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BURT BACHARACH & HAL DAVID



Last Updated: 12/4/2009

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City: Los Angeles
State: California
Country: US
Signup Date: 11/6/2006

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Friday, September 19, 2008 

Category: Music
"BURT BACHARACH LIVE AT THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE"

Burt's new CD, "Burt Bacharach Live at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra" (Verve) is scheduled to be released on October 20, 2008.

To promote its release, Burt will appear on QVC® ("Q Sessions Live") on Tuesday, October 7 at 10:00 PM (ET).

The album presents the legendary Burt Bacharach in concert setting, recorded at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

The album includes all of Burt's best known recordings, performed and directed by the maestro himself, in a vibrant live setting :

1. "What the World Needs Now Is Love" (intro)
2.  Medley 1 – "Don't Make Me Over"
3. "Walk On By"
4. "This Guy's In Love With You"
5. "I Say A Little Prayer"
6. "Trains and Boats and Planes"
7. "Wishin' & Hopin'"
8. "(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me"
9.  Medley 2 – "One Less Bell To Answer"
10. "I'll Never Fall In Love Again"
11. "Only Love Can Break a Heart"
12. "Do You Know the Way to San José?"
13. "Anyone Who Has A Heart"
14. "God Give Me Strength"
15. "Make It Easy On Yourself"
16. "On My Own"
17. "(They Long To Be) Close To You"
18. Movie Medley – "The Look of Love"
19. "Arthur"'s Theme
20. "What's New Pussycat?"
21. "The World Is A Circle"
22. "The April Fools"
23. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"
24. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
25. "Making Love"
26. "Wives and Lovers"
27. "Alfie"
28. "A House Is Not A Home"
29.  Burt Speaking 1
30. "That's What Friends Are For"
31. "Any Day Now"
32. "What the World Needs Now Is Love" – reprise
33.  Burt Speaking 2
34. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" – reprise
35. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" - playout

(Verve distributed by Universal Music)

© Bacharach/David

www.qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx/view.2/app.multi/params.file.|pguide|qvc_program_guide,asp.pview.weekly.navigate.10|6|2008/walk.multi.|pg_nav,asp

BURT BACHARACH 

"Q SESSIONS LIVE / BY POPULAR DEMAND"

Tuesday, October 07, 2008
(10:00 - 11:00 PM ET)

Delighting international audiences for decades with incomparable songs like "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" and "What The World Needs Now (Is Love)", Burt Bacharach joins us for "Q Sessions Live" to give an up close and personal look at his next release, "Burt Bacharach Live At The Sydney Opera House".

A legend in popular music, Burt has composed 48 Top 10 Hits, including nine 1 songs on the Billboard charts. In addition, he's been honored with multiple GRAMMY® Awards and three Academy Awards®.

Join us for a very special performance celebrating Burt's eagerly anticipated new CD (with a special bonus disc created especially for QVC) that is set to release on October 20, 2008.

Reserve your copy of "Burt Bacharach Live At The Sydney Opera House" before it hits the stores.
9:00 PM 
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Sunday, February 10, 2008 

Category: Music
Burt Bacharach :
Recording Academy 'Lifetime Achievement Award'

Grammy

Burt Bacharach is that rarest of composers -- a writer capable of tapping into the collective consciousness with immediately memorable melodies that always rrive via the road less traveled.

Having trained with several avant-garde masters, Bacharach learned to zig when others would zag, but his internal ompass taught him to apply those lessons to popular effect -- so much so that he'd end up cracking the top 10 with nearly 50 different songs and topping th singles chart nine times.



One of the few composers to have picked up hardware at the Grammys, Oscars and Emmys, Bacharach has consistently been abe to reinvent himself by forging kinships with performers as varied as Dionne Warwick (who charted 15 times with his work), B.J. Thomas and Elvis Costllo.

There are undoubtedly dozens of reasons people have chosen to work with Bacharach, but the foremost is probably his steadfast adherence to hisoft-quoted philosophy:

"Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember."

Burt Bacharach

(David Sprague / Variety)
12:58 PM 
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Saturday, February 02, 2008 

Category: Music
theage.com.au

What the world needs now is... still Burt Bacharach

(photo: John Woudstra)

by Daniel Ziffer

EVEN after the world has swooned and bopped to Burt Bacharach's songs for more than half of his 79 years, the legendary composer is not about to quit.

