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Gavin Carr
Gavin Carr is a British conductor and baritone working with major choruses in the UK and appearing in opera and concert in the UK and around the globe. Biography Gavin Carr is Music Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Bath Minerva Choir, is Founder-Director of Chorus Angelorum and, since mid-2018, is Chorus Master of the Philharmonia Chorus. He has guest conducted with the BBC Symphony Chorus and the London Symphony Chorus as well as the Philharmonia Chorus, and in September 2017 was appointed to the vocal faculty of the Royal Academy of Music, where he currently teaches classes in English Song and the Oratorio repertoire. His schedule includes opera and concert performances in Europe and further afield, workshops and masterclasses across the UK, and affiliations with colleges such as Chetham's School of Music, Hawkwood College, and Bath Spa University. He is the brother of composer Paul Carr. Education Carr was born in Croydon, London, the son of Adelaide soprano a ...
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Baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F2–F4) in choral music, and from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C (A2 to A4) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of baritone include the baryton-Martin baritone (light baritone), lyric baritone, ''Kavalierbariton'', Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, ''baryton-noble'' baritone, and the bass-baritone. History The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as ''baritonans'', late in the 15th century, usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the ave ...
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Snape, Suffolk
Snape is a small village in the English county of Suffolk, on the River Alde close to Aldeburgh. At the 2011 census the population was 611. In Anglo-Saxon England, Snape was the site of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial. Snape is now best known for Snape Maltings, no longer in commercial use, but converted into a tourist centre together with a concert hall that hosts the major part of the annual Aldeburgh Festival. Early history There has been human habitation at Snape for some 2,000 years though the original village stood on higher ground, around the present church (it is not known why the village moved nearer to the river). The Romans established a settlement here, centred on salt production. In Anglo-Saxon times the Wuffingas (who ruled East Anglia from Rendlesham) used Snape largely as a burial site, and archaeological investigations have revealed ship burials and other graves. In 1085 the Domesday Book recorded forty-nine men. The book also mentions a church, standing ...
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Opera Municipal
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 o ...
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War Requiem
The ''War Requiem'', Op. 66, is a large-scale setting of the Requiem composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The ''War Requiem'' was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I. The work is scored for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, chorus, boys' choir, organ, and two orchestras (a full orchestra and a chamber orchestra). The chamber orchestra accompanies the intimate settings of the English poetry, while soprano, choirs and orchestra are used for the Latin sections; all forces are combined in the conclusion. The Requiem has a duration of approximately 80–85 minutes. In 2019, ''War Requiem'' was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the Nation ...
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Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera ''Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale ...
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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, and Beckenham and Penge Grammar schools and excelled in graphic art, mathematics, and English literature. Student years Finnissy received the William Hurlstone composition prize at the Croydon Music ...
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Astra Chamber Music Society
The Astra Chamber Music Society is a concert organisation for choral music and contemporary performance, based in Melbourne, Australia and under the musical direction of John McCaughey. Astra presents an annual series of concerts featuring the Astra Choir. The concerts present new and original work from all musical periods, ranging from medieval tropes and Vietnamese work songs through recent European and American music to newly commissioned Australian compositions. Each Astra program is planned as an event that engages the audience with the stimulus of contrasting materials, extending from the sound of voices to combinations with instruments, electro-acoustics, text and theatre. Astra also publishes CD recordings of the work of the Astra Choir and associated artists. It also has a continuing project to publish scores of the works of the influential Australian composer, performer and educatoKeith Humble History Astra was formed in 1951 as an orchestra of women musicians under t ...
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English National Opera
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English. The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis, presented theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic, for the benefit of local people. Baylis subsequently built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later added a ballet company; these evolved into the ENO, the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Ballet, respectively. Baylis acquired and rebuilt the Sadler's Wells theatre in north London, a larger house, better suited to opera than the Old Vic. The opera company grew there into a permanent ensemble in the 1930s. During the Second World War, the theatre was closed and the company toured British towns and cities. After the war, the ...
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Sir Charles Mackerras
Mackerras in 2005 Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras (; 1925 2010) was an 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 very musical family and his mother was immensely cultured. In 1928, when Charles was aged two, the family returned to Sydney, Australia. 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 seven child ...
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Jan Latham-Koenig
Jan Betrand Latham-Koenig, (born 1953) is a British conductor. He was born in England, coming from French, Danish and Polish origins. He attended Highgate School and then studied at the Royal College of Music in London before he founded the Koenig Ensemble in 1976 and began his career as a concert conductor with the BBC, in 1981 and winning the Gulbenkian Fellowship. He made his debut with ''Macbeth'' at the Vienna State Opera in 1988 and was appointed its permanent guest conductor in 1991. His guest appearances in opera and concert have included the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, English National Opera, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Orchestra dell'Arena di Verona, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the orchestras of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Sudwestfunk and Baden ...
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Wexford Festival Opera
Wexford Festival Opera () is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in south-eastern Ireland during the months of October and November. The festival began in 1951 under Tom Walsh and a group of opera lovers who quickly generated considerable interest by programming unusual and rare works, a typical festival staging three operas. This concept has been maintained over the company's history under the direction of seven different artistic directors. From the beginning, the company embraced new and upcoming young singers, many of whom were Irish, but it also included new international names who made first appearances there. By the 1960s Czech and Russian operas entered the repertory, while the 1970s saw an interest in the operas of Jules Massenet under director Thomson Smillie, followed by an emphasis on Italian operas from the end of that decade. However, into the mix there appeared more modern operas by Benjamin Britten and Carlisle Floyd while Elaine Padmore ...
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Galina Vishnevskaya
Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya (russian: links=no, Галина Павловна Вишневская, Ivanova, Иванова; 25 October 192611 December 2012) was a Russian soprano opera singer and recitalist who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1966. She was the wife of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and mother to their two daughters, Olga and Elena Rostropovich. Biography Vishnevskaya was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). She made her professional stage debut in 1944 singing operetta. After a year studying with Vera Nikolayevna Garina, she won a competition held by the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (with Rachmaninoff's song "O, Do Not Grieve" and Verdi's aria "O patria mia" from ''Aida'') in 1952. The next year, she became a member of the Bolshoi Theatre. On 24 March 1957, she made her debut in Finnish National Opera as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin. On 9 May 1960, she made her first appearance in Sarajevo at the National Theatre, as Aida. In 1961, she made her Met ...
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