Joan Hammond News
Australian operatic soprano and golfer (1912-1996)
- soprano
- opera
- Australia, New Zealand
- opera singer, golfer
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2024-04-21
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2023-12-12 10:07:41
Handel with Hammond organ and hand claps. Scatting and swing. Five saxophones – this is Messiah, but not perhaps as you know it. Marin Alsop’s Gospel Messiah had its European premiere at the Royal Albert Hall on 7 December, ahead of a broadcast on BBC Radio 3 tonightThirty years ago conductor Marin Alsop was chatting with friends in New York. “They asked what I was up to,” she says. “I told them, ‘Handel’s Messiah’. They said ‘The one where the audience stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus at the end? I like that bit but it takes too long until that happens!”Why not try an update, thought Alsop. “I had always wanted to reimagine it – it lends itself to lots of different feels, and I wanted new audiences to hear the piece.” The 1741 work has been endlessly embellished, tweaked and reimagined, even by Handel himself. Mozart was commissioned to […]
2023-11-09 08:17:00
Remembering Keel Watson
Puccini, arr: Burke: Toscatastrophe! - Gwenneth-Ann Rand, Keel Watson - Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2018With the sad news of the passing of bass-baritone Keel Watson, I thought I would look over some of the remarkable and diverse roles that we have seen him in over the years, in everything from Gilbert & Sullivan to Wagner, he had a remarkable, Derek Hammond Stroud-like ability to inhabit a role whether it be comic or serious.One of my favourites moments was his wonderfully louche Scarpia in Tête à Tête's Toscatastrophe! in 2018, a comic reworking of Puccini's Tosca with Gwenneth-Ann Rand and Ronald Samm [see my review] and the last role we saw him in was also in the comic vein, a wonderfully pointed (and political) Private Willis in Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe at English National Opera last month [see my review], whilst in 2018 he managed to dominate proceedings as the Usher in Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial […]
2023-09-12 15:43:33
The Honnet Brothers added Hammond organ and drums to the mix
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-08-30 21:19:28
Machover’s VALIS This Way Comes
[…] of being on a monitor or out of a screen. Sometimes they’re on a monitor. Sometimes they’re things prepared ahead of time. Sometimes they’re being filmed live. Sometimes they are in a little box. Sometimes they are everywhere. *** LE: Who invented the first hyper instrument? AA: You’re talking to him! LE: No. No, you’re off by 50 years! TM: [LAUGHTER] Well, we coined the term... LE: You coined the term, maybe, but John Hayes Hammond, who built Hammond Castle and wrapped it around a huge a pipe organ, placed microphones and speakers within the chambers, so he could go beyond the expression of swell shades that opened and closed; he could use amplified sounds of individual stops, which he could control with additional pedals to dynamically expand the tonal range of the instrument. TM: Cool! I know a fair amount about the history of music technology, but not much […]
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- timeline: Lyrical singers (Oceania).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): H...