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Su Lian Tan
Su Lian Tan (born 1964) is a Malaysian-born American composer and flautist. Her works have been commissioned by the Takács Quartet, Meridian Arts Ensemble and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She is currently a professor of music at Middlebury College in Vermont teaching Composition and Music Theory classes. Born in Malaysia, Tan began a professional career in music at the age of 14. She went on to study at Juilliard School, Bennington College and Princeton University with teachers including Milton Babbitt, Bernard Rands and Henry Brant. She toured the world as a guest soloist, displaying her virtuosity on the flute, and making forays into opera (she is a lyric soprano) and pop music. She was hired by Middlebury College in 1994, and since then, she has focused on teaching and composition. Compositions Recent premieres include a symphony, premiered by the Vermont Youth Orchestra, River of the Trunk, a song-cycle, set with the poems of fellow Middlebury professor John Elder, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Takács Quartet
The Takács Quartet is a string quartet founded in Budapest, Hungary, and now based in Boulder, Colorado, United States. History In 1975, four students at the Music Academy in Budapest, Gábor Takács-Nagy (first violin), Károly Schranz (second violin), Gábor Ormai (viola), and András Fejér (cello) formed the Takács Quartet. Takács-Nagy, Ormai and Fejér had been playing trios together for several months when they met Schranz during a pickup soccer game after classes. With his immediate addition to the group, the trio became a quartet. The quartet first received international attention in 1977, winning the First Prize and the Critics' Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Évian-les-Bains, France. After that, the quartet won the Gold Medal at the 1979 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The quartet made its first North American to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant (September 15, 1913 – April 26, 2008) was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques. Biography Brant was born in Montreal, to American parents (his father was a violinist), in 1913. Something of a child prodigy, he began composing at the age of eight, and studied first at the McGill Conservatorium (1926–29) and then in New York City (1929–34). He played violin, flute, tin whistle, piano, organ, and percussion at a professional level and was fluent with the playing techniques for all of the standard orchestral instruments. As a 19-year-old, Brant was the youngest composer included in Henry Cowell's landmark book from 1933, ''American Composers on American Music''; and Cowell realized that Brant had already demonstrated an early identification with the American experimental musical tradition. He was represented in Cowell's anthology by an essa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1964 Births
Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople meet in Jerusalem. * January 6 – A British firm, the Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of Cuba. * January 9 – ''Martyrs' Day'': Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers. * January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health (the first such statement from the U.S. government). * January 12 ** Zanzibar Revolution: The predominantly Arab government of Zanzibar is overthrown by African nationalist rebels; a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princeton University Alumni
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. It is one of the highest-ranked universities in the world. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, and then to the current site nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University. It is a member of the Ivy League. The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering to approximately 8,500 students on its main campus. It offers postgraduate degrees through the Princeton School of Publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid (; born May 25, 1949) is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in North Bennington, Vermont and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year. Biography Early life Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in St John's, Antigua, on May 25, 1949. She grew up in relative poverty with her mother, a literate, cultured woman and homemaker, and her stepfather, a carpenter. She was very close to her mother until her three brothers were born in quick succession, starting when Kincaid was nine years old. After her brothers' births, she resented her mother, who thereafter focused primarily on the brothers' needs. Kincaid later recalled, Our family money remained the same, but there were more people to feed and to clothe, and so everything got sort of shortened, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song-cycle
A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rarely a combination of solo songs mingled with choral pieces. The number of songs in a song cycle may be as brief as two songs or as long as 30 or more songs. The term "song cycle" did not enter lexicography until 1865, in Arrey von Dommer's edition of ''Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon'', but works definable in retrospect as song cycles existed long before then. One of the earliest examples may be the set of seven Cantigas de amigo by the 13th-century Galician jongleur Martin Codax. Jeffrey Mark identified the group of dialect songs 'Hodge und Malkyn' from Thomas Ravenscroft's ''The Briefe Discourse'' (1614) as the first of a number of early 17th Century examples in England. A song cycle is similar to a song collection, and the two can be dif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880 Hz in choral music, or to "soprano C" (C6, two octaves above middle C) = 1046 Hz or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which often encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto, and dramatic soprano. Etymology The word "soprano" comes from the Italian word '' sopra'' (above, over, on top of),"Soprano" '' |
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as '' Singspiel'' and '' Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Rands
Bernard Rands (born 2 March 1934 in Sheffield, England) is a British-American contemporary classical music composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's '' Canti del Sole'', premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus. Rands has received many awards for his work, and was elected and inducted into The American Aca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meridian Arts Ensemble
The Meridian Arts Ensemble is an American chamber music ensemble based in New York City, specializing in the performance of new works for brass and percussion. History The Meridian Arts Ensemble was founded in 1987. The original members of the group wanted an opportunity to play challenging works, to experience control of their ensemble, and to find creative outlets for their musicianship. Meridian received its early education in the American Brass Quintet's brass class at the Juilliard School, and then launched its professional career. The ensemble has played all over the country and the world. Ensemble members currently serve as faculty members in many prestigious US universities. Awards and albums In the late 1980s, the group won a string of four competitions: Artists International, Chamber Music Chicago, New York Brass Conference, and finally, in 1990, Concert Artists Guild. The prize for the latter was extremely important to the ensemble - not just the cachet of winning, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. It is one of the highest-ranked universities in the world. The institution moved to Newark, New Jersey, Newark in 1747, and then to the current site nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University. It is a member of the Ivy League. The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment, endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate education, graduate in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
