Life Begins At.....
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L egendary composer Burt Bacharach will return Down Under with his magnificent band and singers on his Farewell to The Symphonies Tour for concerts in five cities with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, The Sydney Symphony and Queensland Pops Orchestra. During his previous sold out visit, the ultra-cool, cult hero was honoured with his eighth Grammy and proclaimed The Greatest Living Composer (2008 Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award) at the 50th Grammy Awards. He is also the recipient of three Academy Awards. Bacharach has had a significant influence on the musical world since the 1950s and 1960s, when he achieved his biggest musical hits. He found a winning formula for how to produce great tunes, and began churning out hit after hit. Although, according to Jim Koehne, former artistic director of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, it has taken some time for people to appreciate exactly what Bacharach achieved and what was unique about him. "At the time [1950s and 1960s] people were swept up with this incredible string of hits, one after the other, that he'd produced during this incredibly fruitful time. In terms of what significance he has, I think that's only starting to become recognised in the last decade or two," Koehne said. Bacharach continues to set industry records and creative standards. He broke new ground with his Grammy awarded 2005 album, At This Time, taking on social and political issues in his first-ever lyrical collaborations. And his Grammy awarded musical Promises, Promises, returned to Broadway last year and earned four Tony nominations. Throughout his career Bacharach – who has written over 500 compositions and produced a phenomenal catalogue with more than 70 timeless hits – achieved a classical type of pop music which found him an audience that spans all ranges of musical tastes and knowledge. Six decades into one of song writing's most successful and honoured careers, he has contributed to the careers of Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Barbra Streisand, Dusty 16 www.theretiree.com.au Springfield, Neil Diamond, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, REM, Sheryl Crow, Gene Pitney, The Beatles and Ronan Keating. "What is unique about Burt is that he has a classical background, so what he brings to writing pop songs is a real sophistication, a lyrical skill that is the fruit of having some training and being a trained composer," Koehne added. "You're either a classical composer or a pop composer, but in Burt Bacharach you have somebody who is both, who brings to pop music a kind of classical sensibility, and it gives an almost classical type of pop music. People are now seeing that as something that's really special, something that's been missing in music for a long time, and so that's why he's able to appeal to an audience that goes across lots of generations or different tastes of people." Bacharach might have been expected to be a good writer, as the only son of the late syndicated fashion columnist Bert Bacharach. From an early age, though, he demonstrated more interest with musical notes than with words. Most of his songs have been collaborations with wordsmiths, including many written with Hal David. That particular pairing resulted in scores of Top 10 records – with Dionne Warwick alone – Bacharach and David scored an incredible string of 39 chart records in 10 years. According to Koehne, Bacharach's partnership with Warwick and David was a stand-out period of time in his career. "He had classical training, and then he spent years working in Tin Pan Alley which was just a factory for producing songs, and there were all sorts of people who worked there and they just churned out songs every day," Koehne said. "Burt had been working hard basically for years, had a few hits, like Magic Moments, and then suddenly he got this partnership with David and Warwick – everything came together – and that's when he really had his big climax and nearly all the great songs come from that time." Bacharach started taking piano lessons while in primary school. His family had moved from the US state of Missouri to New York, where he spent most of Celebrity FEATURE