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Porgy and Bess: Bill Potts
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Between 1956 and 1964, at least 16 jazz interpretations of Porgy & Bess were recorded and released. Why the frenzy? Part of the reason was the opera's global popularity by 1955. In 1952, Robert Breen directed and co-produced with Blevins Davis a revival of the George Gershwin opera in New York that eventually toured 29 countries in four years. The opera eventually wound up being performed in Leningrad and Moscow in December 1955—the first postwar U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange. An account ...
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Porgy & Bess Part 2 This Week On Riverwalk Jazz
Source:
Don Mopsick
This week Riverwalk Jazz offers an encore presentation of the concluding episode in George Gershwin’s folk opera, Porgy and Bess, featuring acting legend William Warfield as narrator. This two-part series features an original jazz transcription of the music from Porgy and Bess, created by The Jim Cullum Jazz Band and recorded at The Landing in San Antonio in 1992. Among his many accolades, Mr. Warfield is known for his role as Porgy opposite Leontyne Price (see photo). The program is ...
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Porgy And Bess Part I This Week On Riverwalk Jazz
Source:
Don Mopsick
For the next two weeks, Riverwalk Jazz presents a two-part special, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band’s acclaimed jazz transcription of George Gershwin’s American folk opera Porgy and Bess. Theater legend William Warfield, the award-winning bass-baritone famous for his memorable stage role as Porgy, appears as narrator in this encore presentation. The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on Sirius/XM satellite radio and can be streamed on-demand from the Riverwalk Jazz website. You can also drop in ...
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"Porgy and Bess" Part 2 This Week on Riverwalk Jazz
Source:
Don Mopsick
This week, Riverwalk Jazz offers an encore presentation of the concluding episode in George Gershwin's folk opera, Porgy and Bess, featuring acting legend William Warfield as narrator. This two-part series features an original jazz transcription of the music from Porgy and Bess, created by The Jim Cullum Jazz Band and recorded at the Landing in San Antonio in 1992. Among his many accolades, Mr. Warfield is known for his 1950s role as Porgy on Broadway opposite Leontyne Price. The program ...
read more
Porgy and Bess Part I This Week on Riverwalk Jazz
Source:
Don Mopsick
Riverwalk Jazz presents a two-part special—The Jim Cullum Jazz Band's acclaimed jazz transcription of George Gershwin's American folk opera Porgy and Bess. Theater legend William Warfield, the award winning bass-baritone famous for his memorable stage role as Porgy, appears as narrator in this encore presentation. The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on Sirius/XM sattelite radio and can be streamed on-demand from the Riverwalk Jazz website. DuBose Heyward, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, wrote the ...
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Grosse Pointe resident Bess Bonnier, 83, died Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011.
Source:
JazzStage Productions
Bess Bonnier began playing piano at an early age, taking her first professional job with a big band at 13. She joined the Detroit Federation of Musicians in 1946. Her career spanned more than six decades and included regular appearances with Jack Brokensha at his club in Detroit's New Center area, and at countless other clubs and hotels, concert and festival venues, private parties, events and local resorts. Highlights of her stage career include a performance in 1981 at the ...
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Two Losses to Detroit Jazz: Bess Bonnier and Brad Felt
Source:
JazzStage Productions
One of the great and unusual combinations of jazz voices hereabouts was the big-horn/little- horn thing that Steve Wood|| and {{Brad Felt had going at least since the '80s, with Steve on sax (especially the relatively small soprano) and Brad on tuba or euphonium, romping through tunes like “Second Balcony Jump," a Jerry Valentine composition from the Billy Eckstine band. (Steve and Brad liked to give credit where it was due like that.) Steve sent out an e-mail Thursday afternoon ...
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Bess Rogers EP Sparks Broad-Ranging Media Interest, Major Tour This Fall
Source:
Seth Cohen PR
National, Regional and Web Media Embracing Pop/Punk/Folk Sound of Bess Rogers Major U.S. Tour Set for Fall Interest is building, as national, regional and web-based outlets including PASTE, PAPER MAGAZINE, WGN-TV/CW NETWORK, FOX-TV, AOL Music, Medleyville, Asbury Park Press, Melodic, Wildy'sWorld, Indie Sounds, Creative Loafing and others have checked out 'Bess Rogers Presents Bess Rogers,' and they like what they've heard. The September 21st EP is a tour de force, introducing Rogers' distinctive pop/punk/folk style to a mainstream audience--Listeners will ...
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Anne Brown, Soprano Who Was Gershwin's Bess, is Dead at 96
Source:
Michael Ricci
Anne Brown, a penetratingly pure soprano who literally put the Bess in “Porgy and Bess” by inspiring George Gershwin to expand the character’s part in a folk opera that was originally to be called “Porgy,” died Friday in Oslo. She was 96.
Her daughter Paula Schjelderup announced the death.
“Porgy and Bess” burst onto the American scene in 1935 as a sophisticated musical treatment of poor blacks. Critics could not make out whether it was a musical comedy, a jazz ...
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Porgy and Bess | Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong | Album
Source:
All About Jazz
Tracks 1. Porgy And Bess: Overture 2. Summertime [Album Version] 3. I Wants To Stay Here 4. My Man's Gone Now 5. I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' 6. Buzzard Song 7. Bess You Is My Woman Now 8. It Ain't Necessarily So 9. What You Want Wid Bess? 10. A Woman Is A Sometime Thing
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