Ongoing History Of New Music

You would think that being a musician would be a very safe existence…I mean, your job is to write and perform music…yeah, you might get into the odd altercation and fight, but it’s not like you’re going to war, right?...yet every once in a while, we hear about a musician being murdered… The earliest example I can find is Alessandro Stradella, an Italian composer of classical music…back in his day—which was the mid-1600s—he was quite the star and was very influential with his six operas, 170 cantatas, and a long list of instrumental compositions… But then on February 25, 1682, he was found stabbed to death in a public square in Genoa…no one was ever convicted although the story is that he was murdered by one of three brothers who accused Stradella of seducing their sister… The first musician I know of who got shot was Pinetop Smith, a boogie-woogie piano player from Chicago…in 1929, just as he was about to go into a recording session, he was shot during a fight at a dance hall…he might not have been the intend