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André Kostelanetz
Andre Kostelanetz (; December 22, 1901 – January 13, 1980) was a Russian-American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music. Biography Abram Naumovich Kostelyanetz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia to a prominent Jewish family. He was a cousin of physicist Lew Kowarski. His father, Nachman Yokhelevich (Naum Ignatyevich) Kostelyanetz, was active on the St. Petersburg stock exchange; his maternal grandfather, Aizik Yevelevich Dymshitz, was a wealthy merchant and industrialist, engaged in timber production. Kostelanetz began playing the piano at four and a half years old. He studied composition and orchestration at the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. When he was 19, the Grand Petrograd Opera Company held a competition to select a chorusmaster and assistant conductor, in which he was selected despite being the youngest applicant. Kostelanetz continued there until leaving Russia in March 1922 after the Russ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the Saint Petersburg metropolitan area, metropolitan area. Saint Petersburg is the List of European cities by population within city limits, fourth-most populous city in Europe, the List of cities and towns around the Baltic Sea, most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's List of northernmost items#Cities and settlements, northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As the former capital of the Russian Empire, and a Ports of the Baltic Sea, historically strategic port, it is governed as a Federal cities of Russia, federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Family Favourites
''Family Favourites'' (remembered by its later name ''Two-Way Family Favourites'') was the successor to the wartime radio show ''Forces Favourites'', broadcast at Sunday lunchtimes on the BBC Light Programme, later BBC Radio 2 from 1945 until 1980. From 1967 to 1972 it was also carried on BBC Radio 1. It was a request programme designed to link families at home in the UK with British Forces serving in West Germany or elsewhere overseas. The programme was a big success with listeners. It had the memorable signature tune " With a Song in My Heart" (original played by Andre Kostelanetz and his Orchestra) and was presented by a variety of well-known radio personalities, including Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe who met while presenting the show and later married on 4 March 1950, Bill Crozier (in Cologne only), Michael Aspel, Judith Chalmers, Sarah Kennedy, and the final UK presenter Jean Challis. Both Pete Murray and Ed Stewart continued to use the title for segments only o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman (29 June 1924 – 28 February 2015) was an American composer of classical music. He was born in Brooklyn. Biography Laderman was of Jewish heritage. His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Though poor, the family had a piano. He wrote, "At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down. I hardly knew it then, but I had at a very early age made a giant step to becoming a composer." He attended New York City's High School of Music and Art. On April 25, 1943, Laderman was inducted into the United States Army and served as a radio operator with the 69th Infantry Division during World War II. He wrote: We were in Caversham, England poised to enter the war. It was here that I learned that my brother Jack had been shot down and killed in Germany. The Battle of the Bulge, crossing the Rhine at Remagen, liberating Leipzig, meeting the Russians at Torgau on the bank of the Elbe were the points ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness (; born Alan Vaness Chakmakjian; March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and 434 opus numbers. The true tally is well over 500 surviving works, since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works. ''The Boston Globe'' music critic Richard Buell wrote: "Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer (rather as Ernest Bloch is seen as a Jewish composer), his output assimilates the music of many cultures. What may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic." Name After his mother's death (on October 3, 1930), the composer began to use the surname "Hovaness" in honor of his paternal grandfather. He stated the name change from the original Chakmakjian refl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Celene Thompson (July 9, 1893 – January 30, 1961) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster. She was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, in 1934, and was one of the few women news commentators broadcasting on radio during the 1930s. Thompson is regarded by some as the "First Lady of American Journalism" and was recognized by ''Time'' magazine in 1939 as equal in influence to Eleanor Roosevelt. Recordings of her NBC Radio commentary and analysis of the European situation and the start of World War II (from August 23 to September 6, 1939) were selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2023, based on their "cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage." Life and career Dorothy Thompson was born in Lancaster, New York, in 1893, one of three children of Peter (1863-1921) and Margaret (Grierson) Thompson (1873-1901). Her siblings were Peter Willard T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiorello H
