Events in Music
Music Premiere
May 19 Maurice Ravel's opera "L'Heure Espagnole" premieres at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, France
Birthdays in Music
Robert Johnson (1911-1938)
May 8 American blues singer-songwriter, and guitarist (King of Delta Blues Singers), born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi
- May 13 Maxine Sullivan [Marietta Williams], American jazz vocalist and performer (Going Places), born in Homestead, Pennsylvania (d. 1987)
- May 14 Hans Vogt, German composer, born in Danzig (d. 1992)
- May 18 "Big" Joe Turner, American blues singer ("Corrine Corrina"; "Shake Rattle & Roll"), born in Kansas City, Missouri (d. 1985)
- May 23 Boris Kremenliev, Bulgarian-American composer (The Tell-Tale Heart), educator (UCLA, 1947-78), and ethno-musicologist (Bulgarian-Macedonian Folk Music), born in Razlog, Bulgaria (d. 1988)
- May 28 Arthur "Skeets" Herfurt, American jazz and session saxophonist and clarinetist (Dorsey Brothers; Benny Goodman; Lawrence Wlek), born in Cincinnati, Ohio (d. 1992)
Deaths in Music
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
May 18 Austrian composer (Symphony No. 2 - "Resurrection"), and conductor (New York Philharmonic, 1909-11), dies of heart disease at 50
W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
May 29 English dramatist, poet librettist remembered for his comic operas with Arthur Sullivan (The Pirates of Penzance; H.M.S. Pinafore; The Mikdao), dies of a heart attack at 74
