Posts tagged "Oscar Brand"
Noted composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist and author David Amram received an Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Award during a star-studded International Folk Music Awards Show, Feb. 15, on the opening night of the 29th Folk Alliance International Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. The late activist songwriter Malvina Reynolds (legacy) and prolific Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton (Business/Academic) were also named as recipients.
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Oscar Brand may well have been the first folksinger and songwriter who I saw perform live when I was a youngster. My parents brought me to see him at a local library on Long Island, NY, where Brand, who died of pneumonia Sept. 30 at age 96, also lived with his family. Over the years, I saw him perform in concert and at festivals and special events many times -- most recently at the opening reception for the “Folk City” exhibit at The Museum of the City of New York last year.
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Acclaimed actor and folksinger Theodore Bikel, best known for his performance as Tevye in the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof, died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California on July 21, 2015. He was 91.
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Jean Ritchie, the Kentucky-born folksinger, songwriter and song collector who helped to popularize hundreds of traditional Appalachian ballads and spur the so-called folk revival of the mid-20th century in the U.S., died June 1, 2015 at her home in Berea, KY. Ritchie, 92, was surrounded by members of her family, who sang at her bedside during her last hours.
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Gene Shay, who has brought folk music to radio listeners in Philadelphia and beyond for more than 50 years, signs off as host of The Folk Show on WXPN 88.5 FM on Sunday, February 1. His last show airs live from 3-6 p.m. EST (with a rebroadcast at 8 p.m. EST) and streams online at xpn.org. Shay will be feted one month later during a March 1 gala musical celebration produced by his friends at Sing Out! and featuring performances by artists who have appeared on his show.
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Music festival impresario George Wein, founder of the Newport Folk Festival, among others, will receive the first Power of Song Award during an Oct. 21 benefit concert in New York City. Monies raised during the event, which is set for 8 p.m. at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, will support the environmental education programs of Clearwater, a nonprofit organization launched by Pete Seeger and others more than 40 years ago to help spur awareness of and preserve and protect the Hudson River and its tributaries.
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Folksinger, songwriter, author and musicologist Oscar Brand has been inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. Brand, 90, who has written more than 300 songs (ranging from bawdy ballads to songs of social commentary), recorded some 100 albums, serves as curator of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and hosts what is now the oldest continuous radio show in history (Folksong Festival on New York’s WNYC), was among the third class of inductees honored during a gala event, Nov. 16, at Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York.
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More than 700 performers, presenters, promoters, agents and managers, folk music societies and clubs, and others actively engaged in traditional and contemporary folk music will converge on the Hudson Valley Resort in Kerhonkson, New York, Nov. 11-14, 2010, for the16th annual Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) Conference. AcousticMusicScene.com will have a major presence as it hosts afternoon and late-night song swaps, a CD release party and wine tasting, its popular Midnight Hoot and a new Midday Hoot.
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