|
John Donald Robb
John Donald Robb (June 12, 1892 – January 6, 1989) was an American composer, ethnomusicologist, arts administrator, and attorney. Biography Early life A symphony concert in his hometown of Minneapolis when he was a pre-teen planted the seed for Robb's lifelong desire to be a composer. He began studying cello, and then pipe organ. While pursuing an undergraduate degree in English literature at Yale University, Robb continued his music education, including a course taught by Horatio Parker. Despite his passion for music, Robb turned to a career in the law. He attended both the University of Minnesota Law School and Harvard Law School. Robb worked as an international bond lawyer in New York City, but always made time for his music aspirations. During a 1935–36 leave of absence from his law firm, he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. It was her encouragement that gave him the confidence to pursue his dream of being a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horatio Parker
Horatio William Parker (September 15, 1863 – December 18, 1919) was an American composer, organist and teacher. He was a central figure in musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in the late 19th century, and is best remembered as the undergraduate teacher of Charles Ives while the composer attended Yale University. Biography He was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts. His earliest lessons were with his mother. He then studied in Boston with George Whitefield Chadwick, Stephen A. Emery, and John Orth. His first professional position was playing the organ at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Dedham, Massachusetts. He was paid a salary of roughly $300 a year from September 1880 to January 1882. He finished his formal education in Europe, a common destination for a young American composer in the 1880s, where he studied in Munich with Josef Rheinberger. His fellow students at the Royal Music School in MunichCharles H. Kaufman. "Whiting, Arthur Battelle." ''Grove Music Online''. ''Oxf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness (; March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American-Armenian composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and 434 opus numbers. The true tally is well over 500 surviving works, since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works. ''The Boston Globe'' music critic Richard Buell wrote: "Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer (rather as Ernest Bloch is seen as a Jewish composer), his output assimilates the music of many cultures. What may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic." Early life He was born as Alan Vaness Chakmakjian ( hy, Ալան Յարութիւն Չաքմաքճեան)Julia Michaelyan"An Interview with Alan Hovhaness" ''Ararat'' 45, v. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1971), pp. 19–31. Reprinted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Tutschku
Hans Tutschku (born 1966) is a German composer. Born in Weimar, Tutschku has been a member of the Ensemble for Intuitive Music Weimar since 1982. He studied composition of electronic music at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden, and since 1989 has participated in several concert cycles of Karlheinz Stockhausen to study the art of the sound direction. He further studied sonology and electroacoustic composition in 1991–92 at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, the Netherlands. In 1994 there followed a one-year study residency at IRCAM in Paris. He taught during 1995–1996 as a guest professor of electroacoustic composition in Weimar. In 1996, he participated in composition workshops with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. From 1997 until 2001 he taught electroacoustic composition at IRCAM in Paris and from 2001 to 2004 taught at the Conservatory of Montbéliard. In May 2003 he completed a doctorate (Ph.D.) with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet. Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex improvisation often involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His technique has been compared to percussion. Referring to the number of keys on a standard piano, Val Wilmer used the phrase "eighty-eight tuned drums" to describe Taylor's style. He has been referred to as being "like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings". Early life and education Cecil Percival Taylor was born on March 25, 1929, in Long Island City, Queens, and raised in Corona, Queens. Ratliff, Ben (May 3, 2012)"Lessons From the Dean of the School of Improv" ''The New York Times''. Retrieved December 9, 2017: "I recently spoke with the 83-year-old improvising pianist Cecil Taylor for about five hours over two days. One day was at his three-story home ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Tower
Joan Tower (born September 6, 1938)http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&ComposerId_2872=1605 Biography on Schirmer is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by ''The New Yorker'' as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, '' Sequoia'' (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including '' Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman'', which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's ''Fanfare for the Common Man'', the '' Island Prelude'', five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Although he wrote works for piano, orchestra and chamber ensemble and solo instruments, he considered all of his music vocal and song-like in nature. Rorem's interest in song centered not around the human voice, but the setting of poetry, as he was deeply familiar with and fond of English literature. A writer himself, he kept—and later published—numerous diaries in which he spoke candidly of his exchanges and relationships with many cultural figures of America and France. Born in Richmond, Indiana, Rorem found an early interest in music, studying with Margaret Bonds and Leo Sowerby among others. He developed a strong enthusiasm for French music—particularly the Impressionist composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel—which remained th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincent Persichetti
