Pierrot Ensemble
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Pierrot Ensemble
A Pierrot ensemble is a musical ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This ensemble is named after 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal work ''Pierrot Lunaire'', which includes the quintet of instruments above with a narrator (usually performed by a soprano). History The quintet of instruments used in ''Pierrot Lunaire'' has been used in the twentieth century by different groups, such as The Fires of London, who formed in 1965 as "The Pierrot Players" to perform Pierrot Lunaire, and continued to concertize with a varied classical and contemporary repertory. This group began to perform works arranged for these instruments and commission new works. While standard chamber ensembles (such as string quartets or piano trios) continued to be extremely popular among 20th-century composers, the Pierrot ensemble represents an example of the many kinds of non-standard chamber ensembles that have been used in classical music since the beginning of the ...
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Bass Clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare (in contrast to the regular A clarinet, which is quite common in classical music). Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, and occasionally in marching bands, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular. Someone who plays a bass clarinet is called a bass clarinettist or a bass clarinetist. Description Most modern bass clarinets are straight-bodied, with a small upturned silver-colored metal bell and curved metal neck. Early examples varied in shape, some having a doubled body making them look similar to bassoons. The bass clarinet is fairly heavy and is suppor ...
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Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann
Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann (1973) is a Peruvian composer, naturalized Brazilian, who currently resides in the United States. Biography Born in Lima, he began musical studies at the age of six, continuing to study the violin with Luis Fiestas and Veronique Daverio. In 1989, he and his family fled Peru for Brazil during the rise of the Maoist Shining Path. In Brazil, he continued musical studies at Faculdade Santa Marcelina with Alberto Jaffe (a student of Max Rostal) and Ayrton Pinto (a former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra). In 1998 he moved to the U.S.A. There he obtained a master's degree at Florida International University as a student of Fredrick Kaufman and, in 2004 he graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Boston University as a student of John Harbison and Lukas Foss His music has been performed world-wide by ensembles such as the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Sao Paulo Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Peruvian National Symphony ...
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Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician. Biography and works Early years Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, the son of German parents Elsie (Bernartz) and Arthur E. Schuller, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. He studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an accomplished French horn player and flute player. At age 15, he was already playing horn professionally with the American Ballet Theatre (1943) followed by an appointment as principal hornist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1943–45), and then the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, where he stayed until 1959. During his youth, he attended the Precollege Division at the Manhattan School of Music, later going on to teach at the school. But, already a high school dropout because he wanted to play professionally, Schuller never obtained a degree from any in ...
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Steven Mackey
Steven ("Steve") Mackey (born February 14, 1956) is an American composer, guitarist, and music educator. Life As a musician growing up listening to and performing vernacular American musics as well as classical music, Mackey's compositions are influenced by rock and jazz, though in an avant-garde vein. He favors the electric guitar and frequently performs his own compositions for the instrument, which include a concerto for electric guitar and orchestra (''Tuck and Roll'') and two works for electric guitar and string quartet (''Physical Property'' and ''Troubadour Songs''). As an electric guitar soloist, he has performed with the Kronos Quartet (''Short Stories''), the Arditti Quartet, New World Symphony, Dutch Radio Symphony, and London Sinfonietta. Among Mackey's notable awards include a Guggenheim fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, two awards from the Kennedy Center for the performing arts, and the Stoeger Pr ...
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Zhou Long
Zhou Long (; born July 8, 1953) is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Biography Zhou Long was born in Beijing, China. Born into an artistic family, he began studying piano from an early age. Due to the artistic restrictions implemented during the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to delay his piano studies and live on a state-run farm where he operated a tractor. The deserted landscape with fierce winds and fires he experienced during the Cultural Revolution made a deep impression and influence his compositions even today. Nearing the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was able to resume his musical studies in the areas of composition, music theory, conducting and also traditional Chinese music. One year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Long was one of one hundred students chosen from eighteen thousand applicants to study at the newly reopened Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1977. From 1977 to 1983, he studied compo ...
