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Alex Hills
Alex Hills (born 1974) is an English composer of contemporary classical music. He was born in Cambridge. He studied composition with Michael Finnissy at the Royal Academy of Music and completed his doctorate with Brian Ferneyhough at Stanford University. Additional influences include Stefan Wolpe, Iannis Xenakis as well as bands such as The Shaggs and the Yellow Magic Orchestra. A number of his works have been based on Renaissance isorhythmic techniques such as the nonet ''Ficta'' . Other important works include ''Broken Frames'', for cello and piano, and the solo piano pieces ''Injera'' and ''The Principle of Terrestrial Mediocrity'' (which was recorded for CD by Chris Jones). His most substantial work to date is 'Everything in Life can be Montaged', an hour-long piece for soprano, two solo celli, percussion, ensemble and electronics based on ideas and texts by the Russian thinker Viktor Shklovsky. It received its first performance at the Royal Academy of Music in June 2009. In ...
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Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of the City of Cambridge was 145,700; the population of the wider built-up area (which extends outside the city council area) was 181,137. (2021 census) There is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area as early as the Bronze Age, and Cambridge became an important trading centre during the Roman Britain, Roman and Viking eras. The first Town charter#Municipal charters, town charters were granted in the 12th century, although modern city status was not officially conferred until 1951. The city is well known as the home of the University of Cambridge, which was founded in 1209 and consistently ranks among the best universities in the world. The buildings of the university include King's College Chap ...
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Michael Finnissy
Michael Peter Finnissy (born 17 March 1946) is an English composer, pianist, and pedagogue. An immensely prolific composer, his music is "notable for its dramatic urgency and expressive immediacy". Although he rejects the label, he is often regarded as the foremost composer of the New Complexity movement. Biography Early life Michael Finnissy was born at 77 Claverdale Road in Tulse Hill, London at roughly two in the morning on 17 March 1946 to Rita Isolene (''née'' Parsonson) and George Norman Finnissy. His father was employed at the London City Council. When he was four, he received his first piano lessons from his great-aunt Rose Louise (Rosie) Hopwood, soon after writing his first compositions. He attended Hawes Down Infant and Junior schools, Bromley Technical High School, and Beckenham and Penge Grammar School, and excelled in graphic art, mathematics, and English literature. Student years Finnissy received the William Hurlstone composition prize at the Croydon ...
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Royal Academy Of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of Wellington. The academy provides undergraduate and postgraduate training across instrumental performance, composition, jazz, musical theatre and opera, and recruits musicians from around the world, with a student community representing more than 50 nationalities. It is committed to lifelong learning, from Junior Academy, which trains musicians up to the age of 18, through Open Academy community music projects, to performances and educational events for all ages. The academy's museum houses one of the world's most significant collections of musical instruments and artefacts, including stringed instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri, and members of the Amati family; manuscripts by Purcell, Handel and Vaughan Williams; and a col ...
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Brian Ferneyhough
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and the University of California, San Diego; he teaches at Stanford University and is a regular lecturer in the summer courses at Darmstädter Ferienkurse. He has resided in California since 1987. Life Ferneyhough was born in Coventry and received formal musical training at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music from 1966 to 1967, where he studied with Lennox Berkeley. Ferneyhough was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1968 and moved to mainland Europe to study with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam, and later with Klaus Huber in Basel. Between 1973 and 1986 he taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany, Richard Toop, "Ferneyhough, Brian", ''Grove Music Online'' (Updated 22 October 2008), edi ...
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Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth List of governors of California, governor of and then-incumbent List of United States senators from California, United States senator representing California) and his wife, Jane Stanford, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., Leland Jr. The university admitted its first students in 1891, opening as a Mixed-sex education, coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland died in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, university Provost (education), provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley). In 1951, Stanfor ...
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Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe (25 August 1902, Berlin – 4 April 1972, New York City) was a German-born American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz movement to the Eighth Street Artists' Club, Black Mountain College, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He lived and worked in Berlin (1902–1933) until the Nazi seizure of power forced him to move first to Vienna (1933–34) and Jerusalem (1934–38) before settling in New York City (1938–72). In works such as ''Battle Piece'' (1942/1947) and "In a State of Flight" in ''Enactments for Three Pianos'' (1953), he responded self-consciously to the circumstances of his uprooted life, a theme he also explored extensively in voluminous diaries, correspondence, and lectures. His densely eclectic music absorbed ideas and idioms from diverse artistic milieus, including post-tonality, bebop, and Arab classical musics. Life Wolpe was bo ...
