What do these actors
have in common?
F. Murray Abraham, Holly Hunter, Adrien Brody, Jamie Foxx.
Name another actor that has the same characteristic. I have one answer in mind, though there may be others.
What do these actors
have in common? F. Murray Abraham, Holly Hunter, Adrien Brody, Jamie Foxx. Name another actor that has the same characteristic. I have one answer in mind, though there may be others. |
I'm extremely indifferent to academy awards, so I'll fail the second half there.
Four actors who aren't Jewish.
There's a lot more on that list, too.
Darn it, you beat me to it!
won an Oscar for playing a character who played a keyboard instrument, then...
A similar and more ribald question might be what Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Gaynor, Mira Sorvino and Shirley Jones have in common.
Holly Hunter was really good in The Incredibles.
But I still say that these are for people who act, aren't Jewish, and have never been in Cliff's kitchen. What are the probabilities of any four people meeting that description!
Nah, too easy.
F. Murray Abraham was in Looking for Richard (1996) with Aidan (I) Quinn
Aidan (I) Quinn was in Cavedweller (2004) with Kevin Bacon
Holly Hunter was in End of the Line (1988) with Kevin Bacon
Adrien Brody was in Liberty Heights (1999) with Paul Majors
Paul Majors was in Woodsman, The (2004) with Kevin Bacon
Jamie Foxx was in Bait (2000) with Billy Otis
Billy Otis was in Cavedweller (2004) with Kevin Bacon
And another actor within the 6 degrees would be Charley Chaplin:
Charles Chaplin was in Limelight (1952) with Norman Lloyd
Norman Lloyd was in Adventures of Rocky &Bullwinkle, The (2000) with David Alan Grier
David Alan Grier was in Woodsman, The (2004) with Kevin Bacon
There is at least one recording of "The Two Piano Concertos" by Salieri, although it's possible that they were actually written for some other keyboard instrument and are just being played on the harpsichord. Salieri was born in 1750, which is after the first appearance of an instrument that we would recognize today as a piano (1709 is the usual date given). Mozart was born in 1756, and his piano concerti are definitely for piano, although a somewhat different instrument from today's piano (only 64 keys, for one thing).
Most composers are able to play the piano to some degree if only to hear how their compositions are shaping up, but the ability required for that type of work is a far cry from what it takes to perform in front of an audience. The large majority of composers are surely content with their own keyboard talents, whatever they may be. The rest, I suppose, just suffer from pianist envy.
That's true as far as it goes, but it lacks some context. In Mozart and Salieri's time (and certainly through Beethoven's time, as well), composers wrote concerti primarily to perform them themselves; H.C. Robbins Landon, perhaps the world's pre-eminent Haydn scholar, has written that Haydn's relative lack of skill as a performer is the reason that he wrote so few concerti. There are exceptions, of course; Mozart wrote an astonishingly great clarinet concerto, several horn concerti, etc., but he wrote his piano concerti (all twenty-seven of them) to perform himself (with the exception, of course, of No. 10, which is for two pianos).
Also, playing the piano, while it differs somewhat from playing the harpsichord, really doesn't differ as much as, say, playing the oboe does. It's more like oboe vs. English horn. The differences between an eighteenth-century piano and a harpsichord would have been smaller than the differences between today's piano and a harpsichord.