|
English Idyll
Julian Lloyd Webber (born 14 April 1951) is a British solo cellist, conductor and broadcaster, a former principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the founder of the In Harmony music education programme. Early years and education Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer and music educator William Lloyd Webber and his wife, Jean Johnstone (a piano teacher). He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. The composer Herbert Howells was his godfather. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1968 and completed his studies with Pierre Fournier in Geneva in 1973. Career Lloyd Webber made his professional debut as a cellist at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, in September 1972 when he gave the first London performance of the cello concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, including conductors Yehudi Menuhin, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Georg Solti, Yevgeny Svetlano ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal College Of Music
The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performance, composition, conducting, music theory and history, and has trained some of the most important figures in international music life. The RCM also conducts research in performance practice and performance science. The RCM has over 900 students from more than 50 countries, with professors who include many who are musicians with worldwide reputations. The college is one of the four conservatories of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and a member of Conservatoires UK. Its buildings are directly opposite the Royal Albert Hall on Prince Consort Road, next to Imperial College and among the museums and cultural centres of Albertopolis. History Background The Royal College of Music was founded in 1883 to replac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin (22 April 191612 March 1999), was an American-born British violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius, considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari. Early life and career Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City to Moshe Menuhin, a Lithuanian Jew from Gomel in modern Belarus, and Marutha, a Crimean Karaites, Crimean Karaite. Through his father Moshe, he was descended from a rabbinical dynasty. Moshe and Marutha (née Sher) met in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (part of Palestine (region), historic Palestine under the Ottoman Empire) before marrying in New York in 1914. In late 1919, the pair became American citizens and changed the family name from Mnuchin to Menuhin. Menuhin's sisters were concert pianist and human rights activist Hephzibah Menuhin, Hephzibah, and pian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleo Laine
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth (born Clementine Dinah Hitching; 28 October 1927) is an English singer and actress known for her scat singing. She is the widow of jazz composer and musician Sir John Dankworth and the mother of bassist Alec Dankworth and singer Jacqui Dankworth. Early life Laine was born Clementine Dinah Hitching on 28 October 1927, in Southall, Middlesex (now London), to Alexander Sylvan Campbell, a Jamaican who worked as a building labourer and regularly busked, and Minnie Bullock, an English farmer's daughter from Swindon, Wiltshire, whose maiden name was reportedly Hitching. The family moved constantly, but most of Laine's childhood was spent in Southall. It was not until 1953, when she was 26 and applying for a passport for a forthcoming tour of Germany, that Laine found out her real birth name, owing to her parents not being married at the time and her mother registering her under her own name (Hitching). Education Laine attended the Board school ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, songwriter and pianist. His music and showmanship have had a significant, lasting impact on the music industry, and his songwriting partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin is one of the most successful in history. John was the 19th EGOT winner in history. He has sold over 300 million records worldwide, making him one of the List of best-selling music artists, best-selling music artists of all time. John learned to play piano at an early age, winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. In the 1960s, he formed the blues band Bluesology, wrote songs for other artists alongside Taupin, and worked as a session musician, before releasing his debut album, ''Empty Sky'' (1969). Throughout the next six decades, John cemented his status as a cultural icon with Elton John albums discography, 32 studio albums, including ''Honky Château'' (1972), ''Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'' (1973), ''Roc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli (; 26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997) was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties. For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, ''Grappelly'', reverting to the Italian spelling ''Grappelli'' in 1969. The latter is used when referring to the violinist, including reissues of his early work. Biography Early years Grappelli was born at Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris, France. His father, Italian Ernesto Grappelli, was born in Alatri, Lazio, while his French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, was from St-Omer. Ernesto was a scholar who taught Italian, sold translations, and wrote articles for local journals. Grappelli's mother died when he was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murray Perahia
Murray David Perahia ( ; born April 19, 1947) is an American pianist and conductor. He has been considered one of the greatest living pianists. He was the first North American pianist to win the Leeds International Piano Competition, in 1972. Known as a leading interpreter of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, among other composers, Perahia has won numerous awards, including three Grammy Awards from a total of 18 nominations, and 9 Gramophone Awards in addition to its first and only "Piano Award". Early life Murray (Moshe) was born in the Bronx borough of New York City to a family of Sephardi Jewish origin. According to the biography on his Mozart piano sonatas CD, his first language was Judaeo-Spanish, or Ladino. The family came from Thessaloniki, Greece. His father moved to the United States in 1935. Perahia began studying the piano at age four, with a teacher, he said, who was "very limiting" because she made him play a single piece until it wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clifford Curzon