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Gérard Grisey
Gérard Henri Grisey (; ; 17 June 1946 – 11 November 1998) was a twentieth-century French composer of contemporary classical music. His work is often associated with the Spectralist Movement in music, of which he was a major pioneer. Biography Grisey was born in Belfort, on 17 June 1946. From a very young age, Grisey demonstrated enormous interest and talent in music composition and study, writing his first essay on music when he was 9 years old. He studied at the in Trossingen in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique where he studied with Olivier Messiaen from 1965 to 1967 and again from 1968 to 1972, while also working with Henri Dutilleux at the École normale de musique in 1968. He won prizes for piano accompaniment, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and composition at the Conservatoire under Messiaen's guidance. He also studied electroacoustics with Jean-Étienne Marie in 1969, composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ian ...
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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich ( ; born April 30, 1939) is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers."Schwartz, K. Robert. "Ellen Taaffe Zwilich." Grove Music Online. Ed. L. Macy. Accessed December 20, 2006. www.grovemusic.com. She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Florida Artists Hall of Fame
Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at

Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia to Albert E. Babbitt and Sarah Potamkin, who were Jewish. He was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and began studying the violin when he was four but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone. Early in his life he was attracted to jazz and theater music, and "played in every pit-orchestra that came to town". Babbitt was making his own arrangements of popular songs by age 7, "wrote a lot of pop tunes for school productions", and won a local songwriting contest when he was 13. A Jackson newspaper called Babbitt a "whiz kid" and noted "that he had perfect pitch and could add up his family’s grocery bills in his head. In his teens he became a great fan of jazz cornet player Bix Beiderbecke." Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and Babbitt inten ...
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John Harbison
John Harris Harbison (born December 20, 1938) is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works. Life John Harris Harbison was born on December 20, 1938, in Orange, New Jersey, to the historian Elmore Harris Harbison and Janet German Harbison. The Harbisons were a musical family; Elmore had studied composition in his youth and Janet wrote songs. Harbison's sisters Helen and Margaret were musicians as well. He won the prestigious BMI Foundation's Student Composer Awards for composition at the age of 16 in 1954. He studied music at Harvard University (BA 1960), where he sang with the Harvard Glee Club, and later at the Berlin Musikhochschule and at Princeton (MFA 1963). He is an Institute Professor of music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a former student of Walter Piston and Roger Sessions. His works include several symphonies, string quartets, and concerti for violin, viola, and double bass. He won the Pulitzer Prize for musi ...
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Amaury Du Closel
Amaury (from the Old French '' Amalric'') or Amauri may refer to: People Surname *Philippe Amaury (1940–2006), French publishing tycoon Given name *Amaury Duval (1760–1838), French writer * Amaury Duval (1808–1885), French painter *Amaury, Count of Valenciennes, 10th-century noble in Hainaut *Amaury de Montfort (other), several people, lords of Montfort and counts of Évreux *Amaury Filion (born 1981), Dominican basketball player *Amaury Guichon (born 1991), Swiss-French pastry chef *Amaury Gutiérrez (born 1963), Cuban singer and musician * Amaury of Jerusalem (Amalric; 1136–1174), king of the Crusader state of Jerusalem *Amaury Nolasco (born 1970), Puerto Rican actor *Amaury Pasos (born 1935), Brazilian basketball player *Amaury Telemaco (born 1974), Dominican baseball player *Amaury Vassili (born 1989), French tenor *Sergio Amaury Ponce (born 1981), Mexican soccer player Other *Montfort-l'Amaury, a French commune in Yvelines département, France *Éditions P ...
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Da Capo Chamber Players
The Da Capo Chamber Players are an American contemporary music "Pierrot ensemble," founded in 1970. Winners of the Naumburg Award in 1973, its founding members included composer/pianist Joan Tower, violinist Joel Lester (former dean of Mannes College of Music), and flutist Patricia Spencer. The current members are Curtis Macomber, violin; Chris Gross, cello; Steve Beck, piano; Patricia Spencer, flute; and Meighan Stoops, clarinet. The Da Capo Chamber Players have commissioned over 100 works from composers such as Joan Tower, John Harbison, Chinary Ung, George Perle, Shulamit Ran, Philip Glass, Mohammed Fairouz, Kyle Gann, Roberto Carnevale, Milton Babbitt, Martin Bresnick, and David Lang among others. In recent years, Da Capo has established active creative relationships with prominent Russian contemporary composers, and the ensemble regularly visits Russia for performances and master classes. Da Capo has been in residence at Bard College since 1982, and since 2006 have been the ...
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