Elisabeth Waldo | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Elisabeth Ann Waldo |
| Born | June 18, 1918 Tacoma, Washington, U.S. |
| Occupations |
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| Instruments | Violin |
| Years active | 1940–2008 |
| Spouse | Carl Dentzel (m. 1948;died 1980) |
| Website | elisabethwaldomusic |
Elisabeth Ann Waldo (born June 18, 1918) is an American former violinist, composer, conductor, and ethnomusicologist. [1]
Elisabeth Ann Waldo was born on June 18, 1918, in Tacoma, Washington, [2] [3] to Jane Althea Blodgett, a singer trained at the Boston Conservatory of Music, and Benjamin Franklin Waldo, a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She and her younger sister, actress Janet Waldo, were raised in Yakima. [4]
Waldo married Carl Schaefer Dentzel in 1948, son of Edward P. Dentzel, a councilman and mayor of Beverly Hills, and Mrs. Emma P. Dentzel, co-founder of the park system for Beverly Hills. [5] Waldo and her husband shared a love of Asian and Native American culture and artifacts, and he served as director of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. [6] [7] The couple had two sons, Dana and Paul.[ citation needed ]
Waldo grew up on her family's ranch at the edge of the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington state. She started singing at age three and took up violin by age five. Russian-born violinist Jascha Heifetz heard her play and helped her attain a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she received her musical education. [1]
In 1940, conductor Leopold Stokowski invited Waldo to join the newly formed All-American Youth Orchestra. [6] They toured South America in 1940 and then North America in 1941 before disbanding when the U.S. entered World War II. It was on these tours that Waldo's interest in musical archeology grew and she began collecting pre-Columbian instruments. [8]
After the All-American Youth Orchestra, Waldo made her home in Southern California, where she played as a first violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for one season. She returned to Latin America as a touring solo performer, playing in Panamá, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico before taking up residence in Mexico City, where she was a regular on the newly networked national radio. [1]
While living there, she collaborated frequently with singer Agustín Lara and appeared in the 1945 film Song of Mexico as a violinist; this film appearance marks Waldo as one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She also struck up a friendship with muralist Diego Rivera, with whom she shared an interest in pre-Columbian and Maya music. Rivera suggested that she develop her own system of hieroglyphic musical notation for working with pre-Columbian instruments, in order to teach others how to play them. [1]
From 1954 to 1955, she played violin for Peruvian-American soprano Yma Sumac. Sumac's music fused Andean folk songs with Caribbean rhythms, big band jazz and operatic singing, and her elaborate stage show fit the "exotic" tastes of patrons of venues in Hollywood and Las Vegas, while also meeting the standards of quality to appear in the most prestigious concert halls in North America and Europe. While displaying her talents as a soloist in the orchestra, Waldo regarded her work with Sumac's touring show as part of her research into Latin American music. [9]
Working with arrangers like Les Baxter and Billy May, Sumac helped define the music that would become known as exotica. Inspired by her time with Sumac, Waldo returned to Los Angeles and formed an ensemble that used instruments from Native North, South, and Meso-America to play her own original compositions. [10]
Waldo was among the first to bring many pre-Columbian instruments into a recording studio for her albums Maracatu (1959), Rites of the Pagan (1960) and Realm of the Incas (1961). Although based on her research in indigenous music, the albums were unlike field recordings of Native American music produced by ethnomusicologists at the time: they were made in the studio using the most advanced high fidelity and stereo recording techniques, and all of the compositions were by Waldo. For these reasons her records would later not be regarded as "world music" but as "new-age music" [6] and then "exotica". [9]
Waldo was recruited to compose original music for a Latter-day Saint pageant, People of the Book , inspired by the Book of Mormon. The pageant played four shows at the Starlight Bowl October 1967 and was revived for a three-date run in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Provo, Utah, where Waldo's music received the most praise as in an article in the Daily Universe : "the sonic experience made one's attendance at this production worthwhile." [11]
Waldo began scoring film soundtracks in the early 1970s. During the 1980s she became interested in the music of China and formed an ensemble that helped introduce Chinese music and dance for the Los Angeles Unified School District. The group toured several times to China as part of a cultural exchange with several Chinese conservatories. While there, Waldo performed her "Concierto Indo-Americano" with the Xian Symphony Orchestra. [6] In 1987, she founded the New Mission Theatre, a 150-seat venue for use by the Multi-Cultural Music and Art Foundation of Northridge (a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles). [12]
The Rite of Spring is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation. Many have called the first-night reaction a "riot" or "near-riot", though this wording did not come about until reviews of later performances in 1924, over a decade later. Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece and is widely considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century.
Leslie Thompson Baxter was an American musician, composer and conductor. After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica and scored over 250 radio, television and motion pictures numbers.
Martin Denny was an American pianist, composer, and arranger. Known as the "father of exotica," he was a multi-instrumentalist and could play a number of percussion instruments. In a long career that saw him performing up to 3 weeks prior to his death, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and original songs that celebrated Tiki culture.
Arthur Hunt Lyman was a Hawaiian jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His group popularized a style of faux-Polynesian music during the 1950s and 1960s which later became known as exotica. His albums became favorite stereo-effect demonstration discs during the early days of the stereophonic LP album for their elaborate and colorful percussion, deep bass and 3-dimensional recording soundstage. Lyman was known as "the King of Lounge music."
Exotica is a musical genre that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder and board chairman, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album Exotica. The musical colloquialism exotica means tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers.
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director. His 44-year association with the orchestra is one of the longest enjoyed by any conductor with any American orchestra. Ormandy made numerous recordings with the orchestra, and as guest conductor with European orchestras, and achieved three gold records and two Grammy Awards. His reputation was as a skilled technician and expert orchestral builder.
Xavier Cugat was a Spanish musician and bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a leading figure in the spread of Latin music. In New York City, he was the leader of the resident orchestra at the Waldorf–Astoria before and after World War II. He was also a cartoonist and a restaurateur. The personal papers of Xavier Cugat are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.
Kay Starr was an American singer who enjoyed considerable success in the late 1940s and 1950s. She was of Iroquois and Irish heritage. Starr performed multiple genres, such as pop, jazz, and country, but her roots were in jazz.
Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, known as Yma Sumac, was a Peruvian-born American-naturalised vocalist, composer, producer, actress and model. She won a Guinness World Record for the Greatest Range of Musical Value in 1956. "Ima sumaq" means "how beautiful" in Quechua. She has also been called Queen of Exotica and is considered a pioneer of world music. Her debut album, Voice of the Xtabay (1950), peaked at number one in the Billboard 200, selling a million copies in the United States, and its single, "Virgin of the Sun God ", reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming an international success in the 1950s. Albums like Legend of the Sun Virgin (1952), Fuego del Ande (1959) and Mambo! (1955), were other successes.
Janet Waldo was an American radio and voice actress. In animation, she voiced Judy Jetson in various Hanna-Barbera media, Nancy in Shazzan, Penelope Pitstop, Princess from Battle of the Planets, and Josie in Josie and the Pussycats. On radio, she was the title character in Meet Corliss Archer.
Anahid Marguerite Ajemian was an American violinist of Armenian descent. Her career in contemporary music began from her desire to help young composers of her generation get their compositions performed. Additionally, she enjoyed performing the music of established contemporary composers. She included these composers with the traditional repertoire in her performances.
Rusty Warren was an American comedian and singer, specializing in sex-related themes and such songs as "Bounce Your Boobies" and "Knockers Up!".
Fred Steven "Skip" Heller is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Although active in many different types of music as a performer, producer, and historian coming out of the Philadelphia jazz scene, and in spite of local critical recognition, he did not make a large mark in his hometown.
René Touzet y Monte was a Cuban composer, pianist and bandleader.
Adella Prentiss Hughes was a pianist and impresaria based in Cleveland, Ohio. She is best known for founding The Cleveland Orchestra.
"Babalú" is an international popular Afro Cuban song written by Margarita Lecuona, the cousin of composers Ernestina and Ernesto Lecuona. The song title is a reference to the Santería deity Babalú Ayé.
Camilla Dolores Wicks was an American violinist, and one of the first female violinists to establish a major international career. Her performing career included solo appearances with leading European and American symphony orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Dylana Jenson is an American concert violinist and violin teacher. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband, conductor and cellist David Lockington. They have four children. Jenson is the sister of Vicky Jenson, an animated film storyboard artist and director.
Jennifer Frautschi is an American violinist. A recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, she is currently Artist-in-Residence at Stony Brook University. She plays a 1722 Antonio Stradivari violin known as the "ex-Cadiz," on loan from a private American foundation.
Jewels of the Sea is a 1961 orchestral exotica album by American composer Les Baxter. The album was inspired by fantasy ideas of the ocean from pop culture, such as mermaids and sea nymphs, sunken ships, and legendary underwater cities such as Atlantis. There was an overall erotic element to the album, whose tagline was "Titillating Orchestrations for Listening and Loving", and whose original cover featured actress and model Diane Webber smiling glamorously underwater, apparently naked. Although not explicitly shown wearing a mermaid tail, her makeup and jewellery are styled to be reminiscent of the performing mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs.
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