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Mark Anthony Turnage
Mark-Anthony Turnage (born 10 June 1960) is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Life and career Mark-Anthony Turnage was born in Corringham, Essex on 10 June 1960. Turnage was the eldest of three children. His parents were lovers of classical music and were enthusiastic Pentecostal Christians. He began composing at age nine and at fourteen began studying at the junior section of the Royal College of Music. His initial musical studies were with Oliver Knussen, John Lambert, and later with Gunther Schuller. He also has been strongly influenced by jazz, in particular by the work of Miles Davis, and has composed works featuring jazz performers, including John Scofield, Peter Erskine, John Patitucci, and Joe Lovano. Turnage has composed numerous orchestral and chamber works, and three full-length operas. ''Greek'', composed with the encouragement of Hans Werner Henze and first performed in 1988 at the Munich Biennale, is based on Steven Berkoff's adaptation of ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cabrillo Festival Of Contemporary Music
The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music is an annual Festival dedicated to contemporary symphonic music by living composers. The music director since 2017 has been Cristian Măcelaru. According to Jesse Rosen, CEO of the League of American Orchestras, the Festival is "distinctive for being focused entirely on contemporary works." Each year, a tenured orchestra gathers in Santa Cruz, California to rehearse five programs of contemporary music, often world, US, or West Coast premieres. Most of the composers whose work is performed each season come to the Festival to be in residence and participate in the rehearsals and performances of their work, as well as to participate in public panel discussions, lectures, and concert introductions. The Festival also presents guest artists and ensembles known for contemporary music performance, such as Kronos Quartet or eighth blackbird. History The Festival was founded in 1963 by the composers Lou Harrison, Robert Hughes (American composer), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Patitucci
John Patitucci (born December 22, 1959) is an American jazz bassist and composer. Biography John James Patitucci was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began playing the electric bass at age 10, performing and composing at age 12, and at age 15, started playing the acoustic bass, as well as piano by age 16. He listened to bass parts in R&B songs on the radio and on his grandfather's jazz records. He cites as influences Oscar Peterson's albums with Ray Brown (musician), Ray Brown and Wes Montgomery's with Ron Carter. For the development of rhythm, he points to the time he has spent with Danilo Pérez, a pianist from Panama. In the late 1970s he studied acoustic bass at San Francisco State University and Long Beach State University. He began his professional career when he moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and made connections with Henry Mancini, Dave Grusin, and Tom Scott (saxophonist), Tom Scott. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s he was a member of three Chick Corea groups: the Chick ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Thomas (musician)
Richard Thomas (born 1964) is a British composer, writer, and comedy actor. He is best known for composing, writing and scoring the award-winning '' Jerry Springer: The Opera'' with book and additional lyrics co-written with Stewart Lee. Thomas collected the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Score in 2004. Richard Thomas's comedy career began in 1987, doing a musical act on keyboards. In 2000, he wrote and performed a one-act opera called ''Tourette's Diva'' with four actors, which aired at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Thomas had the idea for an opera based on Jerry Springer at this time, and wrote it over the next two years, chiefly in workshops at Battersea Arts Centre. Thomas would offer a "Beer for an Idea", where any audience members submitting a good idea would be rewarded with a can of Foster's and poor ideas with a supermarket store brand. After a number of small scale performances of the first act, which was in much the same shape as it remains today, the secon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Nicole
''Anna Nicole'' is an opera in 2 acts and 16 scenes, with music by Mark-Anthony Turnage to an English libretto by Richard Thomas. Based on the life of American model Anna Nicole Smith, the opera received its première on 17 February 2011 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, directed by Richard Jones. A recording of the opera was broadcast on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer on 25 March 2011. The broadcast drew in 67,700 viewers. The opera received its first London revival at Covent Garden in September 2014. Premiere The opera received its European continental premiere at Theater Dortmund (Germany) in April 2013 with American soprano Emily Newton in the title role. ''Anna Nicole'' received its U.S. premiere on September 17, 2013, in a production by the New York City Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the last work staged by the City Opera before its closure that year. Roles Synopsis Act 1 * 'Scene Zero' – Overture * Scene 1 – 'America Sings' * Scene 2 – "No! It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey ( ; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes. Early life O'Casey was born at 85 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin, as John Casey, the son of Michael Casey, a mercantile clerk (who worked for the Irish Church Missions), and Susan Archer. His parents were Protestants and he was a member of the Church of Ireland, baptised on 28 July 1880 in St. Mary's parish, confirmed at St John the Baptist Church in Clontarf, and an active member of St. Barnabas' Church on Sheriff Street until his mid-20s, when he drifted away from the church. There is a church called 'Saint Burnupus' in his play '' Red Roses For Me''. O'Casey's father died when Seán was just six years of age, leaving a family of thirteen. The family lived a peripatetic life thereafter, moving from house to house around north Dublin. As a child, he suffere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Silver Tassie (opera)
