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Gordon Watson (pianist)
Gordon Charles Watson AM (28 February 192116 April 1999) was an Australian classical pianist and teacher. He taught at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from 1964 to 1986, retiring as Head of the Keyboard Department. Early life Gordon Charles Watson was born in Parkes, New South Wales in 1921. He served with the Australian Imperial Force for four years in World War II. He studied piano under Laurence Godfrey Smith in Sydney, and later had advanced studies at Mills College, Oakland, California with Egon Petri (piano), and Darius Milhaud (composition). Career As early as 1943, commentators such as Neville Cardus were noticing that his piano playing, while showing great skill and promise, revealed the soul of someone other than a performer (Cardus suggested composing or conducting might be Watson's natural bents). Watson spent some years living in the United Kingdom as a touring performer. On 22 October 1951, to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt, he pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Member Of The Order Of Australia
The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Government. Before the establishment of the order, Australian citizens received British honours. The Monarch of Australia is sovereign head of the order, while the Governor-General of Australia is the principal companion/dame/knight (as relevant at the time) and chancellor of the order. The governor-general's official secretary, Paul Singer (appointed August 2018), is secretary of the order. Appointments are made by the governor-general on behalf of the Monarch of Australia, based on recommendations made by the Council of the Order of Australia. Recent knighthoods and damehoods were recommended to the governor-general by the Prime Minister of Australia. Levels of membership The order is divided into a general and a military division. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The orchestra was originally conceived in 1928 as a joint enterprise by the BBC and the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, but the latter withdrew the next year and the task of assembling and training the orchestra fell to the BBC's director of music, Adrian Boult. Among its guest conductors in its first years was Arturo Toscanini, who judged it the finest orchestra he had ever conducted. During and after the Second World War, Boult strove to maintain standards, but the senior management of the post-war BBC did not allocate the orchestra the resources to meet competition from new and well-funded rivals. After Boult's retirement from the BBC in 1950, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephanie McCallum
Stephanie McCallum (born 3 March 1956) is a classical pianist. She has recorded works of Erik Satie, Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Carl Maria von Weber, Albéric Magnard, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis among others. Life McCallum was born in Sydney in 1956. She studied with Alexander Sverjensky and Gordon Watson at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. After further study with Ronald Smith in the UK, she gave her debut concert at Wigmore Hall in 1982. Returning to Australia in 1985, she became a founding member of contemporary ensembles austraLYSIS (with Roger Dean) and the Sydney Alpha Ensemble. She has performed as soloist with most of the major Australian symphony orchestras and in ensembles such as the Australian Chamber Orchestra, ELISION Ensemble and the Australia Ensemble. In a 1985 Wigmore Hall recital, she gave what is believed to be the first complete public performance of Alkan's ''Trois grandes études'', Op. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Kieran Harvey
Michael Kieran Harvey (born 7 July 1961) is an Australian pianist and composer whose career has been notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. He is renowned for commissioning, performing and composing new music. He has especially promoted the works of Australian composers, such as Carl Vine, most of whose piano music he has recorded and much of which was written for him. He is also particularly associated with the piano music of Olivier Messiaen. According to critic Clive O'Connell in ''The Age'': "Few Australian pianists can touch Michael Kieran Harvey, one of the most exciting exponents of contemporary music in the country". Biography Family Michael Kieran Harvey was born in Sydney in 1961. He says that as a child he had great difficulty in coming to terms with being a musician, as he played four different codes of football and was also involved in surf lifesaving.Ben Holgate, "Classical champion", ''The Weekend Australian'', 6–7 September 1999. His brother, Domin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerard Willems
Gerard Willems AM (born Gerardus Maria Willems; 19 August 1946) is a Dutch- Australian classical pianist and teacher. He was the first Australian pianist to record the complete series of 32 piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. He also recorded Beethoven's five piano concertos, the ''Diabelli Variations'', C minor variations, Andante favori, Für Elise and the 3 Electoral "Kurfürstensonaten" sonatas as well as a reconstructed "Fantasy Sonata in D". These recordings feature the Australian designed and manufactured Stuart & Sons piano. This series of recordings constitutes the largest classical music recording project ever undertaken in Australia, and Willems became the best selling classical artist in Australia's recording history. Biography Willems was born and grew up in Tilburg, Netherlands. He was named after his maternal grandfather, a church organist, composer and piano builder. He received a scholarship from the Brabant Conservatorium, but the Soviet inv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Powell (pianist) (1743–1830), American socialite
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Elizabeth Powell may refer to: * Elizabeth Powell (colonist) (fl. 1836), early settler of Texas * Elizabeth Powell (pianist), classical pianist * Elizabeth Powell (poet), American poet * Elizabeth Powell (scientist), Australian scientist * Elizabeth Dilys Powell (1901–1995), English journalist * Elizabeth Powell, lead singer and guitarist of the band Land of Talk See also * Elizabeth Willing Powel Elizabeth Willing Powel (February 21, 1743 – January 17, 1830) was an American socialite and a prominent member of the Philadelphia upper class of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The daughter, later sister and then wife of mayors of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Heinze
Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC (1 July 189410 June 1982) was an Australian conductor, academic, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music. He conducted all the orchestras run by the ABC, most particularly the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, of which he was chief conductor from 1933 to 1950. Also, he was chief conductor of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic from 1927, becoming Honorary Life Conductor in the 1960s, and continuing his association with the RMP until 1978. In addition he was guest conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 1939. Discouraged by Australian audiences' lack of interest in music, he founded Children's Concerts. He also initiated the Young Performers Awards, which continue to showcase emerging international talent. He introduced Australian audiences to the works of Anton Bruckner, Dmitri Shostakovich, Béla Bartók and William Walton, and promoted Australian composers. In 1949 he became the first Australian ever to be knighted fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peeping Tom (1960 Film)
''Peeping Tom'' is a 1960 British psychological horror-thriller film directed by Michael Powell, written by Leo Marks, and starring Carl Boehm, Anna Massey, and Moira Shearer. The film revolves around a serial killer who murders women while using a portable film camera to record their dying expressions of terror. Its title derives from the expression "peeping Tom", which describes a voyeur. The film's controversial subject matter and its extremely harsh reception by critics had a severely negative impact on Powell's career as a director in the United Kingdom. However, it attracted a cult following, and in later years, it has been re-evaluated and is now widely considered a masterpiece, and a progenitor of the contemporary slasher film. The British Film Institute named it the 78th greatest British film of all time, and in 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for '' Time Out'' magazine saw it ranked the 27th best British film ever. The music score ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Powell (director)
Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notably ''The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'' (1943), ''A Canterbury Tale'' (1944), ''I Know Where I'm Going!'' (1945), '' A Matter of Life and Death'' (1946, also called ''Stairway to Heaven''), ''Black Narcissus'' (1947), '' The Red Shoes'' (1948), and ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' (1951). His later controversial 1960 film ''Peeping Tom'', while today considered a classic, and a contender as the first "slasher", was so vilified on first release that his career was seriously damaged. Many filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and George A. Romero have cited Powell as an influence. In 1981, he received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award along with his partner Pressburger, the highest honour the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Easdale
Brian Easdale (10 August 1909 – 30 October 1995) was a British composer of operatic, orchestral, choral and film music, best known for his ballet film score ''The Red Shoes'' of 1948. Life Easdale was born in Manchester, and was educated at Westminster Abbey School and the Royal College of Music. At the latter institution he was a pupil of Armstrong Gibbs (composition) and Gordon Jacob (orchestration). His London introduction as a composer came through a concert of his own music he organised (shared with Herbert Murrill) at the Wigmore Hall on 1 July 1931, which attracted press notices. The concert included the Piano Sonata (1929), String Trio (1931) and five pieces accompanying recited texts by his sister, the poet Joan Adeney Easdale. By the 1930s Easdale was living in London, in a Hampstead bed-sit. His downstairs neighbour, the poet Louis MacNeice, suggested to him that he should work for John Grierson's GPO Film Unit, where MacNeice's fellow poet W. H. Auden was alre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Parsons (pianist)
Geoffrey Penwill Parsons AO OBE (15 June 192926 January 1995) was an Australian pianist, most particularly notable as an accompanist to singers and instrumentalists. After the retirement of Gerald Moore, he was generally considered the world's finest and most sympathetic accompanist of lieder singers, "elevating the role of the accompanist to new heights with his musicality, authority and quiet strength of playing". Biography Geoffrey Parsons was born in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield, to a working-class family. He had two older brothers and a large extended family. He originally intended to study architecture, but his love of music prevailed. From 1941 to 1948 he studied with Winifred Burston (a student of Ferruccio Busoni) at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music (where a family friend, George Vern Barnett, was on the piano staff) and under the general tutelage of Eugene Goossens. He won the ABC's Instrumental and Vocal Competition in 1947 with a performance of Bra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Sitsky
Lazar "Larry" Sitsky (born 10 September 1934) is an Australian composer, pianist, and music educator and scholar. His long term legacy is still to be assessed, but through his work to date he has made a significant contribution to the Australian music tradition.Cotter (2004a) p. 6. Sitsky was the first Australian to be invited to the USSR on a cultural exchange visit, organised by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in 1977. He has received many awards for his compositions: the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award in 1968, and again in 1981; the Alfred Hill Memorial Prize for his String Quartet in 1968; a China Fellowship in 1983; a Fulbright Award in 1988–89, and an Advance Australia Award for achievement in music (1989). He has also been awarded the inaugural prize from the Fellowship of Composers (1989), the first National Critics' Award, and the inaugural Australian Composers' Fellowship presented by the Music Board of the Australia Council, which gave him the o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
