Alphabe-Thursday M is for Music

Anyone who has been reading my Alphabe-Thursday posts regularly will know that I have already introduced some of you to a couple of my favourite singers but in fact my musical tastes lean a lot more in the classical direction than you might so far have thought. Music has been an important part of my life. As a small child I was taken along to rehearsals of Gilbert and Sullivan, as my dad belonged to two and sometimes three, amateur operatic societies. I appeared in my first musical at the age of 9, just a small part as a gypsy child in a musical called "Gypsy Love" and I was my dad's attendant in Iolanthe when I was 10 - he always played the G&S comedy role. I played a lead role in a school musical when I was 10 as well and at the age of 14 I sang in my first oratorio with the local choral society. That was as a soprano but I soon moved over to the altos. I have sung solo on occasion and have a video to prove it but not the technology to put it on YouTube (don't all breathe a sigh of relief quite so quickly ha ha) What was then called the "Third Programme" on the radio was on at home a lot, that was the classical music station, and I studied music at school. It is now called Radio Three and I still have it on a lot. Three of my favourite composers begin with "V" and that is my planned post for that letter when we get there. I do like popular music but if I had to choose then it would be classical. I like "World" music too, that is, music from non-western traditions. So, I thought I would set myself a little challenge and try to pick one classical and one popular composer or artist for every letter of the alphabet and this is what I came up with - I had to cheat a bit with first or second names and stretch the definition of classical or popular in a few cases. And there are surprisingly few classical composers for N and none that I like so I put in The Naxos Catalogue, which is the hugest list of classical CDs that I know of and which I drool over regularly. And I didn't want to cheat so I had to leave a few gaps. But I would be really interested to know a) how many of the 48 in the list you have heard of and b) any suggestions for the gaps

Albinoni and Alice Cooper,
Bach (J.S.) and Jacques Brel,
Canteloube and Leonard Cohen,
Dvorak and Dave Brubeck ,
Elgar and Electric Light Orchestra,
Faure and Brian Ferry,
Gershwin and Georges Guetary,
Handel and Lionel Hampton,
Isobel Baillie and The Inkspots
Jussi Bjorling and Japan,
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and The Kinks,
Lehar and Lata Mangeshkar ,
Mendellsohn and Mohammed Rafi,
The Naxos Catalogue and Peter Nero,
Orff and Mike Oldfield,
Phillip Glass and The Police ,
John Shirley Quirk and Queen,
Rodrigo and Diane Reeves,
Sondheim and Sade,
Tedesco and Tom Lehrer ,
?? and Unit 4 plus 2,
John Vickers and ??
Weil and Scott Walker,
Xavier Depraz and XLNC,
Yves Montand and The Yardbirds
??? and ???

Sorry I haven't put any pictures up with this, I was going to do a photo of my cd collection but the battery's gone on the camera again! See what other things the letter M has brought to mind HERE