RIP

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the German baritone whose beautiful voice and mastery of technique made him the 20th century’s pre-eminent interpreter of art songs, died on Friday at his home in Bavaria. He was 86.

Mr. Fischer-Dieskau was by virtual acclamation one of the world’s great singers from the 1940s to his official retirement in 1992, and an influential teacher and orchestra conductor for many years thereafter.

He was also a formidable industry, making hundreds of recordings that pretty much set the modern standard for performances of lieder, the musical settings of poems first popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. His output included the many hundreds of Schubert songs appropriate for the male voice, the songs and song cycles of Schumann and Brahms, and those of later composers like Mahler, Shostakovich and Hugo Wolf. He won two Grammy Awards, in 1971 for Schubert lieder and in 1973 for Brahms’s “Die Schöne Magelone.”

Mr. Fischer-Dieskau had sufficient power for the concert hall, and for substantial roles in his parallel career as a star of European opera houses. But he was essentially a lyrical, introspective singer whose effect on listeners was not to nail them to their seatbacks, but rather to draw them into the very heart of song.

The pianist Gerald Moore, who accompanied many great artists of the postwar decades, said Mr. Fischer-Dieskau had a flawless sense of rhythm and “one of the most remarkable voices in history — honeyed and suavely expressive.” Onstage, he projected a masculine sensitivity informed by a cultivated upbringing and by dispiriting losses in World War II: the destruction of his family home, the death of his feeble brother in a Nazi institution, induction into the Wehrmacht when he had scarcely begun his voice studies at the Berlin Conservatory.

His performances eluded easy description. Where reviewers could get the essence of a Pavarotti appearance in a phrase (the glories of a true Italian tenor!), a Fischer-Dieskau recital was akin to a magic show, with seamless shifts in dynamics and infinite shadings of coloration and character.

He had the good luck to age well, too. In 1988, at 62, he sang an all-Schumann program at Carnegie Hall, where people overflowed onto the stage to hear him. Donal Henahan, then the chief music critic of The New York Times, noted that Mr. Fischer-Dieskau’s voice had begun to harden in some difficult passages — but also that he was tall and lean and handsomer than ever, and had lost none of his commanding presence.

Mr. Fischer-Dieskau described in his memoir “Reverberations” (1989) how his affinity for lieder had been formed in childhood. “I was won over to poetry at an early age,” he wrote. “I have been in its thrall all my life because I was made to read it, because it gave me pleasure, and because I eventually came to understand what I was reading.”

He discerned, he said, that “music and poetry have a common domain, from which they draw inspiration and in which they operate: the landscape of the soul.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/ar...at-86.html?amp

What a tremendous loss!

[Teddybear]

Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees

Loved their music RIP Robin

[The_Lady_Snow]

[girl_dee]

OMG i have been listening and downloading their music all week, i had NO idea he died, i just posted a song on youtube, i had no idea. Freaky. RIP a very talented man.

[Rocket]

RIP Robin Gibb
I couldn't be a fan of Donna Summer after the way she treated the gay community, which had been her biggest following. Read- http://www.donna-tribute.com/articles/80/advocate2.htm

[musicman]

I had the honor of briefly working with Donna, her sweet husband Bruce and his writing partner Nathan.

Sweet lady will surly be missed. It's been a bad year of losing some great artists.

[Wolfsong]

I am so completely bummed today. Saturday Night Fever is one of my guilty pleasures

[SnackTime]

Rest In Peace

Robin Gibb

[Kobi]

Herb Reed, the last surviving original member of 1950s vocal group the Platters who sang on hits like "Only You" and "The Great Pretender," has died. He was 83.

Reed sang bass on the group's four No. 1 hits, including "The Great Pretender," ''My Prayer," ''Twilight Time" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

The Platters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998. Their recordings are in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The group's popularity reached across racial lines and genres, "achieving success in a crooning, middle-of-the-road style that put a soulful coat of uptown polish on pop-oriented, harmony-rich material," according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's website.

Reed was the only member of the group to appear on all of their nearly 400 recordings. He continued touring, performing up to 200 shows per year, until last year, often performing with younger singers under the name Herb Reed and the Platters or Herb Reed's Platters.

[Kobi]

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and other beloved science fiction novels, died Tuesday night at the age of 91.

Bradbury sold eight million copies of his books in 36 languages, according to The New York Times' obit.

He attributed his success as a writer to never having gone to college--instead, he read and wrote voraciously. "When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week," he said in an interview with The Paris Review. "I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school."

His best known book, Fahrenheit 451, was a dystopian tale set in the future about a society where books were banned and firefighters spent all day burning them. "Bradbury's novel anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits," the Associated Press writes.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and other beloved science fiction novels, died Tuesday night at the age of 91.

Bradbury sold eight million copies of his books in 36 languages, according to The New York Times' obit.

He attributed his success as a writer to never having gone to college--instead, he read and wrote voraciously. "When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week," he said in an interview with The Paris Review. "I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school."

His best known book, Fahrenheit 451, was a dystopian tale set in the future about a society where books were banned and firefighters spent all day burning them. "Bradbury's novel anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits," the Associated Press writes.

RIP, re was one of my favorites! "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

[QueenofSmirks]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and other beloved science fiction novels, died Tuesday night at the age of 91.....

I still have an old, beat up copy of The Illustrated Man. I love so many of his works, it would be tough to choose a favorite.

[Kobi]

Comedian Yvette Wilson, who had been battling stage 4 cervical cancer and kidney disease, died Thursday, reports NewsOne.com and other news outlets. She was 48.

Wilson was best known as Andell Wilkerson on UPN's Moesha and its spinoff, The Parkers. In addition, she appeared in the movies House Party 2, House Party 3 and Friday.

According to NewsOne, Wilson went to California's San Jose State University and became a regular on Russell Simmon's Def Comedy Jam.. Her big break came in 1993, on the short-lived ABC sitcom Thea, which, like the later Moesha, also starred Brandy Norwood.

[nycfem]

A nice obit for a member of our community, Dillon62, and someone a number of us loved dearly in real time:

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/...lvia-colon-49/