Oregon Symphony
The Oregon Symphony is an American symphony orchestra based in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded as the 'Portland Symphony Society' in 1896, it is the sixth oldest orchestra in the United States, and oldest in the Western United States. Its home venue is the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland's Cultural District. History The precursor ensemble to the orchestra gave its first concert at the Marquam Grand Theatre on October 30, 1896, with W.H. Kinross conducting 33 performers. Included on the first program was Joseph Haydn's '' Surprise Symphony''. By 1899, the orchestra was performing an annual concert series (with occasional lulls). In 1902, the orchestra made its first tour of the state. Orchestra members shared ticket revenues as a cooperative, and elected their conductors in the early years. Royal Academy of Music-trained musician Carl Denton was a major force in helping the Portland Symphony Society enter a new era. The board of directors was elec ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous county in Oregon. Portland had a population of 652,503, making it the 26th-most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous in the United States. About half of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area. Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1840s, near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city's early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Willem Van Hoogstraten
Willem van Hoogstraten (March 18, 1884 – September 11, 1965) was a Dutch violinist and conductor. Van Hoogstraten was born in Utrecht, and studied the violin from age eight including studies with Alexander Schmuller, and enrolled at the conservatory in Cologne at age sixteen where he studied with Bram Eldering. He also studied violin with Otakar Ševcik in Prague. He began his career as the conductor at a health resort, and then conducted the orchestra at Kleefeld 1914-1918. He was married for sixteen years, from 1911–1927, to the pianist Elly Ney. They met in 1907 at the conservatory in Cologne where Ney was a teacher. They traveled throughout Europe performing chamber music, recruiting cellist Fritz Reitz to form a trio. They made their home at Tutzing on the Starnberger See. The two recorded the final three Beethoven piano concertos together for Colosseum Records. A daughter was born to them, the actress Eleonore van Hoogstraten. The couple divorced in 1927. Van Hoogstr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Piero Bellugi
Piero Bellugi (14 July 1924 – 10 June 2012) was an Italian orchestral conductor. Life Bellugi was born in Florence, in Tuscany, on 14 July 1924. He took a diploma in violin at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in that city, studying under . He studied conducting under Paul van Kempen at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and under Igor Markevitch at the summer academy of the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg in Austria. In 1951, with the help of a study grant, he travelled to the United States, where he studied under William Steinberg and Rafael Kubelík, and at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood under Leonard Bernstein. On 10 August 1951 he conducted a performance of '' Ma mère l'oye'' by Maurice Ravel there. From 1954 to 1956 he was conductor of the Tri-City Symphony Orchestra in Davenport, Iowa. Between 1956 and 1961 he was resident conductor of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra and of the Portland Symphony Orchestra. From 1960 he received invitations t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theodore Bloomfield
Theodore Robert Bloomfield (June 14, 1923 – April 1, 1998) was an American conductor. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, he studied music at Oberlin College in Ohio and conducting with Edgar Schenkman for two years on a fellowship at the Juilliard School in Manhattan. He studied French horn to gain experience in orchestral performance, and he also studied piano with the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. For two summers, he studied conducting with Pierre Monteux in Hancock, Maine. In 1946, Monteux conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the premiere of Bloomfield's transcription of Bach’s '' Toccata and Fugue in C major''. Artur Rodzinski conducted the New York Philharmonic premiere of Bloomfield’s Toccata and Fugue transcription on October 3, 1946. Olin Downes review stated “This is a sound job, one free from oversimplification or the sensational effects in which so many modern transcriptions indulge. Mr. Bloomfield tells us that he tried to instrumentate as he believes ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music. Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913). The last transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase", which continued with works such as '' Renard'', ''L'Histoire du soldat,'' and ''Les noces'', was followed in the 1920s by a period ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thomas Schippers
