Rock music separates itself into broad categories to help fans find their way. One group forced the rock establishment to invent a new category: symphonic/gothic rock.

When listening to the rock group Nightwish, the most striking initial characteristic is the operatic quality of the lead, female vocals. Readers may react that women have been in the world of rock since its inception and that a few have been frontliners: Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane, Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, and Pat Benatar come to mind.
Yet Nightwish stands out not only for feminine vocal talent in a male-oriented rock strata, but for the passion and hauntingly theatrical qualities of their music. Of Finnish origin, they have delighted audiences and fans around the world for well over a decade.
A Brief History of Nightwish
According to the Nightwish band biography, the “idea” for the group was born around midnight at a campfire in July of 1996. The first three members were Tuomas and Emppu, who played acoustic guitars, and Tarja, who sang. They considered their new sound “mood music,” and soon wondered how it would sound if drums were added. This brought a fourth member to the group, Jukka.
Shortly after the addition of drums, the group also switched to electric guitars. Initially, they enjoyed success in their native Finland, with one of their singles reaching number eight on the musical charts there, but early concert tours were rare. Jukka and Emppu were in the army and Tarja was busy with her school studies.
By the late 1990’s and early 2000’s they ironed out most of those conflicts and began to record and tour extensively. The CD’s Wishmaster and Century’s Child brought the group prominence in Europe, and by August of 2004 they finally made it to the United States to the delight of their new fans on this continent.
Focus on Tarja Turunen
The resume of the original lead singer of Nightwish reads more like the list of accomplishments for an operatic soprano than a heavy metal rock and roll singer. While Nightwish was in its beginning stages, Tarja also sang for the Savonlinna Opera Festival Choir, where she sang Wagner, Verdi, and other classical composers.
Onstage and off, Tarja possessed astounding beauty and charisma, which complemented her angelic singing voice. Her picture illustrated magazines around the world and her stunning theatrical talents lit up video screens for the Nightwish songs “Nemo” and “I wish I had an Angel.” From 2000 to 2004 Ms. Turunen managed not only to tour with Nightwish but to continue her musical studies and perform classical opera for ballets and stunningly beautiful a capella solos for Christmas concerts.
One of the best examples of the power of both the band and its Junoesque lead singer was the Nightwish peformance of “The Phantom of the Opera” from 2002. Late in 2003, Tarja started to distance herself from the band and aim for a solo career. By early 2005, her Nightwish band mates wistfully dismissed her.
Nightwish from 2005 to the Present
The search for a new lead singer led Nightwish to listen to thousands of tapes from singers around the world. By early 2007, they found Anette Olzon, a singer with a similar style to Tarja, and promptly released two new videos and a new CD: Dark Passion Play.With their new singer leading the way, Nightwish toured extensively in late 2007 and into the first half of 2008. Ms. Olzon braved the great expectation and inevitable comparisons and put aside her nervousness, performing admirably. A Nightwish concert review from May, 2008 describes how American fans received her.
While the band has been on hiatus at the time of this article, early 2010, their music and epic videos remain wildly popular and easily accessible on music download and P2P sites. The video “Amaranth” features a story about villagers rescuing an injured angel, intercut with studio footage from the band and gloriously showcases their unique style.

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Research has shown how good sight-readers are successful, but how should we be teaching these skills to music students?

Sight-reading seems to be something that private lesson teachers just assume that a student is practicing on his or her own. Realistically, many students are not practicing sight-reading on their own and most probably don’t know how unless it is explained to them. Also, sight-reading is a skill that takes practice to become good at. Teachers should monitor their students’ sight-reading progress carefully, just like other skills taught in lessons.
A teacher can teach their student good sight-reading habits by isolating skills and teaching them to students, just like other concepts taught in a lesson. Research has isolated certain habits of good sight-readers, so teaching those ideas in a lesson setting should prove beneficial. These habits are scanning the music before playing, knowing common patterns in music, reading rhythms accurately, and practicing well.
Scanning the Music Before and Reading
The best sight-readers note the time signature and key signature before playing. It seems simple, but research shows that when the music is covered up after a student has started, many students don’t remember what key they’re in. By establishing the importance of the key signature, the student can make a step toward good sight-reading skills.
Knowing Common Patterns in Music
This skill comes with hour of scales, arpeggios, and exercises. Spending lesson time on these skills at any level beyond beginners can be a waste of lesson time. However, to recognize common patterns in music, a student must also know how to scan ahead enough in the music to find the patterns. Many students are not aware of their peripheral vision.
They can be taught how they can use their peripheral vision to scan ahead in music to find recognizable patterns. While doing this, the teacher can encourage the student to try to take in larger and larger “chunks” of information.