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Iannis Xenakis
Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; , ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and engineer. After 1947, he fled Greece, becoming a naturalised citizen of France eighteen years later. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances. Among his most important works are '' Metastaseis'' (1953–54) for orchestra, which introduced independent parts for every musician of the orchestra; percussion works such as '' Psappha'' (1975) and '' Pléïades'' (1979); compositions that introduced spatializ ...
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The Shaggs
The Shaggs were an American rock band formed in Fremont, New Hampshire, in 1965. They comprised the sisters Dorothy "Dot" Wiggin (vocals and lead guitar), Betty Wiggin (vocals and rhythm guitar), Helen Wiggin (drums) and, later, Rachel Wiggin (bass guitar). Their music has been described as both among List of music considered the worst, the worst of all time and a work of unintentional brilliance. The Shaggs composed seemingly simple and bizarre songs using Musical tuning, untuned guitars, erratic time signatures, disconnected rhythms, wandering melodies and rudimentary lyrics. According to ''Rolling Stone'', the sisters sang like "lobotomized Trapp Family Singers", while the musician Terry Adams (musician), Terry Adams compared their music to the free jazz compositions of Ornette Coleman. The Shaggs formed at the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin, who believed that his mother had predicted their rise to fame. For several years, he made them practice every day and perf ...
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Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yellow Magic Orchestra (abbreviated to YMO) was a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocals), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals, occasional keyboards) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, vocals). The group is considered influential and innovative in the field of popular electronic music. They were pioneers in their use of synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, drum machines, computers, and digital recording technology, and effectively anticipated the "electropop boom" of the 1980s. They are credited with influencing the development of various electronic genres, including synth-pop, city pop, dance, electro, hip-hop, J-pop and techno. They also explored subversive socio-political themes throughout their career. The three members were veterans of the music industry before coming together as YMO, and were inspired by eclectic sources, including the electronic music of Isao Tomita and Kraftwerk, Japanese traditional music, ...
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Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures associated with Russian formalism. Viktor Shklovsky's ''Theory of Prose'' was published in 1925. Shklovsky himself is still praised as "one of the most important literary and cultural theorists of the twentieth century" (Modern Language Association Prize Committee); "one of the most lively and irreverent minds of the last century" (David Bellos); "one of the most fascinating figures of Russian cultural life in the twentieth century" (Tzvetan Todorov) Life Shklovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian Jewish mathematician (with ancestors from Shkloŭ, Shklov) who converted to Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodoxy and his mother was of German-Russian origin. He attended St. Petersburg University ...
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Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by its namesake, industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. The largest one is the Stern Auditorium, a five-story auditorium with 2,804 seats. Also part of the complex are the 599-seat Zankel Hall on Seventh Avenue, as well as the 268-seat Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall on 57th Street. Besides the auditoriums, Carnegie Hall ...
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Clash (magazine)
''Clash'' is a music and fashion magazine and website based in the United Kingdom. It is published four times a year by Music Republic Ltd, whose predecessor Clash Music Ltd went into liquidation. The magazine won awards including the Best New Magazine award in 2004 at the PPA Magazine Awards, Magazine of the Year at the 2011 Record of the Day Awards, and others in England and Scotland. History ''Clash'' was founded by John O'Rourke, Simon Harper, Iain Carnegie and Jon-Paul Kitching. It emerged from the long-running Dundee, Scotland-based free-listings magazine ''Vibe''. Re-launching as ''Clash Magazine'' in 2004, it won Best New Magazine award at the PPA Magazine Awards and Music Magazine of the Year at the Record of the Day Awards in 2005 and 2011 respectively. At the turn of 2011, ''Clash'' took on an entirely new look, ditching its previous glossy feel and music-led design for an altogether more artistically-led approach. In 2013, it launched a Smartphone channel, the iOS A ...
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