'Walk On By', 'What the World Needs Now Is Love', 'I Say a Little Prayer', 'Alfie' and 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head' are just some of the hits Bacharach has written. Expect more.

"Do I look like I'd be happy staying at home and playing golf?" he said, smiling, at a press conference yesterday.

"I'll keep going as long as I know how to keep going."

Bacharach is playing four concerts with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra from February 6 and said the act of composing and performing music continued to drive his life.

"It's important for me to keep doing this stuff and keep performing," he said. "The only thing I don't like about it is the airports and the travel."

Bacharach is a legend in the entertainment industry, winning three Academy Awards for his songs and seven Grammys from the US recording industry. Artists including Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones, Dionne Warwick and Frank Sinatra have sung his songs, which have found a new life through films such as 'My Best Friend's Wedding' and the Austin Powers series.

But the star has experienced heartache — he has been married four times and a daughter committed suicide last year — and found new energy in being a late-life father to three young children.

His most recent album, 2005's 'At This Time', was an intensely political collection of songs expressing his disgust at the Bush Administration, with contributions from Elvis Costello, rap producer Dr Dre and indie sensation Rufus Wainwright. He broke with tradition by writing his own lyrics to accompany his compositions.

A new instrumental piece inspired by his 2007 tour, 'For the Children', will be premiered in Sydney.

Bacharach is angry about the direction of his country, and described being brought to tears by a recent speech by Democratic presidential aspirant Senator Barack Obama.

"It excited me. Here's somebody who's like nobody I ever heard talking," he said. "What kind of message could that send to the deprived and under-privileged world … kids who aspire to blowing themselves up as suicide bombers in that part of the world, to suddenly see 'Hey, there's a young black man who's the President of the United States'."

The man who made the yearning sound of 'Wishin' and Hopin' ' and 'The Look of Love' declared he was uninspired by contemporary music: "You can't whistle the technology."

Many songs on the pop charts were unremarkable, unmemorable, he said. "You can remember the slickness and the gloss, the techno beats, the industrial sound of dance music. But peel it back, there better be a melody. You find less melodic content out there, really solid songs, than there used to be."

This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/01/29/1201369136006.html

11:18 AM 
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Friday, February 01, 2008 

Category: Music

BURT BACHARACH NEW WORK "FOR THE CHILDREN"

COMPOSED FOR SYDNEY SYMPHONY
 

International music legend Burt Bacharach announced at a press conference in Melbourne today (Tuesday 29 January 2008) that he has composed a new work entitled "For The Children", an eleven and a half minute orchestral piece specifically written for the Sydney Symphony and inspired by his 2007 tour.

"For The Children" will have its Australian Premiere this Thursday at the opening night of an Evening with Burt Bacharach, his band and the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House.

Mr Bacharach said:

"The emotion I felt walking out onto the Sydney Opera House stage for the first time and performing with the Sydney Symphony last year, was a career highlight for me." 


The Sydney concerts will also be recorded in anticipation of an album release in 2008, "Burt Bacharach Live at the Sydney Opera House".

Acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of our generation, Mr Bacharach has returned to Australia due to overwhelming demand, less than seven months after a sell out tour with State Orchestras in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney.


Following his final Australian concert in Melbourne, Mr Bacharach will be honoured with his eighth Grammy Award, The Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award, to be received and accepted on his behalf by his children, Cristopher, Oliver and Raleigh Bacharach, at the 50th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Mr Bacharach also has three Academy Awards.
 

www.wma.com/burt_bacharach         

 

6:14 PM 
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Thursday, January 31, 2008 

Category: Music
Source : www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23130361-16947,00.html

Burt can't walk on by a game of tennis

IT is a spooky coincidence that the first four letters of Burt Bacharach's surname recall another of the world's great composers. There is one very obvious difference, however: Johann Sebastian would never have arrived at a national media conference in a navy tracksuit and pristine trainer shoes.

Looking relaxed and tanned, the 79-year-old Bacharach recalled in words (and attire) the Australian Open men's final two nights earlier. "I feel so fortunate I was at the finals, I love tennis," Bacharach said.

Although his own tennis-playing days are over, Bacharach still exercises each day, adding that "conducting is a workout - conducting from the piano where you get yourself into all kinds of positions".

Over his 50-year career, Bacharach has composed more than 500 works, including 48 top-10 hits, and numerous Grammy and Academy Award-winning songs.

It started in 1957 when, as a young pianist and arranger, he met lyricist Hal David. Like their near-contemporaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Bacharach and David took popular songwriting to new levels of emotional storytelling and technical brilliance.

Bacharach's repertoire includes some of the 20th century's most-loved songs: 'Alfie', 'Close To You', 'I Say A Little Prayer', 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', 'Walk On By' and 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head', to name a few.

A stellar group of artists has turned Bacharach's songs into hits, including Perry Como, Gene Pitney, Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones, the Beatles, the Carpenters, Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick, whom Bacharach yesterday described as "the flagship".

"We (he and David) structured so many of those songs around her voice," he said.

This year, Bacharach is still going strong. He has written a new composition for the current tour with the Sydney and Melbourne symphony orchestras, which starts in Sydney tomorrow.

Meanwhile, his 2005 Grammy Award-winning album 'At This Time', which signalled a new direction in the artist's political activism, still packs a punch.

"I think it was very important for me to make this album at this time," Bacharach said.

"I find myself very, very involved in what's going on in my country now, and I'm very, very worried for my kids (he has three children aged 12, 15 and 21).

"This (Bush) administration has made such a mess of so many things."

Bacharach supports Barack Obama's presidential campaign, saying of a recent speech by the candidate: "God, it was good. It brought tears to my eyes and it excited me. It was like 'now here is somebody'. It was like nobody I'd ever heard talk in politics."

Coming from a man who has been stirring people's souls and warming their hearts for more than 50 years, that is high praise indeed.

(Corrie Perkin | 01/30/2008)
7:23 PM 
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Sunday, December 23, 2007 

Category: Music
Aspen Times

At 79, Bacharach proves he's got staying power

(Photo : Olaf Heine)

Burt Bacharach doesn't tend to have that movie moment in his songwriting — that instance when the musicians put the final touches on a song, and the singer, the band and the producer all look at one another, then break into that big smile that says, "Hit record!" Bacharach has had a staggering number of hit songs — 70 that have made the top 40 since he first made the charts, in 1957 (That first hit, "The Story of My Life," as recorded by Marty Robbins, was No. 1 on the Country and Western charts). But the element Bacharach typically listens for, to see if a song is going to take a prominent place on radio, is one that doesn't announce itself the moment the session is done.

A great song, at least by the standards of someone who has composed many of them, has to sound as good after the 50th spin as it did on the first.

"It's something that doesn't wear me out, doesn't beat me up", said Bacharach from his home in Los Angeles, explaining what he tries to put into his songwriting. "So it's not, you listen four or five times and you love it, and then you say, 'OK, enough with that.' If I get tired of it quicker than I should, I have to rethink it."

The best of Bacharach's songs — "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head", "I Say a Little Prayer", "Walk on By" — have stood that test of time, working their way into the collective American consciousness.

Often, his songs have been reworked decades after they were first recorded; such artists as rockers the White Stripes ("I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself"), the folk-punk Ani DiFranco ("Wishin and Hopin'"), and the British New Wave band Naked Eyes, who had a 1982 hit with "Always Something There to Remind Me," have honored Bacharach by reinterpreting his songs.

Bacharach himself has similarly been favored by the passing of time. While he's no longer the hit-making machine he was through the 60's and early 70's — when he and lyricist Hal David were churning out tunes for singer Dionne Warwick — he has been embraced by a younger generation of artists and fans.

The cover of "Definitely Maybe", the debut album by British rockers Oasis, featured a photo of Bacharach; the band's singer, Noel Gallagher, once performed Bacharach's "This Guy's in Love With You" with the composer. Elvis Costello made an entire album, 1998's much-lauded "Painted From Memory", with Bacharach, and the two are at work on a new batch of songs, likely to be recorded by Costello's wife, jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall. Bacharach has made appearances in all three "Austin Powers" films, making the 79-year-old improbably recognizable to hordes of 10-year-olds. He has likewise made three appearances on "American Idol"; in the most recent of them, finalists competed in singing a 12-minute medley of Bacharach songs.

