|
Bongani Ndodana-Breen
Bongani Ndodana-Breen (born 1975, in Queenstown, Cape Province, Republic of South Africa), is a South African-born composer, musician, academic and cultural activist. He is a member of the Xhosa clan. He was educated at St. Andrew's College and Rhodes University in Grahamstown (where he graduated with a PhD in Music Composition) and also studied composition in Stellenbosch under Roelof Temmingh. In 1998 Ndodana-Breen was the first Black classical composer to be awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, by the National Arts Festival and sponsored by Standard Bank of South Africa. He was one of Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans and was profiled on CNN ''African Voices'' for his work ''Harmonia Ubuntu'' commissioned for the centenary of Nelson Mandela and based on his writings and speeches. He is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University for the 2019/2020 academic year. Dr. Ndodana-Breen's music is a blend of African and classical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queenstown, Eastern Cape
Queenstown, officially Komani, is a town in the middle of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, roughly halfway between the smaller towns of Cathcart and Sterkstroom on the N6 National Route. The town was established in 1853 and is currently the commercial, administrative, and educational centre of the surrounding farming district. History Queenstown was founded in early 1853 under the direction of Sir George Cathcart, who named the settlement, and then fort, after Queen Victoria. Work on its railway connection to East London on the coast was begun by the Cape government of John Molteno in 1876, and the line was officially opened on 19 May 1880. The town war memorial was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1922 with its sculpture by Alice Meredith Williams. The town prospered from its founding up to the worldwide depression of the 1930s, and again thereafter. In the 1960s, the majority of the Black population were moved east to the township of Ezibeleni, as part of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miller Theatre
Miller Theatre at Columbia University is located on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University. It is a performing arts producer dedicated to developing and presenting new music. In 1988, the former McMillin Theater was renovated and renamed the Kathryn Bache Miller Kathryn Bache Miller (April 19, 1896 – October 15, 1979) was an American art collector and philanthropist. Early life Bache was born in 1896, she was the daughter of investment banker Jules S. Bache and Florence Rosalie Scheftel (1869– ... Theatre with George Steel as its first executive director. The current director, Melissa Smey, took over from Steel in 2009. Miller Theatre is particularly known for its Composer Portraits Series. Each concert in the series focuses on the work of a single composer. References External links Miller Theatre{{Columbia Music venues in Manhattan Columbia University campus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's ''Cardillac'' (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergolesi's ''La serva padrona'' (1733) are sometimes known as chamber operas. Other 20th-century examples include Gustav Holst's '' Savitri'' (1916). Benjamin Britten wrote works in this category in the 1940s when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. ''The Rape of Lucretia'' (1946) was his first example in the genre, and Britten followed it with ''Albert Herring'' (1947), ''The Turn of the Screw'' (1954) and ''Curlew River'' (1964). Other composers, including Hans Werner Henze, Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès, George Benjamin, William Walton, and Philip Glass have written in this genre. Instrumentation for chamber operas vary: Britten scored ''The Rape ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Butler (poet)
Frederick Guy Butler (21 January 1918 – 26 April 2001) was a South African poet, academic and writer. Early life He was born and educated in the Eastern Cape town of Cradock. He attended Rhodes University and received his MA in 1938. After marrying Jean Satchwell in 1940 he left South Africa to fight in the Second World War. After the war, he read English literature at Brasenose College, Oxford University, graduating in 1947. Academic career He returned to South Africa, lecturing in English at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1951, he returned to Rhodes University in Makhanda then known as Grahamstown, to take up a post as senior lecturer, and a year later was made professor and head of English. He remained there until his retirement in 1987, when he was appointed Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Fellow. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Natal, the University of the Witwatersrand and Rhodes University. Butler promoted the cultu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Greyson
John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. Greyson has won accolades and achieved critical success with his films—most notably '' Zero Patience'' (1993) and ''Lilies'' (1996). His outspoken persona, activism, and public image have also attracted international press and controversy. Greyson is also a professor at York University's film school, where he teaches film and video theory, film production, and editing. Early life Greyson was born in Nelson, British Columbia, the son of Dorothy F. (née Auterson) and Richard I. Greyson. He was raised in London, Ontario, before moving to Toronto in 1980, where he became a writer for ''The Body Politic'' and other local arts and culture magazines, as well as a video and performanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oratorio
An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece – though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio, the choir often plays a central role, and there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. Protestant composers took their stories from the Bible, while Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints, as w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Hani
Chris Hani (28 June 1942 – 10 April 1993), born Martin Thembisile Hani , was the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government, and was assassinated by Janusz Waluś, a Polish immigrant and sympathiser of the Conservative opposition on 10 April 1993, during the unrest preceding the transition to democracy. Early life Thembisile Hani was born on 28 June 1942 in the Xhosa village in Cofimvaba, Transkei. He was the fifth of six children. He attended Lovedale school in 1957, to finish his last two years. He twice finished two school grades in a single year. When Hani was 12 years old, after hearing his father's explanations about apartheid and the African National Congress, he wished to join the ANC but was still too young to be accepted. In Lovedale school, Hani joined the ANC Youth League when he was 15 years old, even though p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela; 26 September 1936 – 2 April 2018), also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003, and from 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation". Born to a Xhosa royal family in Bizana, and a qualified social worker, she married anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in 1958; they remained married for 38 years and had two children together. In 1963, after Mandela was imprisoned following the Rivonia Trial, she became his public face during the 27 years he spent in jail. During that period, she rose t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances. Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends". For more than 100 years, chamber music was played primarily by amateur musicians in their homes, and even today, when chamber music performance has migrated from the home to the concert hall, many musicians, amateur and professional, still play chamber music for their own pleasure. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for playing solo or symphonic works. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as '' Singspiel'' and '' Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall is a concert hall located at 36 Wigmore Street, London. Originally called Bechstein Hall, it specialises in performances of chamber music, early music, vocal music and song recitals. It is widely regarded as one of the world's leading centres for this type of music and an essential port of call for many of the classical music world's leading stars. With near-perfect acoustic, the Hall quickly became celebrated across Europe and featured many of the great artists of the 20th century. Today, the Hall promotes 550 concerts a year and broadcasts a weekly concert on BBC Radio 3. The Hall also promotes an extensive education programme throughout London and beyond and has a huge digital broadcasting arm, which includes the Wigmore Hall Live Label and many live streams of concerts. Origins Originally named Bechstein Hall, it was built between 1899 and 1901 by C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, the German piano manufacturer, whose showroom was next door. The renowned British a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern African Music Rights Organisation
SAMRO, the Southern African Music Rights Organisation, is a copyright asset management society. It was established by the South African Copyright Act, and aims to protect the intellectual property of music creators by licensing music users, collecting licence fees and distributing royalties to music creators. SAMRO represents more than 15,000 Southern African music composers, lyricists/authors and music publishers. The organisation administers performing rights. History The Southern African Music Rights Organisation (name since 1974) was formed in December 1961 under the chairmanship of Dr. Gideon Roos Senior, a former Director-General of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). SAMRO began operations in January 1962 with 40 South African composers and 13 music publishers, taking over from the UK royalty collecting society PRS. In June 1962, SAMRO was accepted as a member of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC). In the same ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
