1.
Norah Jones
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Norah Jones is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Throughout her career, Jones has won awards and has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. Billboard named her the top jazz artist of the 2000–2009 decade and she has won nine Grammy Awards and was 60th on Billboard magazines artists of the 2000–2009 decade chart. In 2002, Jones launched her music career with the release of Come Away with Me. It was certified diamond, selling over 26 million copies, the record earned Jones five Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist. They were also well received by critics. Jones fifth studio album, Little Broken Hearts, was released on April 27,2012, Jones is the daughter of Indian sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar, and half-sister of fellow musician Anoushka Shankar. Jones was born Geetali Norah Shankar on March 30,1979 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, to American concert producer Sue Jones, after her parents separated in 1986, Shankar lived with her mother, growing up in Grapevine, Texas. She attended Colleyville Middle School and Grapevine High School before transferring to Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing, while in high school, she sang in the school choir, participated in band, and played the alto saxophone. At the age of sixteen, with parents consent, she officially changed her name to Norah Jones. Jones always had an affinity for the music of Bill Evans and Billie Holiday and she once said, My mom had this eight-album Billie Holiday set, I picked out one disc that I liked and played that over and over again. As a child, Jones began singing in church and also took piano and she considers herself spiritual and appreciates the rituals of her church but does not consider herself deeply religious. She attended Interlochen Center for the Arts during the summers, while at high school, she won the Down Beat Student Music Awards for Best Jazz Vocalist and Best Original Composition. Jones attended the University of North Texas, where she majored in jazz piano, during this time, she had a chance meeting with future collaborator Jesse Harris. She gave a ride to a band playing at the university whose members happened to be friends of Harris and he was on a cross-country road-trip with friend and future Little Willies member Richard Julian, and stopped to see the band play. After meeting Jones, Harris started sending her lead sheets of his songs, in 1999, Jones left Texas for New York City. Less than a later, she started a band with Harris. As artist Peter Malick states in the notes, I started looking for a singer who could record for me
2.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
3.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
4.
Rock music
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It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of genres such as electric blues and folk. Musically, rock has centered on the guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse-chorus form, like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of subgenres, including new wave, post-punk. From the 1990s alternative rock began to rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures and this trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. The basic rock instrumentation was adapted from the blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group, Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock, because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm, as a result, it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality, according to Simon Frith rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the concept of art as artistic expression, original. The foundations of music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll record. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
5.
Blue Note Records
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Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards and it derives its name from the characteristic blue notes of jazz and the blues. Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, from 1947 the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz, while the original company did not itself record many of the pioneers of bebop, significant exceptions are Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro and Bud Powell. Historically, Blue Note has principally been associated with the hard bop style of jazz, but also recorded essential albums in the avant-garde and free styles of jazz. Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Hutcherson, the label is currently owned by the Universal Music Group. Lion first heard jazz as a boy in Berlin. The Blue Note label initially consisted of Lion and Max Margulis, musicians were supplied with alcoholic refreshments, and recorded in the early hours of the morning after their evenings work in clubs and bars had finished. Francis Wolff, a photographer, emigrated to the USA at the end of 1939 and soon joined forces with Lion. In 1941, Lion was drafted into the army for two years, Milt Gabler at the Commodore Music Store offered storage facilities and helped keep the catalog in print, with Wolff working for him. By late 1943, the label was back in recording musicians. Johnson, who was returning to a degree of musical activity after having largely recovered from a stroke suffered in 1940. Towards the end of the war, saxophonist Ike Quebec was among those who recorded for the label, Quebec would act as a talent scout for the label until his death in 1963. Although stylistically belonging to a generation, he could appreciate the new bebop style of jazz. Lion recorded several Monk sessions before he began to release the resulting sides, monks recordings for Blue Note between 1947 and 1952 did not sell well for some years, but have since come to be regarded as the most important of his career. The sessions by Powell are commonly ranked among his best, J. J. Johnson and trumpeter Miles Davis both recorded several sessions for Blue Note between 1952 and 1954, but by then the musicians who had created bebop were starting to explore other styles. The recording of musicians performing in a jazz idiom, such as Sidney Bechet and clarinettist George Lewis. In 1951, Blue Note issued their first vinyl 10 releases, the label was soon recording emerging talent such as Horace Silver and Clifford Brown. Meanwhile, Milt Jackson and the Jazz Messengers recorded for Blue Note, the Milt Jackson Quartet session was a one-off, but Blakeys various groups recorded for the label extensively, if intermittently, for the next decade
6.
