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BCMG
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) is a British chamber ensemble based in Birmingham, England specialising in the performance of new and contemporary music. BCMG performs regularly at the CBSO Centre and Symphony Hall in Birmingham, tours nationally and worldwide and has appeared several times at the Proms in London. Musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra formed the ensemble in 1987, with Simon Rattle as its founding patron. Since then BCMG has premiered over 150 new works and won numerous awards, including the 2004 Royal Philharmonic Society Audience Development Award, the 1995 Gramophone Award for Best Orchestral Recording, the 1993 Royal Philharmonic Society Chamber Ensemble Award, the 1993 Prudential Award for Music, and The Arts Ball 2002 Outstanding Achievement Award. Thomas Adès was the first music director of BCMG, from 1998 to 2000. The current artistic director of BCMG is Stephan Meier, who succeeded Stephen Newbould (artistic director ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Sawer
David Sawer (born 14 September 1961), is a British composer of opera and choral, orchestral and chamber music. Biography Sawer was born in Stockport, England. After attending Ipswich School, he studied music at the University of York where he began composing contemporary music-theatre pieces. He directed the UK premiere of Mauricio Kagel's ''Kantrimiusik'' at the ICA, conducted the UK premieres of ''Mare Nostrum'' and ''Szenario'', and appeared as solo performer in ''Phonophonie'' at the South Bank Centre, London, and in the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle's ''Gawain'' at the Royal Opera House. In 1984 he won a DAAD scholarship to study with Mauricio Kagel in Cologne. Even from this point his career, Sawer's music tends to define each piece within theatrical terms. Indeed, Sawer has described himself as a "theatre person". His works often reference the visual arts, and in particular surrealist imagery. For example, his piano piece, ''The Melancholy of Departure'' was insp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Adès
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès (born 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: '' The Tempest'' (2004), ''Violin Concerto'' (2005), ''Tevot'' (2007), '' In Seven Days'' (2008), and '' Polaris'' (2010). Biography Adès was born in London to art historian Dawn Adès and poet Timothy Adès. His surname is of Syrian Jewish origin. Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. After attending University College School, he achieved a double starred first in 1992 at King's College, Cambridge, studying with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. He was made Britten Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2004 was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex. In 2006, Adès entered a civil partnership, later terminated, with Israeli film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West Midlands metropolitan county, and approximately 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area. It is the largest UK metropolitan area outside of London. Birmingham is known as the second city of the United Kingdom. Located in the West Midlands region of England, approximately from London, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries River Rea and River Cole – one of the closest main rivers is the Severn, approximately west of the city centre. Historically a market town in Warwickshire in the medieval period, Birmingham grew during the 18th century during the Midla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aaron Jay Kernis
Aaron Jay Kernis (born January 15, 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as Director of the Minnesota Orchestra's Composers' Institute, and is currently the Workshop Director of the Nashville Symphony Composer Lab. He has received numerous awards and honors throughout his thirty-five year career. He lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Evelyne Luest, and their two children. Background, early life, and education Aaron Jay Kernis was born in Philadelphia, and grew up in neighboring Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. He began his musical career by playing the violin and piano. His composition career began at age 13, and he was awarded three BMI Foundation Student Composers Awards throughout his time as a student. He studied composition with John Adams at the San Francisco Conservatory; Charles Wuorinen at the Manh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poul Ruders
Poul Ruders (born 27 March 1949) is a Danish composer. Life Born in Ringsted, Ruders trained as an organist, and studied orchestration with Karl Aage Rasmussen. Ruders's first compositions date from the mid-1960s. Ruders regards his own compositional development as a gradual one, with his true voice emerging with the chamber concerto, ''Four Compositions'', of 1980. His notable students include Marc Mellits. Writing about Ruders, the English critic Stephen Johnson states: "He can be gloriously, explosively extrovert one minute – withdrawn, haunted, intently inward-looking the next. Super-abundant high spirits alternate with pained, almost expressionistic lyricism; simplicity and directness with astringent irony." Minor planet 5888 Ruders discovered by Eleanor Helin and Schelte J. Bus is named after him. Music Ruders has created a large body of music ranging from opera and orchestral works through chamber, vocal and solo music in a variety of styles, from the Vivaldi pastiche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thea Musgrave
Thea Musgrave CBE (born 27 May 1928) is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music. She has lived in the United States since 1972. Biography Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Musgrave was educated at Moreton Hall School, a boarding independent school for girls near the market town of Oswestry in Shropshire, followed by the University of Edinburgh, and in Paris as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger from 1950 to 1954. In 1958 she attended the Tanglewood Festival and studied with Aaron Copland. In 1970 she became Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a position which confirmed her increasing involvement with the musical life of the United States. She married American violist and opera conductor Peter Mark in 1971. From 1987 to 2002 she was Distinguished Professor at Queens College, City University of New York. Among Musgrave's earlier orchestral works, the Concerto for Orchestra of 1967 and the Concerto for Horn of 1971 display the composer's ongoing fascinat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerald Barry (composer)