Reading Rhythms Accurately
The brain takes in sight-reading information incredibly quickly when it recognizes something familiar, and slowly when it doesn’t. By taking time to go over difficult rhythms in a lesson when they come up in an exercise or solo, the student has a much better chance of recognizing it next time.
Practicing Well
Students often don’t know how to practice properly. By talking about what a student should be doing during personal practice time, that student can learn good habits that will make practice time much more profitable.
Practicing scales, arpeggios and challenging rhythmical etudes at home are some ways students can improve their sight-reading skills at home. To make sure that the student is progressing, a teacher should make sure in the lessons that the student is practicing these skills at home.
Consistently teaching sight-reading practice in the right environment should yield a highly efficient sight-reader, and a student who can have more fun playing music.
Sources
MacKnight, Carol B. “Music Reading Ability of Beginning Wind Instrumentalists after
Melodic Instruction. Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 23-34.
McPherson, Gary E. “Factors and Abilities Influencing Sight-reading Skill in Music.”
Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 217-

Duke Ellington is considered to be one of the greatest figures in the history of American music. Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington was born in Washington D.C. on April 29, 1899.
His parents were James Edward and Daisy Kennedy Ellington. They raised Duke as an only child, until his sister, Ruth, was born when Duke was sixteen years old.
Duke, even as a teenager had a great talent for music. In the beginning of his musical life, Duke began to take a promising interest in a new type of music that would later be called jazz. Choosing to base his career on a new idea may not have been smart, but Duke did take this chance and in turn became one of the most famous musicians in America.
Duke’s first job was at a government office. He was a clerk who received the minimum wage and was barely getting by. He would arrange dance bands for weddings and parties for extra money. His mother taught him how to play the piano. Sometimes he put this knowledge to use and played at a few of the dance parties and weddings.
After Duke’s first job, he became more interested in painting and the arts. For a few years he painted public posters. Duke then decided to put together his own band. At this point in his life things started to change for the better for Duke, but not for long. In those days, this new music was just beginning to develop and would later be given the name of jazz. In that time it was considered to be low and vulgar because it was music that grew directly out of the Black culture. In those early years, segregation was at one of its all time worst points in history. I think that is why Duke Ellington was one of the most important individuals to the growth and development of jazz.
During Duke’s long career, the new music slowly spread out of bars and saloons, to dance and night clubs and then eventually onto the concert stage.
In time, jazz became a universally recognized form of art and has been said that it is the only real form that has originated from the American soul.
By the 1960’s Duke traveled the globe so many times that he became known as the unofficial ambassador to the United States. Duke’s band had played in Russia, Japan, Latin America, the Far East, the Middle East, and Africa.
Duke, himself, was an elegant man. When the white people looked down on the black man and his music, Duke managed to bring dignity to every one of his performances. Once, the jazz historian Leonard Feather described Duke as, ‘an inch over six feet tall, sturdily built, he had an innate grandeur that would have enabled him to step with unquenched dignity out of a mud puddle.’
Duke’s private life was something of an enigma. Although he had many friends he never really told them everything about himself. He would often guard his privacy probably because he had so little of it. When he was alone though, he would almost always be arranging the next tune for the band to play, and was always thinking or preparing something for the band to do in the next performance.
Duke attracted some of the greatest musicians to join his band. Because of this it has been said that many of Duke’s pieces are almost impossible to exactly duplicate without the personal style of the original musicians. One of the strange things that was known about Duke was that his school music teacher, Mrs. Clinkscales, who played the piano, was always the inspiration for him to just sit down and start tinkering around with a few notes that usually became big hits.
In his band the two, probably most famous musicians were the trumpeter Whetsol and the saxophonist Hodges. As the band became more and more popular, saxophonist Hodges became the highest paid performer in the United States.
The 1920’s became known as ‘the Jazz Age’ because jazz had hit its first great burst of popularity. At that time Duke then added a young drummer named Sonny Greer. A few years after Greer was hired, Duke’s band hit a very rough spot. They were often stuck in the street with no money and nowhere to go. Duke and his band often were stuck doing crude recordings just for a few dollars to buy a meal.