In a way, Bacharach's popularity with the likes of Gallagher and Costello — not to mention hip-hopper Dr. Dre, who added loops and drumbeats to Bacharach's 2005 album "At This Time" — is improbable enough. The composer specialized in a brand of light, romantic music that may have been popular and enduring, but was hardly the essence of cool or dwelled on the cutting-edge. Bacharach himself says that the main ingredient in his music has been accessibility — an element that normally fades over the years. But what the younger crowd is responding to isn't Bacharach's persona, but his way with a song.

This continuing relevance underscores another facet to the music. For all of their easy hummability, Bacharach's songs have more complexity to them than is evident on the surface. His music employs distinctive time changes and unexpected chord progressions, to go with their incomparable melodies.

Perhaps even more than the individual songs, Bacharach has created a signature. A Burt Bacharach song, even divorced from Hal David's lyrics, sounds like a Burt Bacharach song, whether sung by Dionne Warwick or Tom Jones, Christopher Cross or B.J. Thomas. Much of that has to do with the fact that Bacharach is not only a composer, but an arranger and producer as well, with his hands firmly on how his songs are framed and adorned.

"It just may have something to do with the orchestration, the way it's presented," said Bacharach, who performs at the Wheeler Opera House on Thursday, Dec. 27. "So much of the music has been born with the songs and the orchestration at the same time. 'What's New Pussycat' and 'Walk on By' are very different — but there's a common thread there that I haven't figured out. I haven't tried to figure it out. But people say it sounds like a Burt Bacharach song."

Bacharach may have been a king of the 60's, and remains a vital creative force, but there have also been low periods in his career. The one that seems still to be at the front of his mind is the 1973 remake of the classic 1937 film, "Lost Horizon". The artistic difficulties in making the film were severe, and the critical and commercial rejection that followed seemed inevitable. Taking a significant portion of the blow were the songs themselves; the experience was enough to split the Bacharach/David writing team, and cause the former to rethink even his past accomplishments.

"It was a disastrous picture", said Bacharach. "I didn't want to write anymore. I just wanted to hang out at the beach. You don't look at the body of work you've already done. You're just right in the moment: 'That's a failure'."

Time, however, has led to a different perspective. "I've gone back to the score, and it's pretty good. It's got good songs," he said. "The movie just wasn't good, but it didn't have anything to do with me. It's out of your control when it goes up on the screen."

In the context of all that Bacharach is capable of, a film debacle from 35 years ago seems like a mere pebble in the road. After his Aspen performance — which features an eight-piece band, three singers, and Bacharach playing piano and doing a spot of singing himself — he is off to Hawaii, then Japan and Australia. All of those subsequent appearances are symphonic concerts, with Bacharach conducting the orchestra in his arrangements of his songs.

Asked if he could think of anyone else who had such a deep involvement — composing, arranging, producing, conducting — with a repertoire of songs, Bacharach could come up with three names: David Foster, whose songs include the movie hits "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)", and "I Have Nothing", from "The Bodyguard"; Henry Mancini, known best for his movie and TV scores, but was not much of a presence on radio; and his friend Elvis Costello, the former punk rocker who has taken up composing classical music and arranging and singing jazz.

"Outside of that, I don't know who else", said Bacharach. "As far as an overall package of singing, writing, producing, writing the arrangements, I think there's just me."

(Stewart Oksenhorn - Dec. 22, 2007 / Aspen Times Weekly)
7:47 PM 
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Sunday, July 08, 2007 

Category: Music

Yep, we're working hard on it! "The Boss" is on tour down under but stay tuned for more, precious friends...!

Greetings XO

B-Alec

(B&D webmaster)

WWW.BURTBACHARACH.NET

8:10 PM 
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Saturday, June 23, 2007 

Category: Music
So Long, Sal!

We all lost a good friend today. A magnificent guitar artist named Sal DiTroia. 

Yesterday, June 22, he apparently lay down to take a nap and just didn't wake up. He was in his mid sixties and had previously had a heart attack.

The native New Yorker Sal was one of those enigmatic artists that you know but you don't know you know. It was in New York that he met one of his heroes, electric guitar virtuoso Les Paul, whose advice DiTroia always recalled: "Don't get complicated. Always play for the public."

