John Williams first performance of Stevie Concerto by Patrick Gowers (1987)

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Low ‘C’ sounds wonderful on the guitar.This recording was made shortly before I joined “John Williams and Friends” – heady days!
Thanks selftaughtgirl who says
“My recording of a live radio broadcast from the 1980s of the first performance by John Williams of the “Stevie” concerto by Patrick Gowers written in 1987. Sorry about the quality of the recording due to the noisy reception and the wobbly tape as well as the few seconds gap at the end as it didn’t quite fit on one side of a 60min tape. Hopefully Mr Williams’ great playing of a great piece still comes through.”

Evangelos & Liza: studio concert playing Bach, Carulli and Granados

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How many people remember Evangelos Assimakopoulos and Liza Zoe?
From 1953 both Assimakopoulos and Zoe studied the guitar at the National Conservatoire in Athens under Dimitris Fampas. After receiving First Prizes and the Medals for Outstanding Performance upon graduating, they shared the first two prizes in the International Competition in Naples, Italy in 1960. From the late 1950s they both gave many solo recitals

throughout Greece.
They became professors of the guitar at the National Conservatory of Athens in 1962, started playing as a duo in 1963 and were married in 1965 establishing Greece’s first guitar duo, known as the Athenian Guitar Duo.
For four consecutive periods Evangelos & LIza were awarded scholarships to study with the Presti-Lagoya duo in France and with Andrés Segovia in Spain.

Thank you selftaughtgirl

Practise practising-more from Stephen Hough

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Hough BBC

“There is a well-worn saying: practice makes perfect. I don’t believe this, at least in reference to playing the piano: abstract “perfection” is rarely what we seek; but good practising makes it more likely that we will give a good performance. Its attention, its concentration, its tightening of the screws enable the concert experience to take wing in freedom.”

The following article by Stephen Hough appears in the November/December issue of International Piano magazine. For full, free access to the other articles in that issue see here. It is reprinted in the Daily Telegraph’s music column.

More on the BBC website – Thanks to Oren Myers for this

Continue reading →

Christopher Lee presents a heavy metal version of the Little Drummer Boy

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But first, a Christmas message from the man himself: he’s 91, the same age as my Mum, who is visiting me from Hong Kong this very moment…

Thanks to Open Culture for the following-
“It’s a cliche for an aging actor to release an album of seasonal chestnuts, but the 91-year-old Lee’s A Heavy Metal Christmas is a thing apart. His take on The Little Drummer Boy is the sonic equivalent of Rosemary’s Baby.”

Heavy Metal Christmas – Jingle Hell – thank you, Sir Christopher!

Link to full article