In the autumn of 1927, luck had crossed paths with Duke again. The manager of Duke’s band, Irving Mills, had heard that the prestigious cotton club was looking for a new band and immediately Irving began campaigning for Duke. Duke and his band opened on December 4, 1927 to meet a mad rush of spectators who eagerly awaited to hear Dukes newest pieces. Duke’s band became very prosperous and they had their own spot on the Cotton Club floor with special lighting and accommodations.
At the year of 1928 the band consisted of Bubber Miley, Freddy Jenkins, and Arthur Whetsol on trumpet, joined with Tricky Sam Nanton, and Juan Tizol on trombone. Johnny Hodges, now on alto sax, with Barney Bigard doubled on tenor sax and clarinet, and finally Harry Carney at seventeen years old joined on bari sax. Carney was known as one of the first people in a band ever to use the bari sax as a solo instrument.
While Duke’s band was performing at the Cotton Club, his band participated in more than sixty-four recording sessions.
In 1931 Duke grew so tired of the show-business routines that he decided to try his luck again on his own. When he arrived in New York his band grew to almost three times what it originally had been at the Cotton Club. Duke feared that this would become a very serious problem considering how the stock market crashed in late 1929 and millions of people across the United States were out of work.
Somehow, though, most of the entertainment business survived the economic hardships. Ellington’s band had appeared on Broadway and had even gone to Hollywood to make a movie. Duke’s band was having a hard time performing in the south because of the segregation laws not allowing blacks to eat in white restaurants or finding accommodations that would allow blacks and whites to stay together in a half-decent room.
In 1932 Duke added a trombonist named Lawrence Brown. In the same year, most of the other big bands were adding vocalists to their ensemble and thus Duke felt pressured to do so too. Duke then hired a woman named Ivie Anderson and quickly proved that he had done the right thing.
Then in 1933 his band got a chance to play in Europe. At first Duke was very skeptical of how his music would be reacted to just because jazz had its roots in America and the Europeans had a very contrasting style of music. The band managed to talk Duke into believing the idea was a good one. The band’s first stop was England. The band was amazed at how well informed they were about their entire past. Even the Prince of Wales came to hear the band play. At the time the prince was an amateur drummer and Sonny Greer Showed the prince how to work the drum set and they played together and in the end were calling each other ‘Sonny’ and ‘The Wale’. All the concerts held in England were sellouts. The band then moved on to Scotland, and then Paris, France where their music was greeted with open arms.
When Duke’s band returned to America the band really began feeling the hardship and sorrow of traveling on the road, being separated from loved ones. Also, many of the band members, including Duke, began developing drinking problems and started making some of the musicians lives miserable. What made things worse was the fact that Duke’s mother, Daisy, died in May of 1935 that set Duke into a deep depression and he used to sit and stare into space while he talked to himself. Fortunately though, those long pep-talks with himself seem to snap Duke out of his depression.
But despite everything the band survived and in 1946 a saxophonist/clarinetist named Russell Procope joined the band and brought everyone up to a new point of view about traveling on the road. Around the time that Procope joined the band Duke invented a new song called ‘Reminiscing in Tempo’ and was not looked upon favorably by critics but it did seem to sum everything up that was written by Ellington from 1931 to 1939 in a combination of gladness, sadness, triumph, and tragedy. But then Duke’s friend Arthur Whetsol became and had to leave the band.
Then the future of the band seemed uncertain as the depression continued and millions of people were still out of work. Until around 1935 when the ‘Swing Era’ hit the U.S. Irving Mills had then formed his own record company in 1936 that boomed with popularity as the demand for big bands playing this new swing music was in intense demand.
Later on Duke hired a lyrical writer named Billy Strayhorn that led a premature death in 1967. But when Strayhorn was with the band he wrote many compositions that often went into the band’s book of music. Then in 1942 Duke hired one of the best tenor saxophonists ever and let him play the first tenor sax solo ever arranged by Duke Ellington.
In 1951 Saxophonist Johnny Hodges, trombonist Lawrence Brown, and Sonny Greer left the band together and formed their own band but then in 1955 Sonny Greer returned to the band and stayed with Duke until his death in 1970. And then by the 1950’s the Ellington band was carrying on almost alone.
By 1972 the times and styles of the world no longer fit the old time style of Duke’s band. The band was not known like it used to be and that could be the point in time I suppose you could say that the band broke up.
Duke Ellington’s career spanned the whole history of the birth of the music called jazz. And nowhere in that glorious history is there a man who had more love for music, more respect for his art, than the man they called the Duke.