Gerald Barry (born 28 April 1952) is an Irish composer. Life and works Gerald Barry was born in Clarehill, Clarecastle, County Clare, in the Republic of Ireland. He was educated at St. Flannan's College, Ennis, County Clare. He went on to studied music at University College Dublin, in Amsterdam with Peter Schat, in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel, and in Vienna with Friedrich Cerha. Barry taught at University College Cork from 1982 to 1986. Growing up in rural Clare, he had little exposure to music except through the radio: ''"The thing that was the lightning flash for me, in terms of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, would have been an aria from a Handel opera, from Xerxes maybe, that I heard on the radio. I heard this woman singing this, and bang – my head went. And that was how I discovered music.''" "Barry's is a world of sharp edges, of precisely defined yet utterly unpredictable musical objects. His music sounds like no one else's in its diamond- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Hesketh
Kenneth Hesketh (born 20 July 1968) is a British composer of contemporary classical music in numerous genres including dance, orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo. He has also composed music for wind and brass bands as well as seasonal music for choir. Early life and education Hesketh was born in Liverpool and began composing whilst a chorister at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, completing his first work for orchestra at the age of thirteen. He received his first formal commission at nineteen for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves. He studied at the Royal College of Music, London, with Edwin Roxburgh, Joseph Horovitz and Simon Bainbridge between 1987 and 1992 and attended Tanglewood in 1995 as the Leonard Bernstein Fellow where he studied with Henri Dutilleux. After completing a master's degree in Composition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, a series of awards followed: the Shakespeare Prize scholarship from the Toepfer Foundation, H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart MacRae (composer)
Stuart MacRae (born 12 August 1976) is a Scottish composer. Education and career Stuart MacRae was born in Inverness, Scotland. He studied at Durham University with Philip Cashian and Michael Zev Gordon, and subsequently with Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. By his mid-twenties he was writing astonishingly original and powerfully expressive works, and was receiving commissions from organisations such as the BBC and the London Sinfonietta as well as being appointed Composer-in-Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Often inspired by aspects of nature and humans' relationship to it, MacRae's style draws on various strands of European modernism, including the music of Igor Stravinsky, Elliott Carter, Iannis Xenakis, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. Key works * ''The Witch's Kiss'' (1997; chamber ensemble) * ''Violin Concerto'' (2001) * ''Ancrene Wisse'' (2002; choir, orchestra) * ''Motus'' (2003; ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bent Sørensen (composer)
Bent Sørensen (born 18 July 1958) is a Danish composer. He won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2018 for ''L'isola della Città'' (2016). He studied composition with Ib Nørholm at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and with Per Nørgård at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus. Sørensen treats major/minor tonalities with microtonal inflections and blurs the harmonies with glissandi. Examples of this technique can be found in his trombone concerto "Birds and Bells", a work for orchestra and choir "Echoing Garden", and his violin concerto "Sterbende Gärten", which took the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize in 1996. His early works deal with folksong in prosaic way. Sørensen has composed in a variety of mediums, including opera (his "Under the Sky" was premiered in 2004 at the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen), orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble and solo instruments, but notably he has not composed any electroacoustic music. Since 2008 he has be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Bainbridge
Simon Bainbridge (30 August 1952 – 2 April 2021) was a British composer. He was also a professor and head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and visiting professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States. Biography Bainbridge was born in London. He had his first major break with ''Spirogyra'', written in 1970 while he was still a student. This work displays a passion for intricate and sensuous textures that remained the hallmark of Bainbridge's style. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music. After graduating from the Royal College of Music, he studied with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood; his fondness for American culture was occasionally portrayed in works such as ''Concerto in Moto Perpetuo'' (1983), which contains echoes of American minimalism, and the be-bop inspired ''For Miles'' (1994). In the 1990s, his work took on a new expressive dimension such as in ''Ad Ora Incerta'' (1994) which earned him the G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerard McBurney
Gerard McBurney (born 20 June 1954) is a British composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher and writer. Life Born in Cambridge, England, he is the son of Charles McBurney, an American archaeologist, and Anne Francis Edmondstone (née Charles), who was a British secretary of English, Scots, and Irish ancestry. Gerard's younger brother is Simon McBurney, an English actor, writer and director. Gerard was educated at Winchester College, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – where he read English Literature – and at the Moscow Conservatory. Work For many years he lived in London, teaching first at the London College of Music and later, for 12 years, at the Royal Academy of Music. He also worked as artistic advisor with various orchestras, performers and presenters including The Hallé, Complicite and Lincoln Center. In September 2006, he was appointed Artistic Programming Advisor to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Creative Director of the CSO's multimedia series ''Beyo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
