Omaha Symphony
   HOME
*





Omaha Symphony
The Omaha Symphony is a professional orchestra performing more than 200 concerts and presentations annually in Omaha, Nebraska and throughout the orchestra's home region. The orchestra was established in 1921. It is considered a major American orchestra, classified under "Group 2" among the League of American Orchestras, which ranks symphony orchestras by annual budget, with Group 1 the largest and Group 8 the smallest. Its annual budget in 2012 was approximately $7 million. The symphony has a $30 million endowment. The orchestra's home and principal venue is the 2,005-seat Holland Performing Arts Center, the $100 million purpose-built facility designed by Polshek Partnership that opened in October 2005. In a review, The Dallas Morning News called the Holland "one of the country's best-sounding" symphony halls. Its music director since 2005 is Thomas Wilkins. Wilkins lives in Omaha. He also is principal guest conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, which is under the auspices o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Holland Performing Arts Center
The Holland Performing Arts Center is a performing arts facility located on 13th and Douglas Streets in downtown Downtown Omaha, Nebraska in the United States; it opened in October 2005. Designed by Omaha architectural firm HDR, Inc. in collaboration with Polshek Partnership Architects, the structure is owned and managed by Omaha Performing Arts, and specializes in events requiring an environment with good acoustics, including performances by touring jazz, blues and popular entertainers, as well as the Omaha Symphony Orchestra and Omaha Area Youth Orchestra. Kirkegaard Associates provided acoustics consulting and New York firm Fisher Dachs Associates provided theater planning and design consultation. Performance and other facilities The Center includes several performance areas. The Peter Kiewit Concert Hall seats 2,005 and has a stage size of 64 feet by 48 feet; it is modeled after European "shoebox" shaped halls. The Suzanne and Walter Scott Recital Hall is a "black box" spac ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Joshua Bell
Joshua David Bell (born December 9, 1967) is an American violinist and conductor. He plays the Gibson Stradivarius. Early life and education Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, to Shirley Bell, a therapist, and Alan P. Bell, a psychologist, professor emeritus at Indiana University (IU), and former Kinsey researcher. His father is of Scottish descent and his mother is Jewish (her father was born in Mandatory Palestine and her mother was from Minsk). Bell began playing the violin at age four after his mother discovered that he had taken rubber bands from around the house and stretched them across the handles of his nine dresser drawers to pluck out music he had heard her play on the piano. His parents got a scaled-to-size violin for him when he was five and started giving him lessons. Bell took to the instrument but had an otherwise normal Indiana childhood, playing video games and excelling at sports, especially tennis and bowling. He placed in a national tennis tournament ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Joseph Littau
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic countries. In Portuguese and Spanish, the name is "José". In Arabic, including in the Quran, the name is spelled '' Yūsuf''. In Persian, the name is "Yousef". The name has enjoyed significant popularity in its many forms in numerous countries, and ''Joseph'' was one of the two names, along with ''Robert'', to have remained in the top 10 boys' names list in the US from 1925 to 1972. It is especially common in contemporary Israel, as either "Yossi" or "Yossef", and in Italy, where the name "Giuseppe" was the most common male name in the 20th century. In the first century CE, Joseph was the second most popular male name for Palestine Jews. In the Book of Genesis Joseph is Jacob's eleventh son and Rachel's first son, and k ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Sandor Harmati
Sandor Harmati (9 July 18924 April 1936) was a Hungarian-American violinist, conductor and composer, best known for his song "Bluebird of Happiness" written in 1934 for Jan Peerce. Biography Sandor Harmati (''Harmati Sándor'' in Hungarian orthography) was born into a Jewish family in Budapest on 9 July 1892. He studied at the Budapest Music Academy in 1909, becoming a professor at age 17. From 1910 to 1912 he was Concertmaster of the Hungarian State Orchestra. He emigrated to the United States in 1914. From 1917 to 1921 he played with the Letz String Quartet, becoming leader in 1922; and the Elki Piano Trio (Ernö Rapée, piano; Paul Gruppe, cello; Sandor Harmati, violin). From 1922 to 1925 he played first violin with the Lenox String Quartet, which he co-founded. In 1921 Sandor Harmati was a founding member of the American Music Guild, created by a group of young American composers "to learn each other's music and to present worthy works by other American composers to the Ne ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Henry Cox (musical Director)
Henry Cox (December 1832 - ?) was an American shoemaker and politician, who served as a state legislator in Virginia. He served several terms in the Virginia House of Delegates. He represented Dinwiddie County. He married and had two daughters. He was born in Powhatan County Powhatan County () is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 30,033. Its county seat is Powhatan. Powhatan County is included in the Greater Richmond Region. The James River forms the cou .... He and his family moved to Washington D.C. about 1881. References Members of the Virginia House of Delegates 1832 births Year of death missing {{Virginia-politician-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Joseph Schwantner
