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Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Dominic Carmen Frontiere (June 17, 1931 – December 21, 2017) was an American composer, arranger, and jazz accordionist.


Award-winning composer for film and TV -- via Variety. He won the Golden Globe for "The Stunt Man," He did "Hang 'em High," and "Freebie and the Bean." On TV, he created catchy ditties for shows such as "The Outer Limits," "The Rat Patrol," the unintentionally hilarious "Strike Force," and "The Invaders.." He is known for composing the theme and much of the music for the first season of the television series The Outer Limits.

Frontiere died Thursday December 21, 2017 in Tesuque, N.M. He was 86. Frontiere was a fixture on the film- and TV-music scene throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s .

WIKIPEDIA

Monday, December 11, 2017

Žermēna Heine-Vāgnere, Soprano, had died age 94

Žermēna Heine-Vāgnere (23 June 1923 – 7 December 2017) was a Soviet operatic soprano. She was born on 23 June 1923 in Riga, to singer Erna Heine. An uncle, Alberts Verners, was a leading baritone for the Latvian National Opera in the 1930s for which Heine-Vāgnere also performed. She studied under singers Hertas Lūses and Marijas Bolotovas. Heine-Vāgnere began her career in 1950 and appeared in Macbeth as Lady Macbeth, Cavalleria rusticana as Santuca, Otello as Desdemona, Eugene Onegin as Tatyana, Der Ring des Nibelungen as Brynhildr, and Lohengrin as Ortrud. Other performances included roles in Alfrēds Kalniņš's Banuta, Salome, and Turandot. She retired in November 1975, having sang in 39 distinct roles. Heine-Vāgnere was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1969 and also received the Order of the Three Stars, third class. She was married to architect Nikolajs Vīgners and died on 7 December 2017, aged 94. (WIKIPEDIA)

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Vienna Opera mourns an American singer...William Blankenship

William Leonard Blankenship (7 March 1928 Gatesville, Texas – 2 December 2017 Vienna, Austria) was an American operatic tenor, music pedagogue at the collegiate level, stage and television actor, and stage director. In Europe, Blankenship sang roles at the opera houses in Vienna (Vienna Volksoper & Vienna State Opera), Stuttgart, Hamburg, Braunschweig (1957–1960), Bern (1960), Mannheim, Brunswick, Munich (from 1965), Berne, Klagenfurt (1956 European debut), Bregenz (1972 as Phoebus in The Fairy-Queen by Henry Purcell). In the United States, he sang with the Santa Fe Opera, San Antonio, San Diego (1968), Dallas Opera, and Houston Grand Opera. He has sung in international festivals in Moscow, Salzburg, Vienna, Munich, and Rio de Janeiro. He performed concerts with major orchestras on radio and television. He was the father of Rebecca Blankenship, an American operatic soprano. (Wikipedia) SLIPPED DISC, Vienna Opera link

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

William Mayer (November 18, 1925 - November 17, 2017)[1]) was an American composer, best known for his prize-winning opera A Death in the Family.

Mayer was born in New York City, the son of Dorothy (née Ehrich) and John C. Mayer. He entered Yale University in 1944, but his college years were interrupted by military service (he served as a counter-intelligence agent in US-occupied Japan). Upon his discharge he re-entered Yale and graduated in 1949, then trained at the Juilliard School and the Mannes College of Music, studying with Roger Sessions and Felix Salzer, and later with Otto Luening, Emanuel Balaban and Izler Solomon. The composer has written three stage works in addition to his prize-winning A Death in the Family, and a variety of orchestral, chamber, choral and vocal works. WIKIPEDIA