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Phase 4 Stereo
Phase 4 Stereo was a recording process created by the U.K. Decca Records label in 1961. The process was used on U.K. Decca recordings and also those of its American subsidiary London Records during the 1960s. Phase 4 Stereo recordings were created with an innovative 10-channel, and later 20-channel, "recording console". The 10-channel and 20-channel console outputs for Phase 4 recordings were originally made on then novel 4-track tape, but the innovation was in the special scoring used to maximize the technology. In recording techniques of the early-to-mid-60s, to get the kind of layered sound realized in Phase 4 recordings, multiple overdubs over multiple reels of tape, bouncing down and bouncing across to different recorders were used. This increased the level of tape hiss on the final master, something which Phase 4 engineers wanted to avoid. They achieved in their scoring techniques in one pass what everybody else was achieving with multiple overdubs. Approximately two hund ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decca Records
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis (Decca), Edward Lewis after his acquisition of a gramophone manufacturer, The Decca Gramophone Company. It set up an American subsidiary under the Decca name, which became an independent company just before the Second World War. The American spin-off became a subsidiary of MCA Inc. in 1962. Known for its technical innovations, the British parent company grew to become the second most successful recording company in Britain and celebrated fifty years of existence in 1979, shortly before being sold to PolyGram. Both Decca and its former subsidiary were subsequently acquired by Universal Music. Decca and its American spin-off both built up strong catalogues of popular music. In their first two decades their artists included Gertrude Lawrence, George Formby, Jack Hylton and Vera Lynn in Britain and Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers in the US. Later performers in their popular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fantasia (1940 Film)
''Fantasia'' is a 1940 American Animated film, animated Musical film, musical anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions, with story direction by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer and production supervision by Walt Disney and Ben Sharpsteen. It consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor acts as the film's Master of Ceremonies who introduces each segment in live action. Disney settled on the film's concept in 1938 as work neared completion on ''The Sorcerer's Apprentice'', originally an elaborate ''Silly Symphony'' cartoon designed as a comeback role for Mickey Mouse, who had declined in popularity. As production costs surpassed what the short could earn, Disney decided to include it in a feature-length film of multiple segments set to classical pieces with Stokowski and Taylor as collaborators. The soundtrack was recorded u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compact Disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of holding of uncompressed stereo audio. First released in Japan in October 1982, the CD was the second optical disc format to reach the market, following the larger LaserDisc (LD). In later years, the technology was adapted for computer data storage as CD-ROM and subsequently expanded into various writable and multimedia formats. , over 200 billion CDs (including audio CDs, CD-ROMs, and CD-Rs) had been sold worldwide. Standard CDs have a diameter of and typically hold up to 74 minutes of audio or approximately of data. This was later regularly extended to 80 minutes or by reducing the spacing between data tracks, with some discs unofficially reaching up to 99 minutes or which falls outside established specifications. Smaller variants, such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in film scoring. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary." An Academy Award-winner for '' The Devil and Daniel Webster'' (1941), Herrmann worked in radio drama, composing for Orson Welles's '' The Mercury Theater on the Air'', and his first film score was for Welles's film debut, ''Citizen Kane'' (1941). He is known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, notably '' The Man Who Knew Too Much'' (1956) (where he makes a cameo as the conductor at Royal Albert Hall), ''Vertigo'' (1958), ''North by Northwest'' (1959), '' Psycho'' (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorin Maazel
Lorin Varencove Maazel (; March 6, 1930 – July 13, 2014) was an American conductor, violinist and composer. He began conducting at the age of eight and by 1953 had decided to pursue a career in music. He had established a reputation in the concert halls of Europe by 1960 but his career in the U.S. progressed far more slowly. He served as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, among other posts. Maazel was well regarded in baton technique and had a photographic memory for scores. Described as mercurial and forbidding in rehearsal, he mellowed in old age. Early life Maazel was born to American parents of Russian Jewish origin in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. His grandfather Isaac Maazel (1873–1925), born in Poltava, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire, was a violinist in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. He and his wife Esther Glazer (1879� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Munch (conductor)
Charles Munch (; born Karl Münch; 26 September 1891 – 6 November 1968) was an Alsacian French symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he was best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Life and career Munch was born in 1891 in Strasbourg, Alsace. The son of organist and choir director Ernst Münch, he was the fifth of six children. He was the brother of conductor Fritz Münch and the cousin of conductor and composer Hans Münch. Although his first ambition was to be a locomotive engineer, he studied violin at the Strasbourg Conservatory. His father, Ernst, was a professor of organ at the conservatory and performed at the cathedral; he also directed an orchestra with his son Charles in the second violins. After receiving his diploma in 1912, Charles studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin and Lucien Capet at the Conservatoire de Paris. He was conscripted into the German army in World War I, serving as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anatole Fistoulari
