(Musical Album:) The Power, The Glory, The Soul of Moishe Oysher. Judaica Sound Archives. Florida Atlantic University

Article about Moshe Oysher - Chazzanut Online

Category:1907 births Category:1958 deaths Category:Hazzans Category:Yiddish theatre performers Category:Jewish actors

Coordinates	53°18′17″N15°16′46″N
Name	Johnny Mathis
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	John Royce Mathis
Born	September 30, 1935
Origin	Gilmer, Texas, United States
Genre	Pop, soul, easy listening
Occupation	Singer, songwriter, actor
Years active	1956–present
Label	Columbia, Mercury
Url	www.JohnnyMathis.com

John Royce "Johnny" Mathis (born September 30, 1935) is an American singer of popular music.

Mathis concentrated on romantic jazz and pop standards for the adult contemporary audience through the 1980s. Starting his career with singles of standards, Mathis became more popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Mathis has sales of over 27 million sellers, certified units in the United States. According to recordings chart historian and music writer Paul Gambaccini, Mathis has recorded over 130 albums and sold more than 350 million records worldwide.

Early life

Mathis was born in Gilmer, Texas, the fourth of seven children of Clem Mathis and his wife, Mildred Boyd. Their family moved to San Francisco, California, settling in the Fillmore district where he grew up. Mathis's father had worked in vaudeville, and when he saw his son's talent, he bought an old upright piano for US$25 and encouraged his efforts. Mathis began learning songs and routines from his father; his first song was "My Blue Heaven." Mathis started singing and dancing for visitors at home, and at school and church functions.

When Mathis was 13, Connie Cox, a voice teacher, accepted him as a student in exchange for work around her house. He studied with Cox for six years, learning vocal scales and exercises, voice production, classical and operatic skills. He is one of the few popular singers who received years of professional voice training that included opera. The first band Mathis would sing with was formed by fellow high school student Merl Saunders. Mathis eulogized him in October, 2007 at his funeral, to thank him for giving him his first chance as a singer.

Mathis was a star athlete at George Washington High School. He was a high jumper and hurdler, and played on the basketball team, earning four athletic letters. In 1954, he enrolled at San Francisco State University on a scholarship, intending to become an English and physical education teacher. as a guest on March 29, 2007 performing the classic "The Shadow of Your Smile" with saxophonist Dave Koz. Mathis returned to the UK Top 20 album chart in 2007 with the Sony BMG release "The Very Best of Johnny Mathis" and again in 2008 with the Columbia CD "A Night to Remember". Also in 2007, he was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

A performance by Mathis in Florida in 2009 netted him $65,000 in artist fees and royalties.

Personal life

In a 1982 Us Magazine article, Mathis was quoted as having said, "Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed to." Us Magazine later retracted the statement. After more than 20 years of silence on the subject, Mathis revealed in an interview, in 2006, that his silence was due to death threats he received as a result of that 1982 article. On April 13, 2006, Mathis granted a podcast interview with The Strip in which he talked about the subject once again, and how some of his reticence to speak of the subject was partially generational.

In 1982 he published a cookbook, Cooking for You Alone.

Mathis has undergone rehab for both alcohol and prescription drug addictions.

Grammy Hall of Fame

Johnny Mathis was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan=5 align=center | Grammy Hall of Fame Awards |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Year Inducted |- align=center | 1957 | It's Not for Me to Say | Traditional Pop (Single) | Columbia | 2008 |- align=center | 1959 | Misty | Traditional Pop (Single) | Columbia | 2002 |- align=center | 1957 | Chances Are | Traditional Pop (Single) | Columbia | 1998 |- align=center |}

Discography

Hit singles

|- DUET PARTNERS: *Gladys Knight & the Pips, **Deniece Williams, ***Jane Olivor, #Paulette, ##Dionne Warwick, ###Regina Belle

JOHNNY MATHIS "THE MILLION SELLERS"

Singles: 1 Wonderful Wonderful USA

2 Its not For Me To say USA

3 Chances Are (over 2 Million) USA

4 Misty USA (over 2 million ) USA & UK

5 When A Child Is Born UK

6 Too Much,Too Little,Too Late (over 2 million USA & UK )

Albums: 1 Johnnys Greatest Hits (approaching 5 Million) USA

2 Merry Christmas (approaching 6 Million) USA

3 Heavenly (over 2.5 million) USA

4 Give Me Your Love For Christmas USA

5 All Time Greatest Hits (approaching 2 Million) UK and USA

6 You Light Up My Life (over 2 million) USA and UK )

Albums

Mathis has had much more success as an album artist. His celebrated albums include:

Johnny Mathis Columbia CL-887 1957

Wonderful, Wonderful Columbia CL-1028 (Gold) 1957

Warm Columbia CL-1078/CS-8039 (Gold) 1957

Good Night, Dear Lord Columbia 1958

Johnny's Greatest Hits Columbia CL-1133 (Multi-Platinum) 1958

Swing Softly Columbia CL-1165/CS-8023 (Gold), #10 UK Pop Albums 1958

Merry Christmas Columbia CL-1195/CS-8021 (Multi-Platinum) 1958

Open Fire, Two Guitars Columbia CL-1270/CS-8056 (Gold) 1959

More Johnny's Greatest Hits Columbia CL-1344/CS-8150 (Gold) 1959

Heavenly Columbia CL-1354/CS-8152 (Multi-Platinum) 1959

Faithfully Columbia CS-8219 (Gold) 1959

The Rhythms and Ballads of Broadway Columbia #6 UK Pop Albums 1960

Johnny's Mood Columbia 1960

I'll Buy You A Star #18 UK Pop Albums Columbia 1961

Portrait Of Johnny Columbia 1961

Live It Up! Columbia 1962

Rapture Columbia 1962

Johnny's Newest Hits Columbia 1963

Johnny Columbia 1963

Romantically Columbia CS 8898, CL 2098 1963

Sounds of Christmas Mercury 1963

I'll Search My Heart and Other Great Hits Columbia CS-8943

The Great Years Columbia 1964

Tender Is The Night Mercury 1964

The Wonderful World of Make Believe Mercury 1964

This Is Love Mercury MG 20942/SR 60942 1964

Olé Mercury 1965

Love Is Everything Mercury 1965

The Sweetheart Tree Mercury SR 61041/MG 21041 1965

The Shadow of Your Smile Mercury 1966

So Nice Mercury 1966

Johnny Mathis Sings Mercury SR-61107 1967

Up, Up & Away Columbia 1967

Love is Blue Columbia CS-9637 1968

Those Were The Days Columbia CS 9705 1968

Theme From Romeo And Juliet Columbia 1969

People Columbia 1969

The Impossible Dream Columbia 1969

Give Me Your Love For Christmas Columbia 1969

Close To You Columbia 1970

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head #23 UK Pop Albums 1970

Sings The Music Of Bacharach & Kaempfert 1970

Love Story #27 UK Pop Albums 1971

You've Got A Friend Columbia 1971

In Person - Recorded Live At Las Vegas Columbia 1972

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face #40 UK Pop Albums 1972

Johnny Mathis' All-Time Greatest Hits 1972

Song Sung Blue 1972

This Guy's In Love With You Harmony 1972

Christmas With Johnny Mathis Columbia 1972

Me And Mrs. Jones 1973

Killing Me Softly 1973

I'm Coming Home Columbia #18 UK Pop Albums 1973

The Heart Of A Woman #39 UK Pop Albums 1974

What'll I Do 1974

When Will I See You Again #13 UK Pop Albums 1975

Feelings 1975 (Platinum)

Heavenly And Faithfully Columbia 1975

I Only Have Eyes For You #14 UK Pop Albums 1976

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me 1977

''The Johnny Mathis Collection" #1 UK Pop Albums 1977

''Sweet Surrender" Pop Albums 1977

Mathis Is 1977

Johnny's Greatest Hits 1977

You Light Up My Life (Platinum), #3 UK Pop Albums 1978

That's What Friends Are For #16 UK Pop Albums 1978

The Best Days Of My Life#38 UK Pop Albums 1979

Mathis Magic #59 UK Pop Albums 1979

Tears and Laughter #1 UK Pop Albums 1980

All For You #20 UK Pop Albums 1980

Different Kinda Different 1980

The Best Of Johnny Mathis (1975–1980) 1980

Celebration #9 UK Pop Albums 1981

The First 25 Years: Silver Anniversary Album 1981

Friends In Love #34 UK Pop Albums 1982

Unforgettable #5 UK Pop Albums 1983

A Special Part Of Me #45 UK Pop Albums 1984

For Christmas 1984

Johnny Mathis Live 1985

Right From the Heart 1985

Hollywood Musicals #46 UK Pop Albums 1986

Christmas Eve With Johnny Mathis 1986

Once In A While 1988

Love Songs 1988

In the Still Of the Night 1989

In A Sentimental Mood: Mathis Sings Ellington 1990

Better Together: The Duet Album 1991

How Do You Keep the Music Playing 1993

All About Love 1996

Because You Loved Me: Songs of Diane Warren 1998

Mathis On Broadway 2000

The Christmas Album 2002

Isn't It Romantic: The Standards Album 2005

The Very Best Of Johnny Mathis #6 UK Pop Albums 2006

A Night To Remember #29 UK Pop Albums 2008

Release September 2010

Bibliography

References

External links

Johnny Mathis Official website

Johnny Mathis at Sony website

[ Mathis, Johnny-AMG discography] — ''Allmusic

Johnny Mathis at The Mathis Chronicles

Johnny Mathis NPR Audio: with Ed Gordon

Dave Koz f/ Johnny Mathis "The Shadow of Your Smile" NBC Audio: The Tonight Show

Thom Bell talks about his classic Johnny Mathis produced album "I'm Coming Home" Soul Jones Presents

Category:1935 births Category:African American singers Category:American crooners Category:American jazz singers Category:American male singers Category:American pop singers Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:LGBT African Americans Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:Living people Category:Mercury Records artists Category:People from Beverly Hills, California Category:People from Longview, Texas Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:San Francisco State University alumni Category:Traditional pop music singers

Coordinates	53°18′17″N15°16′46″N
Name	John Zorn
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Alias	Dekoboko Hajime, Rav Tzizit
Born	September 02, 1953
Origin	New York City, United States
Genre	Avant-garde jazz, free jazz, punk jazz, classical, jazz fusion, hard bop, experimental rock, noise rock, grindcore, jazzcore, dark ambient, dub, easy listening, klezmer
Instrument	Alto saxophone, clarinet, keyboards, percussion
Occupation	Composer, producer
Years active	1973–present
Label	Tzadik, Avant, DIW, Elektra Nonesuch, Earache, Hat Hut, Shimmy-Disc, Eva, Toy's Factory, Nato, Lumina, Black Saint, Subharmonic, Parachute, Yukon, Rift
Associated acts	Naked City, Masada, Painkiller, Hemophiliac, Weird Little Boy
Url	www.tzadik.com
Notable instruments	Clarinet, Piano, Theremin, Wind machine

John Zorn (born September 2, 1953 in New York City) is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist.

Rundown

Zorn's recorded output is prolific with hundreds of album credits as a performer, composer, or producer. His work of avant-garde and experimental music expertly draws from a wide range of musical genres and traditions, often within a single composition, including jazz, rock, hardcore punk, classical, contemporary classical music, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular, and improvised music.