Thomas Schippers (9 March 1930 – 16 December 1977) was an American conductor. He was highly regarded for his work in opera. Biography Of Dutch ancestry and son of the owner of a large appliance store, Schippers was born in Portage, Michigan. He began playing piano at age four. After graduating from high school at age 13, he attended the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School. Schippers made his debut at the New York City Opera at age twenty-one, and the Metropolitan Opera at twenty-five. He conducted world premieres of now well-known music by Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber. He conducted child actor Chet Allen in a theatrical version of Menotti's ''Amahl and the Night Visitors''. Schippers conducted in all the major opera houses of the United States and Europe, most notably the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala, and founded Italy's Spoleto festival with Menotti and once described his perfect orchestra as being composed of "one-third Italian musicians for their line, o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dimitri Mitropoulos
Dimitri Mitropoulos ( el, Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος; The dates 18 February 1896 and 1 March 1896 both appear in the literature. Many of Mitropoulos's early interviews and program notes gave 18 February. In his later interviews, however, the conductor said he was born on 1 March, and most American sources also show this birthdate. The reason for the different dates is that Greece was still using the Julian calendar in 1896, and did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1923, when Mitropulos was 27. By then, the calendars were 13 days apart, but in 1896 they were only 12 days apart. The date 18 February 1896 under the Julian calendar corresponded to 1 March 1896 in the Gregorian. The earlier sources used the original Julian calendar date, and the later sources used the equivalent Gregorian date. – 2 November 1960) was a Greek conductor, pianist, and composer. Life and career Mitropoulos was born in Athens, the son of Yannis and Angelikē Mitropoulos. His father ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Enrique Jordá
Enrique Jordá (March 24, 1911 – March 18, 1996) was a Spanish-American conductor. Born in San Sebastián (Guipúzcoa, Spain), later on he was a naturalized US citizen. After conducting in Madrid, Cape Town and Antwerp, he was music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1954 to 1963. He made several stereophonic recordings in San Francisco for RCA Victor in 1957 and 1958. He made several highly acclaimed recordings for Decca in the late 1940s and early 1950s of Spanish music with the London Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra and Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, including two recordings of Nights in The Gardens of Spain with Clifford Curzon as soloist. Several of these have been reissued on the Dutton label. During his tenure in San Francisco he gave the world premiere of Joaquín Rodrigo's ''Fantasía para un gentilhombre'' with Andrés Segovia as the soloist. Jorda made recordings with both the San Francisco Symphony and the Symphony of the Air, several ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carlos Chávez
Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez (13 June 1899 – 2 August 1978) was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six symphonies, the second, or '' Sinfonía india'', which uses native Yaqui percussion instruments, is probably the most popular. Biography The seventh child of a criollo family, Chávez was born on Tacuba Avenue in Mexico City, near the suburb of Popotla. His paternal grandfather, José María Chávez Alonso, a former governor of the state of Aguascalientes, had been executed by the French Army in April 1864. His father, Augustín Chávez, who died when Carlos was barely three years old, invented a plough that was produced and used in the United States. Carlos had his first piano lessons from his brother Manuel, and later on he was taught piano by Asunción Parra, Manuel Ponce, and Pedro Luis Ozagón, and har ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Sample (conductor)
James W. Sample (October 8, 1910 – October 7, 1995) was an American conductor. Biography Sample was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and began studying the violin at age ten and piano at age eleven. By the age of twenty he conducted his first symphony in Minneapolis. He earned his bachelor’s in music degree at the MacPhail School of Music in 1930. In Europe, he studied for four years receiving a diploma at the Mozarteum Salzburg in 1934, and also studied with Pierre Monteux who was conducting the Paris Symphony. Sample also studied with Henri Verbrugghen and Bernhard Paumgartner. He also received a doctorate in music in 1942 from the New York College of Music and a doctor of laws degree from Gannon College in 1963. Sample was the Master of Music at The Blake School in Minneapolis 1929-1933. He also organized the Little Symphony of Minneapolis 1931-1933. Guest conducting in Austria and France occupied his musical efforts in 1933-1937. He was the conductor for the symphony ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Werner Janssen
Werner Janssen (born Werner Alexander Oscar Janssen;Werner Alexander Oscar Janssen in the New York, New York, U.S., Birth Certificate Number: 22344 ancestry.com. Accessed November 26, 2022. June 1, 1899 – September 19, 1990) was an American composer and conductor of classical music and s. He was the first New York-born conductor to lead the New York Philharmonic. For his film work he was nominated for six . |
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Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal. The WPA's first appropriation in 1935 was $4.9 billion (about $15 per person in the U.S., around 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools, and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing. The largest single project of the WPA was the Tennessee Valley Authority. At its peak ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |