- published: 04 Oct 2008
- views: 24560
- author: ndtv
Vimeo results:
Youtube results:
Open Collage in a new Window
Email the Collage
- Loading...
Loading suggestions ...
- Alan Gilbert
- Aldo van Eyck
- Alfred Wallenstein
- Allmusic
- Andrew Lloyd Webber
- André Previn
- Angela Lansbury
- Anselm Kiefer
- Anton Bruckner
- Anton Seidl
- Antoni Tàpies
- Artur Rodziński
- Arturo Toscanini
- Bank Leumi
- Barbra Streisand
- Bavarian State Opera
- Brian Wilson
- British India
- Bruce Nauman
- Bruce Springsteen
- Bruno Walter
- Carl Bergmann
- Carlo Maria Giulini
- Carol Burnett
- Castel Sant'Angelo
- Catherine Malfitano
- Charles Dutoit
- Chennai
- Chita Rivera
- Christopher Nupen
- Chuck Berry
- Claes Oldenburg
- Claudio Abbado
- Clemens Krauss
- Clint Eastwood
- Dan David Prize
- Daniel Barenboim
- Dave Brubeck
- David Chipperfield
- Denys Lasdun
- Diana Ross
- Dimitri Mitropoulos
- Dodger Stadium
- Dolly Parton
- Double bass
- Désiré Defauw
- Echo (music award)
- Eduard van Beinum
- Eduardo Chillida
- Elizabeth Taylor
- Elton John
- Emil Paur
- Esa-Pekka Salonen
- Felix Mottl
- Ferenc Fricsay
- Frank Gehry
- Frank Zappa
- Franz Lachner
- Franz Schmidt
- Franz Schubert
- Franz Wüllner
- Franz-Paul Decker
- Frei Otto
- Fumihiko Maki
- Georg Schnéevoigt
- Georg Solti
- George Jones
- George Szell
- Gerhard Richter
- Giacomo Puccini
- Giancarlo De Carlo
- Gil Shaham
- Giya Kancheli
- Goethe-Institut
- Government of India
- Grace Bumbry
- Gustav Mahler
- Gustavo Dudamel
- György Ligeti
- Hans Knappertsbusch
- Hans Swarowsky
- Hans von Bülow
- Hebrew
- Hermann Levi
- Hermann Zumpe
- Igor Markevitch
- Indian people
- Isaac Stern
- Israel Prize
- Israeli Arabs
- Itzhak Perlman
- Jack Nicholson
- Jacqueline du Pré
- James Brown
- James Earl Jones
- James Levine
- James Turrell
- Jasper Johns
- Jean Martinon
- Jean Nouvel
- Jezreel Valley
- Joan Sutherland
- John Barbirolli
- John Williams
- Josef Stránský
- Josef Tal
- Joseph Keilberth
- Julie Andrews
- Julie Harris
- Jørn Utzon
- Karl Böhm
- Kennedy Center
- Kent Nagano
- Krzysztof Penderecki
- Kurt Masur
- Leon Fleisher
- Leonard Bernstein
- Leopold Damrosch
- Leopold Stokowski
- Loretta Lynn
- Lorin Maazel
- Louise Bourgeois
- Luciano Berio
- Luciano Pavarotti
- Madras Music Academy
- Marc Chagall
- Martin Scorsese
- Mehli Mehta
- Mel Brooks
- Mike Nichols
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
- Morgan Freeman
- Mumbai
- Munich Philharmonic
- Nancy Kovack
- Nazareth
- Olivier Messiaen
- Opera (magazine)
- Ossie Davis
- Otto Klemperer
- Padma Bhushan
- Padma Vibhushan
- Palazzo Farnese
- Parsi
- Paul Simon
- Pete Townshend
- Peter Eisenman
- Pierre Boulez
- Pinchas Zukerman
- Plácido Domingo
- Praemium Imperiale
- Quincy Jones
- Ravi Shankar
- Requiem (Mozart)
- Riccardo Muti
- Richard Strauss
- Robert De Niro
- Robert Redford
- Roger Daltrey
- Rosemarie Trockel
- Ruby Dee
- Rudolf Kempe
- Ruggero Raimondi
- Saarbrücker Zeitung
- Sarajevo
- Shfaram
- Simon Rattle
- Smokey Robinson
- Steve Martin
- Steven Spielberg
- Suzanne Farrell
- Terry Sanders
- Theodore Eisfeld
- Three Tenors
- Time (magazine)
- Tina Turner
- Tony Bennett
- Tosca
- Trout Quintet
- Tsunami
- Turandot
- Twyla Tharp
- Ureli Corelli Hill
- Van Cliburn
- Vasily Safonov
- Vienna Philharmonic
- Vienna State Opera
- Vladimir Horowitz
- Walter Damrosch
- Warren Beatty
- Weimar
- Wikipedia Persondata
- Wilfrid Pelletier
- Willem Mengelberg
- Wolf Prize in Arts
- Wolfgang Sawallisch
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Ynet
- Yugoslav wars
- Zarin Mehta
- Zhang Yimou
- Zubin Mehta
- Álvaro Siza Vieira
-
Castel Sant'Angelo
Coordinates: 41°54′11″N 12°27′59″E / 41.903064°N 12.466355°E / 41.903064; 12.466355
The Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as the Castel Sant'Angelo (English: Castle of the Holy Angel), is a towering cylindrical building in Parco Adriano, Rome, Italy. It was initially commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family. The building was later used by the popes as a fortress and castle, and is now a museum.
The tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian, also called Hadrian's mole, was erected on the right bank of the Tiber, between 135 AD and 139 AD. Originally the mausoleum was a decorated cylinder, with a garden top and golden quadriga. Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138 AD, together with those of his wife Sabina, and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who also died in 138 AD. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were also placed here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217 AD. The urns containing these ashes were probably placed in what is now known as the Treasury room deep within the building. Hadrian also built the Pons Aelius facing straight onto the mausoleum – it still provides a scenic approach from the center of Rome and the right bank of the Tiber, and is renowned for the Baroque additions of statues of angels holding aloft elements of the Passion of Christ.
wn.com/Castel_Sant'Angelo -
Chennai
Chennai /ˈtʃɛnaɪ/, formerly Madras /məˈdræs/, is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is a major commercial, cultural, and educational centre in South India, while the port of Chennai is the second largest port in India. As of the 2011 census, the city had 4.68 million residents making it the sixth most populous city in India; the urban agglomeration, which comprises the city and its suburbs, was home to approximately 8.9 million, making it the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the country.
Although the area has been part of successive South Indian kingdoms through centuries, the recorded history of the city began in the colonial times, specifically with the arrival of British East India Company and the establishment in 1644 of Fort St George, an English settlement. The British defended several attacks from the French colonial forces, and from the kingdom of Mysore, on Chennai's way to become a major naval port and presidency city by late eighteenth century. Following the independence of India, Chennai became the capital of Tamil Nadu and a hotbed of regional politics that tended to bank on Dravidian identity of the populace. Chennai had become a bustling metropolis with beautiful classical and colonial European styled buildings, lining the city’s thoroughfares.
wn.com/Chennai -
Jezreel Valley
The Jezreel Valley (Hebrew: עמק יזרעאל, Emek Yizre'el) (Arabic: مرج ابن عامر, Marǧ Ibn Amer) is a large fertile plain and inland valley south of the Lower Galilee region in Israel and West Bank in Palestinian Territories. The Samarian highlands and Mount Gilboa border the valley from the south and the northern outskirts of the West Bank cities of Jenin and Tulkarm have spread into the southern part of the valley. To the west is the Mount Carmel range, and to the east is the Jordan Valley.
The Jezreel Valley takes its name from the ancient city of Jezreel (known in Arabic as Zir'in; Arabic: زرعين) which was located on a low hill overlooking the southern edge of the valley, though some scholars think that the name of the city originates from the name of the clan which founded it, and whose existence is mentioned in the Merneptah stele. The word Jezreel means "God sows" or "El sows". The phrase "valley of Jezreel" was sometimes used to refer to the central part of the valley, around the city of Jezreel, while the southwestern portion was known as the "valley of Megiddo", after the ancient city of Megiddo, which was located there. The area has been known as the Plain of Esdraelon (Esdraelon is the Koine Greek rendering of Jezreel).
wn.com/Jezreel_Valley -
Kennedy Center
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (on the building itself called the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The Center, which opened on September 8, 1971, produces and presents theater, dance, ballet, orchestral, chamber, jazz, popular, and folk music, in addition to multi-media performances for all ages.
It is the busiest performing arts facility in the United States and annually hosts approximately 2,000 performances for audiences totaling nearly two million; Center-related touring productions, television, and radio broadcasts welcome 20 million more. Now in its 40th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater; supports artists in the creation of new work; and serves the nation as a leader in arts education. With its artistic affiliate, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Center's achievements as a commissioner, producer, and nurturer of developing artists have resulted in over 200 theatrical productions, dozens of new ballets, operas, and musical works.
wn.com/Kennedy_Center -
Mumbai
Mumbai /mʊmˈbaɪ/, also known as Bombay /bɒmˈbeɪ/, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million. Along with the neighbouring urban areas, including the cities of Navi Mumbai and Thane, it is one of the most populous urban regions in the world. Mumbai lies on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbour. In 2009, Mumbai was named an Alpha world city. Mumbai is also the richest city in India, and has the highest GDP of any city in South, West or Central Asia.
The seven islands that came to constitute Mumbai were home to communities of fishing colonies. For centuries, the islands were under the control of successive indigenous empires before being ceded to the Portuguese and subsequently to the British East India Company. During the mid-18th century, Mumbai was reshaped by the Hornby Vellard project, which undertook the reclamation of the area between the seven constituent islands from the sea. Completed by 1845, the project along with construction of major roads and railways transformed Bombay into a major seaport on the Arabian Sea. Economic and educational development characterised the city during the 19th century. It became a strong base for the Indian independence movement during the early 20th century. When India became independent in 1947, the city was incorporated into Bombay State. In 1960, following the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, a new state of Maharashtra was created with Bombay as capital. The city was renamed Mumbai in 1996.
wn.com/Mumbai -
Nazareth
Nazareth (
/ˈnæzərəθ/; Hebrew: נָצְרַת, Natzrat or Natzeret; Arabic: اَلنَّاصِرَة an-Nāṣira or an-Naseriyye) is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Nazareth is known as "the Arab capital of Israel"; the population is made up predominantly of Arab citizens of Israel, the majority of whom are Muslim. In the New Testament, the city is described as the childhood home of Jesus, and as such is a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical events.
Nazareth is not mentioned in pre-Christian texts and appears in many different Greek forms in the New Testament. There is no consensus regarding the origin of the name. One theory holds that "Nazareth" is derived from the Hebrew noun ne·ṣer, נֵ֫צֶר, meaning branch.Ne·ṣer is not the common Hebrew word for "branch," but one understood as a messianic title based on a passage in the Book of Isaiah. Alternatively, the name may derive from the verb na·ṣar, נָצַר, "watch, guard, keep." The negative references to Nazareth in the Gospel of John suggest that ancient Jews did not connect the town's name to prophecy.
wn.com/Nazareth -
Palazzo Farnese
Palazzo Farnese is one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian state, it was given to the French Government in 1936 for a period of 99 years, and currently serves as the French embassy in Italy.
First designed in 1517 for the Farnese family, the building expanded in size and conception when Alessandro Farnese became Pope Paul III in 1534, to designs by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Its building history involved some of the most prominent Italian architects of the 16th century, including Michelangelo, Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Giacomo della Porta.
At the end of the 16th century, the important fresco cycle of The Loves of the Gods in the Farnese Gallery was carried out by the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci, marking the beginning of two divergent trends in painting during the 17th century, the Roman High Baroque and Classicism. The famous Farnese sculpture collection, now in the National Archeological Museum of Naples, as well as other Farnese collections, now mostly in Capodimonte Museum in Naples, were accommodated in the palace.
wn.com/Palazzo_Farnese -
Sarajevo
Sarajevo (Cyrillic: Сарајево) (pronounced [sǎrajɛʋɔ]) is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an estimated population of over 311,161 people within its administrative limits. It is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, as well as the center of the Sarajevo Canton, which has a population of 438,757. Nestled within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans.
Sarajevo is the leading social and cultural center of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its region-wide influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science, and the arts contribute to its status as Bosnia and Herzegovina's major economic center.
The city is historically famous for its traditional cultural and religious diversity, with adherents of Islam, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism coexisting there for centuries. Due to this long and rich history of religious and cultural variety, Sarajevo is often called the "Jerusalem of Europe" or "Jerusalem of the Balkans". It was, until recently in the 20th century, the only major European city to have a mosque, cathedral, Orthodox church and synagogue within the same neighborhood.
wn.com/Sarajevo -
Shfaram
Shefa-'Amr, also Shfar'am (Arabic: شفاعمرو, Šafā ʻAmr; Hebrew: שְׁפַרְעָם, Šəfarʻam) is a predominantly Arab city in the North District of Israel. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), at the end of 2009 the city had a population of 35,300.
In the Roman Era, the town was known as "Shofar Am", Hebrew for "horn of a nation". It is thought that this name is derived from that of the Jewish Sanhedrin, which for a time was located in the city and was considered the nation's horn.[citation needed] Alternatively, the name could be based on the literary Hebrew word shefer שפר, meaning "beauty" or "goodness", i.e. "the beauty of the people". According to a popular Arab legend, the Arab general Amr Ibn Al-Aas was cured of an illness after drinking the local water. Upon seeing their commander's recovery, his soldiers cheered "Shofiya Amr" (Arabic for "Amr was healed"), and that was the source of the name.[citation needed] The spring from which he allegedly drank is located southeast of the city. Others allege that the name "Shfar-am" was changed to an Arabic form "Shefa-'Amr" in the Mamluk period.[citation needed]
wn.com/Shfaram -
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper) is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera (Wiener Hofoper). In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian Republic, it was renamed the Vienna State Opera. The members of the Vienna Philharmonic are recruited from its orchestra.
The building was the first major building on the Vienna Ringstraße commissioned by the controversial Viennese "city expansion fund". Work commenced on the building in 1861 and was completed in 1869, following plans drawn up by architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, who lived together in the 6. Bezirk. It was built in the Neo-Renaissance style.
The Ministry of the Interior had commissioned a number of reports into the availability of certain building materials, with the result that stones long not seen in Vienna were used, such as Wöllersdorfer Stein, for plinths and free-standing, simply-divided buttresses, the famously hard stone from Kaisersteinbruch, whose colour was more appropriate than that of Kelheimerstein, for more lushly decorated parts. The somewhat coarser-grained Kelheimerstein (also known as Solnhof Plattenstein) was intended as the main stone to be used in the building of the opera house, but the necessary quantity was not deliverable. Breitenbrunner stone was suggested as a substitute for the Kelheimer stone, and stone from Jois was used as a cheaper alternative to the Kaiserstein. The staircases were constructed from polished Kaiserstein, while most of the rest of the interior was decorated with varieties of marble.
wn.com/Vienna_State_Opera
-
Adolf Neuendorff
Adolf Heinrich Anton Magnus Neuendorff, also known as Adolph Neuendorff (June 13, 1843 - December 4, 1897) was a German-American composer, violinist, pianist and conductor, stage director and theater manager.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Neuendorff emigrated with his father to New York in 1855. Here he studied music, violin lessons with G. Matzka and Joseph Weinlich, and lessons of piano, music theory and composition with Dr. Gustav Schilling. In 1859 he made his début as a concert pianist at Dodworth Hall. In 1861 went on a tour around Brazil, playing the violin.
In 1864 he returned to the United States, now living in Milwaukee. Here he was conductor of the orchestra at the German Theatre and chorus-master of Carl Anschutz's German Opera Company. Later he succeeded Anschutz as conductor.
wn.com/Adolf_Neuendorff -
Alan Gilbert
Alan Gilbert (born February 23, 1967) is an American conductor and violinist. He is currently the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, making his debut performance as the orchestra's music director on September 16, 2009.
Alan Gilbert was born in New York City, into a New York Philharmonic family. Both his father, Michael Gilbert, and his Japanese mother, Yoko Takebe, have had careers as violinists in the Philharmonic — his father retired in 2001, and his mother still performs in the orchestra. Growing up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Gilbert attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. As a youth, he learned the violin, viola, and piano.
In the 1980s Gilbert studied music at Harvard University, where he was music director of the Harvard Bach Society Orchestra in 1988–89. While in Boston, Gilbert also studied with violinist Masuko Ushioda at the New England Conservatory of Music. After obtaining his degree at Harvard, Gilbert studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School of Music with Otto-Werner Mueller. In 1994, he won the Georg Solti prize, which garnered him a week's private tutoring with maestro Solti. Also in 1994, Gilbert won first prize at the International Competition for Musical Performance in Geneva.
wn.com/Alan_Gilbert -
Aldo van Eyck
Aldo van Eyck or van Eijk (16 March 1918, Driebergen, Utrecht, Netherlands - 14 January 1999,Loenen aan de Vecht) was an architect from the Netherlands.
He was a son of poet, critic, essayist and philosopher Pieter Nicolaas van Eyck or van Eijk and wife Nelly Estelle Benjamins, a woman of Jewish and Latin origin born and raised in Suriname.
His brother is poet, artist and art restorer Robert Floris van Eyck or van Eijk.