Joseph Clyde Schwantner (born March 22, 1943, Chicago, Illinois) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize. Schwantner is prolific, with many works to his credit. His style is coloristic and eclectic, drawing on such diverse elements as French impressionism, African drumming, and minimalism. His orchestral work '' Aftertones of Infinity'' received the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Biographical information Schwantner began his musical study at an early age in classical guitar; this study also incorporated the genres of jazz and folk. He also played the tuba in his high school orchestra. His first compositional aspirations were noticed by his guitar teacher who consistently experienced Schwantner elaborating on pieces he would be studying. From this, Schwantner's teacher suggested he collect these ideas and create his own musical composition. One of his e ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. Early life and education Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington. At age 11, he entered the University of Washington to study composition privately with George Frederick McKay and John Verrall and piano with Madame Berthe Poncy Jacobson. "He later studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College while working on his Master of Arts degree, with Leland Smith at Stanford University while working on his D.M.A., and with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received the 2ème Prix de Composition". Career Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for '' 12 New Etudes for Piano''. In the fall of 1994, he was named ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Thomas Briccetti
Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (other) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the Apostle * Thomas (bishop of the East Angles) (fl. 640s–650s), medieval Bishop of the East Angles * Thomas (Archdeacon of Barnstaple) (fl. 1203), Archdeacon of Barnstaple * Thomas, Count of Perche (1195–1217), Count of Perche * Thomas (bishop of Finland) (1248), first known Bishop of Finland * Thomas, Earl of Mar (1330–1377), 14th-century Earl, Aberdeen, Scotland Geography Places in the United States * Thomas, Illinois * Thomas, Indiana * Thomas, Oklahoma * Thomas, Oregon * Thomas, South Dakota * Thomas, Virginia * Thomas, Washington * Thomas, West Virginia * Thomas County (other) * Thomas Township (other) Elsewhere * Thomas Glacier (Greenland) Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Thomas'' (Burton novel) 1969 nove ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Henry Cowell
Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 2022.Campbell, Brett (2014)"Liberating Henry Cowell's Music at San Quentin" ''San Francisco Classical Voice''. Retrieved 19 June 2022. Earning a reputation as an extremely controversial performer and eccentric composer, Cowell became a leading figure of American avant-garde music for the first half of the 20th century — his writings and music serving as a great influence to similar artists at the time, including Lou Harrison, George Antheil, and John Cage, among others.Swed, Mark (2010)"Critic's notebook: Revelatory Henry Cowell revival at Lincoln Center" ''The Los Angeles Times''. Retrieved 19 June 2022. He is considered one of America's most important and influential composers. Cowell was mostly self-taught and developed a unique musical ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Purple Rhapsody
''Purple Rhapsody'' is a viola concerto by the American composer Joan Tower. The work was jointly commissioned by the Omaha Symphony Orchestra with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra, and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra with a grant from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress. It was first performed on November 4, 2005, by the Omaha Symphony Orchestra and the violist Paul Neubauer, to whom the piece is dedicated. Composition ''Purple Rhapsody'' has a duration of roughly 18 minutes and is composed in one continuous movement. Tower described the origins of the title in the score program notes, writing, "The sound of the viola has always reminded me of the color purple-a deep kind of luscious purple." This mental association was also reflected in her work ''Wild Purple'', her first solo viola composition for Paul Neubauer. Wh ...
[...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]  


Michael Daugherty
Michael Kevin Daugherty (born April 28, 1954) is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired ''Metropolis Symphony'' for Orchestra (1988–93), ''Dead Elvis'' for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993), '' Jackie O'' (1997), ''Niagara Falls'' for Symphonic Band (1997), ''UFO'' for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) and for Symphonic Band (2000), ''Bells for Stokowski'' from ''Philadelphia Stories'' for Orchestra (2001) and for Symphonic Band (2002), '' Fire and Blood'' for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2003) inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, ''Time Machine'' for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003), ''Ghost Ranch'' for Orchestra (2005), ''Deus ex Machina'' for Piano and Orchestra (2007), ''Labyrinth of Love'' for Soprano and Chamber Winds (2012), ''American Gothic'' for Orchestra (2013), and ''Tales of Hemingway'' for Cello and Orchestra ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]