After releasing albums on several independent US and European labels, Zorn signed with Elektra Nonesuch and attracted wide acclaim in 1985 when he released The Big Gundown with his interpretations of music composed by Ennio Morricone. This was followed by the album Spillane in 1987, and the first album by Naked City in 1989 which all attracted further worldwide attention. Zorn then recorded on the Japanese DIW label and curated the Avant subsidiary label before forming Tzadik in 1995, where he has been prolific, issuing several new recordings each year and releasing works by many other musicians.

Zorn established himself within the New York City downtown music movement in the early 1980s but has since composed and performed with a wide range of musicians working in diverse musical areas. By the early 1990s Zorn was working extensively in Japan, attracted by that culture's openness about borrowing and remixing ingredients from elsewhere, where he performed and recorded under the name Dekoboko Hajime, before returning to New York as a permanent base in the mid-1990s. Zorn has undertaken many tours of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, often performing at festivals with varying ensembles to display his diverse output.

Biography

Early life

John Zorn was born in New York City and learned piano, guitar and flute as a child. His family possessed broad musical tastes and he gained an appreciation of classical and world music from his mother, a professor of education, through his father, a hairdresser, was exposed to jazz, French chansons, and country music, and listened to his older brother's collection of doo-wop, and 1950s rock and roll. Zorn recalled an episode of his life, after buying a record by Mauricio Kagel in 1968 at the age of fifteen, that influenced his subsequent taste for experimental and avant-garde music:

Here we are: Kagel, "Improvisation Ajoutée." I bought this when I was about 15. Still marked: got it at Sam Goody in September, for 98 cents. And it's a really crazy piece, with the guys screaming and hooting, something that attracted me. I was over at my friend's house, and he really liked the Rolling Stones. And I just got this record, and I put it on and he looked at me like... who the hell are you? Are you out of your mind? And his mother was there, and she was like [puts palm on cheek] my God, take this off... and right then and there, I decided: this was the music.

As a teenager, Zorn played bass in a surf band. He studied music under Leonardo Balada. During these years, he taught himself about orchestration and counterpoint, by transcribing scores and using in his own compositions, a procedure of "plagiarizing, stealing, quoting, or whatever you can call it", of collage and transposition into his own world, that he has been using throughout his career.

Zorn picked up the saxophone after discovering Anthony Braxton's album For Alto (1969) while studying composition at Webster College (now Webster University) in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended classes taught by Oliver Lake. While still at Webster, Zorn incorporated elements of free jazz, avant-garde and experimental music, film scores, performance art and the cartoon scores of Carl Stalling into his first recordings which were later released as First Recordings 1973 (1995).

After dropping out of college, and following a stint on the West Coast, Zorn moved to Manhattan and gave concerts in his apartment and other small NY venues playing saxophone and a variety of reeds, duck calls, tapes, and other instruments. He founded the Theatre of Musical Optics, a performance art project, in 1975 and became a major participant in the fertile, avant-garde downtown music scene as a composer, performer and producer of music that challenges the confines of any single musical genre. Zorn later used the term 'Theatre of Musical Optics' as the publishing company for his compositions.

Early composition

Zorn's early major compositions included several "game pieces" or "game theories", which he describes as "complex systems harnessing improvisers in flexible compositional formats," and which "involved strict rules, role playing, prompters with flashcards, all in the name of melding structure and improvisation in a seamless fashion." These compositions use cues, rules, and strategies to combine and contrast improvisations in various, sometimes extreme, ways, enlisting the talents of many downtown musicians in large ensembles for performances of these pieces. Zorn discusses his history and the musical philosophy behind his early works in the book Talking Music by William Duckworth (composer)|William Duckworth.

In 1981, Zorn was "blowing duck calls in buckets of water at fringe venues," which included 8BC, Roulette, Chandelier, and Zorn's own clubhouse, the Saint. Zorn's versions of Morricone's compositions incorporated elements of traditional Japanese music, soul jazz, and other diverse musical genres. Zorn's 15th Anniversary re-release of the album featured additional explorations of Morricone's work.

He first released the composition 'Godard', a tribute to French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard whose jump-cut technique inspired Zorn's compositional approach, on the French tribute album The Godard Fans: Godard Ca Vous Chante? in 1986. Zorn followed this with his second major-label release Spillane in 1987 composed of three different tribute compositions. The title track featured text by Arto Lindsay set to an array of sonic film noir references, 'Two-Lane Highway' a blues-based form to highlight the guitar of Albert Collins and 'Forbidden Fruit', Zorn's tribute to a Japanese film star, performed by the Kronos Quartet. 'Godard' and 'Spillane' were re-released as a single CD, Godard/Spillane, on Tzadik in 1999.

These pieces are described by Zorn as "file-card compositions", a method of combining composition and improvisation in which Zorn would write down a description of what he wanted on file-cards and arrange them to form the piece. Zorn described the process in 2003. "I write in moments, in disparate sound blocks, so I find it convenient to store these events on filing cards so they can be sorted and ordered with minimum effort. Pacing is essential. If you move too fast, people tend to stop hearing the individual moments as complete in themselves and more as elements of a sort of cloud effect... I worked 10 to 12 hours a day for a week, just orchestrating these file cards. It was an intense process - one I don't want to go through again." News for Lulu (1988) and More News for Lulu (1992) featured Zorn, Bill Frisell and George Lewis performing compositions by Kenny Dorham, Sonny Clark, Freddie Redd, and Hank Mobley. He performed on two recordings by organist Big John Patton - Blue Planet Man (1993) and Minor Swing (1995) and contributed to the Sax Legends series (later re-released as The Colossal Saxophone Sessions) in 1993 with a version of Wayne Shorter's composition "Devil's Island" alongside Lee Konitz, who Zorn has described as "one of my all-time heroes".

While Zorn is often considered a jazz musician his schema is considerably broader. He stated "The term 'jazz', per se, is meaningless to me in a certain way. Musicians don’t think in terms of boxes. I know what jazz music is. I studied it. I love it. But when I sit down and make music, a lot of things come together. And sometimes it falls a little bit toward the classical side, sometimes it falls a little bit towards the jazz, sometimes it falls toward rock, sometimes it doesn’t fall anywhere, it's just floating in limbo. But no matter which way it falls, it's always a little bit of a freak. It doesn’t really belong anywhere. It's something unique, it's something different, it's something out of my heart. It's not connected with those traditions."

Film music

Zorn has written music for documentaries, underground films, television advertisements and cartoons which are documented in the Filmworks albums on the Tzadik label. Some of these film scores are jazz-influenced, others classical, and most feature ensembles consisting of rotating combinations of downtown musicians. Zorn has often used his cinematic and television commissions to experiment with line-ups and forms that would become more established parts of his musical canon.

Zorn stated that "After my record The Big Gundown came out I was convinced that a lot of soundtrack work was going to be coming my way". While Hollywood acclaim was not forthcoming he attracted the attention of many independent filmmakers. The first director to commission him was Rob Schwebber for the 1986 short White And Lazy followed by his work for Sheila McLaughlin's film, She Must Be Seeing Things (1986). In 1990 he composed the soundtrack for the Raul Ruiz film The Golden Boat. All these soundtracks appeared on Filmworks 1986-1990 along with a sixty-four second interpretation of the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which featured future members of Naked City.

Zorn's second Filmworks release documented his Walter Hill (1996) which was composed for the film Trespass (1992) but replaced by a score by Ry Cooder. (1997) featured the first recordings by the Masada lineup for Joe Chappelle's Thieves Quartet (1993) along with early drafts for the project, duets with Marc Ribot which featured in Mei-Juin Chen's Hollywood Hotel (1994), and a series of commercial soundtracks for the advertising firm Weiden and Kennedy, including one directed by Jean-Luc Godard - a long-term Zorn inspiration. (1997) and (1996) both included music written for films dealing with BDSM. contains the soundtracks to three underground films produced in 1996; Dina Waxman's Anton, Mailman, Henry Hills' Mechanics Of The Brain, and Maria Beatty's The Black Glove.

re-released the themes that Zorn produced for a Japanese cartoon which had only been previously available in limited release in Japan. Zorn regained the rights to these recordings by trading a booking at The Knitting Factory to Sony executives. features music for the documentary Port Of Last Resort (1998), which detailed the experiences of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai during the years preceding World War II, and the soundtrack to the underground film Latin Boys Go To Hell (1997).

Zorn's next soundtrack work did not appear until 2000 with Trembling Before G-d featuring music for an award winning documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski. The following year In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2001) featured music for a documentary on the life and work of underground filmaker Maya Deren.

The year 2002 was a very productive one for Zorn's cinematic scores. (2002) featured the Masada String Trio performing music for Aviva Slesin's documentary film on Jewish children hidden from the Nazis. (2002) features music for three documentaries; Homecoming: Celebrating Twenty Years of Dance at PS 122, Shaolin Ulysses, a film about Shaolin Monks in America, and variations on the theme for Family Found, a documentary on outsider artist Morton Bartlett. Zorn released his third soundtrack collection of 2002 with , written for a black comedy about a man selling tickets to his own suicide to save his father's life.

Zorns next two Filmworks releases featured in documentaries examining Jewish identity and antisemitism. Hiding and Seeking (2003) provided the soundtrack a documentary about an Orthodox Jewish father attempting to alert his sons of the dangers of creating barriers between themselves and those outside their faith. Protocols of Zion (2005) featured music for a documentary about a resurgence of antisemitism in the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

(2005) presented themes for a documentary portraying hazardous employment undertaken in the Ukraine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and China.

(2006) featured music for Martina Kudlacek's documentary Notes on Marie Menken intertwined with Zorn's percussive score for Beth Cataldo's portrait Ray Bandar: A Life with Skulls. (2006) featured music for Oren Rudavsky's romantic comedy based on the tango music of Astor Piazolla.

(2008) was written for an animated children's short film by Russian director Dimitri Gellar. Also released in 2008 were containing music for a documentary on the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem, featuring soundtracks for another of Maria Beatty's films and a documentary on the restoration of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and .

Hardcore

Zorn established Naked City in 1988 as a 'compositional workshop' to test the limitations of a rock band format. Featuring Zorn on saxophone, Bill Frisell (guitars), Fred Frith (bass), Wayne Horvitz (keyboards), Joey Baron (drums), and occasional vocals from Yamatsuka Eye, Bob Dorough, and later Mike Patton, Naked City incorporated Zorn's appreciation of hardcore bands like Agnostic Front and grindcore bands like Napalm Death with his other influences and experimented with compositional form and cover versions.

Named after a 1945 book of graphic black and white photographs by Weegee the band performed an aggressive mix of "soundtrack themes, bluesy hard bop, speedy hardcore rock, squealing free jazz [and] metallic funk". Zorn has stated that "Naked City started with rhythm and blues/Spillane type things then went into this hard-core thing... because I was living in Japan and experiencing a lot of alienation and rejection... My interest in hard-core also spurred the urge to write shorter and shorter pieces."

Naked City followed the release of their self-titled album with Torture Garden a collection of 42 'hardcore miniatures'; intense brief compositions often lasting less than a minute, in 1989. Some of these tracks had featured on Naked City and others would resurface on the bands next full-length release, Grand Guignol (1992), which also included performances of works by Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin, Orlande de Lassus, Charles Ives, and Olivier Messiaen. The band's third album, Heretic (1992), featured more of these short improvisations produced for the soundtrack of an underground S/M film Jeux des Dames Cruelles. The band released a second EP, Leng Tch'e, in 1992 featuring a single composition which lasted just over half an hour. Radio, released in 1993, was the first Naked City album composed solely by Zorn, and featured tracks drawing on a wide range of musical influences including Charles Mingus, Little Feat, Ruins, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Colin Wilson, Albert King, Chuck Brown, Orchestra Baobab, the Accüsed, the Meters, Tony Williams' Lifetime, Anton Webern, Sammy Cahn, Frank Sinatra, Morton Feldman, Igor Stravinsky, the Melvins, Beatmasters, Septic Death, Abe Schwartz, Ivo Papasov, Naftule Brandwein, Repulsion, Led Zeppelin, Bernard Herrmann, Santana, Extreme Noise Terror, Conway Twitty, Siege, Ornette Coleman, Corrosion of Conformity, Massacre, Quincy Jones, Sam Fuller, Funkadelic, Carcass, Liberace, Jan Hammer, Eddie Blackwell, Charlie Haden, Mick Harris, Carole King, Red Garland, Boredoms, Jerry Reed, SPK and Roger Williams in addition to Zorn's previously identified touchstones. The final recording from the band Absinthe (1993) featured a blend of ambient noise styled compositions with tracks titled after the works of Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire and other figures in the fin de siècle Decadent movement, and a dedication to Olivier Messiaen. Zorn disbanded Naked City after this release but briefly reformed the band for a European tour in 2003.

Zorn also formed Painkiller with Bill Laswell on bass and Mick Harris on drums in 1991. Painkiller's first two releases Guts of a Virgin (1991) and Buried Secrets (1992) also featured short grindcore and free jazz inspired compositions. They released their first live album, on the Japanese Toys Factory label in 1993 followed by the double CD Execution Ground (1994) which featured longer dub and ambient styled pieces. A second live album was released in 2002 and the band was featured on Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Volume 12 (2005) with Hamid Drake replacing Harris on drums and guest vocalist Mike Patton.

Both bands attracted worldwide interest, particularly in Japan, where Zorn had relocated following a three-month residency in Tokyo. Zorn collaborated with, and produced, numerous Japanese 'noise' artists including Merzbow, Otomo Yoshihide, Melt Banana and frequent collaborator Yamatsuka Eye. Many of these artists have now released albums on Tzadik and some regularly travel to New York to perform.

Releases from both bands were criticized for their graphic album covers. The cover of the eponymous album by Naked City used the Weegee photograph 'Corpse with Revolver C.A. 1940' which shows a gangland killing as did their later . Zorn left Electra Nonesuch after the company's response to the artwork for Naked City's Grand Guignol, releasing the remaining Naked City albums on a Japanese-based label, Avant. The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence protested against Zorn because they believed that the images used in the graphic design of Naked City's Torture Garden and Leng Tch'e portrayed degrading images of Asian people. To avoid problems, Zorn removed the original albums from retail sale and later replaced the artwork with new packaging titled Black Box. Painkiller's Guts of a Virgin EP was banned in the UK after customs seized and destroyed the first shipment for violating the Obscene Publications Act. Execution Ground was also released with the original cover photograph of a lynching removed. Zorn later re-released the Naked City and Painkiller albums as box sets with restored artwork after forming his own record label.

Zorn recorded Hemophiliac in 2002 with Mike Patton and Ikue Mori which continued his interest in hardcore improvisations. The first release from this trio was a double CD set which was signed by the performers. Limited to 2,500 copies this album soon became a highly sought after collectors item. The trio also released a live recording as part of Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration Series.

In 2006 Zorn formed the hardcore voice/bass/drums trio of Mike Patton, Trevor Dunn, and Joey Baron which became known as the Moonchild Trio. That year two albums of Zorn's compositions performed by the trio were released: and Astronome. A third album with the trio, but also featuring Zorn, Ikue Mori, Jamie Saft and chorus, Six Litanies for Heliogabalus, was released in 2007. Their fourth release The Crucible appeared in 2008.

Concert music

John Zorn has established a diverse repertoire of music written for chamber musicians and orchestras. As Zorn's interest in Naked City waned he "started hearing classical music in [his] head again." Zorn began composing the suites Elegy (1992) (dedicated to Jean Genet) and Kristallnacht (1993) both of which drew on chamber music arrangements of strings, percussion and electronic instruments.

Zorn was quoted in 1998 as saying "Sometimes I get the feeling that people just don't see me as a composer, but it's what I've always been since I was eight years old... I've always thought of myself as a composer, but the world has had a hard time looking at me as a composer because a lot of what I compose is controversial." The establishment of Tzadik allowed Zorn to release many compositions which he had written, over the previous two decades, for classical ensembles. Zorn's earliest released 'classical' composition (for five flutes), 'Christabel' was written in 1972 and first appeared on Angelus Novus in 1998. Redbird (containing new compositions for bass drums and a harp/viola/cello/percussion quartet inspired by Agnes Martin) and The Book of Heads (35 etudes for solo guitar written in 1978 for Eugene Chadbourne and realised by Marc Ribot) were released in 1995 as part of Tzadiks Composer Series. Zorn credits the composition of his 1988 piece for string quartet "Cat O' Nine Tails", commissioned and originally released by the Kronos Quartet, to awakening him to the possibilities of writing for classical musicians. This composition was featured on The String Quartets (1999) and Cartoon S/M (2000) along with variations on "Kol Nidre", inspired by the Jewish prayer of atonement which was written at the same time as (but not part of) the first Masada book. (1997) consists of two 'tribute' compositions, the first dedicated to Marguerite Duras has four movements lasting roughly thirty-four minutes influenced by the composition of Oliver Messiaen, the second "69 Paroxyms for Marcel Duchamp" lasts just over thirteen minutes. (1998) was Zorn's first full-scale orchestral release featuring pianist Stephen Drury, the Hungarian Radio Children's Choir and the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

Songs from the Hermetic Theatre (2001) featured four experimental compositions; "American Magus", was Zorn's first piece of electronic music dedicated to Harry Smith; "BeuysBlock", a meditation on the work of Joseph Beuys; "In the Very Eye of Night", a tribute to Maya Deren; and "The Nerve Key", Zorn's first piece of computer music. Madness, Love and Mysticism (2001) featured "Le Mômo", inspired by Antonin Artaud, performed by Stephen Drury (piano) and Jennifer Choi (violin); "Untitled", dedicated to Joseph Cornell, a cello solo for Erik Friedlander; and "Amour Fou" featuring the trio. Chimeras (2001) was inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's atonal composition "Pierrot Lunaire".

Several of Zorn's later concert works drew inspiration from mysticism and the works of Aleister Crowley in particular. Magick (2004) featured the Crowley Quartet on "Necronomicon: for string quartet" and "Sortilège" written for two bass clarinets. A 2009 performance of "Necronomicon" was described as "...frenetic vortexes of violent, abrasive motion, separated by eerily becalmed, suspenseful sections with moody, even prayerful melodies. The music is sensational and evocative, but never arbitrary; you always sense a guiding hand behind the mayhem". Mysterium released in 2005 featured "Orphée" performed by a sextet of flute, viola, harp, harpsichord and electronics; "Frammenti Del Sappho" for female chorus; and "Wulpurgisnacht" for string trio. Rituals (2005) featured Zorn's five movement opera for mezzo soprano and ten instruments composed for the Bayreuth Opera Festival in 1998. From Silence to Sorcery (2007) features three compositions; "Goetia" consists of eight variations for solo violin performed by Jennifer Choi; "Gris-Gris" is composition for thirteen tuned drums performed by William Winant; and "Shibboleth" is a tribute to Paul Celan scored for clavichord, strings and percussion.

Zorn's concert works have been performed all over the world and he has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic and Brooklyn Philharmonic. When the piece for the Brooklyn Philharmonic was played at New Music America festival, he wrote in the pamphlet with the music:

Less than an actual music festival, New Music America is a one-sided overview that's more about politics, marketing, and sales than about the music it pretends to support... it's no more than a convention for the people in the music business who try to "out-hip" each other in the manipulation of artists. This postmodern yuppie tendency of business people dictating creative policy to artists is a very real danger that I intend to avoid at all costs.

Masada Books

John Zorn recorded Kristallnacht in November 1992, his premiere work of radical Jewish culture, featuring a suite of seven compositions reflecting the infamous Night of Broken Glass in late 1938 where Jews were targets of violence and destruction in Germany and Austria. The experience prompted Zorn to further explore his Jewish heritage and composing using Jewish musical styles. Zorn then set himself the task of writing 100 compositions within a year incorporating klezmer styles with his already broad musical palette. Within three years, the number of compositions had grown to 200 and became known as the first Masada book. Zorn has stated:

: Joey Baron (dr), Greg Cohen (b), Dave Douglas (tr), John Zorn (as)]]

The initial releases featuring this compositional approach were ten albums by Masada appearing on the Japanese DIW label from 1994. Masada (later referred to as 'acoustic' Masada) was an Ornette Coleman-inspired quartet with Zorn (alto saxophone), Joey Baron (drums), Dave Douglas (trumpet), and Greg Cohen (bass) that performed jazz-styled compositions based on Sephardic scales and rhythms. The original Masada albums were titled after the first ten letters of the Hebrew Alphabet – , , , , , , , , and – and contained compositions with Hebrew titles. Further releases by Masada consisted of live performances of the band recorded in Jerusalem, Taipei, Middleheim, Seville and in New York at the Knitting Factory and at Tonic and as a DVD, and a double CD of unreleased studio recordings, Sanhedrin 1994-1997 (2005).

The Masada quartet performed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in March 2007 for what were billed as their final concerts. Zorn reformed the band as a sextet with Uri Caine and Cyro Baptista in 2009 stating:

The Masada Book has been performed by many different ensembles and musicians. The Masada String Trio composed of Greg Cohen (bass), Mark Feldman (violin), and Erik Friedlander (cello) regularly performs and records Zorn's Masada pieces. This group, with the addition of Marc Ribot (guitar), Cyro Baptista (percussion), and Joey Baron (drums) also perform as the Bar Kohkba Sextet. Electric Masada, the most recent regular Masada ensemble usually features Zorn, Baptista, Baron, and Ribot, along with Trevor Dunn (bass), Ikue Mori (electronics), Jamie Saft (keyboards) and Kenny Wollesen (drums). A Tenth Anniversary Series of Masada recordings was released by Zorn beginning in 2003. The series featured five albums of Masada themes including Masada Guitars by Marc Ribot/Bill Frisell/Tim Sparks, Masada Recital by Mark Feldman & Sylvie Courvoisier, Masada Rock by Rashanim and two albums featuring various artists - Voices in the Wilderness and The Unknown Masada''.

In 2004, Zorn began composing the second Masada Book, 'The Book of Angels', resulting in an additional 300 compositions. Zorn has stated:

He has released several albums of Masada Book Two compositions performed by other artists. Recordings by the , , , , , , , , , , , and the have been released in this series. The titles of many Masada Book Two compositions are derived from demonology and Judeo-Christian mythology.

Tzadik record label

In 1992 John Zorn collaborated with the Japanese Disc Union label to curate the Avant imprint, a subsidiary of the DIW jazz label which released the first Masada albums. Several Naked City recordings were released through the Avant label as well as many others on which Zorn featured downtown musicians including Derek Bailey, Buckethead, Eugene Chadbourne, Dave Douglas, Erik Friedlander, Wayne Horvitz, Ikue Mori, Bobby Previte, Zeena Parkins and Marc Ribot.

In 1995, in co-operation with jazz producer Kazunori Sugiyama, Zorn established the Tzadik label to ensure availability of his catalogue and promote experimental musicians. Zorn said that the label is a way to shield from the power of the music industry, with "giant corporations acting like slave masters, like the return of the pharaohs," merging together to get even more powerful like in the Polygram-Universal acquisition; and to shield from distribution companies like Tower, HMV, and Virgin Megastores, that are destroying "the small mom and pop stores—people that love the music and that’s why they have their store," and from the insidious pollution of the tastes of the masses, "with brainwashing and brain-control. These marketing guys who are at the head of all these companies, they’re really the ones that are spoon-feeding everybody shit."

The label's releases are divided into series:

The Archival Series features Zorn's recordings exclusively, including re-releases of several albums that appeared on other labels, Zorn's film work, and recordings from 1973 onwards;

The 50th Birthday Celebration Series is 11 live albums recorded in September 2003 at Tonic as part of the month-long concert retrospective of Zorn's work;

The Composer Series features Zorn's music for 'classical' ensembles along with work by many other contemporary composers;

The Radical Jewish Culture Series features contemporary Jewish musicians;

The New Japan Series covers Japanese underground music;

The Film Music Series features soundtracks by other musicians (Zorn's Filmworks recordings are feartured in the Archival Series);

The Oracle Series promotes women in experimental music;

The Key Series presents notable avant-garde musicians and projects; and

The Lunatic Fringe Series releases music and musicians operating outside of the broad categories offered by other series.

Music romance

Zorn released Music for Children in 1998. The album, identified as "Music Romance Volume One" portrayed the broad spectrum of Zorn's compositions. Music for Children opened with a polyrhythmic etude for percussion and celeste, featured three short Naked City compositions, written at the time of Torture Garden, performed by Zorn with the Boston-based band Prelapse, a composition for wind machines and feedback dedicated to Edgard Varèse, a classical chamber piece for violin, percussion and piano, and ended with a music box-styled lullaby. The second "Music Romance" album, Taboo & Exile, was released in 1999 and featured a similar spectrum of broad styles. One of Zorn's most popular albums was the third in the series, The Gift (2001), which surprised many with its relaxed blend of surf, exotica and world music. Zorn released The Dreamers in 2008 which is considered to be a sequel to The Gift although not identified as a volume of "Music Romance".

50th birthday celebration

In September 2003 Zorn celebrated his 50th birthday with a month-long series of performances at Tonic in New York, repeating an event he had begun a decade earlier at the Knitting Factory. He conceptualized the month into several different aspects of his musical output. Zorn's bands performed on the weekends, classical ensembles were featured on Sundays, Zorn performed improvisations with other musicians on Mondays, featured his extended compositions on Tuesdays and a retrospective of game pieces on Wednesdays. Twelve live albums were released on his 50th Birthday Celebration Series which featured performances by the Masada String Trio, Milford Graves & John Zorn, Locus Solus, Electric Masada, Fred Frith & John Zorn, Hemophiliac, Masada, Susie Ibrarra, Wadada Leo Smith & John Zorn, John Zorn solo, Yamataka Eye & John Zorn, Bar Kokhba Sextet and Painkiller.

Recent projects

Zorn was the principal force in establishing The Stone in 2005, an avant-garde performance space in New York's Alphabet City which supports itself solely on donations and the sale of limited edition CDs, giving all door revenues directly to the performers. Zorn holds the title of artistic director and regularly performs 'Improvisation Nights'. On Friday April 13, 2007, Zorn played the final night at Tonic, the Lower East Side venue where he played regularly for the previous decade, which closed due to financial pressures. On January 10, 2008, Zorn performed with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson at a special benefit night at The Stone which was also released on on CD.

On February 4, 2008, Zorn premiered his work for three cellists "777" performed by Fred Sherry, Erik Friedlander, and Michael Nicolas at the Guggenheim Museum. Zorn premiered The Dreamers with members of Electric Masada on February 29, 2008 at St Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn. On March 27, 2008, Miller Theater at Columbia University in New York City, which has been the venue for several premieres of Zorn's concert works, hosted the first performance of a new composition by John Zorn, "The Prophetic Mysteries of Angels, Witches & Demons". Zorn curated the music for the Aleph-Bet Sound Project, a sound installation featuring new music by Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Erik Friedlander, David Greenberger, Chris Brown, Z’EV, Terry Riley, Alvin Curran, Christina Kubisch, Marina Rosenfeld, Raz Mesinai, and Jewlia, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum from June 4, 2008 to January 8, 2009. Zorn's "Shir Ha-Shirim" premiered in February 2008. The piece is inspired by the Song of Songs from the old testament and is performed by an amplified quintet of female singers with female and male narrators performing the "Song of Solomon". Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson read the texts in English for the February performances. The group returned to New York for performances at the Guggenheim on November 23 and 24, at which Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Jeremy Fogel recited in Hebrew. These performances at the Guggenheim Museum in November 2008 featured choreography for paired dancers from the Khmer Arts Ensemble by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro. The ensemble includes Marc Ribot on guitar, Carol Emanuel on harp, Trevor Dunn bass and the five extraordinary female vocalists. The Daughters of Jerusalem, as they are known for this project are, Lisa Bielawa, Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer, Kathryn Mulvihill and Kirsten Sollek. Photos of February rehearsals. Shir Ha-Shirim was also performed in Milano, Italy on September 24, 2008 and in Paris, France for the Jazz à la Villette event, on Saturday September 5, 2009.

In 2009, American playwright and avant-garde theatre pioneer Richard Foreman directed Astronome: A Night at The Opera based on Zorn's Astronome (2006). 2009 also saw the release of the album O'o, featuring the same style of music and set of players as the 2008 album The Dreamers.