His family moved to Great Britain in 1919 and he was educated at Sidcot School, Somerset 1932–1935 in England during his youth, after which he finished his secondary school in The Hague between 1935 and 1938, and went to study at the ETH Zurich, graduating in 1942, after which he remained in Switzerland until the end of World War II, where he entered the circle of many other avant-garde artists around Carola Giedion-Welcker, wife of historian Sigfried Giedion.
He taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture from 1954 to 1959 and he was a professor at the Delft University of Technology from 1966 to 1984. He also was editor of the architecture magazine Forum from 1959 to 1963 and in 1967. Aldo van Eyck was one of the most influential protagonists of the movement Structuralism.
wn.com/Aldo_van_Eyck -
Alfred Wallenstein
Alfred Wallenstein (October 7, 1898 – February 8, 1983) was an American cellist and conductor, born in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of 17, he joined the San Francisco Symphony as a cellist. He subsequently played cello with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before becoming principal cello of the New York Philharmonic under Arturo Toscanini in 1929. He frequently performed with these orchestras as a soloist.
Toscanini, also a cellist, advised Wallenstein to become a conductor. He conducted the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and then conducted frequently on the radio. From 1943 to 1956, he was music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He later taught at the Juilliard School in New York, where he died in 1983 at age 84.
In 1941, Wallenstein was given a personal Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music.
He was a descendant of Albrecht von Wallenstein.
wn.com/Alfred_Wallenstein -
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.
wn.com/Andrew_Lloyd_Webber -
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929) is a German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
Previn was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher. He is said to be "a distant relative of" the composer Gustav Mahler. However, In a pre-concert public interview at the Lincoln Center, in May 2012, Previn laughed at the suggestion that he is related to Mahler. The year of his birth is uncertain. Whilst most published reports give 1929, Previn himself has stated that 1930 is his birth year. This situation is a consequence of his the family losing Previn's birth certificate when they left Germany in 1938.[citation needed] His elder brother was director Steve Previn.[citation needed] The Previn family, which was Jewish,[citation needed] emigrated to the United States in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime in Germany.[citation needed]
wn.com/André_Previn -
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer (born March 8, 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.
In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting "Margarethe" (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Paul Celan's well-known poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").
His works are characterised by a dull/musty, nearly depressive, destructive style and are often done in large scale formats. In most of his works, the use of photography as an output surface is prevalent and earth and other raw materials of nature are often incorporated. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or places particularly pregnant with history. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with a style called "New Symbolism."
wn.com/Anselm_Kiefer -
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner (help·info) ((1824-09-04)4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896(1896-10-11)) was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies.
Unlike other musical radicals, such as Richard Wagner or Hugo Wolf who fit the enfant terrible mould, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music.
His works, the symphonies in particular, had detractors, most notably the influential Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick, and other supporters of Johannes Brahms, who pointed to their large size, use of repetition, and Bruckner's propensity to revise many of his works, often with the assistance of colleagues, and his apparent indecision about which versions he preferred. On the other hand, Bruckner was greatly admired by subsequent composers, including his friend Gustav Mahler, who described him as "half simpleton, half God".
wn.com/Anton_Bruckner -
Anton Seidl
Anton Seidl (7 May 1850 – 28 March 1898) was a Hungarian conductor.
He was born at Pest, Hungary. He began the study of music at a very early age, and when only seven years old could pick out at the piano melodies which he had heard at the theatre. At 15, he became a student of harmony in counterpoint under Nicolitsch at the Hungarian national musical academy, of which Liszt was director. He attended the normal school at Pest for three years, the gymnasium eight years, and afterward attended the university for two years. At 16, he had been thinking of becoming a priest, but his love for music prevailed, and he entered Leipzig Conservatory in October 1870, remaining there until 1872, when he was summoned to Bayreuth as one of Richard Wagner's copyists.
At Bayreuth, he assisted in making the first fair copy of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Wagner treated him as one of the "chosen few", and it was natural that he should take a part in the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876. Wagner also sent him to Vienna to place Siegfried and Götterdämmerung on the stage.
wn.com/Anton_Seidl -
Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies (Catalan pronunciation: [ənˈtɔni ˈtapiəs]; 13 December 1923 – 6 February 2012) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist, who became one of the most famous European artists of his generation.
The son of lawyer Josep Tàpies i Mestre, and Maria Puig i Guerra, Antoni Tàpies Puig was born in Barcelona on December 13, 1923. His father was a lawyer and Catalan nationalist who served briefly with the Republican government. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis. He spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art that had already expressed itself when he was in his early teens.
Tàpies studied at the German School of Barcelona. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. He lived mainly in Barcelona and was represented by The Pace Gallery in New York. Tàpies died in early February 2012. He was 88.
Tàpies was perhaps the best-known Catalan artist to emerge in the period since the Second World War. He first came into contact with contemporary art as a teenager through the magazine D’Ací i D’Allà, published in Barcelona, and during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), while he was still at school, he taught himself to draw and paint. On a French government scholarship in the early 1950s he lived in Paris, to which he often returned. Both in Europe and beyond, the highly influential French critic and curator Michel Tapié (no relation, despite the similar name) enthusiastically promoted the work of Antoni Tàpies.
wn.com/Antoni_Tàpies -
Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodziński (January 1, 1892 – November 27, 1958) was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.
Artur Rodziński was born in Split, the capital of Dalmatia on January 1, 1892. Soon after, his father, of Polish descent, and a general in the army of the Habsburg empire returned with his family to Lwów, Poland. Artur studied music in Lwów, and then law in Vienna, where he simultaneously enrolled at the Academy of Music; his teachers there included Josef Marx and Franz Schreker (composition), Franz Schalk (conducting), and Emil von Sauer and Jerzy Lalewicz (piano). He returned to Lwów where he was engaged as chorus master at the Opera House, making his debut as a conductor in 1920 with Verdi's Ernani. The following year saw him conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Warsaw Opera House. While visiting Poland, Leopold Stokowski heard Rodziński leading a performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and exclaimed "I have found that rare thing, a born conductor!" and invited him to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra.
wn.com/Artur_Rodziński -
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini (Italian pronunciation: [arˈtuːro toskaˈniːni]; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. As music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra he became a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, Leopoldo Miguez, the locally hired conductor, reached the summit of a two-month escalating conflict with the performers due to his rather poor command of the work, to the point that the singers went on strike and forced the company's general manager to seek a substitute conductor. Carlo Superti and Aristide Venturi tried unsuccessfully to finish the work. In desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera from memory. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was eventually convinced by the musicians to take up the baton at 9:15 P.M., and led a performance of the two-and-a-half hour opera. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth and sheer aplomb of this unknown conductor, then by his solid mastery. The result was astounding acclaim. For the rest of that season Toscanini conducted eighteen operas, all with absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19.
wn.com/Arturo_Toscanini -
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.
wn.com/Barbra_Streisand -
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group The Beach Boys. On stage, Wilson provided many of the lead vocals, and often harmonized with the group in falsetto. Early during his on-stage career, Wilson primarily played bass on stage, but gradually transitioned to primarily playing piano/keyboards. Besides being the primary composer in The Beach Boys, he also functioned as the band's main producer and arranger. After signing with Capitol Records in mid-1962, Wilson wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen Top 40 hits including "Surfin' Safari", "Surfin' USA", "Shut Down", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Be True to Your School", "In My Room", "Fun, Fun, Fun", "I Get Around", "Dance Dance Dance", "Help Me Rhonda", "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations". These songs and their accompanying albums were internationally popular, making The Beach Boys one of the biggest acts of their time.
In the mid-60s Wilson used his increasingly creative ambitions to compose and produce Pet Sounds, considered one of the greatest albums of all time. At this point his music was considered to rival that of Lennon–McCartney. The intended follow up to Pet Sounds, Smile, was cancelled for various reasons, including Wilson's deteriorating mental health. Wilson's contributions to The Beach Boys diminished as the years went by, and his erratic behavior led to tensions with the band. After years of treatment and recuperation, he began a solo career in 1988 with Brian Wilson, the same year that he and The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Since then he has toured for the first time in decades with a new band and released acclaimed albums such as a reworked version of Smile in 2004, for which Wilson won a Grammy Award for "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow (Fire)" as Best Rock Instrumental, That Lucky Old Sun, and Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin.
wn.com/Brian_Wilson -
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.
Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1960–64), and art with William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California, Davis (1965–6). In 1964 he gave up painting to dedicate himself to sculpture, performance and cinema collaborations with William Allan and Robert Nelson. He worked as an assistant to Wayne Thiebaud. Upon graduation (MFA, 1966), he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1968, and at the University of California at Irvine in 1970. In 1968 he met the singer and performance artist Meredith Monk and signed with the dealer Leo Castelli. Nauman moved from Northern California to Pasadena in 1969. In 1979, Nauman further moved to New Mexico where he continues to work and live along with his wife, the painter Susan Rothenberg.
wn.com/Bruce_Nauman -
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.
wn.com/Bruce_Springsteen -
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter (September 15, 1876 – February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor. Born in Berlin, he lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939. Though he was born Bruno Schlesinger, he began using Walter as his surname in 1896, and officially changed his surname to Walter upon becoming a naturalised Austrian in 1911. Walter was active as a composer for many years, but his works have not entered the repertoire.
Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family as Bruno Schlesinger, he began his musical education at the Stern Conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public appearance as a pianist when he was nine. However, following visits to one of Hans von Bülow's concerts in 1889 and to Bayreuth in 1891, he changed his mind and decided upon a conducting career. He made his conducting début at the Cologne Opera with Albert Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied in 1894. Later that year he left for the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he first met and worked with Gustav Mahler, whom he idolized and with whose music he later became strongly identified.
wn.com/Bruno_Walter -
Carl Bergmann
Carl Bergmann (born Ebersbach,[disambiguation needed
]Saxony, April 12, 1821, died New York, August 10, 1876) was a German-American cellist and conductor.
In 1827, he began studies with Adolph Zimmerman in Zittau, and later he studied with organist-composer Adolph Hesse in Breslau. By 1842, he was conducting and playing the cello in Breslau. Eventually, Bergmann conducted orchestras in Vienna, Breslau, Budapest, Warsaw, and Venice.
Motivated by his implication in the revolutions of 1848 in Vienna, Bergmann came to the United States in 1850 as first cellist in the Germania Orchestra, a touring band of young German musicians, mostly refugees. When the conductor of that orchestra resigned the same year, Bergmann took over. The Germania Orchestra subsequently based itself in Boston before disbanding in 1854 after giving 800 concerts over its career. During this period Bergmann also directed the Handel and Haydn Society of that city. After this Bergmann went to Chicago and was immediately invited to direct the Chicago Philharmonic Society. However, he left quickly after giving only two concerts because the Chicago musicians intrigued against him.
wn.com/Carl_Bergmann -
Carlo Maria Giulini
Carlo Maria Giulini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkarlo maˈriːa dʒuˈliːni]; May 9, 1914 – June 14, 2005) was an Italian conductor.
Giulini was born in Barletta, Italy, to a father born in Lombardy and a mother born in Naples; but he was raised in Bolzano, which at the time of his birth was part of Austria (it was given to Italy in the Treaty of London (1915)). Therefore, most of the neighbors spoke a dialect of German, and the local music he heard tended to be Austrian/ Tyrolean. He recalled being transfixed by the town band.
Giulini was given a violin for Christmas in 1919, when he was five, and progressed rapidly with local instructors, notably a Bohemian violinist (and local pharmacist) whom he called "Brahms." In 1928, the distinguished Italian violinist/composer Remy Principe (1889–1977) gave a recital in Bolzano, and auditioned Giulini; he invited Giulini to study with him at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Giulini undertook his studies there two years later, at the age of 16. He studied viola with Principe, composition with Alessandro Bustini (1876–1970), and conducting with Bernardino Molinari.
wn.com/Carlo_Maria_Giulini -
Carol Burnett
Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut. After successful appearances on The Garry Moore Show, Burnett moved to Los Angeles and began an eleven-year run on The Carol Burnett Show which was aired on CBS television from 1967 to 1978. With roots in vaudeville, The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show which combined comedy sketches, song, and dance. The comedy sketches included film parodies and character pieces. Burnett created many characters during the show's television run.
Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas, the daughter of Ina Louise (née Creighton), a publicity writer for movie studios, and Joseph Thomas Burnett, a movie theater manager. Both of her parents suffered from alcoholism, and at a young age she was left with her grandmother, Mabel Eudora White. Her parents divorced in the late 1930s, and Burnett and her grandmother moved to an apartment near her mother’s in an impoverished area of Hollywood. There, they stayed in a boarding house with her younger half-sister Chrissy.
wn.com/Carol_Burnett -
Catherine Malfitano
Catherine Malfitano (born 18 April 1948) is an American operatic soprano. She is generally considered to be one of America's leading operatic sopranos. Her vocal versatility, physical grace and dramatic abilities make her a sought-after performer in opera houses and concert halls.
Malfitano was born in New York City, the daughter of a ballet dancer mother, Maria Maslova, and a violinist father, Joseph Malfitano. She attended the High School of Music and Art and studied at the Frank Corsaro Studio and the Manhattan School of Music, graduating in 1971.
Malfitano made her professional singing debut in 1972 at the Central City Opera playing the role of Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff. She soon appeared with Minnesota Opera, where she sang in the world premiere of Conrad Susa's Transformations and, in 1974 at New York City Opera, in La bohème, as Mimi. She then appeared with the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1975) and at the Royal Opera House (1976) and in other major European opera houses. In 1978, Malfitano achieved wider recognition in a telecast of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street from NYCO, playing Annina.
wn.com/Catherine_Malfitano -
Charles Dutoit
Charles Édouard Dutoit, (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl e.dwaːʁ dy.twa]) OC GOQ (born 7 October 1936) is a Swiss conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of French and Russian 20th century music. He has made influential modern recordings of Hector Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette and Maurice Ravel's ballets Daphnis et Chloé and Ma mère l'oye. He currently serves as the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, studied there and graduated from the Geneva Conservatory where he won first prize in conducting, then he went to the Music Academy in Siena by the invitation of Alceo Galliera. In his younger days, he frequently attended Ernest Ansermet's rehearsals and had a personal acquaintance with him. He also worked with Herbert von Karajan at Lucerne as a member of the festival youth orchestra and studied with Charles Munch at Tanglewood. Dutoit began his professional music career in 1957 as a viola player with various orchestras across Europe and South America. In January 1959, he made his debut as a professional conductor with an orchestra of Radio Lausanne and Martha Argerich. From 1959 he was a guest conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. After this, he was the conductor for Radio Zurich until 1967, when he took over the Bern Symphony Orchestra from Paul Kletzki, where he stayed for eleven years.
wn.com/Charles_Dutoit -
Chita Rivera
Chita Rivera (born January 23, 1933) is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award (December 2002). She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Rivera (birth name: Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero) was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Katherine, a government clerk, and Pedro Julio Figueroa del Rivero, a clarinetist and saxophonist for the United States Navy Band. Her father was Puerto Rican and her mother was of Scottish and Italian descent. Rivera was seven years old when her mother was widowed and went to work for The Pentagon.
In 1944, Rivera's mother enrolled her in the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet (now the Jones Haywood School of Dance). Later, when she was 15, a teacher from George Balanchine's School of American Ballet visited their studio and Rivera was one of two students picked to audition in New York City; she was accompanied to the audition by Doris Jones, one of the people who ran the Jones-Haywood School. Rivera's audition was successful and she was accepted into the school and given a scholarship
wn.com/Chita_Rivera -
Christopher Nupen
Christopher Nupen is a South African-born filmmaker based in the United Kingdom specialising in biographical documentaries of musicians.
Nupen was born in South Africa to a family of Norwegian descent — his father, E. P. "Buster" Nupen (1902–1977), was a Test cricketer.
After studying law at university he moved to Britain to work in banking, then trained as a sound engineer with the BBC.
In 1962 he made High Festival In Siena about the summer music school at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena for BBC Radio Three and was subsequently invited by Huw Weldon to make films for the BBC. Using newly-developed silent 16mm film cameras he created a new, intimate style of biographical film beginning with Double Concerto in 1966, featuring the collaboration of Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim.
In 1968 he co-founded Allegro Films, one of the earliest independent television production companies in the UK. He went on to work on over 80 film and television productions based around music.
The Trout, his film of a performance of Schubert’s Trout quintet by Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman and Zubin Mehta on August 30th 1969 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, became a benchmark of classical music broadcasting. His close friendships with many of his subjects enabled him to communicate the spirit of the artists' work, such as in Jacqueline Du Pré In Portrait.
wn.com/Christopher_Nupen -
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.
Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.
wn.com/Chuck_Berry -
Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [ˈklaudio abˈbaːdo]; born June 26, 1933), is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra from 1989 to 2002, when he retired from the position for health reasons.
Born in Milan, Italy, Abbado is the son of the violinist and composer Michelangelo Abbado, who was his first piano teacher, and the brother of musician Marcello Abbado. After studying piano at the Milan Conservatory, in 1955 Claudio Abbado studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music. In 1958 he won the international Koussevitsky Competition for conductors, which resulted in a number of operatic conducting engagements in Italy, and in 1963 he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize for conductors, allowing him to work for five months with the New York Philharmonic.
wn.com/Claudio_Abbado -
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.
For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.
wn.com/Clint_Eastwood -
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBE (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings.
