Stanley Walden
Stanley Walden (born December 2, 1932) is an American composer, musical performer, and professor of musical theater. He has written music for the theater (musicals, operas, ballets) in America and Europe, as well as for the concert stage (Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland and Louisville Orchestras; and chamber music for Carole Cowan, Jan DeGaetani, Reri Grist, Gilbert Kalish, Joel Krosnick, Robert Levin and many others). He has also been a clarinetist, actor and director. He is perhaps best known for writing music and lyrics of the revue ''Oh! Calcutta!'' He has also written a number of song cycles. Clarinetist Walden attended James Madison High School and studied modern dance with Merce Cunningham. He then attended New York University and Queens College, studying clarinet with David Weber and composition with Ben Weber. From 1953 to 1955 – and after serving in the U.S. Army as principal clarinetist of the 7th Army Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart (1955–57) – he worked as mu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Definition The term is descended from Latin, ''compōnō''; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Thomas Morley's 1597 ''A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'', where he says "Some wil be good descanters ..and yet wil be but bad composers". 'Composer' is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms 'songwriter' or ' singer-songwriter' are more often used, particularl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Daniel Nagrin
Daniel Nagrin (May 22, 1917 – December 29, 2008) was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, and author. He was born in New York City. Nagrin studied with Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, Hanya Holm, Bill Matons and Helen Tamiris whom he later married. In addition to work as a modern dancer, Nagrin also performed on Broadway in ''Plain and Fancy'', ''Up in Central Park'', and '' Annie Get Your Gun,'' among other musicals. His 1950 dance ''Dance in the Sun'' was adapted by filmmaker Shirley Clarke for her 1953 film of the same name. In June 1954 he formed the Dance-Percussion Trio with David Shapiro and Ronald Gould (who would go on to form the New York Percussion Trio), and the group toured the United States in June and July of that year. Nagrin and his wife formed the Tamiris-Nagrin Company in 1960. When Tamiris died in 1966, Nagrin concentrated on a solo career. In the early 1970s Nagrin formed "The Workgroup", a performance company with a focus on improvisation. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure in 2010. The CSO is one of five American orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". History In 1890, Charles Norman Fay, a Chicago businessman, invited Theodore Thomas to establish an orchestra in Chicago. Under the name "Chicago Orchestra," the orchestra played its first concert October 16, 1891 at the Auditorium Theater. It is one of the oldest orchestras in the United States, along with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Orchestra Hall, now a component of the Symphony Center complex, was designed by Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham and completed in 1904. Maestro Thomas served as music director for thirteen years until his death shortly after the orchestra' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jorge Mester
Jorge Mester (born April 10, 1935, Mexico City) is a Mexican conductor of Hungarian ancestry. He has served as the artistic director for the Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, Veracruz, since it was founded in 2014. Biography He studied conducting with Jean Morel at the Juilliard School in New York City, and worked with Leonard Bernstein at the Berkshire Music Center and with Albert Wolff. In 1955 he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico and in 1960 made his opera debut with '' Salome'' at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Mester became music director of the Louisville Orchestra in 1967 and served in the post until 1979. In this time he gave over 200 world premieres of works commissioned by the orchestra. From 1970 to 1990, he was music director of the Aspen Music Festival, and there founded the Aspen Chamber Symphony. He became music director of the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra in 1984. His most recent contract extension had been through 2012, but in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Louisville Orchestra
The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney (1904–1986) and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville. The Louisville Orchestra employs salaried musicians, and offers a wide variety of concert series to the community, including classical programs featuring international guest artists, pops performances, and education and family concerts. In 1942 the orchestra adopted the name of the former Louisville Philharmonic Society (founded in 1866), which it kept until 1977 before reverting to its original name. The orchestra is the resident performing group for the Louisville Ballet and the Kentucky Opera, and presents several concerts across the Kentucky/Indiana area. The orchestra performs its concerts at Whitney Hall (named for its founder) in the Kentucky Center for the Arts and The Brown Theatre. The current Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra is Teddy Abrams, who began his tenure in 2014. First Editi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights
''Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights'' (1938) is a libretto for an opera by the American Modernism, modernist playwright and poet Gertrude Stein. The text has become a rite of passage for avant-garde theatre artists from the United States: La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Judson Poets Theatre, Judson Poets' Group, The Living Theatre, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson (director), Robert Wilson, and The Wooster Group have all produced the piece. Background Stein wrote the piece during what critics often refer to as the final or narrative period of her playwriting career. From 1932 onwards, she had begun to rediscover and reintegrate stories into her dramatic writing, an element hitherto she had worked to exclude. In a letter to Carl Van Vechten, Stein identified her work on this piece as a breakthrough: "I have been struggling with this problem of dramatic narrative and in ''Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights'' I think I got it."Ryan (1984, 55). Despite her newfound use for narrative, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Berliner Ensemble
The Berliner Ensemble () is a German theatre company established by actress Helene Weigel and her husband, playwright Bertolt Brecht, in January 1949 in East Berlin. In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langhoff's Deutsches Theater and in 1954 moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, built in 1892, that was open for the 1928 premiere of ''The Threepenny Opera'' (''Die Dreigroschenoper''). Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble Brecht's students Benno Besson, Egon Monk, Peter Palitzsch, and Manfred Wekwerth were given the opportunity to direct plays by Brecht that had not yet been staged. The stage designers Caspar Neher and Karl von Appen, the composers Paul Dessau and Hanns Eisler, as well as the dramaturge Elisabeth Hauptmann, were among Brecht's closest collaborators. After her husband died in 1956, Weigel continued managing the Berliner Ensemble until her death in 1971. The Berliner Ensemble achieved success through long and meticulous rehears ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Tabori
George Tabori ( György Tábori; 24 May 1914 – 23 July 2007) was a Hungarian writer and theatre director. Life and career Tabori was born in Budapest as György Tábori, a son of Kornél and Elsa Tábori. His father Kornél (Cornelius) was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, but his mother and his brother Paul Tabori (writer and psychical researcher), managed to escape the Nazis. As a young man, Tabori travelled to Berlin but was forced to leave Nazi Germany in 1935 because of his Jewish background. He first went to London, where he worked for the BBC and received British citizenship. In 1947 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a translator (mainly of works by Bertolt Brecht and Max Frisch) and a screenwriter including Alfred Hitchcock's movie '' I Confess'' (1953). His first novel, ''Beneath The Stone'', was published in America in 1945. In the late 1960s, Tabori brought his own and the work of Brecht to many colleges and universities. At the University of Pennsylv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Peter Schickele
"Professor" Peter Schickele (; born July 17, 1935) is an American composer, musical educator, and parody, parodist, best known for comedy albums featuring his music, but which he presents as being composed by the fictional P. D. Q. Bach. He also hosted a long-running weekly radio program called ''Schickele Mix''. From 1990 to 1993, Schickele's P. D. Q. Bach recordings earned him four consecutive wins for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. Early life Schickele was born in Ames, Iowa, United States, to Alsace, Alsatian immigrant parents. His father, Rainer Schickele (1905, Berlin – 1989, Berkeley, California), son of the writer René Schickele, was an agricultural economist teaching at Iowa State University. In 1945, Schickele's father took a position at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; then, in 1946, became chairman of the Agricultural Sciences Department at North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State University) in Fargo, North Dakota. In ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |