LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING

RICHARD CLAYDERMAN
COMPOSITEUR: SAMMY FAIN
PAYS: FRANCE
ALBUM: CANDLELIGHT & MUSIC: THE ROMANTIC PIANO OF RICHARD CLAYDERMAN
RECORD: SONY MUSIC
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
ANNÉE: 1992
 
              Richard Clayderman (prononciation française: [ʁiʃaʁ klɛidɛʁman]; né Philippe Pagès prononciation française: [filip paʒɛs], 28 décembre 1953 à Paris) est un pianiste français qui a publié de nombreux albums dont les compositions de Paul de Senneville et Olivier Toussaint, des interprétations instrumentales de musique populaire, de réarrangements de bandes sonores de films, de musique ethnique et d'arrangements faciles à écouter d'œuvres populaires de musique classique.
Clayderman a appris le piano de son père, un professeur d'accordéon.
          À l'âge de douze ans, il a été accepté au Conservatoire de Paris, où il a remporté un grand succès dans ses dernières années d'adolescence. Des difficultés financières, précipitées par la maladie de son père, ont empêché une carrière prometteuse de pianiste classique. Alors pour gagner sa vie, il a trouvé du travail comme commis de banque et comme accompagnateur de groupes contemporains. Il a accompagné des chanteurs français tels que Johnny Hallyday, Thierry Le Luron et Michel Sardou.

BLUE IN GREEN

MILES DAVIS
SONGWRITERS: BILL EVANS & MILES DAVIS
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: KIND OF BLUE
LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1969
 
            Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926– September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz.
          Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Miles Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955, he signed a long-term contract with Columbia Records and recorded the 1957 album 'Round About Midnight. It was his first work with saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers, key members of the sextet he led into the early 1960s. During this period, he alternated between orchestral jazz collaborations with arranger Gil Evans, such as the Spanish music-influenced Sketches of Spain (1960), and band recordings, such as Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). The latter recording remains one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, having sold over five million copies in the U.S.
       Davis made several lineup changes while recording Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), his 1961 Blackhawk concerts, and Seven Steps to Heaven (1963), another mainstream success that introduced bassist Ron Carter, pianist Herbie Hancock, and drummer Tony Williams. After adding saxophonist Wayne Shorter to his new quintet in 1964, Davis led them on a series of more abstract recordings often composed by the band members, helping pioneer the post-bop genre with albums such as E.S.P (1965) and Miles Smiles (1967), before transitioning into his electric period. During the 1970s, he experimented with rock, funk, African rhythms, emerging electronic music technology, and an ever-changing line-up of musicians, including keyboardist Joe Zawinul, drummer Al Foster, and guitarist John McLaughlin. This period, beginning with Davis' 1969 studio album In a Silent Way and concluding with the 1975 concert recording Agharta, was the most controversial in his career, alienating and challenging many in jazz. His million-selling 1970 record Bitches Brew helped spark a resurgence in the genre's commercial popularity with jazz fusion as the decade progressed.
        After a five-year retirement due to poor health, Davis resumed his career in the 1980s, employing younger musicians and pop sounds on albums such as The Man with the Horn (1981) and Tutu (1986). Critics were often unreceptive but the decade garnered Davis his highest level of commercial recognition. He performed sold-out concerts worldwide, while branching out into visual arts, film, and television work, before his death in 1991 from the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure. In 2006, Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which recognized him as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz". Rolling Stone described him as "the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time, not to mention one of the most important musicians of the 20th century", while Gerald Early called him inarguably one of the most influential and innovative musicians of that period.
          "Blue in Green" is the third tune on Miles Davis' 1959 album, Kind of Blue. One of two ballads on the LP (the other being "Flamenco Sketches"), the melody of "Blue in Green" is very modal, incorporating the presence of the Dorian, Mixolydian, and Lydian modes. This is the only tune on which Cannonball Adderley sits out.

MY HEART WILL GO ON

ANDRÉ RIEU
SONGWRITERS: JAMES HORNER & WILL JENNINGS
COUNTRY: NEETHERLANDS
ALBUM: CROISIERE ROMANTIQUE
LABEL: UNIVERSAL MUSIC
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 2002
 
          André Léon Marie Nicolas Rieu (born 1 October 1949) is a Dutch violinist and conductor best known for creating the waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra.
          He and his orchestra have turned classical and waltz music into a worldwide concert touring act, as successful as some of the biggest global pop and rock music acts. He resides in his native Maastricht.
        The name Rieu is of French Huguenot origin. André was born to Andries Antonie Rieu and is the third of six children. He has two older sisters (Teresia and Cilia), two younger brothers (Robert and Jean-Philippe), and a younger sister (Gaby Buirma-Rieu).
         Rieu's father was conductor of the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra. Showing early promise, André began studying violin at the age of five. From a very early age, he developed a fascination with orchestra. He studied violin at the Conservatoire Royal in Liège and at the Conservatorium Maastricht, (1968–1973), studying under Jo Juda and Herman Krebbers.
         From 1974 to 1977, he attended the Music Academy in Brussels, studying with André Gertler. He completed his training with the distinction "Premier Prix" from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.
      He married Marjorie Kochmann in 1975. She has been a language teacher and has written compositions. They have two sons, Marc and Pierre.
         He speaks six languages: Dutch, English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