EMI
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EMI was a British multinational conglomerate founded in March 1931 and was based in London. At the time of its break-up in 2012, it was the fourth-largest business group and its EMI Records Ltd. group of record labels included EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records and Capitol Records. EMI also had a publishing arm, EMI Music Publishing—also based in London with offices globally. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE100 Index, other members of the Sony consortium include the Estate of Michael Jackson, The Blackstone Group, and Abu Dhabi–owned investment fund Mubadala Development Company. The new vertically integrated company produced sound recordings as well as recording, the companys gramophone manufacturing led to forty years of success with larger-scale electronics and electrical engineering. He was killed in 1942 whilst conducting flight trials on an experimental H2S radar set, post-war, the company resumed its involvement in making broadcasting equipment, notably providing the BBCs second television transmitter at Sutton Coldfield. It also manufactured broadcast television cameras for British television production companies as well as for the BBC, the commercial television ITV companies also used them alongside cameras made by Pye and Marconi. Exports of this piece of equipment were low, however, the company was also for many years an internationally respected manufacturer of photomultipliers. This part of the business was transferred to Thorn as part of Thorn-EMI, in 1958 the EMIDEC1100, the UKs first commercially available all-transistor computer, was developed at Hayes under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield, an electrical engineer at EMI. In 1973 EMI was awarded a prestigious Queens Award for Technological Innovation for what was called the EMI scanner. After brief, but brilliant, success in the imaging field, EMIs manufacturing activities were sold off to other companies. Subsequently, development and manufacturing activities were sold off to companies and work moved to other towns such as Crawley. Emihus Electronics, based in Glenrothes, Scotland, was owned 51% by Hughes Aircraft, of California, US and it manufactured integrated circuits electrolytic capacitors and, for a short period in the mid-1970s, hand-held calculators under the Gemini name. Early in its life, the Gramophone Company established subsidiary operations in a number of countries in the British Commonwealth, including India, Australia. Over 150,000 78-rpm recordings from around the world are held in EMIs temperature-controlled archive in Hayes, in 1931, the year the company was formed, it opened the legendary recording studios at Abbey Road, London. During the 1930s and 1940s, its roster of artists included Arturo Toscanini, Sir Edward Elgar, during this time EMI appointed its first A&R managers. These included George Martin, who brought the Beatles into the EMI fold. When the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931, at this point RCA had a majority shareholding in the new company, giving RCA chair David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board
7.
The Fall (Norah Jones album)
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The Fall is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Norah Jones, released November 17,2009, through Blue Note Records. The album debuted at three on the Billboard 200, selling 180,000 copies in its first week. As of August 2012, the album has more than three million copies worldwide. Jones enlisted several songwriting collaborators, including Ryan Adams and Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, the cover artwork for the album features a portrait by photographer Autumn de Wilde. The first single, Chasing Pirates, was released on October 13,2009, “Young Blood” was released as the second single for North America, Europe and Japan. The music video was available at iTunes on 30 March 2010. The song has reached #33 on the Japan Hot 100, stuck was released as the second single on March 5,2010 in the UK. Its Gonna Be was released as the single for North America in April 2010. It charted on the billboard Triple A Chart and peak on airplay chart #11 in April 2010, Jones performed the song on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Jones reappeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on June 25 and performed Its Gonna Be on the show for a second time and she performed the song on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on August 31,2010. Billboard gave the album a score of 83 out of 100 and stated that Jones ditches the gentle piano-playing of her previous work and rises to a new level of creative boldness. The New York Times gave it a review and called it the sonic and emotional expansion music needed. Uncut gave it four out of five and said that The emotional imprint. Moves beyond the pining, wistful tones that are trademark in favor of Sex And The City scenarios bursting with heartbreak, regret, Q also gave it four stars out of five and praised the album for its copper-bottomed classics. MusicOMH likewise gave it four out of five and said, Less predictable was her now clear desire to take risks and step off the all-too-well-forged path of safe. Instead, on The Fall Norah Jones chooses to defy categorization, Hot Press gave it a score of four out of five with the header, Easy listening princess goes indie-goth. Filter gave the album a score of 78% and stated that unlike Not Too Late, in a way, she has indeed found a different beat to groove to, and if anyone can play in a piano bar without a piano, it would certainly be Norah Jones. Paste gave it a score of 7.6 out of 10 and stated that Jones is clearly comfortable with where she’s arrived, spin gave it a score of seven out of ten and said that the album has been billed as Norah Jones rock album
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