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Orchestra Of The Swan
Orchestra of the Swan is a British professional chamber orchestra based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. It is Resident Orchestra at the Royal Birmingham ConservatoireThe Courtyard Hereford Warwick Hall and the Stratford Play House with regular concert series at Number 8 Pershore and Cheltenham Town Hall. Founded in 1995 by David Curtis, the orchestra has been creatively led by Artistic Director David Le Page since 2018. It gives over 45 concerts annually and is increasing its overseas touring. In 2014 the orchestra undertook its first highly successful tour to China. In 2016 The Swan performed at the Istanbul International Festival, and in 2017-18 toured to Mexico and New York (Carnegie Hall). The Swan has also toured the UK with groups such as Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel and James, with sell-out performances at London's Albert Hall. Recordings and digital concerts have been Gramophone Choice, Album of the Week on Classic Fm and Scala Radio (UK) and Washington Public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Orchestra
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances. Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends". For more than 100 years, chamber music was played primarily by amateur musicians in their homes, and even today, when chamber music performance has migrated from the home to the concert hall, many musicians, amateur and professional, still play chamber music for their own pleasure. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for playing solo or symphonic works. J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon (), commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and south-west of Warwick. The town is the southernmost point of the Arden area on the edge of the Cotswolds. In the 2021 census Stratford had a population of 30,495; an increase from 27,894 in the 2011 census and 22,338 in the 2001 Census. Stratford was originally inhabited by Britons before Anglo-Saxons and remained a village before the lord of the manor, John of Coutances, set out plans to develop it into a town in 1196. In that same year, Stratford was granted a charter from King Richard I to hold a weekly market in the town, giving it its status as a market town. As a result, Stratford experienced an increase in trade and commerce as well as urban expansion. Stratford is a popular touris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon and Victorian novelist George Eliot, (born Mary Ann Evans), at Nuneaton. Other significant towns include Rugby, Leamington Spa, Bedworth, Kenilworth and Atherstone. The county offers a mix of historic towns and large rural areas. It is a popular destination for international and domestic tourists to explore both medieval and more recent history. The county is divided into five districts of North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Rugby, Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon. The current county boundaries were set in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972. The historic county boundaries included Coventry, Sutton Coldfield and Solihull, as well as much of Birmingham and Tamworth. Geography Warwickshire is bordered by Leicestershire to the nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is a music school, drama school and concert venue in Birmingham, England. It provides professional education in music, acting, and related disciplines up to postgraduate level. It is a centre for scholarly research and doctorate-level study in areas such as performance practice, composition, musicology and music history. It is the only one of the nine conservatoires in the United Kingdom that is also part of a faculty of a university, in this case Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. It is a member of the Federation of Drama Schools, and a founder member of Conservatoires UK. The conservatoire houses a 500-seat concert hall and other performance spaces including a recital hall, organ studio, and a dedicated jazz club. It was founded in 1886 as the Birmingham School of Music, the first music school to be established in England outside London. History The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire was founded in 1886 as the Birmingham Sch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Harley
Steve Harley (born Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice; 27 February 1951) is an English singer and songwriter, best known as frontman of the rock group Cockney Rebel, with whom he still tours, albeit with frequent and significant personnel changes. Early life Harley was born in 1951 in Deptford, London, the second of five children. His father was a milkman and his mother a semi-professional jazz singer. During the summer of 1953, Harley contracted polio, causing him to spend four years in hospital between the ages of three and 16. He underwent two major surgeries in 1963 and 1966. After recovering from the first operation at the age of 12, Harley was introduced to the poetry of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, the prose of John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, and the music of Bob Dylan, which inspired him to a career of words and music. From the age of nine, Harley began taking classical violin lessons and would later play as part of his grammar school orchestra. Age ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James (band)
James are an English rock band from Manchester, who were formed in 1982. They had popularity throughout the 1990s, with four top 10s on the UK Singles Chart and nine top 10s on the UK Albums Chart. The band's best-known singles include " Come Home", " Sit Down", "She's a Star" and " Laid", which also became a hit on American college radio. Following the departure of lead singer Tim Booth in 2001, the band became inactive, but reunited in January 2007 and have gone on to produce a further seven albums. Live performance has continually remained a central part of the band's output. As of 2010, the band had sold more than 25 million albums worldwide. History Formation and early releases: 1982–1987 James were formed in 1982 in Whalley Range, Manchester, when Paul Gilbertson persuaded his friend Jim Glennie to buy a bass guitar and form a band with him. Their line-up solidified when Gavan Whelan joined on drums. They played a string of gigs under the names Venereal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It can seat 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 151 year history the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings by Suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Gál
Hans Gál OBE (5 August 1890 – 3 October 1987) was an Austrian composer, pedagogue, musicologist, and author, who emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1938. Life Gál was born to a Jewish family in the small village of Brunn am Gebirge, Lower Austria, just outside Vienna, the son of a doctor, Josef Gál. In 1909, his piano teacher Richard Robert (who also taught George Szell, Rudolf Serkin and Clara Haskil) appointed Gál as a teacher when he became director of the New Vienna Conservatory. From 1909 to 1913, Gál studied music history at the University of Vienna under music historian Guido Adler, who published Gál's doctoral dissertation on the style of the young Beethoven in his own ''Studien zur Musikwissenschaft''. From 1909 to 1911, Gál studied composition privately with Eusebius Mandyczewski, who had been a close friend of Johannes Brahms, and with whom he later edited ten volumes of the Complete Edition of Brahms's works, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1926. Mand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Woods
Kenneth Allen Woods (born 1968) is an American conductor, composer and cellist, resident in the UK. Early career Woods studied conducting at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His subsequent conducting mentors have included Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, Jorma Panula and Gerhard Samuel. In 2000, Zinman selected Woods to be a fellow in the inaugural class of the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. In 2001, Slatkin chose Woods as one of four participants in the Kennedy Center National Conducting Institute. Woods was music director of the Dayton Philharmonic in 1999, of the Grande Ronde Symphony from 1999 to 2002, and of the Oregon East Symphony (OES) from 2000 to 2009. From 1999 to 2002, he was head of conducting, strings and chamber music at Eastern Oregon University. UK career In 2009, Woods was appointed principal guest conductor of the Orchestra of the Swan. His recording projects with the Orchestra of the Swan included the first complete recor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John McCabe (composer)
John McCabe (21 April 1939 – 13 February 2015) was a British composer and pianist. He created works in many different forms, including symphonies, ballets, and solo works for the piano. He served as director of the London College of Music from 1983 to 1990. Guy Rickards praised him as "one of Britain's finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies". Early life and education McCabe was born in Huyton, Liverpool on 21 April 1939. His father was an Irish physicist and his German/Finnish mother, Elisabeth Herlitzius, was an amateur violinist. McCabe was badly burned in an accident when he was a child and was home schooled for eight years. During this time, McCabe said that there was "a lot of music in the house", which inspired his future career. He explained "My mother was a very good amateur violinist and there were records and printed music everywhere. I thought that if all these guys – Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Saxton
Robert Saxton (born 8 October 1953 in London) is a British composer. Biography Robert Saxton was born in London and started composing at the age of six. He was educated at Bryanston School. Guidance in early years from Benjamin Britten and Elisabeth Lutyens was followed by periods of study at Cambridge and Oxford Universities with Robin Holloway and Robert Sherlaw Johnson respectively, and also with Luciano Berio. Saxton won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in the Netherlands at age 21. In 1986, he was awarded the Fulbright Arts Fellowship to the USA, where he was in residence at Princeton and an assistant to Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood. In 1995 he co-directed the composers' course on Hoy, with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He has directed the composers' course at Dartington International Summer School on several occasions and was artistic director of Opera Lab. He has also been a regular member of the BBC TV 4 (digital) Proms broadcasting commentary team and was a memb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deborah Pritchard
Deborah Pritchard is an award-winning British composer. She is known for her concert works, a compositional approach informed by her Synesthesia, synaesthesia, and her work in response to Visual arts, visual artists, most notably Marc Chagall and Maggi Hambling. She also paints music in the form of visualisations and music maps. The London Symphony Orchestra premiered her large orchestral piece ''The Angel Standing in the Sun'' at LSO St Lukes in 2015, her violin concerto ''Calandra'' was premiered by Jennifer Pike and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, London in 2022 and ''Radiance'' for solo cello, responding to ''The Peace Window'' by Marc Chagall at the United Nations, was premiere by Natalie Clein at the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival in 2022. She won a British Composer Awards, British Composer Award for her solo violin piece ''Inside Colour'' in 2017, Education Pritchard was awarded an undergraduate degree and postgraduate diploma from the Guildhall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
