Juan Habichuela (1933 – 30 June 2016) was a Spanish flamenco guitarist. He accompanied some of the most famous singers of the time such as Manolo Caracol, Juan Valderrama, Fosforito, and Enrique Morente. Sonny James (May 1, 1928 – February 22, 2016), was an American country music singer and songwriter best known for his 1957 hit, “Young Love”. Dubbed the “Southern Gentleman” for his congenial manner, his greatest success came from ballads about the trials of love. James had 72 country and pop charted releases from 1953 to 1983, including an unprecedented five-year streak of 16 straight Billboard #1 singles among his 26 #1 hits. Twenty-one of his albums reached the country top ten from 1964 to 1976. David Baker (December 21, 1931 – March 26, 2016) was an American symphonic jazz composer at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit. Among the first and most important people to begin to codify the then largely aural tradition of jazz he wrote several seminal books on jazz, including Jazz Improvisation in 1988. Joe Temperley (20 September 1929 – 11 May 2016) was a Scottish jazz saxophonist. He performed with various instruments, but was most associated with the baritone saxophone, soprano saxophone, and bass clarinet. Vasyl Slipak (December 20, 1974 – June 29, 2016) was a Ukrainian baritone opera singer. From 1994 he frequently performed in France at such venues as Paris Opera and Opéra Bastille. For his opera performance, Slipak received several awards, including “Best Male Performance” for the Toreador Song. Following the outbreak of the pro-Russian insurgency in Donbass, Slipak returned to Ukraine and participated in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. He was killed by a sniper shot near Luhanske. “Corry” Brokken (3 December 1932 – 31 May 2016) was a Dutch singer. In 1957, she was the first Dutch winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, one of the high points in a long career as a singer and entertainer in the 1950s and 1960s, during which she scored a number of hits. Remo Belli (June 22, 1927 – April 25, 2016) was an American jazz drummer who developed and marketed the first successful synthetic drumheads and founded the Remo company. After opening a store, Drum City, in 1950, he realized that the growth of rock and roll meant that there were insufficient supplies of calfskin, the traditional material for drumheads, to meet the demands. He bought a supply of Mylar, a durable polyester film, and established a partnership with chemist Samuel Muchnick who developed a way of bonding the plastic membrane to an aluminum hoop. The new drums eventually became a huge commercial success. Franco Oppo (2 October 1935 – 14 January 2016) was an Italian composer and scholar. Oppo studied at the Conservatory of Cagliari, graduating in piano (1958), choral music and choral conducting (1960), and composition (1961). Since 1965 he won several international composition competitions. Gayle McCormick (November 26, 1948 – March 1, 2016) was an American singer, best known for her work with the rock band Smith. She attended Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Missouri near St. Louis and sang high soprano with the Suburb Choir, a 150-voice unit that performed annually with the St. Louis Symphony. Her recording and performing career stretched from 1965-76. Ismael Quintana (June 3, 1937 – April 16, 2016) was a Puerto Rican-American singer and composer of salsa music. In addition to solos Quintana also participated with the Fania All-Stars and went on tour with them to Africa, Japan, France, Central and South America and the United States. Lord Tanamo (2 October 1934 – 19 April 2016), was a Jamaican singer and songwriter best known for his mento and ska work. He switched to ska in the early 1960s, and was a founding member of the Skatalites. Billy Paul (December 1, 1934 – April 24, 2016), was a Grammy Award-winning American soul singer, known for his 1972 #1 single, “Me and Mrs. Jones”, as well as the 1973 album and single “War of the Gods” which blends his more conventional pop, soul, and funk styles with electronic and psychedelic influences. He was one of the many artists associated with the Philadelphia soul sound. Donald Harris (April 7, 1931 in St. Paul, Minnesota – March 29, 2016 in Columbus, Ohio) was an American composer who taught music at The Ohio State University for 22 years. He was Dean of the College of the Arts from 1988 to 1997. From 1954 to 1968, Harris lived in Paris, where he served as music consultant to the United States Information Agency and produced the city’s first postwar Festival of Contemporary American Music. Réagissez à cet article / Comment this article commentaires / comments
