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Simon Halsey
Simon Halsey, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 8 March 1958) is an English choral conductor. He is the chorus director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus (CBSO Chorus), a position he has held since 1983, and has been chorus director of the London Symphony Chorus since 2012. He is also artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Youth Choral Programme and the director of the BBC Proms Youth Choir, and conductor laureate of the Berlin Radio Choir. He is professor and director of choral activities at the University of Birmingham. Early career Born in London, Halsey sang in the choirs of both New College, Oxford and King's College, Cambridge. He studied conducting at the Royal College of Music in London. In 1987, he founded the City of Birmingham Touring Opera (since 2001 the Birmingham Opera Company) with leading international opera director Graham Vick. In addition, he was artistic director and founder of the professional choir European Voices, and p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concert Requiem De Fauré - Palau De La Música 03
A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir, or band. Concerts are held in a wide variety and size of settings, from private houses and small nightclubs, dedicated concert halls, amphitheatres and parks, to large multipurpose buildings, such as arenas and stadiums. Indoor concerts held in the largest venues are sometimes called ''arena concerts'' or ''amphitheatre concerts''. Informal names for a concert include ''show'' and ''gig''. Regardless of the venue, musicians usually perform on a stage (if not actual then an area of the floor designated as such). Concerts often require live event support with professional audio equipment. Before recorded music, concerts provided the main opportunity to hear musicians play. For large concerts or concert tours, the challenging logistics of arranging the musicians, venue, equipment and audi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City Of Birmingham Symphony Chorus
The CBSO Chorus is a chorus based in Birmingham, England. Description It was founded in 1973 as the CBSO Chorus, with an upper age limit of 45 years old. Simon Halsey has served as Chorus Director since 1983. Between 1995 and 2009 was known officially as The City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus (CBSC). The chorus is allied with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), but unlike the orchestra, the singers are amateur. Because of its close association with the CBSO, the chorus regularly performs with the orchestra and prioritises its time to the CBSO. It has also performed with other major orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The chorus has travelled and toured to all the major concert halls around the UK and has toured Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. It has recorded with both the CBSO and other orchestras, mainly on the EMI Classics lab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Lang (composer)
David Lang (born January 8, 1957) is an American composer living in New York City. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for ''The Little Match Girl Passion'', which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. Lang was nominated for an Academy Award for " Simple Song #3" from the film ''Youth''. Early life and education Lang was born in Los Angeles, California. Lang is of Jewish descent. In his youth he played trombone. After completing his undergraduate degree at Stanford University, he went to the University of Iowa; he says, "There was a teacher in composition at the University of Iowa named Martin Jenni, and he had come to Stanford as a leave replacement to teach for a semester. And I just thought he was amazing. He knew a lot of stuff that I'd never heard of before. So when I thought about grad school, I went to Iowa. I was happy I did. It was rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noye's Fludde
''Noye's Fludde'' is a one-act opera by the British composer Benjamin Britten, intended primarily for amateur performers, particularly children. First performed on 18 June 1958 at that year's Aldeburgh Festival, it is based on the 15th-century Chester "mystery" or "miracle" play which recounts the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark. Britten specified that the opera should be staged in churches or large halls, not in a theatre. By the mid-1950s Britten had established himself as a major composer, both of operas and of works for mixed professional and amateur forces – his mini-opera ''The Little Sweep'' (1949) was written for young audiences, and used child performers. He had previously adapted text from the Chester play cycle in his 1952 '' Canticle II'', which retells the story of Abraham and Isaac. ''Noye's Fludde'' was composed as a project for television; to the Chester text Britten added three congregational hymns, the Greek prayer ''Kyrie eleison'' as a children's chant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hong Kong Philharmonic
The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (Cantonese: 香港管弦樂團), commonly abbreviated as HKPO or HKPhil (Cantonese: 港樂), is the largest symphony orchestra in Hong Kong. First established in 1947 as an amateur orchestra under the name Sino-British Orchestra (中英管弦樂團), it was renamed the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 and became a professional orchestra in 1974 under the funding of the government. History Sino-British Orchestra Sino-British Club was an organisation founded in 1946, aimed at promoting harmony among different groups in Hong Kong (especially British and native Hongkongese) through cultural activities. Various groups were found under the club, including drama, literature, film, and music. In 1947, Anthony Braga, one of the leaders of the music group of Sino-British Club, suggested to form a symphony orchestra to gather instrumentalists in the city and provide musical performance to the citizens, as the society was still recovering from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Requiem (Fauré)
Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral-orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin is the best-known of his large works. Its focus is on eternal rest and consolation. Fauré's reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finishing it in 1900. In seven movements, the work is scored for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ. Different from typical Requiem settings, the full sequence is omitted, replaced by its section . The final movement is based on a text that is not part of the liturgy of the funeral Mass but of the burial. Fauré wrote of the work, "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of fai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minnesota Orchestra
The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded originally as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, the Minnesota Orchestra plays most of its concerts at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall. History Emil Oberhoffer founded the orchestra as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, and it gave its first performance on November 5 of that year in Minneapolis's Exposition Building. In 1968, the orchestra changed its name to the Minnesota Orchestra. It makes its home in downtown Minneapolis at Orchestra Hall, which was built for the ensemble in 1974. The orchestra's previous hall, starting in 1929, was Northrop Memorial Auditorium on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus. Financial concerns In 2007 the Minnesota Orchestra's assets began declining, a trend exacerbated by the financial crisis of 2007–2008. In August 2008, the Minnesota Orchestra Association's invested assets totaled $168.5 million, 13% less than the $192.4 mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Messiah (Handel)
''Messiah'' (HWV 56) is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The text was compiled from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Bible, Coverdale Psalter by Charles Jennens. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western culture#Music, Western music. Handel's reputation in England, where he had lived since 1712, had been established through his compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English oratorio in the 1730s in response to changes in public taste; ''Messiah'' was his sixth work in this genre. Although its Structure of Handel's Messiah, structure resembles that of Opera#The Baroque era, opera, it is not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennens's text ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival is a classical music festival held each summer throughout the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany. History The festival was founded in 1986 by German concert pianist Justus Frantz. In 2006, the 21st festival was from 15 July through 3 September with the Low German festival motto ''Dat klinkt lekker'' (That sounds yummy). The 22nd festival in 2007 focused on Hungary, 2008 on Russia, 2009 on Germany, when the motto was ''Heimspiel'' (''home game''). In 2010 the motto was ''Poland in Pulse'' featuring music from Poland. The regional focus was in 2011 Turkey, in 2012 China, and in 2013 Baltic states. Beginning in 2014, the concept changed by highlighting a specific composer for each year. The composer retrospectives were devoted in 2014 to Felix Mendelssohn, in 2015 to Peter Tchaikovsky, in 2016 to Joseph Haydn, in 2017 to Maurice Ravel, in 2018 to Robert Schumann, in 2019 Johann Sebastian Bach, and in 2020 Carl Nielsen. Awards and Le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dream Of Gerontius
''The Dream of Gerontius'', Op. 38, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. Elgar disapproved of the use of the term "oratorio" for the work (and the term occurs nowhere in the score), though his wishes are not always followed. The piece is widely regarded as Elgar's finest choral work, and some consider it his masterpiece. The work was composed for the Birmingham Music Festival of 1900; the first performance took place on 3 October 1900, in Birmingham Town Hall. It was badly performed at the premiere, but later performances in Germany revealed its stature. In the first decade after its premiere, the Roman Catholic theology in Newman's poem caused difficulties in getting the work performed in Anglican cathedrals, and a revised text was used for performances at the Three Choir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Requiem
The ''War Requiem'', Op. 66, is a large-scale setting of the Requiem composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The ''War Requiem'' was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I. The work is scored for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, chorus, boys' choir, organ, and two orchestras (a full orchestra and a chamber orchestra). The chamber orchestra accompanies the intimate settings of the English poetry, while soprano, choirs and orchestra are used for the Latin sections; all forces are combined in the conclusion. The Requiem has a duration of approximately 80–85 minutes. In 2019, ''War Requiem'' was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Sea Symphony
''A Sea Symphony'' is an hour-long work for soprano, baritone, chorus and large orchestra written by Ralph Vaughan Williams between 1903 and 1909. The first and longest of his nine symphonies, it was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1910 with the composer conducting, and its maturity belies the relatively young age — thirty — when he began sketching it. Moreover it is one of the first symphonies in which a chorus is used throughout as an integral part of the texture and it helped set the stage for a new era of symphonic and choral music in Britain during the first half of the 20th century. It was never numbered. History From 1903 to 1909, Ralph Vaughan Williams worked intermittently on a series of songs for chorus and orchestra that were to become his most lengthy project to date and his first true symphony. Originally titled ''The Ocean'', ''A Sea Symphony'' was first performed in 1910 at the Leeds Festival on the composer's 38th birthday. This is generally cite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