Currently, he is general music director of La Scala in Milan, the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. Barenboim is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz and Willy Brandt Award, and, together with the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. He has won seven Grammy awards for his work and discography.
wn.com/Daniel_Barenboim -
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck (born December 6, 1920) is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote the Dave Brubeck Quartet's best remembered piece, "Take Five", which is in 5/4 time and has endured as a jazz classic on the top-selling jazz album, Time Out. Brubeck experimented with time signatures throughout his career, recording "Pick Up Sticks" in 6/4, "Unsquare Dance" in 7/4, and "Blue Rondo à la Turk" in 9/8. He is also a respected composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television such as Mr. Broadway and the animated mini-series This Is America, Charlie Brown.
Brubeck was born in Concord, California and grew up in Ione. He is of English (maternal), Swiss and possibly Native American Modoc Tribe multi-ethnic (paternal) ancestry His father, Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Elizabeth (née Ivey), who had studied piano in England under Myra Hess and intended to become a concert pianist, taught piano for extra money. Brubeck originally did not intend to become a musician (his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already on that track), but took lessons from his mother. He could not read sheet music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but "faked" his way through, well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed.
wn.com/Dave_Brubeck -
Denys Lasdun
Sir Denys Lasdun CH (8 September 1914–11 January 2001) was an eminent English architect. Probably his best known work is the Royal National Theatre, on London's South Bank of the Thames, which is a Grade II* listed building and one of the most notable examples of Brutalist design in the United Kingdom.
Lasdun studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and was a junior in the practice of Wells Coates. Like other Modernist architects, including Sir Basil Spence and Peter and Alison Smithson, Lasdun was much influenced by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but there was a gentler, more classical influence, too, from the likes of Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Before and after Second World War service in the army, Lasdun worked for a while with Berthold Lubetkin's Tecton practice, becoming a partner. In this period he also completed one private house in Paddington in Le Corbusier's style. After the war Lasdun worked with Lindsay Drake on the Hallfield Estate, which had been planned by Lubetkin and Tecton in a similar patterned, tightly planned idiom to his Spa Green and Priory Green Estates. Lasdun's Hallfield School was the first clue to his mature style, in its use of bare concrete and angularity, as well as its more human scale.
wn.com/Denys_Lasdun -
Diana Ross
Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer, record producer, and actress.
Diana Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that has included successful ventures into film and Broadway. She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), for which she won a Golden Globe award. She has won seven American Music Awards, was honored with a 2012 Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, and won a Tony Award for her one-woman show, An Evening with Diana Ross, in 1977.
In 1976, Billboard magazine named her the "Female Entertainer of the Century." In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Diana Ross the most successful female music artist in history due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts with a career total of 18 number one records in the United States. Diana Ross has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
wn.com/Diana_Ross -
Dimitri Mitropoulos
Dimitri Mitropoulos (Greek: Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος) (1 March [O.S. 18 February] 1896 – 2 November 1960), was a Greek conductor, pianist, and composer. He received international fame, in the classical music world, both as a major conductor and composer of the 20th century. Also known as Dimitris Mitropoulos.
Mitropoulos was born in Athens, the son of Yannis (John) and Angelikē (Angelica) Mitropoulos. His father owned a leather goods shop at 15, St. Mark Street, in downtown Athens. He was musically precocious, demonstrating his abilities at an early age. From the ages of eleven to fourteen, when Mitropoulos was in secondary school, he would host and preside over informal musical gatherings at his house every Saturday afternoon. His earliest acknowledged composition - a sonata for violin and piano, now lost - dates from this period.
He studied music at the Athens Conservatoire as well as in Brussels and Berlin, with Ferruccio Busoni among his teachers. From 1921 to 1925 he assisted Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera and then took a number of posts in Greece. At a 1930 concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, he played the solo part of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 and conducted the orchestra from the keyboard, becoming one of the first modern musicians to do so.
wn.com/Dimitri_Mitropoulos -
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. As a songwriter, she has composed over 3,000 songs, the best known of which include "I Will Always Love You" (a two-time U.S. country chart-topper for Parton, as well an international pop hit for Whitney Houston), "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", "9 to 5" and "My Tennessee Mountain Home". As an actress, she starred in the movies 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, Unlikely Angel and Joyful Noise. She is one of the most successful female country artists of all time; with an estimated 100 million in album sales, Dolly Parton is also one of the best selling artists of all time. She is known as "The Queen of Country Music".
She was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children of Avie Lee Parton (née Owens; October 5, 1923 – December 5, 2003) and Robert Lee Parton (March 22, 1921 – November 12, 2000), a tobacco farmer. Her siblings are: Willadeene Parton (born March 24, 1940), David Wilburn Parton (born March 30, 1942), Coy Denver "Denver" Parton (born August 16, 1943), Bobby Lee Parton (born February 18, 1948), Stella Mae Parton (born May 4, 1949), Cassie Nan Parton (February 12, 1951), Randel Huston "Randy" Parton (born December 15, 1953), Larry Gerald Parton (born and died July 6, 1955), Floyd and Frieda Estelle Parton (born June 1, 1957), and Rachel Ann Parton (born August 31, 1959). Her family was, as she has described them, "dirt poor". She outlined her family's lack of money in a number of her early songs, notably "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". They lived in a rustic, dilapidated one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, a hamlet just north of the Greenbrier Valley, in the Locust Ridge area of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevier County, a predominantly Pentecostal area.
wn.com/Dolly_Parton -
Désiré Defauw
Désiré Defauw (5 September 1885, Ghent, Belgium – 25 July 1960, Gary, Indiana, United States) was a Belgian conductor and violinist.
He was professor of conducting at the Brussels Conservatory and was the first conductor of the Orchestre National de Belgique from 1937. He left Belgium for North America in 1940 and was music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1941 to 1952. He was also music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1943 to 1947. In 1947 he recorded the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the CSO and Mischa Elman as soloist. Defauw was also a composer.
wn.com/Désiré_Defauw -
Eduard van Beinum
Eduard van Beinum (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɛdu̯ɑrd ʋɑn ˈbɛi̯nəm]) (September 3, 1901 – April 13, 1959, Amsterdam) was a Dutch conductor.
Beinum was born in Arnhem, Netherlands, where he received his first violin and piano lessons at an early age. He joined the Arnhem Orchestra as a violinist in 1918. His grandfather was conductor of a military band. His father played the double bass in the local symphony orchestra, the Arnhemse Orkest (later Het Gelders Orkest). His brother Co van Beinum was a violinist, and the two brothers performed as a violin-piano duo in concerts. As a student at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, he gained conducting experience with several concerts by amateur ensembles in Schiedam and Zutphen. He also conducted concerts by the choir of the church of St. Nicholas in Amsterdam.
Van Beinum was the conductor of the Haarlem Orchestral Society from 1927 to 1931. He first conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam in 1929. He became second conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1931, under the supervision of Willem Mengelberg. In 1938 he was named co-principal conductor, alongside Mengelberg. After World War II, Mengelberg was dismissed as principal conductor because of controversy over his (still-disputed) behavior and attitude towards the Nazi occupiers in the Netherlands. According to Kees Wisse, Van Beinum "detested the Nazis and kept himself as aloof as he could." Van Beinum did receive a reprimand after the post-war de-Nazification activities, but this was not so severe as to keep him from his post with the Concertgebouw. Van Beinum remained as sole principal conductor of the orchestra after the war.
wn.com/Eduard_van_Beinum -
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. As one of the world's most famous film stars, Taylor was recognized for her acting ability and for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty and distinctive violet eyes.
National Velvet (1944) was Taylor's first success, and she starred in Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and married her co-star Richard Burton. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won a second Academy Award. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theatre.
Her much publicized personal life included eight marriages and several life-threatening illnesses. From the mid-1980s, Taylor championed HIV and AIDS programs; she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1993. She received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Legion of Honour, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, who named her seventh on their list of the "Greatest American Screen Legends". Taylor died of congestive heart failure in March 2011 at the age of 79, having suffered many years of ill health.
wn.com/Elizabeth_Taylor -
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
In his four-decade career John has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. His single "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold over 33 million copies worldwide, and is the best selling single in Billboard history. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won six Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998.
wn.com/Elton_John -
Emil Paur
Emil Paur (July 19, 1855 – June 7, 1932) was an Austrian orchestra conductor. Paur was born in Czernowitz, Austria, now Ukraine, and trained in Vienna before working as a conductor in Kassel, Königsberg and Leipzig. He then emigrated to the United States where he led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony. After returning to Germany, he went on to conduct Berlin State Opera. Paur was considered a serious conductor, favouring the works of Johannes Brahms, which were at the time considered heavy listening.
Paur died in Místek, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic.
wn.com/Emil_Paur -
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen ( pronunciation (help·info); born June 30, 1958 in Helsinki) is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Salonen, born in Helsinki, Finland, studied horn and 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 ensemble Toimii (lit. "It works"). Later, Salonen studied with the composers Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni and Einojuhani Rautavaara.
His first experience with conducting came in 1979 with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, though he still thought of himself principally as a composer; in fact, Salonen has said that the primary reason he took up conducting was to ensure that someone would conduct his own compositions. In 1983, however, he replaced an indisposed Michael Tilson Thomas to conduct a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London at very short notice without ever having studied the score before that time, and it launched his career as a conductor. He was subsequently principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia from 1985 to 1994.
wn.com/Esa-Pekka_Salonen -
Ferenc Fricsay
Ferenc Fricsay (9 August 1914 – 20 February 1963) (pronounced [ˈfɛrɛnts ˈfritʃɒj]) was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen.
Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leo Weiner. With these and other faculty at the Budapest Academy of Music he studied piano, violin, clarinet, trombone, percussion, composition and conducting. Fricsay made his first appearance as a conductor at age 15, substituting for his father at the podium of the Young Musicians Orchestra of Budapest. In 1930, at the age of 16, he succeeded his father as conductor of the Young Musicians Orchestra.
On graduating in 1933, Fricsay became repetiteur for the chorus of the Budapest Opera; then, from 1933 to 1943, he was music director of the Szeged Philharmonic Orchestra (Szeged is the third largest city in Hungary); he also served as director of its military band from 1933. In 1942, he was court-martialed by the government of Miklós Horthy for wanting to employ Jewish musicians, and for having "Jewish blood" himself (according to reliable reports, his mother was Jewish). When the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, the chief editor of the Szeged daily newspaper warned Fricsay that the Gestapo planned to arrest him; he and his wife and three children avoided this fate by going underground in Budapest.
wn.com/Ferenc_Fricsay -
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Frank Owen Goldberg; February 28, 1929) is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.
His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Experience Music Project in Seattle; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and MARTa Museum in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City. But it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture" – a phenomenon that many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years. Gehry is also the designer of the future Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.
wn.com/Frank_Gehry -
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, recording engineer, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar.
He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. His lyrics—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.
wn.com/Frank_Zappa -
Franz Lachner
Franz Paul Lachner (2 April 1803 – 20 January 1890) was a German composer and conductor.
Lachner was born in Rain am Lech to a musical family (his brothers Ignaz, Theodor and Vinzenz also became musicians). He studied music with Simon Sechter and Maximilian, the Abbé Stadler. He conducted at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna. In 1834, he became Kapellmeister at Mannheim. In 1835 he received the first prize for symphonic composition at Vienna with his Sinfonia passionata, and became royal Kapellmeister at Munich, becoming a major figure in its musical life, conducting at the opera and various concerts and festivals. His career there came to a sudden end in 1864 after Richard Wagner's disciple Hans von Bülow took over Lachner's duties. Lachner remained officially in his post on extended leave for a few years until his contract expired.
Lachner was a well-known and prolific composer in his day, though he is not now considered a major composer. His work, influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven and his friend Franz Schubert, is regarded as competent and craftsman-like, but is now generally little known. Among his greatest successes were his opera Caterina Cornaro (1841), his Requiem and his seventh orchestral suite (1881). In the present day it may be his organ sonatas (Opp. 175, 176, 177) as well as chamber music, in particular his music for wind instruments, that receives the most attention, though his string quartets and some of his eight symphonies have been performed and recorded. His songs, some of which are set to the same texts that Schubert used in his songs, contributed to the development of the German Lied.
wn.com/Franz_Lachner -
Franz Schmidt
Franz Schmidt (22 December 1874 – 11 February 1939) was an Austrian composer, cellist and pianist of Hungarian descent and origin.
Schmidt was born in Pozsony (known in German as Pressburg), in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the city is now Bratislava, capital of Slovakia). His father was half Hungarian and his mother entirely Hungarian. He was a Roman Catholic.
His earliest teacher was his mother, Mária Ravasz, an accomplished pianist, who gave him a systematic instruction in the keyboard works of J. S. Bach. He received a thorough foundation in theory from Brother Felizian Moczik, the outstanding organist at the Franciscan church in Pressburg. He studied piano briefly with Theodor Leschetizky, with whom he clashed. He moved to Vienna with his family in 1888, and studied at the Vienna Conservatory (composition with Robert Fuchs, cello with Ferdinand Hellmesberger and theory (the counterpoint class) with Anton Bruckner), graduating "with excellence" in 1896.
He beat 13 other applicants and obtained a post as cellist with the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra, where he played until 1914, often under Gustav Mahler. Mahler habitually had Schmidt play all the cello solos, even though Friedrich Buxbaum was the principal cellist. Schmidt was also in demand as a chamber musician. Schmidt and Arnold Schoenberg maintained cordial relations despite their vast differences in style. Also a brilliant pianist, in 1914 Schmidt took up a professorship in piano at the Vienna Conservatory, which had been recently renamed Imperial Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. (Apparently, when asked who the greatest living pianist was, Leopold Godowsky replied, "The other one is Franz Schmidt.") In 1925 he became Director of the Academy, and from 1927 to 1931 its Rector.
wn.com/Franz_Schmidt -
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁants ˈʃuːbɛɐ̯t]; 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer.
Although he died at the age of 31, Schubert was a prolific composer, having written some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of Schubert's music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th century. Today, Schubert is seen as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.
Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund (now a part of Alsergrund), Vienna, on 31 January 1797. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, the son of a Moravian peasant, was a parish schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth Vietz, was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith, and had also been a housemaid for a Viennese family prior to her marriage. Of Franz Theodor's fourteen children (one illegitimate child was born in 1783), nine died in infancy; five survived. Their father was a well-known teacher, and his school in Lichtental, a part of Vienna's 9th district, was well attended. He was not a musician of fame or with formal training, but he taught his son some elements of music.
wn.com/Franz_Schubert -
Franz Wüllner
Franz Wüllner (28 January 1832 – 7 September 1902) was a German composer and conductor. He led the premieres of Richard Wagner's operas Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, but was much criticized by Wagner himself, who greatly preferred the more celebrated conductors Hans von Bülow and Hermann Levi.
Wüllner was born in Münster and studied in his native place, and at Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, and Munich. Among his teachers was Anton Schindler, who styled himself Beethoven's amanuensis carrying on the true traditions of the master's style, a claim disputed by Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny. In 1856 Wüllner became instructor in piano at the Munich Conservatory. He held the position of town musical director at Aix-la-Chapelle from 1858 to 1864. In 1867 he became director of the choral classes in the reorganized School of Music at Munich and wrote for them Chorübungen der Münchener Musikschule, text of score reading and singing (Solfege).
He succeeded the temperamental Bülow in 1869 as conductor of the Court Opera and the Academy Courts. Here he conducted the first performances of Rheingold and Walküre (1869, 1870) before the production of the entire Ring cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876. It is for these renditions that he is usually remembered now.
wn.com/Franz_Wüllner -
Franz-Paul Decker
Franz-Paul Decker (June 26, 1923) is a German-born conductor.
Decker was born in Cologne, Germany, where he studied at the Hochschule für Musik with Philip Jarnach and Eugen Papst. He made his conducting début at the age of 22 at the Cologne Opera, and four years later was appointed to the Staatsoper Wiesbaden and subsequently to the positions of conductor of the Wiesbaden Symphony Orchestra and Generalmusikdirecktor in Bochum. In 1948, Decker was introduced to the composer Richard Strauss at a card game of whist. Strauss casually mentioned that he had just finished orchestrating four songs he had recently composed (the Four Last Songs).
Although comfortable conducting virtually any work in the orchestral repertoire, Decker is famous for his mastery and approach to the music of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Anton Bruckner, Max Reger and Gustav Mahler. His performances of works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven have been praised for their balance and clarity. His approach to Spanish and South American music is bold and charismatic. He has conducted the world premieres of dozens of orchestral works by Canadian composers, and has conducted 85 different operas during his distinguished career.
wn.com/Franz-Paul_Decker -
Frei Otto
Frei Paul Otto (31 May 1925) is a German architect and structural engineer.
Otto was born in Siegmar (since 1950 a part of Chemnitz). He studied architecture in Berlin before being drafted into the Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot in the last years of World War II. It is said that he was interned in a French POW camp and, with his aviation engineering training and lack of material and an urgent need for housing, began experimenting with tents for shelter. After the war he studied briefly in the United States and visited Erich Mendelsohn, Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra, and Frank Lloyd Wright. He began a private practice in Germany in 1952. His saddle-shaped cable-net music pavilion at the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Garden Exposition) in Kassel brought him his first significant attention. He earned a doctorate about tensioned constructions in 1954.
