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Colin McPhee
Colin Carhart McPhee (March 15, 1900 – January 7, 1964) was a Canadian-American composer and ethnomusicologist. He is best known for being the first Western composer to make a musicological study of Bali, and developing American gamelan along with fellow composer Lou Harrison. He wrote original music influenced by that of Bali and Java, decades before such compositions that were based on world music became widespread. Early life and career Childhood McPhee was born on March 15, 1900, in Montréal, Québec, Canada, to a family of mostly Scottish and German ancestry. His father, Alexander McPhee, was an advertising executive for Bell Telephone Company. His mother, Lavinia McPhee (née Carhart) was originally from New Jersey and settled in Montréal after marrying Alexander. First musical education He enrolled in the Peabody Institute in 1918, studying composition with Gustav Strube and piano with Harold Randolph; subsequently he studied with the avant-garde composer Edgard Varè ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College of Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia. Mead served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975. Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions. Birth, early family life, and education Margaret Mead, the first of five children, was born in Philadelphia but raised in nearby Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montreal Gazette
The ''Montreal Gazette'', formerly titled ''The Gazette'', is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Three other daily English-language newspapers shuttered at various times during the second half of the 20th century. It is one of the French-speaking province's last two English-language dailies; the other is the ''Sherbrooke Record'', which serves the anglophone community in Sherbrooke and the Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal. Founded in 1778 by Fleury Mesplet, ''The Gazette'' is Quebec's oldest daily newspaper and Canada's oldest daily newspaper still in publication. The oldest newspaper overall is the English-language ''Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph'', which was established in 1764 and is published weekly. History Fleury Mesplet founded a French-language weekly newspaper called ''La Gazette du commerce et littéraire, pour la ville et district de Montréal'' on June 3, 1778. It was the first entirely French-language newspaper i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esprit Orchestra
The Esprit Orchestra is an orchestra based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that is dedicated to the performance of new orchestral works. It was established in 1983 by music director and conductor Alex Pauk, and is Canada's only full-sized orchestra devoted exclusively to new music. Currently, there are 45 full-time members. A season typically features five concerts featuring 20th and 21st century music as well as newly commissioned works. Notable composers who have written for Esprit include John Burke, Alexina Louie, John Rea, Chan Ka-Nin, Murray Schafer, Owen Underhill, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and John Beckwith. In the 1990s, the Esprit Orchestra recorded and released renditions of several never previously recorded compositions by McPhee. This resulted in McPhee receiving posthumous Juno Award nominations for Best Classical Composition for "Symphony No. 2" at the Juno Awards of 1998 and "Concerto for Wind Orchestra" at the Juno Awards of 1999. The orchestra has also participate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alex Pauk
Alexander Peter Pauk (born October 4, 1945) is a Canadian conductor and composer, most noted as the founder of the Esprit Orchestra. Awards and nominations At the Juno Awards of 1996, both Alexina Louie and Harry Freedman received Juno nominations for Classical Composition of the Year, for works they had composed for the Esprit Orchestra album ''Music for Heaven and Earth'', and Harry Somers was nominated at the Juno Awards of 2001 for "The Third Piano Concerto", from the Esprit Orchestra album ''Celebration''. Pauk and the Esprit Orchestra were themselves nominees for Classical Album of the Year (Large Ensemble or Soloist(s) with Large Ensemble Accompaniment) at the Juno Awards of 1998, for ''Tabuh-Tabuhan, Music of Colin McPhee''. In 1999, Pauk and Louie received a Genie Award nomination for Best Original Score at the 19th Genie Awards, for their work on the film '' Last Night''. In 2007, he was a recipient of the Canada Council's Molson Prize for distinguished achievemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Criticism
''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of musical aesthetics. With the concurrent expansion of interest in music and information media over the past century, the term has come to acquire the conventional meaning of journalistic reporting on musical performances. Nature of music criticism The musicologist Winton Dean has suggested that "music is probably the most difficult of the arts to criticise." Unlike the plastic or literary arts, the 'language' of music does not specifically relate to human sensory experience – Dean's words, "the word 'love' is common coin in life and literature: the note C has nothing to do with breakfast or railway journeys or marital harmony." Like dramatic art, music is recreated at every performance, and criticism may, therefore, be directed both at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death In Venice (opera)
''Death in Venice'', Op. 88, is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, his last. The opera is based on the novella ''Death in Venice'' by Thomas Mann. Myfanwy Piper wrote the English libretto. It was first performed at Snape Maltings, near Aldeburgh, England, on 16 June 1973. The often acerbic and severe score is marked by some haunting soundscapes of "ambiguous Venice". The boy Tadzio is portrayed by a silent dancer, to gamelan-like percussion accompaniment. The music of the opera is precise, direct and movingly understated. Composition history Britten had been contemplating the novella for many years and began work in September 1970 with approaches to Piper and to Golo Mann, son of the author. Because of agreements between Warner Brothers and the estate of Thomas Mann for the production of Luchino Visconti's 1971 film, Britten was advised not to see the movie when it was released.Strode, Rosamund "A 'Death in Venice chronicle" in ''Benjamin Britten: Death in Venice.'' (Camb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curlew River
''Curlew River – A Parable for Church Performance'' (Op. 71) is an English music drama, with music by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by William Plomer. The first of Britten's three 'Parables for Church Performance', the work is based on the Japanese ''noh'' play ''Sumidagawa'' (Sumida River) of Juro Motomasa] (1395–1431), which Britten saw during a visit to Japan and the Far East in early 1956. Beyond the ''noh'' source dramatic material, Britten incorporated elements of ''noh'' treatment of theatrical time into this composition. ''Curlew River'' marked a departure in style for the remainder of the composer's creative life, paving the way for such works as ''Owen Wingrave'', ''Death in Venice'' and the Third String Quartet. Plomer translated the setting of the original into a Christian parable, set in early medieval times near the fictional Curlew River, in the fenlands of East Anglia. Peter F. Alexander has investigated in detail the librettist's contribution to the work, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lew Christensen
Lewellyn Farr Christensen (May 6, 1909 – October 9, 1984) was a ballet dancer, choreographer and director for many companies. He was largely associated with George Balanchine and the San Francisco Ballet, which he directed from 1952–1984. Other companies Christensen was a part of include Ballet Caravan, directed by Lincoln Kirstein, and Ballet Society, directed by Kirstein and Balanchine. Early life and training Christensen was born in Brigham City, Utah, to a family with roots in dance and music. His grandfather, Lars Christensen, who emigrated from Denmark, taught folk and social dances.Sowell, Debra. "Christensen Brothers." ''International Encyclopedia of Dance.'' Vol. 2. ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen. 1998. 160. Christensen was raised a Mormon, and this upbringing informed his latter career with of a sense of focusing on propriety. Christensen began studying dance with his uncles and music with his father when he was ten. He was taught early ballet technique by Stefano ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variations On A Theme Of Frank Bridge
Variation or Variations may refer to: Science and mathematics * Variation (astronomy), any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon * Genetic variation, the difference in DNA among individuals or the differences between populations ** Human genetic variation, genetic differences in and among populations of humans * Magnetic variation, difference between magnetic north and true north, measured as an angle * ''p''-variation in mathematical analysis, a family of seminorms of functions * Coefficient of variation in probability theory and statistics, a standardized measure of dispersion of a probability distribution or frequency distribution * Total variation in mathematical analysis, a way of quantifying the change in a function over a subset of \mathbb^n or a measure space * Calculus of variations in mathematical analysis, a method of finding maxima and minima of functionals Arts * Variation (ballet) or pas seul, solo dance or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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