Sir Clifford Michael Curzon CBE (né Siegenberg; 18 May 19071 September 1982) was an English classical pianist. Curzon studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and subsequently with Artur Schnabel in Berlin and Wanda Landowska and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In his early career he was known for his performances of Romantic and virtuoso music, and for championing modern works. Later he concentrated on composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. He played regularly in continental Europe and North America, making tours in the 1930s and for most of his post-war career. Although signed to a recording company, Decca, for most of his career, Curzon was not at ease in the studio, and vetoed the release of many of his recordings, some of which were published after his death. Life and career Early years Curzon was born in Islington, London, the younger son and second of three children of Michael Siegenberg, a Jewish antiques dealer, and his wife Constance Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen (; born 30 June 1958) is a Finnish conducting, conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, he announced his resignation from the San Francisco Symphony upon the expiration of his contract in 2025. Life and career Early work Born in Helsinki, Finland, Salonen graduated from Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu (SYK), one of the top high schools in Finland, in 1977 and then went to study French horn, horn and musical composition, composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, as well as conducting with Jorma Panula. His conducting classmates included Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Osmo Vänskä. Another classmate on the composition side was the composer Magnus Lindberg and together they formed the new-music appreciation group Korvat auki ("Ears open" in the Finnish language) and the experimental ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Mackerras
Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras (; (17 November 1925 – 14 July 2010) was an American-born Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera (and its predecessor) and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon. Early life and education Mackerras was born in Schenectady, New York, to Australian parents, Alan Mackerras and Catherine MacLaurin. His father was an electrical engineer and a Quaker. Mackerras grew up in a musical family and his mother was immensely cultured. In 1928, when Charles was aged two, the family returned to Sydney. They initially lived in the suburb of Rose Bay, and in 1933 they moved to the then semi-rural suburb of Turramurra. Mackerras was the eldest of seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Davis (conductor)
Sir Andrew Frank Davis (2 February 1944 – 20 April 2024) was an English conductor. He was the long-time chief conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He was music director at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne Festival from 1988 to 2000, and especially known for conducting the traditional Last Night of The Proms, including Last Night speeches. He was music director and principal conductor of the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 2000 to the 2020/21 season. Music critic Alan Blyth described Davis as "a conductor whose technical skill was enhanced by an inborn enthusiasm for and dedication to the task in hand that he was able to transfer to the forces before him." Early life and education Andrew Frank Davis was born on 2 February 1944, in Ashridge, Hertfordshire, England. His parents were Robert J. Davis and his wife Florence Joyce (née Badminton). Davis grew up in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, and in Wat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Elder
Sir Mark Philip Elder (born 2 June 1947) is a British conductor. Life and career Elder was born in Hexham, Northumberland, the son of a dentist. He played the bassoon when in primary school, at Bryanston School, Dorset, and in the National Youth Orchestra, where he was one of the foremost musicians (bassoon and keyboard) of his generation. He attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge as a choral scholar, where he studied music. He later became a protégé of Sir Edward Downes and gained experience conducting Verdi operas (as well as Prokofiev's ''War and Peace'' and Wagner's ''Meistersinger'') in Australia, at the Sydney Opera House. Early posts From 1979 to 1993, Elder was music director of English National Opera (ENO). Elder was part of the "Power House" team at ENO that also included general director Peter Jonas and artistic director David Pountney. He also held positions as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1982–1985) and the London M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yevgeny Svetlanov
Yevgeny Fyodorovich Svetlanov (; 6 September 1928 – 3 May 2002) was a Soviet and Russian conductor, composer, and pianist. Life and work Svetlanov was born in Moscow and studied conducting with Alexander Gauk at the Moscow Conservatory The Moscow Conservatory, also officially Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory () is a higher musical educational institution located in Moscow, Russia. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in musical performance and musical research. Th .... From 1955 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre, being appointed principal conductor there in 1962. From 1965 he was principal conductor of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation, USSR State Symphony Orchestra (now the Russian State Symphony Orchestra). In 1979 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Svetlanov was also music director of the Residentie Orchestra (The Hague) from 1992 to 2000 and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
