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Bernadette Speach
Bernadette Speach (born January 1, 1948) is an American avant-garde composer and pianist. Known for her minimalist approach, she often synthesizes improvisation and through-composed material. Biography Born in Syracuse, New York, Speach earned her B.S. in Music Education from the College of Saint Rose in 1971. Five years later, while studying abroad in Siena, Italy, she was introduced to Franco Donatoni and Morton Feldman. She went on to study with Feldman, alongside composers Lejaren Hiller and Leo Smit, at SUNY Buffalo, where she finished her M.A. and Ph.D. in Music Composition, and before that studied under Jacques Louis Monod and Nicolas Rousakis at Columbia University. Although trained in the classical idiom, Speach is equally rooted in jazz, and in the latter vein includes room for aleatory elements in her compositions, ranging from solo and chamber to orchestral and vocal/choral works. An example is her second string quartet, ''les ondes pour quatre'' (1988), which blends ...
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Avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an ''advance guard'' identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times. As a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825), Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues's political usage of ''vanguard'' identified the moral obligation of artists to "ser ...
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Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti (born 1946) is an American cellist and composer known for her use of extended techniques and performance of contemporary classical music. Tom Service, music critic for the ''Guardian'' newspaper, has called her "arguably the world's most influentially experimental cellist." Stephen Brookes wrote in the ''Washington Post'', "The spectacularly gifted cellist Frances-Marie Uitti has made a career out of demolishing musical boundaries. She has developed new techniques (most famously, playing with two bows simultaneously), collaborated with a who's who of contemporary composers, and pushed the cello into realms of unexpected beauty and expression... Uitti showed why she might be the most interesting cellist on the planet." Music career Born in Chicago, Illinois to Finnish-American parents, Uitti graduated from Berkeley High School in 1964, where she played cello in the school orchestra. She studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingol ...
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John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage's teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various Eastern world, East and South Asia, South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of Aleatoric music, aleatoric or Indeterminism#Philosophy, chance-controlled music, which ...
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Thulani Davis
Thulani Davis (born July 19, 1949) is an American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. She is a graduate of Barnard College and attended graduate school at both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. In 1992, Davis received a Grammy Award for her album notes on ''Aretha Franklin's Queen Of Soul – The Atlantic Recordings'', becoming the first female recipient of this award. She has collaborated with her cousin, composer Anthony Davis, writing the librettos to two operas. Davis wrote for the ''Village Voice'' for more than a decade, including the obituary for fellow poet and Barnard alumna June Jordan. She was a mentor to a young Greg Tate, before he emerged as an influential journalist and cultural critic. Thulani Davis is a contemporary of and collaborator with Ntozake Shange. Biography Thulani Davis was born to two African-American educators from Virginia, Willie ("Billie") Louise ( Barbour) Davis and Collis Huntington Davi ...
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Arts Midwest
Arts Midwest is one of six not-for-profit regional arts organizations created to “encourage development of the arts and to support arts programs on a regional basis.” Arts Midwest's mission is to "build unprecedented opportunity across the Midwest by advancing creativity.” Its vision is that Midwestern creativity powers thriving, entrepreneurial, and welcoming communities. Arts Midwest is primarily funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and is charged with supporting artists and arts organizations, and providing assistance to its nine member states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. History Regional arts programs first emerged in the late 1960s in response to a need for greater access to performing arts touring in areas isolated from major cultural centers. The development of the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations (USRAOs) was encouraged in 1973 by the NEA House reauthorizing committee, which state ...
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New York Foundation For The Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations founded to support individual artists and emerging arts organizations, with a mission to "empower artists in all disciplines at critical stages in their creative lives." History NYFA was founded in 1971 by the New York State Council on the Arts as an independent organization to facilitate the development of arts activities throughout the State. NYFA has since expanded their programming around the country and internationally focusing on four core program areas: Artists' Fellowships, Fiscal Sponsorship, Professional Development, and Online Resources. As of 2021, the Executive Director is Michael Royce, who succeeded long time leader Ted Berger. Notable artists Artists who have received support from NYFA early on in their careers include Spi ...
