Kenneth Ascher

Kenneth Lee "Kenny" Ascher (born October 26, 1944 in Washington, D.C.) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who is active in jazz, rock, classical, and musical theater genres — in live venues, recording studios, and cinema production. He is widely known for co-writing, with Paul Williams, Rainbow Connection — music from The Muppet Movie. Both Williams and Ascher received Oscar nominations for the 1979 Academy Awards for Best Original Song ("Rainbow Connection") and Best Original Score (The Muppet Movie Soundtrack). The song was also nominated for the Golden Globes for "Best Original Song" that same year.

His work

Ascher's work through the years has included keyboard parts and string arrangements on John Lennon's albums Mind Games, Walls and Bridges and Rock 'n' Roll and Yoko Ono's A Story, music for several songs from Barbra Streisand's remake of A Star Is Born (where he also served as music coordinator), and arrangements for portions of Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf's masterpiece Bat Out of Hell (produced by Todd Rundgren). Ascher's own rendition of The Rainbow Connection was featured in the closing credits of The Break-Up (starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston). Ascher is the pianist with the Birdland Big Band, which performs Fridays from 5:15 to 7 at Birdland in New York City. The Birdland Big Band performs The Rainbow Connection, arranged by Lew Anderson.

Take That

Take That are an English pop group from Manchester, formed in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow acts as the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers.

The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles in the United Kingdom, 12 of which have reached number 1, as well as having seven number 1 albums. Internationally the band have had 56 number 1 singles and 37 number 1 albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning awards for Best British Group and Best British Live Act.

Robbie Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 documentary about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while taking the number of records sold to 45 million worldwide.

Take That (disambiguation)

Take That is a British pop band.

Take That may also refer to:

Take That (TV series)

Take That was one of the earliest Australian television series. It debuted in 1957 and ran to 1959. As was often the case with early Australian television, it aired only on a single station, in this case HSV-7.

Program synopsis

Take That was a comedy series, one of the earliest such series produced for Australian television, and is sometimes considered to be Australian's first sitcom. The series was produced by Crawford Productions, who also produced several other 1950s-era series like the game show Wedding Day and the children's series Peters Club.

Cast

Cast included Philip Stainton, Irene Hewitt, Frank Rich, Keith Eden, and Joff Allen.

The archival status of the show (which was broadcast live) is not clear; Although Kinescope recording existed, many early Australian broadcasts of the period were not recorded.

Scheduling

For some time the series aired in a 15-minute time-slot 7:00PM on Wednesday, was preceded by a brief newscast and followed by another 15-minute series titled Teenage Mailbag at 7:15PM, itself followed at 8:00PM by an American program (The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin). At some point in 1959, the series aired on Saturday at 5:30PM, preceded by These Were Hits (consisting of clips from the series Hit Parade) and followed at 5:45PM by Cavalcade of Sport.