Publications

In 2000 Zorn edited the book Arcana: Musicians on Music featuring interviews, essays, and commentaries by musicians including Anthony Coleman, Peter Garland, David Mahler, Bill Frisell, Gerry Hemingway, George Lewis, Fred Frith, Eyvind Kang, Mike Patton and Elliott Sharp, on the compositional process. Zorn released the second volume of Arcana: Musicians on Music in the Summer of 2007. According to the preface by Zorn, "This second installment of what will be a continuing series of books presenting radical, cutting-edge ideas about music is made, like the initial volume, out of necessity." The second volume contains essays by more than 30 musicians including Annie Gosfield, Trey Spruance, Zeena Parkins, Steve Coleman, Marina Rosenfeld, Carla Kihlstedt, David Douglas, Bill Laswell, Trevor Dunn, and Jewlia Eisenberg. In October 2008, a third volume of the Arcana series was released containing essays by Wadada Leo Smith, Frank London, Greg Cohen, Sean Lennon and Jamie Saft. In Septermber 2009 Volume IV was released, and Volume V is scheduled to be released on July 2010 with subtitle Musicians on Music, Magic & Mysticism.

Awards and critical reception

In 2001 John Zorn received the Jewish Cultural Award in Performing Arts from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. In 2006 Zorn was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2007, he was the recipient of Columbia University's School of the Arts William Schuman Award, an honor given "to recognize the lifetime achievement of an American composer whose works have been widely performed and generally acknowledged to be of lasting significance."

Zorn has attracted mixed receptions by critics throughout his career stating that "The press has never done anything but ignore and ridicule and marginalize my music—downtown music, because they don't know what to call it." A 1999 NY Times article by Adam Shatz accused Zorn of "attempt[ing] to recast Jewishness as a defiantly marginalized identity -- to claim victim status -- [which] has an air of calculation about it that overpowers his music." Several letters to the Editor from critics and musicians appeared in the following weeks in support of Zorn's artistic merit. In the opinion of Howard Mandel, who has interviewed Zorn numerous times, Zorn has often expressed a reluctance to grant interviews and has requested that journalists not review his performances.

The character of Stephen Colbert from the TV show The Colbert Report mocked the MacArthur Foundation's award of the Genius Grant to Zorn on the September 20, 2006 episode in his segment titled "Who's Not Honoring Me Now". Colbert used a 10-second dissonant excerpt from the 50th Birthday Celebration Series and compared it to his blowing into a saxophone, pleading, "Genius Grant please!" Zorn's comments on the Colbert segment were "It was a hilarious spot."

Works by John Zorn

Discography

Filmography

Put More Blood Into the Music (New York avant garde music), episode 292 of ''The South Bank Show, aired Sunday March 12, 1989, released on DVD

Step Across the Border (1990)

(2004)

Masada Live at Tonic 1999 (2004)

Celestial Subway Lines / Salvaging Noise (2005)

Sabbath in Paradise (2007)

Astronome: A Night At The Opera (2010)

Books

Zorn. J. (editor) (2000) Arcana: Musicians on Music, Hips Road: New York (ISBN 188712327X)

Zorn. J. (editor) (2007) Arcana II: Musicians on Music, Hips Road: New York (ISBN 0978833767)

Zorn. J. (editor) (2008) Arcana III: Musicians on Music, Hips Road: New York (ISBN 0978833775)

Zorn. J. (editor) (2009) Arcana IV: Musicians on Music, Hips Road: New York (ISBN 0978833783)

Zorn. J. (editor) (2010) Arcana V: Musicians on Music, Magic & Mysticism, Hips Road: New York (ISBN 0978833791)

Notes

References

Duckworth, William (1999) Talking Music, Da Capo Press (ISBN 0-306-80893-5) pp. 444–476

Gann, Kyle (2006) Music Downtown: Writing from the Village Voice p. 232

Gordon, Tom (2008) John Zorn: Autonomy and The Avant-Garde.

Mandel, Howard (1986) Howard Mandel interview John Zorn, EAR Magazine Vol. II no. 2, oct., 1986. LOGOS.

Mandel, Howard (1988) Ich habe viele kleine Tricks. John Zorn interview. MusikTexte 23, Febr., 1988.

Mandel, Howard (1997) Guerilla Strategist: John Zorn interviewed by Howard Mandel, Resonance vol. 6 nr. 1, 1997.

Mandel, Howard (2005) Jazz: Who What Where Why New York Press, September 7, 2005.

Mandel, Howard (2008) Musicians Dread Words, Jazz Beyond Jazz, March 2, 2008.

Milkowski, Bill (1998) John Zorn interview in Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries New York: Watson-Guptill Publications

Milkowski, Bill (1999) John Zorn; His Own Scene, NY Times, October 17, 1999

Milkowski, Bill (2000) John Zorn: One Future, Two Views (interview) in Jazz Times, March 2000, pp. 28–35,118-121 (accessed 24 July 2010)

Milkowski, Bill (2009) John Zorn: The Working Man in Jazz Times, May 2009 (accessed 24 July 2010)

Further reading

Discography of John Zorn by Patrice Roussel (to June 2008)

John Zorn Primer The Wire Issue 156 Feb 1997

John Zorn's biography and discography by Scott Maykrantz

John Zorn interview (Hungarian)

Brackett, John. John Zorn: Tradition and Transgression. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-253-22025-7.

John Zorn Q&A; Session

External links

Tzadik.com

The Stone website

Hips Road Edition: Concert music of John Zorn, including score and mp3 samples

Art of the States: John Zorn

The John Zorn Web Site

Category:20th-century classical composers Category:21st-century classical composers Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz saxophonists Category:Avant-garde jazz musicians Category:Jazz fusion musicians Category:Jewish American composers and songwriters Category:Free improvisation saxophonists Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Musicians from New York City Category:People from Queens Category:Postmodern composers Category:American experimental musicians Category:Noise musicians Category:Elektra Records artists Category:Nonesuch Records artists Category:Tzadik Records artists Category:1953 births Category:Living people Category:The Golden Palominos members