Phyllis Diller Was Quite the Musician

-
Boy, you think you know a person. Her New York Times obituary notes that throughout the 1970s, Phyllis Diller performed as Dame Illya Dillya with over 100 orchestras. Janelle Gelfand, on the Cincinnati Enquirer website, recounted a 1972 appearance with the Pops and Erich Kunzel that included not just performances of Bach and Beethoven, but also Diller singing "The Ladies Who Lunch."

In 1969, she played harpsichord with Liberace:


 Here she is playing saxophone on the Muppet Show:


If you can't read, here's NPR's report on her death.

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe Michael Kaiser Just Isn't Looking in the Right Places

-
On Sequenza21, Armondo Bayalo claims that Michael Kaiser is "just plain wrong about the state of the art"--and then proceeds to tell us all the reasons why he's right. Bayalo's real point isn't that Kaiser is wrong, but that he is only right within his own big-arts frame of reference. He doesn't see all the great stuff that's going in "smaller, leaner operations" than the Kennedy Center: Fair enough, but part of the problem is that the funders and fundraisers who hold the purse strings aren't willing to invest in those grass-roots groups so that they can grow.
Read more

Louisville Orchestra Restructuring Slog

-
The dreary business of the Louisville Orchestra's restructuring is going forward, with the CEO threatening to close up shop if he has to pay the band. Today, a US Bankruptcy Court judge ruled that the organization can't cut its budget by voiding its contract with its musicians ,who will now get cheques until April as a result, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. In testimony prior to the ruling , the board president, Chuck Maisch, said that the orchestra could only honor the contract by dipping into its endowment; the orchestra's CEO, Robert Birman, said that the orchestra would simply have to liquidate assets. It looks as if that  the proceedings start up again in Louisville on January 6 .
Read more

Cheesy Classical Music You Should Know: Ravel's Bolero (Part II)

-
Here's what Uncle Fred had to say about Ravel's Bolero : "It's the most descriptive sex music ever written." According to his niece-in-law Jenny, played by Bo Derek in 10 , "he proved it." To anyone with qualms about pedophilia (I'm firmly in this camp), Jenny's little story, meant to seduce poor hapless George (Dudley Moore), is uncomfortable, to say the least. (The whole movie gives me the creeps.) Although he was an incestuous cad, Uncle Fred had a point about Bolero . As mentioned in an earlier post , the piece opens with the snare drum playing the distinctive rhythmic pattern of the Spanish dance it's named after. The seductive flute melody that enters shortly after sets in motion a gradual blossoming to a climactic finale; as that rhythm pulses below, the melody repeats, the orchestration expands, and the music becomes ever more incessant and powerful. It's hard not to get all worked up when you listen to it. Bolero set Rav...
Read more