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New York State Council On The Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) serves to foster and advance the arts, culture, and creativity throughout New York State, according to its website. The goal of the council is to allow all New Yorkers to benefit from the contributions the arts give to the city of New York through its communities, education, economic growth, and daily life. Its funding encompasses various artistic fields, such as literary, visual, media, performing arts, specifically focusing on art education and the underserved communities. The NYSCA prioritizes diverse communities, providing inclusive and fair participation in the arts for people of all ages and backgrounds, opportunities for those who want to experience the arts and cultural offerings, the impacts of arts and culture on all aspects of life, the transformation of art and its creative practices, and creativity as an asset. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senat ...
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National Endowment For The Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government by an act of the Congress of the United States, U.S. Congress, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 29, 1965 (20 U.S.C. 951). It is a sub-agency of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The NEA has its offices in Washington, D.C. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1995, as well as the Special Tony Award in 2016. In 1985, the NEA won an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its work with the American Film Institute in the identification, acquisition, restoration and preservation of histo ...
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Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious and significant awards in the music industry in the United States, and thus the show is frequently called "music's biggest night". The trophy depicts a gilded gramophone, and the original idea was to call them the "Gramophone Awards". The Grammys are the first of the Big Three networks' major music awards held annually, and are considered one of the four major annual American entertainment awards with the Academy Awards (for films), the Emmy Awards (for television), and the Tony Awards (for theater). The first Grammy Awards ceremony was held on May 4, 1959, to honor the musical accomplishments of performers for the year 1958. After the 2011 ceremony, the Recording Academy overhauled many Grammy Award categories for 2012. The 67th Ann ...
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Judith Sherman
Judith Dorothy Sherman (born November 12, 1942) is an American audio engineer, and record producer. She has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and won 14 including for Producer Of The Year, Classical seven times (in 1993, 2007, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2022, and 2023). She has worked with contemporary composers on recordings including Steve Reich, Elliot Carter, John Adams, John Corigliano, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass. Notable artists she has worked with include the Alexander String Quartet, Kronos Quartet ('' Nuevo''), Pacifica Quartet, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Quartet. Early life and career Sherman was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1942 to LaVerne Luekens Smith and William Paul Luekens. She attended Valparaiso University where she graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in 1964. She received a Master of Fine Arts from State University of New York (Buffalo) in 1971. After graduating, Sherman worked for Edd Kalehoff (professionally known ...
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ECM Records
ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) is an independent record label founded by Karl Egger, Manfred Eicher and Manfred Scheffner in Munich in 1969. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres. ECM's motto is "the most beautiful sound next to silence", taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases in '' Coda'', a Canadian jazz magazine. ECM has been distributed in the U.S. by Warner Bros. Records, PolyGram Records, BMG, and, since 1999, Universal Music, the successor of PolyGram, worldwide. Its album covers were profiled in two books: ''Sleeves of Desire'' and ''Windfall Light'', both published by Lars Müller. History The first ECM release produced by Manfred Scheffner was pianist Mal Waldron's 1969 recording '' Free at Last''. The label went on to release recordings by many prominent jazz musicians, including Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Pat Metheny, Gary ...
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Re-Imagining Sondheim From The Piano
Re-Imagining was a Minneapolis interfaith conference of clergy, laypeople, and feminist theologians in 1993 that stirred controversy in U.S. Mainline Protestant denominations,Peter Steinfels"Cries of Heresy After Feminists Meet" ''The New York Times'' May 14, 1994 ultimately resulting in the firing of the highest ranking woman in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Re-Imagining: A Global Theological Conference By Women: For Men and Women, grew out of a U.S.A. Mainline Protestant response to the World Council of Churches' ''Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women 1988–1998.'' Participants met at the Minneapolis Convention Center during November 4 through 7, 1993. It brought together 2,200 people, one third of them clergy, and most of them women. 83 men registered. Attendees represented 16 denominations, 27 countries, and 49 states. (Nevada was not represented.) All presenters were women. The conference aimed to encourage churches to address injustices to women worldwide ...
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