Otto is the world's leading authority on lightweight tensile and membrane structures,[citation needed] and has pioneered advances in structural mathematics and civil engineering. Otto's career bears a similarity to Buckminster Fuller's architectural experiments: both taught at Washington University in St. Louis in the late 1950s, both were architects of major pavilions at the Montreal Expo of 1967, both were concerned with space frames and structural efficiency, and both experimented with inflatable buildings. The work of both men go far beyond traditional methods of calculating structural stresses. His designs are regarded to have been heavily influenced by Australian architect Barry Patten, and his most famous design, the Myer Music Bowl (1959) in Melbourne.
wn.com/Frei_Otto -
Fumihiko Maki
Fumihiko Maki (槇 文彦, Maki Fumihiko?, born September 6, 1928 in Tokyo) is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. He often uses metal and glass materials for his buildings.
After studying at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1952, he moved to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, graduating with a Masters degree in 1953, and then to Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating with a Master of Architecture degree in 1954.
In 1956, he took a post as assistant professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also was awarded his first commission: the design of Steinberg Hall (an art center) on the university's Danforth Campus. This building remained his only completed work in the United States until 1993, when he completed the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts building in San Francisco. In 2006, he returned to Washington University in St. Louis to design the new home for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and Walker Hall.
In 1960 he returned to Japan to help establish the Metabolism Group.
wn.com/Fumihiko_Maki -
Georg Schnéevoigt
Georg Schnéevoigt (8 November 1872 – 28 November 1947) was a Finnish conductor and cellist, born in Vyborg, Grand Duchy of Finland, which is now in Russia.
Schnéevoigt began his career as a cellist performing throughout Europe in the 1890s. He was principal cellist of the Helsinki Philharmonic from 1896 to 1902. After this, he conducted many orchestras including the Kaim Orchestra (now the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra), Riga Philharmonic Orchestra which he founded, the Stockholm Concert Society (later the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra), the Sydney Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. From 1930 until his death in 1947, Schnéevoigt was chief conductor of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra.
Schnéevoigt was a close friend of composer Jean Sibelius and often performed Sibelius's orchestral music. He conducted the first performance in Finland of Luonnotar in January 1914. He discovered the manuscripts of Sibelius's pieces Lemminkäinen and the Maidens, and Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, which had been thought lost, and gave their first performance since 1894. He also made the first recording of Sibelius's Symphony No. 6.
wn.com/Georg_Schnéevoigt -
George Jones
George Glenn Jones (born September 12, 1931) is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette.
Over the past 20 years, Jones has frequently been referred to as the greatest living country singer. Country music scholar Bill C. Malone writes, "For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved."
Throughout his long career, Jones made headlines often as much for tales of his drinking, stormy relationships with women, and violent rages as for his prolific career of making records and touring. His wild lifestyle led to Jones missing many performances, earning him the nickname "No Show Jones." With the help of his fourth wife, Nancy, he has been sober for over 10 years. Jones has had more than 150 hits during his career, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists. The shape of his nose and facial features have given Jones the nickname "The Possum." Jones said in an interview that he has chosen to tour only about 60 dates a year.
wn.com/George_Jones -
George Szell
George Szell ( /ˈsɛl/; June 7, 1897 – July 30, 1970), originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer. He is remembered today for his long and successful tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, and for the recordings of the standard classical repertoire he made in Cleveland and with other orchestras.
Szell came to Cleveland in 1946 to take over a respected if undersized orchestra, which was struggling to recover from the disruptions of World War II. By the time of his death he was credited, to quote the critic Donal Henahan, with having built it into "what many critics regarded as the world's keenest symphonic instrument." Through his recordings, Szell has remained a presence in the classical music world long after his death, and his name remains synonymous with that of the Cleveland Orchestra. While on tour with the Orchestra in the late 1980s, then-Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi remarked, "We give a great concert, and George Szell gets a great review."
wn.com/George_Szell -
Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style.[citation needed] Richter is regarded as the Top-Selling Living Artist. In 2011, Richter's works achieved prices higher than any other living artist. His works sold for more than $200 million, topping auction result totals for Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti, and Mark Rothko combined.
The son of a schoolteacher, Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up in Reichenau, Lower Silesia, and in Waltersdorf (Zittauer Gebirge) in the Upper Lusatian countryside. He left school after 10th grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. In 1948 he terminated the higher professional school in Zittau, and, between 1949 and 1951, was trained there in writing as well as in stage and advertising painting.[citation needed] In 1950 his application for membership in the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Dresden University of Visual Arts, founded in 1764) was rejected.[citation needed] He finally began his study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1951. His teachers were Karl von Appen, Ulrich Lohmar and Will Grohmann.
wn.com/Gerhard_Richter -
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒaːkomo putˈtʃiːni]; 22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.
Described by Encyclopædia Britannica Online as "one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism", he is regarded as one of the last major Italian opera composers. His repertoire is essentially rooted in verismo, or a post-Romantic operatic tradition and literary style. Whilst his work is essentially based on traditional late-19th century Italian opera, his music shows some influences from then-contemporary composers and movements such as Igor Stravinsky and Impressionism. Common themes within his operas include the important role, yet usually tragic end, of his heroines, as well as love; furthermore, there is a strong presence of exoticism in his operas, with several being set in faraway locations.
wn.com/Giacomo_Puccini -
Giancarlo De Carlo
Giancarlo De Carlo (December 12, 1919 - June 4, 2005) was an Italian architect.
He was born in Genoa, Liguria in 1919. He trained as an architect from 1942 to 1949, a time of political turmoil which generated his philosophy toward life and architecture. Libertarian socialism was the underlying force for all of his planning and design.
De Carlo saw architecture as a consensus-based activity. His designs are generated as an expression of the forces that operate in a given context including human, physical, cultural, and, historical forces. His ideas linked CIAM ideals with late twentieth century reality.
De Carlo was a member of Team 10 along with Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo van Eyck, and Jacob Bakema, among others. Although his political beliefs have limited his portfolio of buildings, his ideas remained untainted by postmodernist beliefs through his journal Spazio e Società - Space & Society, and his teaching at the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (ILAUD).
De Carlo died in Milan in 2005.
wn.com/Giancarlo_De_Carlo -
Gil Shaham
Gil Shaham (born February 19, 1971) is an Israeli-American violinist.
Gil Shaham was born in Urbana, Illinois, while his parents, Israeli scientists, were on an academic fellowship at the University of Illinois. His father Jacob was an astrophysicist, and his mother, Meira Diskin, was a cytogeneticist. His sister is the pianist Orli Shaham. He is a graduate of the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York. The family returned to Jerusalem when Gil was two. At the age of seven, Shaham began taking violin lessons from Samuel Bernstein at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In 1980, when Shaham was nine years old, he played for Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein and Henryk Szeryng, and attended the Aspen Music School in Colorado, studying with Dorothy DeLay (the teacher of many other leading artists, including Itzhak Perlman and Sarah Chang) and Jens Ellerman.
Shaham is married to the Australian-born violinist Adele Anthony. They have two children, Elijah and Ella Mei.
At age 10, Shaham debuted as soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony, conducted by the violinist Alexander Schneider. Less than a year later Shaham performed with Israel's foremost orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, which was conducted by Zubin Mehta. At age 11, in 1982, Shaham won first prize in the Claremont Competition and was admitted to the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang. In addition, both he and his younger sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, attended Columbia University.
wn.com/Gil_Shaham -
Giya Kancheli
Giya Kancheli (Georgian: გია ყანჩელი), born 10 August 1935, in Tbilisi, is a Georgian composer resident in Belgium.
Since 1991, Kancheli has lived in Western Europe: first in Berlin, and since 1995 in Antwerp, where he is composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.
In his symphonies, Kancheli's musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. These passages are occasionally punctuated with "battle scenes" involving martial brass and percussion. His music post-1990 has become more refined and generally more subdued and nostalgic in character. Some commentators[citation needed] talk about his music in cinematic terms; one can find equivalents of the dissolve (in his ubiquitous blurred tonal transitions), zoom (such as the long crescendo a third of the way into the Sixth Symphony), abrupt cuts (jumping from very quiet to very loud, as in the opening of the Fifth Symphony), and so on. Rodion Shchedrin speaks of Kancheli as "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius".
wn.com/Giya_Kancheli -
Grace Bumbry
Grace Bumbry (born January 4, 1937), an American opera singer, is considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, as well as a major soprano for many years. She was a member of a pioneering generation of singers who followed Marian Anderson (including Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett and Reri Grist) in the world of classical music and paved the way for future African American opera and classical singers. Bumbry's voice was rich and sizable, possessing a wide range, and was capable of producing a very distinctive plangent tone. In her prime, she also possessed good agility and bel canto technique (see for example her renditions of the 'Veil Song' from Verdi's Don Carlo in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as her Ernani from the Chicago Lyric Opera in 1984). She was particularly noted for her fiery temperament and dramatic intensity on stage. More recently, she has also become known as a recitalist and interpreter of lieder, and as a teacher. From the late 1980s on, she seemed to concentrate her career in Europe, rather than in the US. A long time resident of Switzerland, she now makes her home in Salzburg, Austria.
wn.com/Grace_Bumbry -
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up.
As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
wn.com/Gustav_Mahler -
Gustavo Dudamel
Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez (born January 26, 1981) is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. He is the principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Gothenburg, Sweden, and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Los Angeles, California. Dudamel is also the artistic director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela.
Dudamel was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, the son of a trombonist and a voice teacher. He studied music from an early age, becoming involved with El Sistema, the famous Venezuelan musical education program, and took up the violin at age ten. He soon began to study composition. He attended the Jacinto Lara Conservatory, where he was taught the violin by José Luis Jiménez. He then went on to work with José Francisco del Castillo at the Latin-American Violin Academy. He began to study conducting in 1995, first with Rodolfo Saglimbeni, then later with José Antonio Abreu. In 1999, he was appointed music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, the national youth orchestra of Venezuela, and toured several countries. He attended Charles Dutoit's master class in Buenos Aires in 2002, and worked as assistant for Simon Rattle in Berlin and Salzburg in 2003.
wn.com/Gustavo_Dudamel -
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (Hungarian: Ligeti György Sándor, [ˈliɡɛti ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating and becoming an Austrian citizen.
Ligeti was born in Dicsőszentmárton, which was renamed Târnăveni in 1945, in Transylvania to a Hungarian Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Kolozsvár (Cluj) with his family when he was 6, and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s.
Ligeti received his initial musical training in the conservatory at Kolozsvár (Cluj), and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa in Budapest.
In 1940, Northern Transylvania was occupied by Hungary following the Second Vienna Award. In 1944, Ligeti's education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime. His brother, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only other survivor of his immediate family.
wn.com/György_Ligeti -
Hans Swarowsky
Hans Swarowsky (September 16, 1899 – September 10, 1975) was an Austrian conductor of Hungarian birth and Jewish descent.
Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss. His teachers in musical theory included Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern.
Herbert von Karajan invited him to take on the permanent position as conductor of the Vienna State Opera.
He became a professor of conducting at the Vienna Music Academy. His many conducting students included Leonid Nikolaev, Paul Angerer, Claudio Abbado, Iván Fischer, Jesús López-Cobos, Zubin Mehta, Gustav Meier, Miltiades Caridis, Alexander Alexeev, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Brian Jackson, Alfred Prinz, Bryan Fairfax and Albert Rosen. Swarowsky's lectures and essays were collected into the publication Wahrung der Gestalt (Keeping Shape), which today serves as an encyclopaedia for performance and conducting.
He died in Salzburg, Austria, a few days before his 76th birthday.
wn.com/Hans_Swarowsky -
Hans von Bülow
Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow (January 8, 1830 – February 12, 1894) was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. He was one of the most famous conductors of the 19th century, and his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, including Richard Wagner.
Bülow was born in Dresden, and from the age of nine he was a student of Friedrich Wieck (the father of Clara Schumann). However, his parents insisted that he study law instead of music, and sent him to Leipzig. There he met Franz Liszt, and on hearing some music of Richard Wagner—specifically, the premiere of Lohengrin in 1850—he decided to ignore the dictates of his parents and make himself a career in music instead. He studied the piano in Leipzig with the famous pedagogue Louis Plaidy. He obtained his first conducting job in Zurich, on Wagner's recommendation, in 1850.
Notoriously tactless, Bülow alienated many musicians with whom he worked. He was dismissed from his Zurich job for this reason, but at the same time he was beginning to win renown for his ability to conduct new and complex works without a score. In 1851 he became a student of Liszt, marrying Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857. They had two daughters: Daniela, born in 1860 and Blandine, born in 1863. During the 1850s and early 1860s he was active as a pianist, conductor, and writer, and became well-known throughout Germany as well as Russia. In 1857 he premiered Liszt's great Piano Sonata in B minor in Berlin.
wn.com/Hans_von_Bülow -
Hermann Levi
Hermann Levi (November 7, 1839 – May 13, 1900) was a German Jewish orchestral conductor.
Levi was born in Gießen, Germany, the son of a rabbi. He was educated at Gießen and Mannheim, and came to Vinzenz Lachner's notice. From 1855 to 1858 Levi studied at the Leipzig conservatorium, and after a series of travels which took him to Paris, he obtained his first post as music director at Saarbrücken, which post he exchanged for that at Mannheim in 1861. From 1862 to 1864 he was chief conductor of the German opera in Rotterdam, then till 1872 at Karlsruhe, when he went to Munich, a post he held until 1896, when ill-health compelled him to resign. Levi also taught at the Leipzig Conservatory where one of his pupils was conductor Emil Steinbach.
Levi's name is indissolubly connected with the increased public appreciation of Wagner's music. A longtime friend of Wagner, he conducted the first performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882, and was connected with the musical life of that place during the remainder of his career. He visited London in 1895, and died in Munich in 1900 and was interred in a Mausoleum in the grounds of his villa later that year in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
wn.com/Hermann_Levi -
Hermann Zumpe
Hermann Zumpe (9 April 1850 in Taubenheim, Saxony – 4 September 1903 in Munich) was a German conductor and composer.
Zumpe was educated at the teachers' Seminary at Bautzen, was a schoolmaster at Weigsdorf in 1870-71, from thence going to Leipzig, and playing the triangle in the Stadttheater there; he was one of those who helped Wagner in the preparation of the Ring at Bayreuth in the years 1873-70, and after this he conducted in the theatres of Salzburg, Würzburg, Magdeburg, Frankfurt, and Hamburg (in 1884-86). In 1891 he went to Stuttgart as Court Capellmeister, taking over the conductorship of the Society for Classical Church Music, in lieu of Faisst, who was ill. In 1895 he became conductor of the Kaim Concerts in Munich, and was made Court Capellmeister at Schwerinin 1897. He visited London to conduct the Wagner performances at Covent Garden in 1898. In 1900 he received the most important appointment of his career, that of Court-Capellmeister at Munich, directing what would later become the Bavarian State Opera. Here he was especially active in directing the famous Wagner performances at the Prinz Regenten Theater up to 1903, in which year, on Sept. 4, he died suddenly. Among his compositions were: a fairy opera, "Anhana" (Berlin, 1880), "Die verwunschene Prinzessin," operettas "Farinelli" (Hamburg, 1886), "Karin" (Hamburg, 1888), and "Polnische Wirtschaft" (Berlin, 1891). At his death the score of another opera, "Sawitri", was found incomplete, and was scored by Gustav von Roessler, and produced at Schwerin.
wn.com/Hermann_Zumpe -
Igor Markevitch
Igor Markevitch (Ukrainian: Ігор Маркевич, Ihor Markevych; July 27, 1912 – March 7, 1983) was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.
Igor Markevitch was born in Kiev, Ukraine, a part of Russian Empire, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century. The family was descended from a Jewish merchant (converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in the 17th century). It eventually produced many notable individuals.
A son of the pianist Borys Markevych and Zoya Pokitonova, Markevitch moved with his family to Paris in 1914 and Switzerland in 1916. Alfred Cortot discovered his musical ability and advised him to go to Paris in 1926 for training as a composer and pianist at the École Normale, where he studied under Cortot and Nadia Boulanger.
Markevitch gained recognition in 1929 when he was discovered by Serge Diaghilev, who commissioned a Piano Concerto from Markevitch and desired him to collaborate on a ballet with Boris Kochno. In a letter to the London Times Diaghilev hailed Markevitch as the man who would put an end to 'a scandalous period of music ... of cynical-sentimental simplicity'. The ballet project came to an end with Diaghilev's death on 19 August 1929, but Markevitch's works were accepted by the publisher Schott and he continued to produce at least one major work per year during the 1930s, being rated among the leading contemporary composers. He started being hailed as "the second Igor" — the first Igor being Igor Stravinsky.
wn.com/Igor_Markevitch -
Indian people
Indian people or Indians are people who are citizens of India, which forms a major part of south of Asia, containing 17.31% of the world's population. The Indian nationality is in essence made up of regional ethno-linguistic groups, reflecting the rich and complex history of India. India, in its current boundaries, was formed out of a number of predecessors.
Substantial populations with Indian ancestry, as a result of emigration, exist in many different parts of the world, most notably in Southeast Asia, South Africa, Australia, England, Middle East and North America. Population estimates vary from a conservative 12 million to 20 million diaspora.
wn.com/Indian_people -
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern (Ukrainian: Исаак Стерн, Russian: Айзек Стерн; July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was a Ukrainian-born violinist and conductor. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.
Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother, then in 1928 enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."
wn.com/Isaac_Stern -
Israeli Arabs
Arab citizens of Israel are non-Jewish Israeli citizens whose cultural and linguistic heritage or ethnic identity is Arab. The traditional vernacular of Arab citizens, irrespective of religion, is the Arabic language, or more precisely, the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. Most Arab citizens of Israel are functionally bilingual, their second language being Modern Hebrew. By religious affiliation, most are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam. There is a significant Arab Christian minority from various denominations as well as Druze, among other religious communities. Israeli Mizrahi Jews are not considered to form part of this population.
According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2010 was estimated at 1,573,000, representing 20.4% of the country's population. The majority of these identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship. Many have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Negev Bedouins tend to identify more as Israelis than other Arab citizens of Israel.
wn.com/Israeli_Arabs -
Jack Nicholson
Not to be confused with Nicholas Jackson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. His twelve Oscar nominations make him the second most nominated actor of all time, behind only Meryl Streep, and tied with Katharine Hepburn.
Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three). Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles such as Jack Torrance in The Shining, Frank Costello in The Departed, and the Joker in 1989's Batman, among many other roles.
Nicholson is one of only two actors who have been nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s; the other is Michael Caine. He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. Notable films in which he has starred include Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Passenger, The Shining, Reds, Terms of Endearment, Batman, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, About Schmidt, The Departed and Anger Management .
wn.com/Jack_Nicholson -
Jacqueline du Pré
Jacqueline Mary du Pré OBE (26 January 1945 – 19 October 1987) was a British cellist. She is particularly associated with Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor; her interpretation has been described as "definitive" and "legendary." Her career was cut short by multiple sclerosis, which forced her to stop performing at 28 and led to her premature death. Posthumously, she was the subject of a cinematic film "Hilary and Jackie", factually controversial and criticized for sensationalising her private life. The film was based on the memoir "A Genius in the Family" published by her siblings Hilary du Pré and Piers du Pre.
Du Pré was born in Oxford, England, the second child of Derek and Iris du Pré. Derek was born in Jersey where his family had lived for generations. After working as an accountant at Lloyds Bank in St Helier and London, he became assistant editor and later editor of The Accountant. Iris Greep du Pré was a talented concert pianist who taught at the Royal Academy of Music. At the age of four du Pré is said to have heard the sound of the cello on the radio and asked her mother for "one of those." She began with lessons from her mother, who composed little pieces accompanied by illustrations, before beginning study at the London Violoncello School at age five. Her first teacher was Alison Dalrymple. She attended Croydon High School, an independent day school for girls in South Croydon.
wn.com/Jacqueline_du_Pré -
James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of funk music and is a major figure of 20th century popular music and dance.
In a career that spanned decades, Brown profoundly influenced the development of many different musical genres. Brown moved on a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music making. Brown performed in concerts, first making his rounds across the Chitlin' Circuit, and then across the country and later around the world, along with appearing in shows on television and in movies. Although he contributed much to the music world through his hitmaking, Brown holds the record as the artist who charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart.
For many years, Brown's touring show was one of the most extravagant productions in American popular music. At the time of Brown's death, his band included three guitarists, two bass guitar players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist. The bands that he maintained during the late 1960s and 1970s were of comparable size, and the bands also included a three-piece amplified string section that played during ballads. Brown employed between 40 and 50 people for the James Brown Revue, and members of the revue traveled with him in a bus to cities and towns all over the country, performing upwards of 330 shows a year with almost all of the shows as one-nighters. In 1986, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1990 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
wn.com/James_Brown -
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an American actor. Since his Broadway debut in 1957, Jones has spent more than five decades as "one of America's most distinguished and versatile actors" and has been termed "one of the greatest actors in American history." On November 12, 2011, Jones received an Honorary Academy Award.
He is well known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership.
James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, son of Robert Earl Jones (1910–2006), an actor, boxer, butler, and chauffeur who left the family shortly after James Earl's birth, and his wife Ruth (Connolly) Jones, a teacher and maid. Jones and his father reconciled many years later. Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, farmers John Henry and Maggie Connolly. He is multiracial, with African, Irish, and Native American ancestry.
Jones describes his grandmother, Maggie, as "the most racist person I have ever known", thus forcing him to develop his own independent thinking. His grandmother was of Cherokee, Choctaw, and black ancestry.
wn.com/James_Earl_Jones -
James Levine
James Lawrence Levine ( /lɨˈvaɪn/; born June 23, 1943) is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently on hiatus from his work as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a situation necessitated by health problems and not due to end before the fall of 2013; the hiatus began in May 2011.
Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and, as of June 2011, he had conducted 2,442 Met performances, a record. The conductor has held music director positions with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. In 1997, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a musical family: his maternal grandfather was a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist who led a dance band, and his mother was an actress. He began to play the piano as a small child. At the age of 10, he made his concert debut as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
wn.com/James_Levine -
James Turrell
James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. Turrell is best known for his work in progress, Roden Crater, located outside Flagstaff, Arizona, where he is turning a natural cinder volcanic crater into a massive naked-eye observatory.
Turrell was born in Pasadena, California. His parents were Quakers. His father was an aeronautical engineer and educator. His mother trained as a medical doctor and later worked in the Peace Corps. Turrell obtained a pilot's licence when 16 years old. He subsequently flew supplies to remote mine sites and worked as an aerial cartographer. He received a BA degree from Pomona College in perceptual psychology in 1965 (including the study of the Ganzfeld effect) and also studied mathematics, geology and astronomy there. Turrell received a MA degree in art from Claremont Graduate School, University of California, Irvine in 1966.
Main article List of James Turrell artworks
In 1966, Turrell began experimenting with light in his Santa Monica studio, the Mendota Hotel, at a time when the so-called Light and Space group of artists in Los Angeles, including Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler, was coming into prominence. By covering the windows and only allowing prescribed amounts of light from the street outside to come through the openings, Turrell created his first light projections. In Shallow Space Constructions (1968) he used screened partitions, allowing a radiant effusion of concealed light to create an artificially flattened effect within the given space. That same year, he participated in the Los Angeles County Museum’s Art and Technology Program, investigating perceptual phenomena with the artist Robert Irwin and psychologist Edward Wortz. In 1969, he made sky drawings with Sam Francis, using colored skywriting smoke and cloud-seeding materials.
wn.com/James_Turrell -
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930) is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in." He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since.
Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.
wn.com/Jasper_Johns -
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ nu.vɛl]) (born August 12, 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (technically, the prize was awarded for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work.
Nouvel was born August 12, 1945, in Fumel, Lot-et-Garonne, France, the son of Renée and Roger Nouvel who were teachers. His family moved often when his father became the county's chief school superintendent. His parents encouraged Nouvel to study mathematics and language, but when he was 16 years old he was captivated by art when a teacher taught him drawing. Although he later said he thought that his parents were guiding him to pursue a career in education or engineering, the family reached a compromise that he could study architecture which they thought was less risky than art.
wn.com/Jean_Nouvel -
Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.
One of the most remarkable female opera singers of the 20th century, she was dubbed La Stupenda by a La Fenice audience in 1960 after a performance of the title role in Handel's Alcina. She possessed a voice of beauty and power, combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, "supremely" pinpoint staccatos, a splendid trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction. Her friend Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the "Voice of the Century"; Montserrat Caballé described the Australian's voice as being like "heaven".
Joan Sutherland was born to Scottish parents in Sydney, and attended St Catherine's School in the suburb of Waverley, New South Wales. As a child, she listened to and imitated her mother's singing exercises. Her mother, a mezzo-soprano, had taken voice lessons but never considered making a career as a professional singer. Sutherland was 18 years old when she began seriously studying voice with John and Aida Dickens. She made her concert debut in Sydney, as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, in 1947. In 1951, she made her stage debut in Eugene Goossens's Judith. In 1951, after winning Australia's most important competition, the Sun Aria, now known as the Sydney Eisteddfod McDonald's Operatic Aria in 1949. She then went to London to further her studies at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music with Clive Carey. She was engaged by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a utility soprano, and made her debut there on 28 October 1952, as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, followed in November by a few performances as Clotilde in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, with Maria Callas as Norma.
wn.com/Joan_Sutherland -
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH (2 December 1899 – 29 July 1970), né Giovanni Battista Barbirolli, was an English conductor and cellist. He is remembered above all as conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, which he helped save from dissolution in 1943 and conducted for the rest of his life. Earlier in his career he was Arturo Toscanini's successor as music director of the New York Philharmonic, serving from 1936 to 1943. He was also chief conductor of the Houston Symphony from 1961 to 1967, and was a guest conductor of many other orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, with all of which he made recordings.
Born in London of Italian and French parentage, Barbirolli grew up in a family of professional musicians. After starting out as a cellist, he was given the chance to conduct, from 1926 with the British National Opera Company, and then with Covent Garden's touring company. On taking up the conductorship of the Hallé he had less opportunity to work in the opera house, but in the 1950s he conducted productions of works by Verdi, Wagner, Gluck, and Puccini at Covent Garden with such success that he was invited to become the company's permanent musical director, an invitation he declined. Late in his career he made several recordings of operas, of which his 1967 set of Puccini's Madama Butterfly for EMI is probably the best known.
wn.com/John_Barbirolli -
John Williams
John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, War Horse, Home Alone and the first three Harry Potter films. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg's major feature films.
Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News, the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, and the television series Lost in Space. Williams has also composed numerous classical concerti, and he served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993; he is now the orchestra's conductor laureate.
Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, and 21 Grammy Awards. With 47 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most nominated person, after Walt Disney. John Williams was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music. Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
wn.com/John_Williams -
Josef Stránský
Josef (or Joseph) Stransky (September 9, 1872 – March 6, 1936) was a Czech conductor, composer, and art collector/dealer who moved to the United States and conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 to 1923.
Born in Humpolec (Bohemia), he worked as a conductor in Prague and Berlin before being selected by the New York Philharmonic to replace Gustav Mahler on Mahler's death in 1911. Some commentators did not see Stransky as a worthy successor to Mahler: the periodical Musical America wrote:
An article in the New York Times about the appointment began, "The financial backers of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will be interested to learn that the German artistic world is filled with astonishment over the engagement of Josef Stransky of Berlin as the successor to the late Gustav Mahler.", before going on to allege that Stransky was chosen over other candidates such as Oskar Fried and Bruno Walter because of his low financial demands.
During his tenure with the Phiharmonic, Stransky received praise for his interpretations of Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss by the prominent critic Henry T. Finck of the New York Evening Post. However, Daniel Gregory Mason expressed his dissatisfaction with what he referred to as "the Wagnerian, Lisztian and Tschaikowskian pap ladled out to us by ... Stransky of the Phihamonic Society", and went as far as to call the conductor "a total musical incompetent". In an even more biting critique published in H. L. Mencken's American Mercury Magazine, critic D. W. Sinclair wrote
wn.com/Josef_Stránský -
Josef Tal
Josef Tal (Hebrew: יוסף טל), (September 18, 1910 – August 25, 2008) was an Israeli composer. He wrote three Hebrew operas; four German operas; dramatic scenes; six symphonies; thirteen concerti; chamber music, including three string quartets; instrumental works; and electronic compositions. He is considered one of the founding fathers of Israeli art music
Josef Tal was born Joseph Grünthal in the town of Pinne (now Pniewy), near Poznań, German Empire (present-day Poland). Soon after his birth his family (parents Ottilie and Rabbi Julius Grünthal, and his elder sister Grete), moved to Berlin, where the family managed a private orphanage. Rabbi Julius Grünthal was a docent in the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies (Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums), specializing in the philology of ancient languages.[3]
Tal's first encounter with music was at the synagogue, where there was a choir and his grandfather served as a non-professional cantor. After attending his first concert, he began to take piano lessons. Tal was admitted to the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and studied with Max Trapp (piano and composition), Heinz Tiessen (theory), Max Saal (harp), Curt Sachs (instrumentation), Fritz Flemming (oboe), Georg Schünemann (history of music), Charlotte Pfeffer and Siegfried Borris (ear training), Siegfried Ochs (choir singing), Leonid Kreutzer (piano methodology), and Julius Prüwer (conducting). Paul Hindemith —his composition and theory teacher— introduced him to Friedrich Trautwein, who directed the electronic music studio in the building cellar. Tal completed his studies in the academy in 1931, and married dancer Rosie Löwenthal one year later. He worked giving piano lessons and accompanying dancers, singers, and silent movies.
wn.com/Josef_Tal -
Joseph Keilberth
Joseph Keilberth (April 19, 1908 – July 20, 1968) was a German conductor who specialized in opera.
He started his career in the State Theatre of his native city, Karlsruhe. In 1940 he became director of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague. Near the end of World War II he became principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle. In 1949 he became chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, formed mainly of Germans expelled from post-war Czechoslovakia under the Beneš decrees. He died in Munich in 1968 after collapsing while conducting Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde in exactly the same place as Felix Mottl had done in 1911.
Keilberth made the first stereo recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle in 1955. Among his other recordings, his interpretations of Weber's Der Freischütz made in 1958 for EMI, and a 'live' set of Richard Strauss's Arabella (featuring Lisa Della Casa and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) made in 1963 for DG are still considered among the best versions. He conducted the TV-broadcast German-translation performance of The Barber of Seville, featuring Fritz Wunderlich, Hermann Prey, and Hans Hotter.
wn.com/Joseph_Keilberth -
Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (née Wells; born 1 October 1935) is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours.
Andrews is a former child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut in a 1954 production of The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, both of which earned her Tony Award nominations. In 1957, she made her television debut with the title role in Cinderella, which was seen by over 100 million viewers.
Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her second Academy Award nomination for The Sound of Music (1965). Adjusted for inflation, these two films are the 25th and 3rd highest grossing films of all time, respectively. From 1964 to 1967, Andrews was the biggest film star in the world, with the additional box office successes of her films The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
wn.com/Julie_Andrews -
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (born December 2, 1925) is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later musicalized as Cabaret on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean (with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
wn.com/Julie_Harris -
Jørn Utzon
Jørn Oberg Utzon, (Danish pronunciation: [jɶɐ̯n ˈud̥sʌn]), AC (9 April 1918 – 29 November 2008) was a Danish architect, most notable for designing the Sydney Opera House in Australia. When it was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, Utzon became only the second person to have received such recognition for one of his works during his lifetime. Other noteworthy works include Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen and the National Assembly Building in Kuwait. He also made important contributions to housing design, especially with his Kingo Houses near Helsingør.
Utzon was born in Copenhagen, the son of a naval engineer, and grew up in Aalborg, Denmark, where he became interested in ships and a possible naval career. As a result of his family's interest in art, from 1937 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under Kay Fisker and Steen Eiler Rasmussen. Following his graduation in 1942, he joined Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm where he worked together with Arne Jacobsen and Poul Henningsen. He took a particular interest in the works of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. After the end of World War II and the German Occupation of Denmark, he returned to Copenhagen.
wn.com/Jørn_Utzon -
Karl Böhm
Karl August Leopold Böhm (August 28, 1894, Graz – August 14, 1981, Salzburg) was an Austrian conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century.
The son of a lawyer, Karl Böhm studied law and earned a doctorate on this subject before entering the music conservatory in his home town of Graz, Austria. (His father was originally German-speaking Bohemian from Egerland, while his mother was from Alsace.) He later enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied under Eusebius Mandyczewski, a friend of Johannes Brahms.
In 1917 Karl Böhm became a rehearsal assistant in his home town, in 1919 the assistant director of music, and in 1920 the senior director of music. On the recommendation of Karl Muck, Bruno Walter engaged him at Munich's Bavarian State Opera in 1921. In 1927 he was appointed as chief musical director in Darmstadt. From 1931 to 1934 he fulfilled the same function at the Hamburg opera company and was appointed professor.
wn.com/Karl_Böhm -
Kent Nagano
Kent George Nagano (born November 22, 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.
Nagano was born in Berkeley, California, while his parents were in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Morro Bay, a city located on the Central Coast of California. He is Japanese American. He studied sociology and music at the University of California, Santa Cruz[citation needed]. After graduation he moved to San Francisco State University to study music. While there, he took composition courses from Grosvenor Cooper and Roger Nixon. He also studied at the École Normale de Musique in Paris.
His first conducting job was with the Opera Company of Boston, where he was assistant conductor to Sarah Caldwell. In 1978, he became the conductor of the Berkeley Symphony, his first music directorship. He stepped down from this position in 2009. During his tenure in Berkeley, Nagano became a champion of the music of Olivier Messiaen and initiated a correspondence with him.
wn.com/Kent_Nagano -
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛˈrɛt͡skʲi] (Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki), born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these works exhibit novel compositional techniques. Since the 1970s Penderecki's style has changed to encompass a post-Romantic idiom.
He has won prestigious awards including Grammy Awards in 1987 and 1998 and 2001, and the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992. He has been called Poland's greatest living composer.
As well as the works already mentioned, his compositions include four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works.
wn.com/Krzysztof_Penderecki -
Kurt Masur
Kurt Masur (born 18 July 1927) is a German conductor, particularly noted for his interpretation of German Romantic music.
Masur was born in Brieg, Lower Silesia, Germany (now Brzeg in Poland) and studied piano, composition and conducting in Leipzig, Saxony. Masur has been married three times. His second wife, with whom he had a daughter, died in 1972 in a car accident in which Masur was severely injured. He and his third wife, Tomoko Sakurai, have a son, Ken-David, a classical singer and conductor.
