Author, Researcher and Lecturer with a Passion for History, Music and Japan
The great violinist Ivry Gitlis (b.1922) passed away on 24 December 2020. Others, musicians, people who had the good fortune to meet him have written about him, much better than I can do. Nevertheless, I’m re-posting a blog I wrote for violinist.com a year after the North-Eastern Japan earthquake and…
Musical instruments from Japan – Yamaha grand pianos and wind instruments come to mind, or Suzuki violins; or else traditional Japanese instruments, of which the large taiko drums and the shakuhachi flute are probably most familiar in the West. Occasionally one can also hear other instruments in Europe, such as…
Although I grew up in a (mostly) pop music free home, the name Katja Ebstein was familiar to me. Born in 1945, she was a highly successful pop singer in 1970s-Germany, who reached the finals of Eurovision Song Contest three times (1970, 1971, and 1980). So her songs were hard…