''The Silver Tassie'' is an opera in four acts by the English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. The English libretto was written by Amanda Holden based on the 1927/28 play of the same name by Seán O'Casey. The opera was composed between 1997 and 1999. Background The ''Silver Tassie'' was commissioned by English National Opera (ENO) while Turnage was their Composer in Association and benefited from being worked on at the ENO Studio. It was part funded by Dallas Opera. In an interview for the programme for the ENO production, Turnage talks about treating the four acts as the movements of a symphony with a dance finale. He also discusses how the studio workshops helped him thin out the orchestral textures to make the voices clearer. Although the libretto leaves things vague, Turnage makes it clear that he had a Dublin setting in mind with references in the last act to an Irish jig as one of the dance movements and the use of fiddles in the off-stage band. Turnage includes references ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oedipus Rex
''Oedipus Rex'', also known by its Greek title, ''Oedipus Tyrannus'' (, ), or ''Oedipus the King'', is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles. While some scholars have argued that the play was first performed , this is highly uncertain. Originally, to the ancient Greeks, the title was simply ''Oedipus'' (), as it is referred to by Aristotle in the '' Poetics''. It is thought to have been renamed ''Oedipus Tyrannus'' to distinguish it from '' Oedipus at Colonus'', a later play by Sophocles. In antiquity, the term " tyrant" referred to a ruler with no legitimate claim to rule, but it did not necessarily have a negative connotation. Of Sophocles's three Theban plays that have survived, and that deal with the story of Oedipus, ''Oedipus Rex'' was the second to be written, following '' Antigone'' by about a dozen years. However, in terms of the chronology of events described by the plays, it comes first, followed by ''Oedipus at Colonus'' and then ''Antigone''. Prior to the start of ''Oe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Berkoff
Steven Berkoff (born Leslie Steven Berks; 3 August 1937) is an English actor, author, playwright, theatre practitioner and theatre director. As a theatre maker he is recognised for staging work with a heightened performance style known as "Berkovian theatre", which combines elements of physical theatre, total theatre and expressionism. His work has sometimes been viewed as an example of in-yer-face theatre, due to the intense presentation and taboo-breaking material in a number of his plays. As a screen actor, he is known for his performances in villainous roles, including the portrayals of General Orlov in the ''James Bond'' film ''Octopussy'' (1983), Victor Maitland in '' Beverly Hills Cop'' (1984), Lt. Col. Podovsky in '' Rambo: First Blood Part II'' (1985) and Adolf Hitler in '' War and Remembrance'' (1988–89). Early life Berkoff was born Leslie Steven Berks on 3 August 1937, in Stepney in the East End of London, the son of Pauline "Polly" (née Hyman), a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Munich Biennale
The Munich Biennale () is a contemporary opera and music theatre festival in the city of Munich. The full German name is ''Internationales Festival für neues Musiktheater'', literally: International Festival for New Music Theater. The biennial festival was created in 1988 by Hans Werner Henze and is held in even-numbered years over 2–3 weeks in the late spring. The festival concentrates on world premieres of theater-related contemporary music, with a particular focus on commissioning first operas from young composers. History Hans Werner Henze's artistic directorship (1988–1996) Henze, himself a prolific composer of operas, described the genesis of the festival like this: Henze curated the first four festivals, from 1988 to 1994, and established the general format of most of the festivals that followed. Short runs of the premiered operas are preceded by talks and additional concerts from the featured composers, to introduce the audiences to their ideas and music. See also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large List of compositions by Hans Werner Henze, oeuvre is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Igor Stravinsky, Stravinsky, Music of Italy, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. In particular, his stage works reflect "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life". Henze was also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his Left-wing politics, leftist politics and homosexuality. Late in life he lived in the village of Marino, Lazio, Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio, and in his final years still travelled extensively, in particular to Britain and Germany, as part of his work. An avowed Marxism, Marxist and member of the Italian Communist Party, Henze produced compositions honoring Ho Chi Minh and Che ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek (opera)
''Greek'' is an opera in two acts composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage to a libretto adapted by Turnage and Jonathan Moore from Steven Berkoff's 1980 verse play ''Greek (play), Greek''. The play and the opera are a re-telling of Sophocles's Greek tragedy ''Oedipus Rex'' with the setting changed to the East End of London in the 1980s. The opera was first performed on 17 June 1988 in the Carl-Orff-Saal of the Gasteig, Munich, in a co-production by the Munich Biennale, the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC. Background and performance history Turnage composed ''Greek'' between 1986 and 1988 as a commission from the City of Munich for one of five new operas to premiere at the first Munich Biennale. The commission was suggested by the Biennale's founder, German composer Hans Werner Henze, who had taught Turnage at the Tanglewood Music Center and admired his work. Turnage adapted Berkoff's play for the libretto with the help of Jonathan Moore who would be the stage director of the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libretto, librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, Theatrical scenery, 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 conducting, 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 Western culture#Music, Western classical music, and Italian tradition in particular. Originally understood as an sung-through, entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include :Opera genres, numerous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
