By Brent Warnken
As if Alison Krauss didn’t have enough golden gramophones adorning her fruitful music career, the chirpy bluegrass vocalist snagged another five last night, bringing her grand total to 26 Grammy Awards won through the years. Krauss and newest partner-in-crime Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin) led the way for victors in the 51st annual Grammy Awards, taking the honors for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. The duo’s recent album Raising Sand has been flying off shelves since its release at the end of 2007, and it got due recognition at the 2009 Grammys for its Americana style and mainstream appeal.
Another big winner at the 51st running of the Grammy Awards was rapper Lil Wayne, who took home four awards for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Solo Performance, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group and Best Rap Song. British rock band Coldplay also fared well at the blowout event, taking the title for Song of the Year, Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best Rock Album. Adele, Al Green, Ne-Yo, John Mayer, Brad Paisley and Sugarland all earned two Grammys at the awards show, rounding out the night’s most decorated artists.
Alison Krauss hasn’t always had Robert Plant by her side, but this fiddling queen has been sitting pretty atop the contemporary bluegrass music realm since the mid-’80s, when the talented musician started her ascent to the top of the industry. Krauss, a Decatur, Illinois native, was a musical prodigy from the start, picking up the violin at age five and winning talent contests around her home state by the age of eight. At 12, Krauss won the Illinois State Fiddle Championship, also being named the Preservation of Bluegrass in America’s Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest the same year. Her entrance to the mainstream music scene came just years following this success, and Krauss released her first independent album Different Strokes in 1985, when she was just 14 years old.
The great Alison Krauss employed her longtime backup band Union Station in 1987 and released her major label debut Too Late to Cry in 1987, and this fiddle master hasn’t stopped to breathe since. Her 1990 release I’ve Got That Old Feeling won Krauss her very first Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, and the standout fiddler/vocalist has been blazing a path with songs like “When You Say Nothing at All” and “Forget About It” through the ’90s and ’00s, even using her brilliant bluegrass fusion to light up the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers-directed 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which also garnered Krauss a Grammy Award in 2001 for Album of the Year).
26 Grammy Awards after first striking up her fiddle and band, Alison Krauss is still going strong. Her recent musical partnership with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant has proven to be even more brilliant than expected, and Krauss’ hit music is sure to last through several more decades as the 37-year-old songstress isn’t close to retirement. When she’s not in the studio, Alison Krauss can be spotted strumming her golden fiddle onstage, so if you haven’t seen this bluegrass angel in concert, get Alison Krauss tickets from who knows, maybe you’ll even get to see Robert Plant take the stage, too!
This article is sponsored by StubHub.com and was written by Brent Warnken. StubHub is a leader in the business of selling Alison Krauss tickets, sports tickets, concert tickets, theater tickets and special events tickets.
By Duane Shinn
In order for a piece to be played accurately and with expression and dynamics, written music includes a number of signs and symbols to guide the musician. Some of these include words that tell the musician how loudly or softly to play a note or passage. The following is a list of dynamics often used:
Pianissimo: very soft.
Piano: soft.
Mezzo piano: half as soft as piano.
Mezzo forte: half as loud as forte.
Forte: loud.
Fortissimo: very loud.
Sforzando: forced, abrupt, fierce
Crescendo: a gradual increase in volume.
Diminuendo (or decrescendo) a gradual decrease in volume.
One piece of music can contain many symbols for dynamics, everything from very soft passages (pianissimo) to loud passages (forte) to passages that increase or decrease in volume (crescendo or decrescendo). In some cases, the conductor (or leader) of a group will request changes in dynamics that do not appear in the music (leaving to their discretion the interpretation of the music).
Tempo is measured in beats per minute (bpm). A tempo of 60 bpm would match the ticking of a clock with a beat every second. Quite often, you’ll see the tempo (in bpm) displayed at the beginning of the piece. For a piano or other music student, a metronome is sometimes used as a training device. The metronome can be set for a wide variety of beats per minute and helps the student develop consistency of tempo in their playing. When you see a drummer in a rock band click his drum sticks four times, or call out the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, he is setting the tempo for the rest of the band. Tempo has a great effect on the feel and effectiveness of the music played and it is critical when musicians are playing for dancers. Dances such as the waltz and two-step require a particular tempo.
Bar lines (vertical lines on the staff) are used to separate a song into measures. Measures divide the music into regular groupings of beats be it three, four, or six beats per measure. Except in rare cases, each measure contains the same number of beats throughout a song. Measures are often numbered so that there is a “road map” for the musician when playing as part of a group. For example, a conductor may ask the orchestra to “begin with measure 31.”
A repeat (sign) is used quite often in music. If a particular music passage is to be repeated, a double bar line, preceded by two dots is used. This tells the musician to return to the beginning of the passage and play it again. Other markings such as the coda, and da capo (dc) are used to guide the musician to the proper place in the music such as playing the passage again from the beginning (passages are repeated quite often) or jumping ahead to a particular measure or point in the music.
A fermata (sometimes called a “birds eye” because of its appearance) tells the musician that a particular note is to played longer than its normal duration. How long the note is to be held is usually up to the musician or conductor. A fermata is usually displayed above the note it affects.
Some music contains breath marks that show the musician when to take a breath (if singing or playing a wind instrument) or when to lift the bow for string players. These are a few of the basic road signs every musician should know.
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