Vincent Ludwig Persichetti (June 6, 1915 – August 14, 1987) was an American composer, teacher, and pianist. An important musical educator and writer, he was known for his integration of various new ideas in musical composition into his own work and teaching, as well as for training many noted composers in composition at the Juilliard School. His students at Juilliard included Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Bruce Adolphe, Louis Calabro, Moshe Cotel, Michael Jeffrey Shapiro, Laurie Spiegel, Kenneth Fuchs, Richard Danielpour, Lawrence Dillon, Peter Schickele, Lowell Liebermann, Robert Witt, Elena Ruehr, William Schimmel, Leonardo Balada, Gitta Steiner, Hank Beebe, Roland Wiggins, Randell Croley and Leo Brouwer. He also taught composition to Joseph Willcox Jenkins and conductor James DePreist at the Philadelphia Conservatory. Life Persichetti was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1915. Though neither of his parents was a musician, his musical education began early. Persic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hilda Paredes
Hilda Paredes (born Tehuacan, Puebla, 1957) is one of Mexico's leading contemporary composers, and has received many prestigious awards for her work. She currently resides in London, and is married to the noted English violinist, Irvine Arditti. Biography Paredes was born in Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico, where she studied the piano and flute. At the age of 21, she went to London for college where she continued her studies and performances as a flutist. She regularly performed, and did arrangements for popular and classical music with several ensembles. During these times she was beginning to complete her own compositions. As a student she attended master classes at Dartington Summer School, studied with Peter Maxwell Davies and Richard Rodney Bennett. After graduating at the Guildhall School of Music, she obtained her Master of Arts at City University in London and completed her PhD at Manchester University. Her collaboration with choreographers led her to receive the Music f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros authored books, formulated new music theories, and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "deep listening" and "sonic awareness", drawing on metaphors from cybernetics. She was an Eyebeam resident. Early life and career Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas. She started to play music as early as kindergarten, and at nine years of age she began to play the accordion, received from her mother, a pianist, because of its popularity in the 1940s.Baker, Alan"An interview with Pauline Oliveros" January 2003. '' ... [...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] |
Gordon Mumma
Gordon Mumma (born March 30, 1935, in Framingham, Massachusetts) is an American composer. He is known most for his work with electronics, many devices of which he builds himself, and for his performances on horn. Biography Mumma entered the University of Michigan in 1952 at age 17, after dropping out of high school. He dropped out of Michigan after a year, but the connections he made in Ann Arbor were the foundation of much of his musical career. His early work was in piano, and his musical development drew on traditional composers such as Bach and Haydn, as well as modern composers such as Bartók, Schoenberg, Webern, and Ives.Fillion, Michell"Gordon Mumma's Music for Solo Piano (1960–2001)" Liner notes to ''GORDON MUMMA - MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO 1960–2001''. New World Records. Mumma's performances on piano were often in the context of piano ensembles, partnered with John Cage, David Tudor, and other performers. He toured internationally in the 1960s in a two-piano performance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Lewis (pianist)
John Aaron Lewis (May 3, 1920 – March 29, 2001) was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger, best known as the founder and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Early life John Lewis was born in La Grange, Illinois, and after his parents' divorce moved with his mother, a trained singer, to Albuquerque, New Mexico when he was two months old. She died from peritonitis when he was four and he was raised by his grandmother and great-grandmother. He began learning classical music and piano at the age of seven. His family was musical and had a family band that allowed him to play frequently and he also played in a Boy Scout music group. Lyons, p. 77. Even though he learned piano by playing the classics, he was exposed to jazz from an early age because his aunt loved to dance and he would listen to the music she played. He attended the University of New Mexico, where he led a small dance band that he formed Giddins, p. 378. and double majored in Anthropology and Musi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> John Lewis (pianist)")