Masur conducted the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra for three years ending in 1958 and again from 1967 to 1972. He also worked with the Komische Oper of East Berlin. In 1970, he became Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, serving in that post until 1996.
In 1991, Masur succeeded Zubin Mehta as music director of the New York Philharmonic (NYP). During his tenure, there were reports of tension between Masur and the NYP's Executive Director at the time, Deborah Borda, which eventually contributed to his contract not being renewed beyond 2002. In a television interview with Charlie Rose, Masur stated that regarding his leaving the NYP, "it was not my wish". The root of the problem was a fundamental discordance in status between the Americas and Germany regarding employed personalities of standing. In the former case, the hired beneficiary is expected "to report" to the benefactor, in the latter, he expects a free hand to execute his tasks as he feels best on account of his (to be) recognized experience. Masur stepped down as the NYP's Music Director in 2002, and was named its Music Director Emeritus, a new title created for him. The critical consensus is that Masur improved the playing of the orchestra compared to his more pliable and forbearing predecessor.
wn.com/Kurt_Masur -
Leon Fleisher
Leon Fleisher (born July 23, 1928) is an American pianist and conductor.
Fleisher was born in San Francisco, where he started studying the piano at age four. He made his public debut at age eight and played with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux at 16; Monteux famously called him "the pianistic find of the century." He became one of the few child prodigies to be accepted for study with Artur Schnabel and also studied with Maria Curcio. Fleisher was linked via Schnabel to a tradition that descended directly from Beethoven himself, handed down through Carl Czerny and Theodor Leschetizky.
In the 1950s, Fleisher signed an exclusive recording contract with Columbia Masterworks. He is particularly well known for his interpretations of the piano concerti of Brahms and Beethoven, which he recorded with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. They also recorded Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25, the Grieg and Schumann piano concertos, Franck's Symphonic Variations, and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
wn.com/Leon_Fleisher -
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstaɪn/ US dict: bûrn′·stīn; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, as well as Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town and his own Mass.
Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. In addition, he was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.
As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and commercial success of West Side Story.
wn.com/Leonard_Bernstein -
Leopold Damrosch
Leopold Damrosch (October 22, 1832 – February 15, 1885) was a German American orchestral conductor.
Damrosch was born in Posen (Poznań), Kingdom of Prussia, the son of Heinrich Damrosch. His father was Jewish and his mother was Lutheran. Leopold Damrosch was baptized a Lutheran when marrying his wife, former opera singer Helene von Heimburg.
Damrosch began his musical education at the age of nine, learning the violin against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to become a doctor. Capitulating to the wishes of his parents he entered the University of Berlin and completed his PhD in medicine but during his spare time he studied violin under Ries, and thorough bass with Dehn and Bohmer. After he completed his degree Damrosch decided to dedicate his life and energy to music. He gained fame as a violinist and began to play to large audiences in many major German cities including Berlin and Hamburg. He went to Weimar, and was received by Franz Liszt, who appointed him solo-violinist in the Ducal orchestra.
wn.com/Leopold_Damrosch -
Lorin Maazel
Lorin Varencove Maazel (born March 6, 1930) is an American conductor, violinist and composer.
Maazel was born to Jewish-American parents of Russian origin in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France and brought up in the United States, primarily at his parents' home in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. His father, Lincoln Maazel (1903–2009), was a singer, teacher of voice and piano, and an actor (he co-starred in George A. Romero's 1977 horror movie Martin); and his mother, Marion "Marie" Shulman Maazel (1894–1992), founded the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra. His grandfather Isaac was a violinist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for twenty years. Both Lincoln and Marie gave interviews for the Oral History Collection at the University of Pittsburgh, Lincoln’s in 1994, and Marie’s in 1974. These can be heard online.
Lorin Maazel was a child prodigy, taking his first conducting lesson at age seven with Vladimir Bakaleinikov and making his debut at age eight. At the age of eleven, he guest conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra on the radio. At twelve he toured America to conduct major orchestras. He made his violin debut at the age of fifteen. He later studied at the University of Pittsburgh.
wn.com/Lorin_Maazel -
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia for voices and orchestra and his series of numbered solo pieces titled Sequenza) and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.
Berio was born at Oneglia (now part of Imperia). He was taught the piano by his father and grandfather who were both organists. During World War II he was conscripted into the army, but on his first day he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked, and spent time in a military hospital. Following the war, Berio studied at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. He was unable to continue studying the piano because of his injured hand, so instead concentrated on composition. In 1947 came the first public performance of one of his works, a suite for piano. Berio made a living at this time accompanying singing classes, and it was in doing this that he met American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, whom he married shortly after graduating (they divorced in 1964). Berio would write many pieces aimed at exploiting her very distinctive voice.
wn.com/Luciano_Berio -
Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor, who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, and established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century. He was one of The Three Tenors and became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others.
Pavarotti began his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy. That same year, he made his first international appearance in La traviata in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He sang in opera houses in addition to Italy, in the Netherlands, Vienna, London, Ankara, Budapest and Barcelona. The young tenor earned valuable experience and recognition while touring Australia at the invitation of soprano Joan Sutherland in 1965. He made his United States debut in Miami soon afterwards, also on Sutherland's recommendation. His position as a leading lyric tenor was consolidated in the years between 1966 and 1972, during which time he first appeared at Milan's La Scala and other major European houses. In 1968, he debuted at New York City's Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème. At the Met in 1972, in the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment he earned the title "King of the high Cs" when he sang the aria "Ah mes amis ... pour mon âme". He gained worldwide fame for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register. He was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The late 1970s and 1980s saw Pavarotti continue to make significant appearances in the world's foremost opera houses.
wn.com/Luciano_Pavarotti -
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall (/ʃəˈɡɑːl/ shə-GAHL;Russian: Марк Заха́рович Шага́л; (7 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Russian-French artist associated with several major artistic styles and one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He was an early modernist, and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.
Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century". According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists". For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.
wn.com/Marc_Chagall -
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( /skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.
wn.com/Martin_Scorsese -
Mehli Mehta
Mehli Mehta (September 25, 1908 – 19 October 2002) was an Indian conductor and violinist.
Mehta was born in Bombay, British India to a Parsi family. His involvement in music stemmed from his birth. As a young violinist his main musical influence and inspiration was Jascha Heifetz. A pioneering figure in the Indian musical world, he founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935, and was its Concertmaster (1935-1945) and conductor (1945-1955). He was married to Tehmina.
In 1940 Mr. Mehta founded the Bombay String Quartet. He spent five years in New York City studying with eminent violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian, and earned degrees from the University of Bombay and Trinity College of Music in London.
He moved to the United States in 1945, where he studied violin in New York. In 1955 Mehli Mehta moved to England, where he served for five years as Assistant Concertmaster and Concertmaster of the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester under Sir John Barbirolli. Mehta came to regard Barbirolli as "one of the greatest influences of my conducting life.
wn.com/Mehli_Mehta -
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.
wn.com/Mel_Brooks -
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols (born Michael Igor Peschkowsky; November 6, 1931) is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other noteworthy films include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnal Knowledge, Working Girl, Closer and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.
Nichols is one of a small group of people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. His other honors include the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010.
Mike Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, the son of Brigitte (née Landauer) and Paul Peschkowsky, a physician. His father was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Russian Jewish immigrant family that had been wealthy and lived in Siberia, leaving after the Russian Revolution and settling in Germany around 1920. His mother's family were German Jews. His maternal grandparents were anarchist Gustav Landauer and author Hedwig Lachmann. Nichols is a third cousin twice removed of scientist Albert Einstein, through Nichols' mother. He moved to the United States to flee the Nazis on April 28, 1939. His father, who had changed his name to Paul Nichols, had successfully set up a medical practice in Manhattan and the family lived near Central Park. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944 and attended public elementary school in Manhattan (PS 87). After graduating from Walden High School, Nichols briefly attended New York University before dropping out. In 1950, he enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of Chicago.
wn.com/Mike_Nichols -
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov (Russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Бары́шников, Latvian: Mihails Barišņikovs) (born January 27, 1948), nicknamed "Misha", is a Russian American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers in history. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in western dance. After freelancing with many companies, he joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer to learn George Balanchine's style of movement. He then danced with the American Ballet Theatre, where he later became artistic director.
Baryshnikov has spearheaded many of his own artistic projects and has been associated in particular with promoting modern dance, premiering dozens of new works, including many of his own. His success as a dramatic actor on stage, cinema and television has helped him become probably the most widely recognized contemporary ballet dancer. In 1977, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for his work as "Yuri Kopeikine" in the film The Turning Point.
wn.com/Mikhail_Baryshnikov -
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Unforgiven, Glory, Seven, Deep Impact, The Sum of All Fears, Bruce Almighty, Batman Begins, March of the Penguins, The Bucket List, Wanted, The Dark Knight, and RED.
Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Mayme Edna (née Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber who died April 27, 1961, from cirrhosis. He has three older siblings. Freeman was sent as an infant to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. His family moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. Freeman made his acting debut at age 9, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, later named Threadgill Elementary School, in Mississippi. At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while still at Broad Street High School, he performed in a radio show based in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1955, he graduated from Broad Street, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to work as a mechanic in the United States Air Force.
wn.com/Morgan_Freeman -
Nancy Kovack
Nancy Kovack (born March 11, 1936 in Flint, Michigan) is a former American actress.
She attended the University of Michigan at age 15 and graduated by 19. At the age of 20 she had won eight beauty titles.
Kovack became interested in acting when she went to New York City to attend a wedding and became one of the Glea Girls for Jackie Gleason. She has appeared on a number of TV episodes, including Star Trek, Bewitched (playing Darrin Stephens' catty ex-fiancee and Samantha's nemesis, Sheila Sommers), Batman, I Dream of Jeannie, Perry Mason, 12 O'Clock High, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders episode Task Force in season 2/16, and Burke's Law. In 1969 she was nominated for an Emmy for an appearance on Mannix.
On Broadway she appeared in The Disenchanted.
As she gained fame, Kovack began to win roles in Hollywood movies, most notably as the high priestess Medea in Jason and the Argonauts (1963). She also had parts in Strangers When We Meet (1960), The Wild Westerners (with red hair), Diary of a Madman (1963) with Vincent Price, The Outlaws Is Coming (1965) with The Three Stooges, Sylvia (1965), The Silencers (1966), Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), and the Elvis Presley film Frankie and Johnny (1966).
wn.com/Nancy_Kovack -
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen (French pronunciation: [ɔlivje mɛsjɑ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources); harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", and drew on his deeply held Roman Catholicism.
He travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences such as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He said he perceived colours when he heard certain musical chords, particularly those built from his modes (a phenomenon known as synaesthesia); combinations of these colours, he said, were important in his compositional process. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrisation associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works). He was one of the first composers to use an electronic keyboard—in this case, the ondes Martenot—in an orchestral work.
wn.com/Olivier_Messiaen -
Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis (born Raiford Chatman Davis, December 18, 1917 – February 4, 2005) was an Emmy Award winning and Grammy nominated, African- American film, television and Broadway actor, director, poet, playwright, author, and social activist.
Davis was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell, Clinch County, Georgia, a son of Kince Charles Davis, a railway construction engineer, and his wife Laura (née Cooper). The name Ossie came from a county clerk who misheard his mother's pronunciation of his initials "R.C." when he was born. So he inadvertently became "Ossie" when his mother told the courthouse clerk in Clinch River, Ga., who was filing his birth certificate that his name was R.C. Davis. Davis experienced racism from an early age as the KKK threatened to shoot his father, whose job they felt was too advanced for a black man to have. Following the wishes of his parents, he attended Howard University but dropped out in 1939 to fulfill his acting career in New York; he later attended Columbia University School of General Studies. His acting career, which spanned seven decades, began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. He made his film debut in 1950 in the Sidney Poitier film No Way Out. He voiced Anansi the spider on the PBS children's television series Sesame Street in its animation segments.
wn.com/Ossie_Davis -
Parsi
Parsi or Parsee ( /ˈpɑrsiː/) refers to a member of the larger of the two Zoroastrian communities in South Asia, the other being the Irani community.
According to tradition, the present-day Parsis descend from a group of Zoroastrians of Iran who immigrated to India during the 10th century AD, to avoid persecution by Muslim invaders who were in the process of conquering Iran. At the time of the Arab invasion of Iran, the dominant religion of the region was Zoroastrianism. The Iranians rebelled against the Arab invaders for almost 200 years; in Iran this period is now known as the "Two "Centuries of Silence" or "Period of Silence". After many failed attempts to free the country from Arab domination, the Iranians were forced to either pay heavy taxes (Jizya) or to convert to Islam, the latter being the ultimate goal of the new rulers and thus the easier way. During this time many Iranians who are now called Parsi rejected both options and instead chose to take refuge by fleeing from Iran to India.
wn.com/Parsi -
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is a grammy award winning American singer-songwriter, poet and guitarist.
Simon's international fame and success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, launched in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three highly acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony in 1980 and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998.
Simon has earned 12 Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time magazine. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986 Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.
wn.com/Paul_Simon -
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend (born 19 May 1945) is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the 1960s and 1970s, and, according to Eddie Vedder, "possibly the greatest live band ever."
Townshend is the primary songwriter for The Who, having written well over 100 songs for the band's 11 studio albums, including concept albums and the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples like Who's Next, and dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations like Odds & Sods. He has also written over 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays other instruments such as keyboards, banjo, accordion, synthesiser, bass guitar and drums, on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artists' recordings. Townshend has never had formal lessons in any of the instruments he plays.
wn.com/Pete_Townshend -
Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc. A certain fragmenting of forms visible in some of Eisenman's projects has been identified as characteristic of an eclectic group of architects that were (self-)labeled as deconstructivists, and who were featured in an exhibition by the same name at the Museum of Modern Art. The heading also refers to the storied relationship and collaborations between Peter Eisenman and post-structuralist thinker Jacques Derrida.
wn.com/Peter_Eisenman -
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ bu.lɛːz]) (born 26 March 1925) is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.
Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics. He pursued the latter at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and the wife of Arthur Honegger, Andrée Vaurabourg.
Through Messiaen, Boulez discovered twelve-tone technique — which he would later study privately with René Leibowitz — and went on to write atonal music in a post-Webernian serial style. Boulez was initially part of a cadre of early supporters of Leibowitz, but due to an altercation with Leibowitz, their relations turned divisive, as Boulez spent much of his career promoting the music of Messiaen instead.
The first fruits of this were his cantatas Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra, both composed in the late 1940s and revised several times since, as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Thereafter, Boulez was influenced by Messiaen's research to extend twelve-tone technique beyond the realm of pitch organization, serialising durations, dynamics, mode of attack, and so on. This technique became known as integral serialism.
wn.com/Pierre_Boulez -
Pinchas Zukerman
Pinchas Zukerman (Hebrew: פנחס צוקרמן, born July 16, 1948) is a violinist, violist, and conductor of Israeli descent. He is considered to be one of the world's preeminent violinists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and his ongoing 45-year career has seen him perform with the world's best-known orchestras and record over 100 works.
Born in Tel Aviv to Yehuda and Miriam Lieberman Zukerman, Zukerman began his musical studies at age 4, on the recorder. His father then taught him clarinet, and picked up the violin at age 8. Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals learned of Zukerman's violin talent during a 1962 visit to Israel. Zukerman subsequently moved to the United States that year for study at the Juilliard School, under the tutelage of Stern and Ivan Galamian. He made his New York début in 1963. In 1967, he shared the Leventritt Prize with the Korean violinist Kyung-wha Chung. His 1969 debut recordings of the concerti by Tchaikovsky (under the direction of Antal Dorati, with the London Symphony Orchestra) and Mendelssohn (with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic) launched a successful recording career that continues to the present day and boasts over 110 releases.
wn.com/Pinchas_Zukerman -
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈplaθiðo ðoˈmiŋɡo]; born 21 January 1941), born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range. In March 2008, he debuted in his 128th opera role, and as of July 2011, his 136 roles give Domingo more roles than any other tenor.
One of The Three Tenors, he has also taken on conducting opera and concert performances, and he is the General Director of the Los Angeles Opera in California.
Plácido Domingo was born on January 21, 1941, in the distrito de Retiro section of Madrid, Spain, and in 1949 moved to Mexico with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. He studied piano at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.
In 1957, Domingo made his first professional appearance, performing with his mother in a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. He made his opera debut performing in Manuel Fernández Caballero's zarzuela, Gigantes y cabezudos, singing a baritone role. At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, taking baritone roles and as an accompanist for other singers. Among his first performances was a minor role in the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady where he was also the assistant conductor and assistant coach. The company gave 185 performances, which included a production of Lehár's The Merry Widow in which he performed alternately as either Camille or Danilo.
wn.com/Plácido_Domingo -
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is particularly recognized as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.
In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song "The Eyes of Love" from the Universal Pictures film Banning. That same year, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971, Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first African American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.
wn.com/Quincy_Jones -
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar (Bengali: রবি শংকর; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury on 7 April 1920), often referred to with the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the most known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.
Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent his youth touring Europe and India with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956.