His talent pretty much soundtracked our life. He was the studio musician who played guitar on The Monkees' peppy 1966 hit "I'm A Believer", and worked on the score for the 1972 "The Godfather" movie's foreboding wedding scene. 

Sal has also worked with Bacharach-David (on "Reach Out", Living Together", "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" soundtrack, "Greatest Hits"), Dionne Warwick (hits like "Alfie", "Do You Know the Way to San José?", etc.), Barbra Streisand ("Songbird"), Mary Travers ("Circles"), Jane Olivor ("Chasing Rainbows"), Harry Nilsson ("Midnight Cowboy" soundtrack"), Richard Tee, Janis Ian ("Stars", "Between The Lines", "Janis Ian"), Simon and Garfunkel ("The Boxer",  "Scarborough Fair", "Rosemary And Thyme"), Neil Diamond ("And The Singer Sings His Songs"), Billy Joel ("Cold Spring Harbor"), Melanie ("The Best Of..."), Grace Slick, Country Joe McDonald, The Monkees ("I'm A Believer"), "The Godfather" soundtrack…and on and on.  

He played with some heavy hitters and was on everyone's records. The studio artist.

Janis Ian said about Sal: "He's the quiet fellow in the back, the one you rarely notice until you go to hear the playback and realize he's gluing the whole thing together." (That's Sal's hauntingly sad guitar you hear on "At Seventeen").

"Play on, Sal. Your unique style and your intensity will never be matched. Let us hoist a salty glass and get lost in the music".

www.salditroia.com

www.myspace.com/salditroia

2:19 PM 
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Friday, May 25, 2007 

Category: Music

Best wishes from Eunice, Jim, Craig, Burt, B-Alec & the NY crew, and many many others:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAL!!

Song Hall To Honor John Legend with Hal David Starlight Award

Hal David, Chairman/CEO of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, has announced that John Legend will be the recipient of the Hal David Starlight Award at the 2007 Awards dinner, slated for Thursday, June 7 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.

The Hal David Starlight Award, created in 2004, was renamed in honor of the SHOF Chairman for his longtime support of young songwriters. John Legend joins the prestigious company of Rob Thomas, Alicia Keys and John Mayer.

The astounding success of John Legend comes as no surprise to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2002, the Hall recognized the then-named John Stephens, awarding him with its Abe Olman Scholarship for Excellence in Songwriting as the BMI-sponsored artist that year. He had already been attracting attention in Philadelphia, where he was going to the University of Pennsylvania, making his own music and, eventually, playing and writing with such artists as Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Twista and Janet Jackson. West, a collaborator and friend since the two were introduced in 2001, became a John Legend champion, signing him in 2003 as the first artist to his G.O.O.D. Music, Columbia Records-distributed label.

In 2004, Legend stepped into the solo spotlight as a premier singer-songwriter-pianist-performer in his own right with his debut album Get Lifted. Driven in part by the hit singles "Ordinary People" and "Used To Love U," Get Lifted was a critical and commercial triumph, earning Legend eight Grammy nominations.

He took the statue home for Best New Artist, Best Male R&B Vocal Performance ("Ordinary People") and Best R&B album, and Get Lifted went on to sell more than three million copies worldwide. No stranger to winning Grammys, this year he claimed his fourth and fifth Grammy award for Best R&B Vocal Performance for his most recent album, Once Again, and for Best R&B Performance by a Duo Or Group for his collaboration with Van Hunt and Joss Stone on the Sly Stone Tribute album, Family Affair.

Commenting on the award to Legend, Hal David said, "John Legend is an outstanding, talented songwriter. He is well-deserving of the Starlight Award, not only shining as a writer with a unique vision, but as an expressive performer as well. We recognized John's talent in his earlier years, and we are now pleased to honor him with this prestigious award."

Tickets for the Songwriters Hall of Fame begin at $1000 each, and are available through Buckley Hall Events, (212) 573-6933. Net proceeds from the event will go towards the Songwriters Hall of Fame programs.

BMI.com
10:37 AM 
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007 

Category: Music

1970 version by Richard & Karen Carpenter:


"Close To You" (The Making of...)

 

2:12 AM 
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