Interesting Facts about Mexican composer María Grever

Search engine giant Google celebrates the first female Mexican composer María Grever with Doodle on February 11, 2021. On this day in 1938, Grever recorded “Ti-Pi-Tin,” a waltz about serenading your friends and family that became one of her most influential hits.

Here is a look at the life and work of María Grever.

Personal

• Birth name: María Joaquina de la Portilla Torres
• Birthdate: September 14, 1885
• Birth place: León, Guanajuato, Mexico
• Died on: December 15, 1951 (aged 66)
• Dead place: New York City, New York
• Father name: Francisco de la Portilla
• Mother name: Julia Torres
• Spouse: Leo A
• Children: Carmen Livingston., Charles Grever
• Nationality: Mexican
• Sun sign: Virgo
• Famous as: Composer, singer, songwriter

Interesting Facts about María Grever

• Composer is known for being one of the first successful Mexican female composers ever. María Grever is maybe generally celebrated for the song “What A Difference A Day Makes,” which acquired her a Grammy and was ultimately inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

• María Grever a pioneer in the field of 20th-century well-known music, was the first Mexican woman to become a successful composer.

• María Grever was born as María Joaquina de la Portilla Torres to a Spanish father (Francisco de la Portilla) and Mexican mother (Julia Torres) in Guanajuato, Mexico.

• For the initial six years of her life, she experienced in Mexico City, moving to her dad’s natal city, Sevilla, in 1888.

• María Grever studied music in France, with Claude Debussy and Franz Lenhard among her teachers.

• In 1900 she moved back to Mexico and proceeded with her musical studies at her auntie’s solfège school.

• Grever studied piano, violin, and voice, albeit one account of her life recommends that she learned to read music just in her later years.

• In 1907, the then 22-year-old de la Portilla wedded Leo A. Grever settled in New York in the wake of the wedding of Leo A.

• Grever composed her first piece of music—a Christmas carol—when she was four years of age.

• María Grever’s first published song, “An una Ola” (“To a Wave”, 1912), showed up when she was 18 years of age and sold around 3,000,000 copies.

• Grever, an American oil company executive, and in 1916 moved to New York City where she resided for the rest of her life.

• María Grever published “Besame” (“Kiss Me”) in 1921, and in 1926, Grever’s Spanish tango “Jurame” (“Promise, Love”) found a huge audience.

• Grever’s first significant hit was “What a Difference a Day Makes,” or “Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado,” written in 1934.

• That song is one of María Grever’s longest-lasting hits; it is included on many presently accessible recordings by artists as diverse as Chet Baker, Ray Conniff, Dinah Washington, and Bobby Darin.

• The same year Ella Fitzgerald sang “A-Tisket A-Tasket” and Cole Porter won over the country with “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” Grever scored one of her biggest sensation, a nonsensical song named “Ti-Pi-Tin.”

• Particularly famous for boleros, María Grever carried her ballads from Buenos Aires to New York City while superstar singers from Frank Sinatra to Libertad Lamarque performed them around the world.

• María Grever’s songs, broadcast oftentimes on the radio during her time, incorporate “Lamento Gitano,” “Lero, Lero from Brazil,” “Magic Is the Moonlight,” “Make Love with a Guitar,” “My First, My Last, My Only,” “Rosebud,” “Thanks for the Kiss,” “My Margarita,” “Andalucia,” “Cancionera,” and many more.

• Grever additionally composed film scores, including the music for the 1944 film “Bathing Beauty,” highlighting her song “Magic Is the Moonlight,” or “Te Quiero Dijiste.”

• In 1941, Viva O’Brien, a musical with music by María Grever and lyrics by Leveen, had 20 exhibitions on a New York stage.

• In 1919, one of her soonest New York recitals of Spanish, Italian, and French music, at the Princess Theatre, gotten positive reviews from pundits.

• During the height of her popularity, María Grever made concert tours in Latin America and Europe. In New York, Grever’s music was heard live in a significant number of the city’s concert halls.

• In 1927, she coordinated a concert at the Little Theatre, which highlighted an Argentine cabaret, song dramas complete with costumes, scenery, dialogue, and dancing, and a short play, The Gypsy.

• One of her first effective New York concerts occurred in 1928 at the Pythian Temple before an audience that incorporated the ambassadors of Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina.

• The New York Times investigated a 1939 concert at the Guild Theatre, in which Grever introduced famous songs and a miniature opera, named “El Cantarito.”

• María Grever played out a few songs, however was helped by many different singers and musicians, including an enormous chorus, dance troupe, and orchestra.

• In the late 1930s, she was threatened with blindness because of eye disease.

• Joining ASCAP in 1935, her chief musical associates included Stanley Adams and Irving Caesar.

• In 1942, María Grever hosted an advantage for the Spanish-American Association for the Blind, with headquarters in New York City.

• In her later years, in the wake of becoming paralyzed, she got back to Mexico in 1949 to extraordinary acclaim. She was a frequent speaker on radio and wrote her autobiography, which served as the basis for the film ‘Cuando me vaya (1954)’.

• María Grever frequently worked with American lyricists, who interpreted the songs from Spanish to English to make them accessible to audiences in the United States.

• Truth be told, Maria Grever teamed up with three of the leading songwriters of her day—Stanley Adams, Irving Caesar, and Raymond Leveen.

• At the time of María Grever’s death at 57 years old, on December 15, 1951, following a long sickness, she was living in the Wellington Hotel on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue.

• Following her death, María Grever was honored by a musicale at the Biltmore Hotel by the Union of Women of the Americas. She was named “Woman of the Americas,” 1952, by the UWA before her demise.

• Grever was an individual from the esteemed American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

• Decades after her death, her music has been used in well-known movies like Casino and Run Lola Run.

• In 1953, Argentine singer-actress and Latin America star Libertad Lamarque depicted María Grever in Cuando me vaya (When I Leave), a biopic directed by Tito Davison.

• After three years, Lamarque released a best-selling tribute to Grever’s most well-known songs named Libertad Lamarque canta Canciones de Maria Grever.

• At that point, in 1959 Dinah Washington recorded “What A Difference A Day Makes” (originally “Cuando vuelva a tu lado”), which became her signature song. Grever won a Grammy Award with it, and in 1998 the recording was enlisted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

• María Grever is famous for songs like “Magic Is the Moonlight,” which was composed for the 1944 film Bathing Beauty, featuring Esther Williams.

• Grever composed more than 800 songs most of them boleros and her popularity reached audiences in Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

• Her sentimental songs and ballads, as “Jurame” and “What a Difference a Day Makes,” accomplished wide-spread fame starting during the 1920s among audiences in Spain, South America, Mexico, and the United States.

• On Feb 11th, 2021, Google celebrated María Grever with a Google Doodle.