David Kunstek writes for Http://www.ShotGlassShelf.com – Display Cases for the Shot Glass Collector, and Http://www.Secret-Deals.com – Every day discounts on Brand Name Merchandise

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About the Author
David Kunstek writes for Http://www.ShotGlassShelf.com – Display Cases for the Shot Glass Collector, and Http://www.Secret-Deals.com – Every day discounts on Brand Name Merchandise

Amy Grant was one of the first Christan artist in the Contemporary movement of the 70’s & 80’s.For over 25 years, she has inspired millions. Don’t miss her newest CD.

Amy Grant was born in Augusta, Geogia on November 25, 1960. She’s best known for her music: pop, gospel and contemporary Christian. But she has also done some acting and written a few books.
70’s & 80’s
At the age of 16, Amy Grant signed a recording contract with Word Records. Someone passed on a tape she had made for her parents to the executives at Word Records. She wrote most of the songs on that tape and they found her to be remarkably talented for someone so young. She released her first album, self titled Amy Grant in 1977. She also did some backup singing for Bill Gaither in the 1970’s.
Amy went on to graduate high school and attend college, but after recording a few more albums, she decided to drop out of college and pursue a music career.She recorded My Father’s Eyes in 1979, Never Alone in 1980 and a series of live albums in 1981, Amy Grant in Concert and In Concert Volume Two.
The song My Father’s Eyes was written by her first husband, singer-songwriter, Gary Chapman. Amy and Gary were married in June 1982 and they had three children : Matthew Garrison Chapman 1987. Gloria Mills, (Millie), Chapman 1989 and Sarah Cannon Chapman 1992.
Continuing with her music career, in 1982, Amy gained a lot of attention with the album, Age to Age. This album contained the very popular El Shaddai and a song written by Grant and Chapman entitled, In A Little While. Years later, El Shaddai was rewarded as one of the Songs of the Century by RIAA in 2001. Grant received her first Grammy Award in 1985 for Best Contemporary Gospel Performance, as well as two GMA Dove Adwards for Gospel Artist of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year. Age to Age became the first Christian album by a solo artist to be certified gold in 1983 and the first Christian album to be certified platinum in1985.

Mainstream
In the mid 1980’s, Amy Grant decided she wanted to be the first Christian artist to cross over into pop mainstream and make an impact for Christ with her music in both the Christian and secular music worlds. In 1985, she crossed over to pop with Ungaurded. Christian fans were a little shocked and surprised to see, usually conservative and reserved, Amy Grant in a leopard print jacket for the cover of Ungaurded.
Find A Way, from the album, Ungaurded became the first Christian song to hit the Billboard’s Top 40. A year later, in 1986, Amy had her first #1 hit on the Billboard chart with the duet The Next Time I Fall, sung with Peter Cetera
In 1988, Amy enjoyed moderate success with Lead Me On. It was mostly a pop secular album, but years later, CCM magazine awarded it the greatest contemporary album of all time. She continued her journey into the pop music world in 1991 with Heart in Motion. It was huge success. One song, Baby Baby became a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
Life Changes
In 1994, Amy grant recorded a music video, the House of Love with country singer, Vince Gill. A friendship developed from their first meeting. Amy divorced Gary Chapman in 1999 siting irreconcilable differences. She married Vince Gill in 2000 and they have one daughter together, Corinna Grant Gill.
A Return Back To Contemporary Christian Music
Amy returned to her roots of christian music in 2002 with the release of Legacy…Hymns and Faith. The album features her husband, Vince Gill, and marks her 25th year in the music industry. That year, she was also inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, Amy released a sequel to Legacy…Hymns and Faith called Rock Of Ages…. Hymns and Faith.
Future Plans
In 2006, Amy Grant received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She’s made several television appearances, written a few books and been on the cover of several well known magazines. Amy turns 50 years old this year. She currently hold the record as the best selling Contemporary Christian music singer of all time. She has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. So far, Amy has won six Grammy Awards and 25 Dove Awards.
On March 30, 2010, Amy is set to release her latest project, Somewhere Down The Road. The 12 track album features four new songs and a new version of Arms of Love.This album also incudes a first time duet, Overnight, with her seventeen year old daughter, Sarah. The first single from this new project, Better Than A Hallelujah is Amy Grant’s first radio single in seven years. She starts promoting this new album on Feb 26, 2010 with a concert in Denver, CO. and has dates booked across the US right through August. For more information on concert dates, visit amygrant.com.