LOOK FOR A STAR

BILLY VAUGHN & ORCHESTRA
SONGWRITER: M. ANTHONY
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: BLUE HAWAII/LOOK FOR A STAR
LABEL: DOT RECORDS
GENRE: INSTRUMENTAL
YEAR: 1959
 
            Richard Smith Vaughn (April 12, 1919 – September 26, 1991), known as Billy Vaughn, was an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, orchestra leader, and A&R man for Dot Records.
         Vaughn was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, United States, where his father, Alvis Radford Vaughn, was a barber who loved music and inspired Billy to teach himself to play the mandolin at the age of three, while suffering from measles. He went on to learn a number of other instruments.
           In 1941, Vaughn joined the United States National Guard for what had been planned as a one-year assignment, but when World War II broke out, he was in for the duration as a valued musician and composer at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Major General Daniel I. Sultan decided that Vaughn was too valuable to the base's Thirty-Eighth Division big band, and kept him at Camp Shelby for the duration of the war. He decided to make music a career when he was discharged from the army at the end of the war, and on the GI Bill, attended Western Kentucky State College, now known as Western Kentucky University, majoring in music composition. He had apparently learned barbering from his father, because he did some while studying at Western Kentucky to support himself financially, when he was not able to get jobs playing the piano at local night clubs and lounges. While he was a student there, three other students, Jimmy Sacca, Donald McGuire, and Seymour Spiegelman, who had formed a vocal trio, the Hilltoppers, recruited Vaughn to play the piano with them. He soon added his voice to theirs, converting the trio to a quartet. As a member of the group, he also wrote their first hit song, "Trying", which charted in 1952.
             In 1954, he left the group to join Dot Records in Gallatin, Tennessee, as music director. He subsequently formed his own orchestra which had a hit single in that same year with "Melody of Love." It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. He went on to have many more hits over the next decade and a half, and, based purely on chart successes, was the most successful orchestra leader of the rock era.
           Vaughn charted a total of 42 singles on the Billboard charts, often based on the sound of two alto saxophones. He also charted thirty six albums on the Billboard 200, beginning with 1958's Sail Along Silv'ry Moon and ending with 1970's Winter World of Love. He also had nineteen Top 40 hits in (Germany), beginning with the chart-topping "Sail Along, Silv'ry Moon", also a gold record, which was a cover of a 1937 Bing Crosby hit. He had two more number ones in Germany: "La Paloma" and "Wheels" (all three were reportedly million sellers). Billy Vaughn's recording of "Wheels" was No. 1 for 14 weeks in Germany (Hit Bilanz) as well as No. 1 in India, New Zealand, and Italy (Billboard hits of the world, various issues 1961). Vaughn also charted in Australia, Latin America, and Japan. "Pearly Shells" was a major success in Japan. Vaughn's tours of that country began about the time "Pearly Shells" was a hit in 1965. Many songs which were not US hits or even singles releases there, were major hits in other countries. These included "Lili Marlene", "Zwei Gitarren am Meer", "Blueberry Hill" (Germany), and "Greenfields". Also successful were "Song of Peace", "It's a Lonesome Old Town" (Japan), "Michelle" (No 1 in Argentina and Malaysia), "Mexico" (No. 1 in the Philippines), and "Bonanza" (a major success in Brazil and Italy [Billboard Hits of the World, 1960s]) plus "Theme from the Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (various Latin American countries). The album La Paloma was a success throughout Latin America. He also had a number one album in Germany in the early 1980s with Moonlight Melodies, which consisted of 20 of Billy's biggest hits (original Dot recordings, original LP notes and credits).
         The Billy Vaughn Orchestra began touring in 1965 with numerous sell-out tours throughout Japan, Brazil, and South Korea.
           In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Vaughn lived in Palm Springs, California. He died of peritoneal mesothelioma at Palomar Hospital in Escondido, California, on September 26, 1991, aged 72. He and his wife Marion are buried at the Oak Hill Memorial Park in Escondido.
           On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Billy Vaughn among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire. The Billy Vaughn Orchestra, co-owned and managed by his son, Richard Smith Vaughn Jr., is still a touring big band. The Billy Vaughn Orchestra, produced by the Tate Corporation, Japan, toured Japan in 2013, 2014, and again in 2018 to sell-out audiences.