HOME
*





Michael Collins (clarinetist)
Michael Collins (born 27 January 1962) is a British clarinetist. One of the most foremost clarinetists of his generation, he has served as the principal of the Philharmonia Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. Collins has performed widely as a soloist and played on over 35 recordings on several record labels. He has also served as the conductor of several orchestras and was the principal conductor of the City of London Sinfonia from 2010 to 2018. Early life Collins was born on 27 January 1962 in Isleworth, United Kingdom. He began playing clarinet aged seven after attending a London Symphony Orchestra performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's ''Scheherazade'' suite, which inspired him to take up the instrument. He went on to study clarinet at the Royal College of Music as a youth under David Hamilton and Thea King. Collins had previously attempted to learn the cello and violin but didn't fit the instruments well. At the age of 16, he won the 1978 BBC Young Musician woodwind prize and performe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Bachtrack
''Bachtrack'' is a London-based international online music magazine which publishes listings of classical music, opera, ballet and dance, as well as reviews of these genres, interviews and general feature articles. History Bachtrack Ltd was registered on 3 December 2007 by David Karlin and Alison Karlin. The website bachtrack.com was launched in January 2008, the following month. ''Bachtrack''s event finder initially covered the UK only. In 2009, coverage expanded to include the US and Europe. The finder permitted users to "search for events by date, country, city, festival, venue, work, composer or musician". By 2010, the site listed 7,000 events and was being described favourably by both local London and national UK press. ''Bachtrack''s first mobile app was launched in late 2009. In July 2010, ''Bachtrack'' was named as no. 5 in ''Classical Music'' magazine's top ten Web Winners. Later in 2010, ''Bachtrack'' started publishing reviews of classical music to accompany its l ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Nash Ensemble
The Nash Ensemble of London is an England, English chamber ensemble. It was founded by Artistic Director Amelia Freedman and Rodney Slatford in 1964, while they were students at the Royal Academy of Music, and was named after the Regent's Park, Nash Terraces around the academy. The Ensemble has won awards from the Edinburgh Festival Critics and the Royal Philharmonic Society, as well as a 2002 Gramophone Award for contemporary music. In addition to their classical music, classical repertoire, the Ensemble performs works by numerous contemporary composers, including Richard Rodney Bennett, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Peter Maxwell Davies, and has given premier performances of more than 200 works. Personnel Current members * Adrian Brendel (cello) * Clifford Benson (piano) * Philippa Davies (flute) * Richard Hosford (clarinet) * Gareth Hulse (oboe) * Ursula Leveaux (bassoon) * Duncan McTier (double bass) * Lawrence Power (viola ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Gnarly Buttons
''Gnarly Buttons'' is a composition for solo clarinet and chamber ensemble by the American composer John Adams. The London Sinfonietta and Present Music (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) co-commissioned the work. The work received its premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on October 19, 1996, with the London Sinfonietta, Michael Collins as solo clarinetist and the composer conducting. The work received its first Proms performance on 23 July 1998, conducted by Markus Stenz. The New York City premiere was in October 1997, with David Shifrin as the clarinet soloist and Ransom Wilson conducting musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. ''Gnarly Buttons'' is composed of three movements, with the following titles: :I. The Perilous Shore :II. Hoedown (Mad Cow) :III. Put Your Loving Arms Around Me In addition to the solo clarinet, the work is scored for thirteen musicians, including a banjo player (who doubles on mandolin and guitar), a cor anglais, a bassoon, a t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

John Adams (composer)
John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in minimalism. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, which are often centered around recent historical events. Apart from opera, his ''oeuvre'' includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic and piano music. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Adams grew up in a musical family, being regularly exposed to classical music, jazz, musical theatre and rock music. He attended Harvard University, studying with Kirchner, Sessions and Del Tredici among others. Though his earliest work was aligned with modernist music, he began to disagree with its tenets upon reading John Cage's '' Silence: Lectures and Writings''. Teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Adams developed his own minimalist aesthetic, which was first fully realized in ''Phrygian Gates'' (1977) a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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]  


picture info

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social life. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music and free it from Music of Germany, Teutonic influences. Vaughan Williams i ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the ''Enigma Variations'', the ''Pomp and Circumstance Marches'', concertos for Violin Concerto (Elgar), violin and Cello Concerto (Elgar), cello, and two symphony, symphonies. He also composed choral works, including ''The Dream of Gerontius'', chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-consci ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

BBC Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. The Proms were founded in 1895, and are now organised and broadcast by the BBC. Each season consists of concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, chamber music concerts at Cadogan Hall, additional Proms in the Park events across the UK on the Last Night of the Proms, and associated educational and children's events. The season is a significant event in British culture and in classical music. Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival". ''Prom'' is short for ''promenade concert'', a term which originally referred to outdoor concerts in London's pleasure gardens, where the audience was free to stroll around while the orchestra was playing. In the contex ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. The largest one is the Stern Auditorium, a five-story auditorium with 2,804 seats. Also part of the complex are the 599-seat Zankel Hall on Seventh Avenue, as well as the 268-seat Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall on 57th Street. Besides the auditoriums, Carnegie Hall contains offices on its t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Yamaha Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle division was established in 1955 as Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., which started as an affiliated company but later became independent, although Yamaha Corporation is still a major shareholder. History Nippon Gakki Co. Ltd. (currently Yamaha Corporation) was established in 1887 as a reed organ manufacturer by Torakusu Yamaha (山葉寅楠) in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture and was incorporated on 12 October 1897. In 1900, the company started the production of pianos. The first piano to be made in Japan was an upright built in 1900 by Torakusu Yamaha, founder of Nippon Gakki Co., Ltd. — later renamed Yamaha Corporation. The company's origins as a musical instrument manufacturer are still reflected today in the group's logo—a trio of interloc ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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]  


picture info

City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is a British orchestra based in Birmingham, England. It is the resident orchestra at Symphony Hall: a B:Music Venue in Birmingham, which has been its principal performance venue since 1991. Its administrative and rehearsal base is at the nearby CBSO Centre, where it also presents chamber concerts by members of the orchestra and guest performers. Each year the orchestra performs more than 150 concerts in Birmingham, the UK and around the world, playing music that ranges from classics to contemporary, film scores and even symphonic disco. With a far-reaching community programme and a family of choruses and youth ensembles, it is involved in every aspect of music-making in the Midlands. At its centre is a team of 90 superb professional musicians, and over a 100-year tradition of making the world's greatest music, in the heart of Birmingham. The CBSO has four choirs – the CBSO ChorusYouth Chorus
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]