In 1956, he began to tour Europe and America playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of The Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992 he served as a nominated member of the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999, and received three Grammy Awards. He continues to perform in the 2000s, often with his daughter Anoushka.
wn.com/Ravi_Shankar -
Riccardo Muti
Riccardo Muti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [rikˈkardo ˈmuːti]; born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Muti was born in Naples but spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast. His father was a doctor in Molfetta and an amateur singer; his mother, a Neapolitan, was a professional singer. As wryly explained in the conductor's 2010 autobiography, it was a family pattern for the children to be born in Naples.
Muti graduated from Liceo classico (Classical Lyceum) Vittorio Emanuele II in Naples, then studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella under Vincenzo Vitale; here Muti was awarded a diploma cum laude. He was subsequently awarded a diploma in Composition and Conducting by the Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi", Milan, where he studied with the composer Bruno Bettinelli and the conductor Antonino Votto. He has also studied composition with Nino Rota, whom he considers a mentor. He was unanimously awarded first place by the jury of the "Guido Cantelli" competition for conductors in Milan in 1967 and became, the next year, principal conductor and music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a post he held for eleven years.
wn.com/Riccardo_Muti -
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and other orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, An Alpine Symphony, and Metamorphosen. Strauss was also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Strauss was born on 11 June 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, who was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. In his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six, and continued to write music almost until his death.
wn.com/Richard_Strauss -
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. (born August 18, 1936), better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. His popular films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President's Men (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Sneakers (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993),The Last Castle and Spy Game (2001). As a filmmaker, his notable films include Ordinary People (1980), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000).
wn.com/Robert_Redford -
Roger Daltrey
Roger Harry Daltrey, CBE (born 1 March 1944), is an English singer, musician, songwriter and actor, best known as the founder and lead singer of English rock band The Who. He has maintained a musical career as a solo artist and has also worked in the film industry, acting in a large number of films, theatre and television roles and also producing films. In 2008 he was ranked number 61 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.
Roger Harry Daltrey was born in the Hammersmith area of London, but was brought up in Acton, the same working class suburban district that produced fellow Who members Pete Townshend and John Entwistle. He was one of three children born to parents Irene and Harry Daltrey, and grew up with two sisters, Gillian and Carol. Harry Daltrey worked for a water closet manufacturer, and Irene Daltrey was told she would be unable to have children because of losing a kidney in 1937. Nevertheless, she went into labour during a World War II air raid and gave birth to her son at the nearby Hammersmith Hospital, West London. At the age of three, the young Roger swallowed a rusty nail which had to be surgically removed, leaving a visible scar. At the age of five, the rust from the nail caused an ulcer in his stomach which required him to be hospitalised.
wn.com/Roger_Daltrey -
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel (born November 13, 1952 in Schwerte, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German Artist, and an important figure in the international contemporary art movement.
From 1970–1978, Trockel addressed contemporary concerns, particularly women and their place in the art world. Her work challenged concepts of sexuality, culture, and artistic production. In the 1980s she had important solo shows in the United States, for example at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
Trockel's "knitting pictures", produced in 1985, consist of lengths of machine-knitted, woollen material stretched on to frames. The material is patterned with computer-generated geometrical motifs, or with recognizable logos, such as the hammer and sickle motif of the Soviet Union superimposed on a background of red and white stripes reminiscent of the US flag. Another of Trockel's pieces consists of a steel cube fitted with six hot plates in two parallel, diagonal lines, meant to establish a bridge between the feminine domain of cooking and the masculine domain of industrial production. Aside from the knitted and patterned logos, she has also made a series of pictures of webs made by spiders under the influence of LSD, hashish, or mescaline. She says it depicts their loneliness and their weak figures, because their webs would not be strong enough to catch prey to survive. They would eventually die. The spider web series can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
wn.com/Rosemarie_Trockel -
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee (born October 27, 1924) is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist. She is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has won a Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors, among scores of others awards.
Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Gladys Hightower and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter, and porter. After her mother left the family, Dee's father married Emma Amelia Benson, a schoolteacher. Dee grew up in Harlem, New York. She attended Hunter College High School and went on to graduate from Hunter College with degrees in French and Spanish in 1944. Dee is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Dee made several appearances on Broadway before receiving national recognition for her role in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story. Her career in acting has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades, including the films A Raisin in the Sun, in which she recreated her stage role as a suffering housewife in the projects, and Edge of the City. She played both roles opposite Sidney Poitier. During the 1960s, Dee appeared in such politically charged films as Gone Are the Days and The Incident, which is recognized as helping pave the way for young African-American actors and filmmakers.
wn.com/Ruby_Dee -
Rudolf Kempe
Rudolf Kempe (born 14 June 1910 in Dresden, died 12 May 1976 in Zürich) was a German conductor.
Kempe was born in Dresden, where from the age of fourteen he studied at the Dresden State Opera School. He played oboe in the opera orchestra of Dortmund and then in the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, from 1929. In addition to oboe, he played the piano regularly, as a soloist, in chamber music or accompanying, as a result of which, in 1933, the new Director of the Leipzig Opera invited Kempe to become a répétiteur, and later a conductor, for the opera.
During the Second World War Kempe was conscripted into the army, but instead of active service was directed into musical activities, playing for the troops and later taking over the chief conductorship of the Chemnitz opera house.
Kempe directed the Dresden Opera and the Dresden Staatskapelle from 1949 to 1952, making his first records, including Der Rosenkavalier, Die Meistersinger and Der Freischütz. ‘He obtains some superlative playing from the Dresden orchestra,’ commented The Record Guide. He maintained a relationship with the Dresden orchestra for the rest of his life, making some of his best-known records with them during the stereo era.
wn.com/Rudolf_Kempe -
Ruggero Raimondi
Ruggero Raimondi (born 3 October 1941) is an Italian bass-baritone opera singer who has also appeared in motion pictures.
Ruggero Raimondi was born in Bologna, Italy, during World War II. His voice matured early into its adult timbre, and at the age of 15, he auditioned for conductor Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, who encouraged him to pursue an operatic career. He began vocal studies with Ettore Campogalliani, and was accepted at age 16 as a student at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. He then continued his studies in Rome, under the guidance of Teresa Pediconi and Armando Piervenanzi.
After having won the National Competition for young opera singers in Spoleto, he made his debut in the same city in the role of Colline in La Bohème in the Festival dei Due Mondi. Subsequently an opportunity arose for him at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome when he was called upon to substitute in the role of Procida in Giuseppe Verdi's I Vespri Siciliani, and he received enormous success from the public and the critics. The young singer was very shy and stiff at first, but his early directors helped him, and he was soon an accomplished opera actor.
wn.com/Ruggero_Raimondi -
Simon Rattle
Sir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE (born 19 January 1955) is an English conductor. He rose to international prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and since 2002 has been principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic (BPO).
Rattle was born in Liverpool, the son of Pauline Lila Violet (Greening) and Denis Guttridge Rattle, a Commander in the Royal Navy. He was educated at Liverpool College. Although Rattle studied piano and violin, his early work with orchestras was as a percussionist. He entered the Royal Academy of Music, University of London in 1971. There, his teachers included John Carewe. In 1974, his graduation year, Rattle won the John Player Conductor Competition. After organising and conducting a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony whilst still at the Academy, he was talent-spotted by the music agent Martin Campbell-White, of Harold Holt Ltd. (now Askonas Holt Ltd.), who has since managed Rattle's career. He spent the academic year 1980/81 at St Anne's College, Oxford studying English Language and Literature. He had been attracted to the college by the reputation of Dorothy Bednarowska, Fellow and Tutor in English. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Anne's in 1991. He was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Music honoris causa of the University of Oxford in 1999.
wn.com/Simon_Rattle -
Smokey Robinson
William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is most notable for being the founder and front man of the popular Motown vocal group, The Miracles, for which he also served as the group's chief songwriter and producer. Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as The Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the stage to focus on his role as Motown's vice president.
However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year, later having solo hits such as "Baby That's Backatcha", "Quiet Storm", "The Agony and the Ecstasy", "Cruisin'", "Being With You" and "Just to See Her". Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left Motown in 1990. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Robinson was born in Detroit and raised in the city's North End section. At one point, he and Diana Ross were next-door neighbors; he said he has known Ross since she was eight. Robinson later told reporters when he was a child, his uncle christened him "Smokey Joe", which Robinson assumed was a "cowboy name for me" until he was later told that smokey was a pejorative term for dark-skinned Blacks. Robinson, who is mainly of African American descent and is light-skinned, remembers his uncle saying to him, "I'm doing this so you won't ever forget that you're black." Robinson grew up as a fan of Western films.
wn.com/Smokey_Robinson -
Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, author, playwright, producer, musician and composer. Martin came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.
Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, Martin has become a successful actor in both comedic and dramatic roles, as well as an author, playwright, pianist, and banjo player, eventually earning Emmy, Grammy, and American Comedy awards, among other honors.
wn.com/Steve_Martin -
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.
wn.com/Steven_Spielberg -
Suzanne Farrell
Suzanne Farrell (born August 16, 1945) is an eminent 20th century ballerina (often referred to as the greatest American lyric ballerina) and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
She was born as Roberta Sue Ficker in Cincinnati, and received her early training at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. In 1960 she was selected to study at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet with a Ford Foundation scholarship; she started there in 1960, and joined the New York City Ballet (NYCB) in 1961.
Initially part of the corps de ballet at NYCB, Farrell soon moved on to dancing featured roles. The first ballet choreographed for her was Passage, now Arcade, by John Taras in 1963. Balanchine first paired her with Jacques d' Amboise to choreograph his Meditation, which debuted in Winter 1963. One of her most notable roles was Dulcinea in Balanchine's Don Quixote, which premiered in May 1965. Balanchine performed in the of Don Quixote on opening night. She re-scaled many ballets and expanded them to a new level of technique. In 1965 she was promoted to principal dancer. Her first role in her new title was Agon with Arthur Mitchell at the Paris Opera. George Balanchine quickly fell in love with his "alabaster princess", and created many roles for her. Farrell described learning choreography from Balanchine as a collaborative process, saying, "When Mr. B was working on a ballet, something would just spill out of his body; he could rarely duplicate it, so I tried to see precisely what he wanted the first time." In 1965 he created Don Quixote, thought to be a valentine to his newest "muse." In 1968 he cast her as the lead in the "Diamonds" section of his three-act plotless ballet "Jewels".
wn.com/Suzanne_Farrell -
Terry Sanders
Terry Sanders (born 20 December 1931) is an American filmmaker having produced and/or directed more than 70 dramatic features, televisions specials, documentaries and portrait films. He co-heads the American Film Foundation and has produced and photographed the Oscar-winning dramatic short "A Time Out of War". He also produced and co-directed Crime & Punishment, USA with his brother Denis Sanders. The debuting actors in "War Hunt" are Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, and Tom Skerritt, which he also produced with Denis Sanders.
Currently in development is a dramatic feature film, Tokyo Rose/American Patriot, a World War II true-life story of Iva Ikuko Toguri who was wrongly convicted of treason.
wn.com/Terry_Sanders -
Theodore Eisfeld
Theodore Eisfeld (April 11, 1816, Wolfenbüttel, Braunschweig, Germany – 16 September 1882, Wiesbaden) was a conductor, most notably of the New York Philharmonic Society, which became the New York Philharmonic.
Eisfeld's chief instructor in musical composition was Carl Gottlieb Reissiger, of Dresden. Between 1839 and 1843 he served as Kapellmeister of the Court Theatre at Wiesbaden. He came to New York in 1848, and in 1849 was the first man chosen to by the New York Philharmonic Society to be sole conductor for an entire season (prior to this time it had been customary for several musicians to share the conducting duties). He began the custom of giving an annual Christmas performance of Handel's Messiah. He also introduced the first regular concerts of chamber music in New York.
From 1849 through the 1865/1866 season, when he resigned, Eisfeld often served as conductor of the New York Philharmonic Society. In this period it was customary for the conductor to change from season to season, sometimes with two men sharing the duties. On 18 February 1851, he began a series of quartet concerts, the first being given at Hope Chapel. Eisfeld was also the first conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society, which was founded in 1857. He continued in this position, alternating with Theodore Thomas between 1862 and 1865, before Thomas took over.
wn.com/Theodore_Eisfeld -
Tina Turner
Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939) is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards. Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Success followed with a string of hits including "River Deep, Mountain High" and the 1971 hit "Proud Mary". With the publication of her autobiography I, Tina (1986), Turner revealed severe instances of spousal abuse against her by Ike Turner prior to their 1976 split and subsequent 1978 divorce. After virtually disappearing from the music scene for several years following her divorce from Ike Turner, she rebuilt her career, launching a string of hits beginning in 1983 with the single "Let's Stay Together" and the 1984 release of her fifth solo album Private Dancer.
Her musical career led to film roles, beginning with a prominent role as The Acid Queen in the 1975 film Tommy, and an appearance in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. She starred opposite Mel Gibson as Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome for which she received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, and her version of the film's theme, "We Don't Need Another Hero", was a hit single. She appeared in the 1993 film Last Action Hero.
wn.com/Tina_Turner -
Tony Bennett
Anthony Dominick Benedetto, better known as Tony Bennett (born August 3, 1926), is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, having created works — under the name Benedetto — that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York City.
Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several top hits such as "Rags to Riches" followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and his personal life then suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.
wn.com/Tony_Bennett -
Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp (born July 1, 1941) is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.
Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.
When Tharp was a young child she spent a few months each year living with her Quaker grandparents on their farm in Indiana. In 1950 Tharp's family—younger sister Twanette, twin brothers Stanley and Stanford, mother Lecile and father William—moved to Rialto, California. Her parents opened a drive-in movie theater, where Tharp worked from the time she was 8 years old. The drive-in was on the corner of Acacia and Foothill, the major east–west artery in Rialto and the path of Route 66. She attended Pacific High School in San Bernardino and studied at the Vera Lynn School of Dance. Tharp, a "devoted bookworm," admits that this schedule left little time for a social life. Tharp attended Pomona College in California but later transferred to Barnard College in New York City, where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 1963. It was in New York that she studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. In 1963 Tharp joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
wn.com/Twyla_Tharp -
Ureli Corelli Hill
Ureli Corelli Hill (born New York, 1802 - died Paterson, New Jersey, September 2, 1875) was an American conductor, and the first president and conductor of the New York Philharmonic Society. His grandfather, Frederick Hill, was a fifer in the Revolutionary army. His father, Uri Keeler Hill, was a music teacher and composer. Ureli’s only sibling, George Handel “Yankee” Hill, was a writer and actor noted for his depiction of Yankee characters.
Hill served alternately as conductor and violinist with the New York Sacred Music Society between 1828 and 1835. In 1838 he directed the first American performance of Mendelssohn's cantata St. Paul. He studied in Germany for two years with the composer, conductor, and violinist Louis Spohr. After returning to New York, Hill organized the meeting on April 2, 1842, at which the New York Philharmonic Society was founded. At the meeting, Hill was named the first President of the Society.
Hill opened the Society's inaugural concert on December 7, 1842 by conducting Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. As was typical of this era, the concert featured several different conductors and a mixture of opera excerpts, full orchestral works, and chamber music. Later during the same concert, Hill played violin in a performance of a Hummel Piano Quintet. For the Orchestra’s third season, Hill invited both Spohr and Felix Mendelssohn to conduct, however neither could accept, sending letters of acknowledgement instead. Both were later made honorary members of the Philharmonic. Hill continued to conduct the Society, in alternation with six others, until 1849.
wn.com/Ureli_Corelli_Hill -
Van Cliburn
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn, Jr. (born July 12, 1934), is an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at the age of twenty-three, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War.
Van Cliburn was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and began taking piano lessons at the age of three from his mother, the former Rildia Bee O'Bryan, who herself had been instructed by Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. At six years old, Cliburn moved with his family to Kilgore, Texas, and at twelve he won a statewide piano competition which enabled him to debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He entered the Juilliard School at the age of seventeen, and studied under Rosina Lhévinne, who trained him in the tradition of the great Russian romantics. At twenty, Cliburn won the Leventritt Award, and made his Carnegie Hall debut.
It was his recognition in Moscow that propelled Cliburn to international fame. The first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 was an event designed to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority during the Cold War, on the heels of their technological victory with the Sputnik launch in October 1957. Cliburn's performance at the competition finale of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 earned him a standing ovation lasting eight minutes. When it was time to announce a winner, the judges were obliged to ask permission of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to give first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. "Then give him the prize!" Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time the honor has been accorded a classical musician. His cover story in Time proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."
wn.com/Van_Cliburn -
Vasily Safonov
Vasily Ilyich Safonov (Russian: Васи́лий Ильи́ч Сафо́нов, Vasi'lij Ilji'č Safo'nov, also known as Wassily Safonoff; 6 February 1852 – 27 February 1918) was a Russian pianist, teacher, conductor and composer.
Safonov, or Safonoff as he was known in the West during his lifetime, was born at Itschory, Russian Caucasus, the son of a Russian officer of Cossacks. He was educated at the Imperial Alexandra Lyceum, Saint Petersburg, and at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory of Music 1881-1885 under Louis Brassin. He graduated as Bachelor of Laws, and won the gold medal as a pianist of the Conservatory. He was also a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky and Nikolai Zaremba.