Fiorello may refer to: *'' Fiorello!'', a Broadway musical * ''Fiorello!'' (album), a 1960 album by Oscar Peterson * Rosario Fiorello, also known as simply ''Fiorello'', Italian singer and TV host * Giuseppe Fiorello (born 1969), Italian actor of the cinema and television * Vinnie Fiorello (born 1974), American drummer, lyricist and a founding member of the ska punk band Less Than Jake * Fiorello H. La Guardia, former mayor of New York City * Fiorello Giraud (1870–1928), Italian operatic tenor *''Fiorello I'' and ''Fiorello II'', thoroughbred showjumpers ridden by Raimondo D'Inzeo {{disambig, surname ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera ''Lord Byron'' which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion". Biography Early years Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child he befriended Alice Smith, great-granddaughter of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter-day Saint movement. During his youth he often played the organ in Grace Church, (now Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral), as his piano teacher was the church's organist. After World War I, he entered Harvard University thanks to a loan from Dr. Fred M. Smith, the president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferde Grofé
Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé (March 27, 1892 April 3, 1972), known as Ferde Grofé () was an American composer, arranger, pianist, and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement symphonic poem, ''Grand Canyon Suite'', and for orchestrating George Gershwin's '' Rhapsody in Blue'' for its 1924 premiere. During the 1920s and 1930s, he went by the name Ferdie Grofé. Early life Grofé was born on 127 East Third Street, New York City, in 1892 to German immigrants. He came by his extensive musical interests naturally. His family included several musicians. His father, Emil von Grofé, was a baritone who mainly performed in light opera. His mother, Elsa Johanna Bierlich von Grofé, was a professional cellist and a versatile music teacher who taught Ferde to play both the violin and the piano. Elsa's father, Bernard Bierlich, was a cellist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, and her brother, Julius Bierlich, was the first violinist and concertmaster of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Creston
Paul Creston (born Giuseppe Guttoveggio; October 10, 1906 – August 24, 1985) was an American composer of classical music. He composed six symphonies and several concertante works for violin, piano, accordion, marimba and saxophone. Biography Born in New York City to Sicilian immigrants, Creston was self-taught as a composer. His work tends to be fairly conservative in style, with a strong rhythmic element. His pieces include six symphonies; a number of concertos including two violin concertos, a marimba concerto, (premiered by Ruth Stuber), a piano concerto, premiered by Earl Wild, concerto for two pianos and orchestra, an accordion concerto, and a concerto for alto saxophone dedicated to Cecil Leeson). He composed a fantasia for trombone and orchestra (composed for and premiered by Robert Marsteller). For alto saxophone, he wrote also a Rapsodie for Jean-Marie Londeix; a suite (1935) and a sonata (Op. 19, 1939), dedicated to Leeson.Liley, Thomas, "The Repertoire H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New England Triptych
''New England Triptych'' is an orchestral composition by American composer William Schuman, based on works of William Billings. The work lasts about 16 minutes, and is written for an orchestra comprising three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tenor drum), and strings. Overview Subtitled "Three Pieces for Orchestra After William Billings", ''New England Triptych'' is basically an expansion of Schuman's 1943 ''William Billings Overture'' (premiered by Artur Rodziński and the New York Philharmonic in 1944 but never published, and since withdrawn by the composer). ''New England Triptych'' was written in 1956 and premiered on October 28 of that year by the Orchestra of the University of Miami under the direction of Andre Kostelanetz, who had commissioned it. Schuman prefaced his score with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Schuman
William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. president, William Howard Taft, though his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. He attended Temple Shaaray Tefila as a child. While still in high school, he formed a dance band, "Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra", that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs in which Schuman played string bass. In 1928 he entered New York University's School of Commerce to pursue a business degree, at the same time working for an advertising agency. He also wrote popular songs with E. B. Marks Jr, a friend he had met long before at summer camp. Around that time, Schuman met lyricist Frank Loesser and wrote some forty songs with him. Loesser's first publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's novels include ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and its sequel, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." He also wrote ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (1889) and ''Pudd'nhead Wilson'' (1894) and cowrote ''The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today'' (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ''Huckleberry Finn''." Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for both ''Tom Sawyer'' and ''Huckleberry Finn''. He served an apprenticeship with a printer early in his career, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