Anatole Fistoulari (20 August 1907 – 21 August 1995) was one of the great British conductors of the 20th century.Obituary – Anatole Fistoulari. ''Opera'', October 1995, Vol.46 No.10, p1172. A child prodigy, he later conducted around Europe and America, and left a significant discography. Biography Fistoulari was born into a musical family in Kyiv, Russian Empire, now Ukraine. His principal teacher was his father, the conductor Gregor Fistoulari, who had studied with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Anton Rubinstein. Anatole conducted for the first time, at the age of seven, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, the '' Pathetique'', at a charity concert at the Opera House in Kyiv.Brook, Donald. Anatole Fistoulari. In: Conductors' Gallery. Rockcliff, London, 1946, p56-60. He then conducted a concert of the Imperial Court Orchestra in Odessa from memory. At the age of 13 he went to Bucharest, where he was invited to conduct '' Samson and Delilah'' at the Opera House. Next he went t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erich Leinsdorf
Erich Leinsdorf (born Erich Landauer; February 4, 1912 – September 11, 1993) was an Austrian-born American conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality. He also published books and essays on musical matters. Biography Leinsdorf was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, and was studying music at a local school by the age of 5. He played the cello and studied composition. In his teens, Leinsdorf worked as a piano accompanist for singers. He studied conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and later at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Academy of Music. From 1934 to 1937 he worked as an assistant to the noted conductors Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival. In November 1937, Leinsdorf travelled to the United States to take up a position as assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antal Doráti
Antal Doráti (, , ; 9 April 1906 – 13 November 1988) was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1943. Biography Antal Doráti was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. His father Alexander Doráti was a violinist with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra and his mother Margit Kunwald was a piano teacher. He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy with Zoltán Kodály and Leó Weiner for composition and Béla Bartók for piano. His links with Bartók continued for many years: he conducted the world premiere of Bartók's Viola Concerto, as completed by Tibor Serly, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1949, with William Primrose as the soloist. He made his conducting debut in 1924 with the Budapest Royal Opera. As well as composing original works, he compiled and arranged pieces by Johann Strauss II for the ballet '' Graduation Ball'' (1940), premiered by the Original Ballet Russe in Sydney, Australia, with himself on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Black
Stanley Black OBE (14 June 1913 – 27 November 2002) was an English bandleader, composer, conductor, arranger and pianist. He wrote and arranged many film scores, recording prolifically for the Decca label (including their subsidiaries ''London'' and ''Phase 4''). Beginning with jazz collaborations with American musicians such as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter during the 1930s, he moved into arranging and recording in the Latin American music style and also won awards for his classical conducting. Life and career Black was born as Solomon Schwartz on 14 June 1913 in Whitechapel, England. His parents were Polish and Romanian Jews. He began piano lessons at the age of seven and trained in piano and composition under Rae Robertson at the Matthay School of Music. He was aged only 12 when his first classical composition was broadcast on BBC Radio. His first professional job was for a C.B. Cochran 1930 theatrical revue followed by winning a ''Melody Maker'' competition for his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmundo Ros
Edmundo Ros OBE, FRAM (7 December 1910 – 21 October 2011), born Edmund William Ross, was a Trinidadian-Venezuelan musician, vocalist, arranger and bandleader who made his career in Britain. He directed a highly popular Latin American orchestra, had an extensive recording career and owned one of London's leading nightclubs. Early life Edmund William Ross was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. His mother, Luisa Urquart, was a Venezuelan teacher, thought to be descended from indigenous Caribs, and his father, William Hope-Ross, was a mulatto of Scottish descent. He was the eldest of four children, having two sisters, Ruby and Eleanor, followed by a half-brother, Hugo. His parents separated after Hugo was born, and after various false steps Edmund was enrolled in a military academy. There he became interested in music and learned to play the euphonium and percussion. When his mother became involved with a man he loathed and had a son by him, the 17-year-old left for Caracas, Ven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronnie Aldrich
Ronald Frank Aldrich (15 February 1916 – 30 September 1993) was a British easy listening and jazz pianist, arranger, conductor and composer. Early life He was born Ronald Frank Aldrich on 15 February 1916 in Erith, England, the only son of a store manager. He started playing the piano at three years old and was educated at the Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone and learned violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He travelled to India in the late 30s ahead of World War Two to play jazz and first gained fame in the 1940s as the leader of a Royal Air Force band called The Squadronaires who had a twenty-year-long career before they disbanded in 1964. Education and career Aldrich was educated at The Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone, and taught violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Before the Second World War, he went to India to play jazz and first gained fame in the 1940s with the Squadronaires, which he led from 1951, when the band was then bille ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