Safonov was never a particularly successful composer in his own right, but was a master music educator, becoming Director of the Moscow Conservatory in 1889. He was also the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He was the teacher of some of the best Russian pianists, notably Alexander Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner, Josef Lhévinne and Rosina Bessie (later Lhévinne).
wn.com/Vasily_Safonov -
Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (Russian: Владимир Самойлович Горовиц, Vladimir Samojlovich Gorovitz) (October 1 [O.S. September 18] 1903 – November 5, 1989) was a Russian-born American classical pianist and composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.
Vladimir Horowitz was born in Kiev in the Russian Empire (now the capital of Ukraine). There are unsubstantiated claims that Horowitz was born in Berdychiv; however, his birth certificate unequivocally states Kiev as his birthplace.
Horowitz was the youngest of four children of Samuil Horowitz and Sophia Bodik, who were assimilated Jews. Samuil was a well-to-do electrical engineer and a distributor of electric motors for German manufacturers. Horowitz's grandfather Joachim was a merchant (and an arts-supporter), belonging to the 1st Guild. This status gave exemption from having to reside in the Pale of Settlement. Horowitz was born in 1903, but in order to make him appear too young for military service so as not to risk damaging his hands, his father took a year off his son's age by claiming he was born in 1904. The 1904 date appeared in many reference works during the pianist's lifetime.
wn.com/Vladimir_Horowitz -
Walter Damrosch
Walter Johannes Damrosch (January 30, 1862 – December 22, 1950) was a German-born American conductor and composer. He is best remembered today as long-time director of the New York Symphony Orchestra and for conducting the world premiere performances of George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F (1925), and An American in Paris (1928).
Damrosch was born in Breslau, Silesia, a son of Helene von Heimburg, a former opera singer, and the conductor Leopold Damrosch, and brother of conductor Frank Damrosch and music teacher Clara Mannes. His parents were Lutheran (his paternal grandfather was Jewish). He exhibited an interest in music at an early age and was instructed by his father in harmony and also studied under Wilhelm Albert Rischbieter and Felix Draeseke at the Dresden Conservatory. He emigrated with his parents in 1871 to the United States.
During the great music festival given by his father in May 1881, he first acted as conductor in drilling several sections of the large chorus, one in New York City, and another in Newark, New Jersey. The latter, consisting chiefly of members of the Harmonic Society, elected him to be their conductor. During this time a series of concerts was given in which such works as Anton Rubinstein's Tower of Babel, Hector Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, and Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem were performed. He was then only 19 years of age, but showed marked ability in drilling large masses.
wn.com/Walter_Damrosch -
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.
wn.com/Warren_Beatty -
Willem Mengelberg
Joseph Willem Mengelberg (28 March 1871 – 21 March 1951) was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Mengelberg was the fourth of fifteen children of German-born parents in Utrecht, Netherlands. His father was the well-known Dutch-German sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Mengelberg. After studies in Utrecht with the composer and conductor Richard Hol, the composer Anton Averkamp (1861–1934) and the violinist Henri Wilhelm Petri (1856–1914), he went on to study piano and composition at the Cologne conservatory (now the Hochschule für Musik Köln ), where his principal teachers were Franz Wüllner and Adolf Jensen.
In 1891, when he was 20, he was chosen as General Music Director of the city of Lucerne Switzerland, where he conducted an orchestra and a choir, directed a music school, taught piano lessons and continued to compose.
Four years later, in 1895, when he was 24, Mengelberg was appointed principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, a position he held until 1945.
wn.com/Willem_Mengelberg -
Wolfgang Sawallisch
Wolfgang Sawallisch (German: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ zaˈvalɪʃ]; born 26 August 1923) is a retired German conductor and pianist.
Sawallisch was born in Munich, and studied composition and pianoforte there privately: at the conclusion of the war, in 1946 he continued his studies at the Munich High School for Music and passed his final examination for conducting. He began his career at the opera house in Augsburg in 1947. There he became first coach and later principal conductor: in 1952–53 he was personal assistant to Igor Markevitch at the International Summer Academy Mozarteum, Salzburg.
When he debuted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus conducting Tristan und Isolde in 1957, he was the youngest conductor ever to appear there.
From 1960 to 1970 he was Principal Conductor of the Vienna Symphony. From 1971 to 1992, Sawallisch was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera, and for several years from 1983, concurrently was the general manager of the company.
From 1993 to 2003 he was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and is currently its Conductor Laureate. He is also Honorary Conductor Laureate of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. He was the recipient of a Suntory Music Award in 1993.
wn.com/Wolfgang_Sawallisch -
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City, United States, to Bielorussian Jewish parents from what is now Belarus. His sisters were the concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.
Menuhin began violin instruction at age four under violinist Sigmund Anker; his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to be his teacher, but Persinger refused. Menuhin displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Persinger then agreed to take Menuhin as a student. When the Menuhins went to Paris, Persinger suggested Yehudi go to his own teacher, Eugène Ysaÿe. He did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but did not like his method or the fact that he was very old. Instead, he went to the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch. In 1929 he played in Berlin, under Bruno Walter's baton, three concerti by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting, and between 1934 and 1936 he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.
wn.com/Yehudi_Menuhin -
Zarin Mehta
Zarin Mehta (born October 28, 1938 in Mumbai) is the president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mehta is a chartered accountant. During his career at the public accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand (1962-1981) in Montreal, he rose to partner. He was an accountant at Frederic B. Smart & Co., in London (1957-1962).
Mehta was managing director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1981-1990.
Mehta was named executive director of the Ravinia Festival in 1990 and later became president and CEO. During his 10-year tenure he pioneered the jazz festival within Ravinia and a world music series.
Mehta was appointed New York Philharmonic executive director in September 2000 and received the additional role of president in June 2004. He was instrumental in securing the logistics for the 2008 New York Philharmonic visit to North Korea.
On September 27, 2010 Mehta announced he would step down as president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic when his contract expires after the 2011-2012 season, after having spent 12 years at the Philharmonic.
wn.com/Zarin_Mehta -
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou (born November 14, 1951) is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum.
Zhang has won numerous awards and recognitions, with Best Foreign Film nominations for Ju Dou in 1990 and Raise the Red Lantern in 1991, Silver Lion and Golden Lion prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 1993, he was a member of the jury at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival.
One of Zhang's recurrent themes is the resilience of Chinese people in the face of hardship and adversity, a theme which has been explored in such films as, for example, To Live (1994) and Not One Less (1999). His films are particularly noted for their rich use of colour, as can be seen in some of his early films, like Raise the Red Lantern, and in his wuxia films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. His most recent film is a historical drama war film called The Flowers of War.
wn.com/Zhang_Yimou -
Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta (ज़ुबिन मेहता); pronounced [ˈzuːbɪn ˈmeːɦt̪aː] (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, British India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Mehta is an alumnus of St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist Daniel Barenboim.
Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964, they divorced. Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Zubin's brother, Zarin Mehta, now the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress. Mehta is a permanent resident of the United States, but retains his Indian citizenship.
wn.com/Zubin_Mehta -
Álvaro Siza Vieira
Álvaro Joaquim de Melo Siza Vieira, GOSE, GCIH, is a Portuguese architect, born 25 June 1933 in Matosinhos a small coastal town by Porto. He is internationally known as Álvaro Siza (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈaɫvɐɾu ˈsizɐ]).
He graduated in architecture in 1955, at the former School of Fine Arts from the University of Porto, the current FAUP - Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto. He completed his first built work (four houses in Matosinhos) even before ending his studies in 1954, the same year that he first opened his private practice in Porto. Siza Vieira taught at the school from 1966 to 1969, returning in 1976. In addition to his teaching there, he has been a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the University of Pennsylvania; Los Andes University of Bogota; and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
Along with Fernando Távora, he is one of the references of the Porto School of Architecture where both were teachers. Both architects worked together between 1955 and 1958. Another architect he has collaborated with is Eduardo Souto de Moura, e.g. on Portugal's flagship pavilions at Expo '98 in Lisbon and Expo 2000 in Hannover, as well as on the Serpentine Pavillon 2005. Siza's work is often described as "poetic modernism"; he himself has contributed to publications on Luis Barragán.
wn.com/Álvaro_Siza_Vieira
Mehta, Zubin Filmography
- Pau Casals, l'home que va fer sentir el silenci (2012)
- Orchestra of Exiles (2012)
- Live from Jerusalem: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Live with Zubin Mehta Featuring Renée Fleming and Joseph Calleja (2011)
- Wiem, skad jestem (2011)
- Rigoletto a Mantova (2010)
- Gotterdammerung (2009)
- La forza del destino (2008)
- Siegfried (2008)
- Siegfried (2008)
- La forza del destino (2007)
- Das Rheingold (2007)
- Falstaff (2006)
- Fidelio (2006)
- The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (2006)
- Great Conversations in Music (2005)
- Caballé, más allá de la música (2003)
- Die Entführung aus dem Serail (2002)
- On Wings of Fire (2001)
- Hollywood Remembers Walter Matthau (2001)
- The Turandot Project (2000)
- Carmina burana (1998)
- Wie es ihr gefällt - Cheryl Studer, eine amerikanische Sopranistin (1996)
- In Rehearsal: Zubin Mehta with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1996)
- Claudio Abbado: The Silence That Follows the Music (1996)
- Remembering Jacqueline du Pré (1994)
- The Vision: The Making of the 'Three Tenors in Concert' (1994)
- Mozart: The Requiem from Sarajevo (1994)
- The 3 Tenors in Concert 1994 (1994)
- Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert (1990)
- Carnegie Hall: Live at 100 (1990)
- American Tribute to Vaclav Havel and a Celebration of Democracy in Czechoslovakia (1990)
- Mahler's Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection' at Masada (1989)
- Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C Minor (1987)
- Carnegie Hall: The Grand Reopening (1987)
- Liberty Weekend (1986)
- Zubin and the I.P.O. (1983)
- Live from Studio 8H: Caruso Remembered (1982)
- The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts (1980)
- Live from Studio 8H: A Tribute to Toscanini (1980)
- Live from Studio 8H: A Tribute to Toscanini (1980)
- The Stars Salute Israel at 30 (1978)
- Horowitz: Live! (1978)
- The Astrologer (1975)
- The Bolero (1973)
- Musik zum Ansehen (1972)
- The Switched-On Symphony (1970)
- Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1967)
- Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in Japan (1962)
- Festival of Arts (1962)
Famous quotes by Zubin Mehta:
"It is the technical part of the performance which is troubling me more than the musical part."
"We are performing in a full stadium."
"If we are able to inspire people with our music, we can raise more funds."
"I don't want to hear this as a vice, really what we do with our money. She didn't need to steal from us."
"We have an opening for concertmaster, and we weren't able to find anybody in the last set of auditions. Would you be interested in coming and sitting with us for a month?"
"I pay my tributes to my dearest friend and the greatest musician of India Ravi Shanker. It has been a long time since we made music together. I will never forget the last time we worked together."
"The check comes home, she puts it in the bank, and we both spend."
"Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music."
"Although I am flexible and ready to take advice, I can't carry an umbrella of thoughts over my head that would distract me and affect my music making."
RELEASE
ALBUMS
- Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 "Prague": I. Adagio - allegro
- Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 "Prague": II. Andante
- Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 "Prague": III. Presto
- Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great": I. Andante - Allegro ma non troppo
- Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great": II. Andante con moto
- Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great": III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace
- Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great": IV. Allegro vivace
- Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: I. Poco sostenuto - Allegro - Meno allegro
- Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: II. Andante sostenuto
- Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: III. Un poco allegretto e grazioso
- Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: IV. Adagio - Più andante - Allegro non troppo, ma con brio - Più allegro
- Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90: I. Allegro con brio - Un poco sostenuto - Tempo I
- Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90: II. Andante
- Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90: III. Allegro giocoso
- Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90: IV. Allegro energico e passionate
- Te Deum (da Quattro pezzi sacri)
- Sinfonia No. 1 in Re maggiore "Titano" - I. Langsam, schleppend. Wie ein Naturlaut
- Sinfonia No. 1 in Re maggiore "Titano" - II. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell
- Sinfonia No. 1 in Re maggiore "Titano" - III. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen
- Sinfonia No. 1 in Re maggiore "Titano" - IV. Stürmisch bewegt
- Zivio! Marsch, Op. 456
- Flattergeister, Waltz, Op. 62
- Moulinet-polka française, Op. 57
- Elfenreigen
- Delirien Waltz, Op. 212
- Einzugs-Galopp, Op. 35
- Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36: I. Andante sostenuto
- Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36: II. Allegro giocoso
- Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Sz. 112: I. Allegro non troppo
- Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Sz. 112: II. Andante tranquillo
- Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Sz. 112: III. Allegro molto
- Wo uns're Fahne weht, Marsch, Op. 473
- Nachtfalter, Walzer, Op. 157
- Kleiner Anzeiger, Galopp
- Die Schwebende, Polka Mazur, Op. 110
- Jocus Polka, Polka schnell, Op. 216
- Nordseebilder, Walzer, Op. 390
- Tritsch Tratsch Polka, Polka schnell, Op. 214
- Ouvertüre zur Operette "Prinz Methusalem"
- Wiener Bonbons, Walzer, Op. 307
- Marianka Polka, Op. 173
- In der Heimat, Polka Mazur, Op. 231
- Annen Polka, Op. 117
- Plappermäulchen (Musikalischer Scherz), Polka schnell, Op. 245
- Neue Melodien-Quadrille, Op. 254
- Rosen aus dem Süden, Walzer, Op. 388
- Bahn frei, Polka schnell, Op. 45
- Turandot: Act I. "Popolo di Pekino!"
- Turandot: Act I. "Gira la cote!"
- Turandot: Act I. "Signore, ascolta!"
- Turandot: Act I. "Non piangere, Liù!"
- Turandot: Act I. "Ah! Per l'ultima volta!"
- Turandot: Act II, Scene I. "Olà, Pang! Olà, Pong!"
- Turandot: Act II, Scene I. "Ho una casa nell'Honan"
- Turandot: Act II, Scene II. "In questa Reggia"
- Turandot: Act II, Scene II. "Gelo che ti dà foco"
- Turandot: Act II, Scene II. "Figlio del Cielo!"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I. "Nessun dorma!"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I: "Quel nome!"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I: "L'amore? ... Tanto amore, segreto e inconfessato"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I: "Tu, che di gel sei cinta"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I: "Principessa di morte!"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I: "Che è mai di me?"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I: "Del primo pianto..."
- Turandot: Act III, Scene I. "So il tuo nome!"
- Turandot: Act III, Scene II: "Diecimila anni al nostro Imperatore!"
- Mars, the Bringer of War
- Venus, the Bringer of Peace
- Mercury, the Winged Messenger
- Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
- Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
- Uranus, the Magician
- Neptune, the Mystic
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Suite
- Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47: I. Allegro moderato
- Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47: II. Adagio di molto
- Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47: III. Allegro, ma non tanto
- Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46: Introduction. Grave
- Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46: I. Adagio cantabile
- Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46: II. Allegro
- Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46: III. Andante sostenuto
- Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46: IV. Finale. Allegro guerriero
- Piano Concerto No. 4 in G: i Allegro moderato
- Piano Concerto No. 4 in G: ii Andante con moto
- Piano Concerto No. 4 in G: iii Rondo: Vivace
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in Eb: i Allegro
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in Eb: Adagio un poco mosso
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in Eb: iii Rondo: Allegro
Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25 / Chausson: Poème, Op. 25 / Saint-Saëns: Havanaise, Op. 83; Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28 / Ravel: Tzigane
Released 1990
Released 1990
- Fantaisie de Concert sur des Motifs de l'Opéra "Carmen", Op. 25: Introduction. Allegro moderato
- Fantaisie de Concert sur des Motifs de l'Opéra "Carmen", Op. 25: I. Moderato
- Fantaisie de Concert sur des Motifs de l'Opéra "Carmen", Op. 25: II. Lento assai
- Fantaisie de Concert sur des Motifs de l'Opéra "Carmen", Op. 25: III. Allegro moderato
- Fantaisie de Concert sur des Motifs de l'Opéra "Carmen", Op. 25: IV. Moderato
- Poème, Op. 25
- Havanaise, Op. 83
- Tzigane
- Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28
- Der Zigeunerbaron: Einzugsmarsch
- Die Emancipirte
- Indianer-Galopp
- Donauweibchen
- Sport-Polka
- Sympathie
- Wiener Blut
- Im Sturmschritt
- Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald
- Tritsch-Tratsch
- Explosions-Polka
- Eingesendet
- An der schönen blauen Donau
- Radetzky-Marsch
- Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in A minor, Op. 53: I. Allegro
- Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in A minor, Op. 53: II. Adagio
- Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in A minor, Op. 53: III. Finale
- Romance for Violin & Orchestra in F minor, Op. 11
- Overture in A major, Op. 92 "Carnival"
- Psalm
- Symphony No. 5, Op. 67: I. Allegro con brio
- Symphony No. 5, Op. 67: II. Andante con moto
- Symphony No. 5, Op. 67: III. Scherzo. Allegro
- Symphony No. 5, Op. 67: IV. Allegro
- La Valse
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 "Emperor": I. Allegro
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 "Emperor": II. Adagio un poco mosso
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 "Emperor": III. Rondo. Allegro
- Rondo in C major, Op. 51 No. 1
- Rondo in G major, Op. 51 No. 2
- Piano Sonata No. 19 in G minor, Op. 49 No. 1: I. Andante
- Piano Sonata No. 19 in G minor, Op. 49 No. 1: II. Rondo. Allegro
- Piano Sonata No. 20 in G major, Op. 49 No. 2: I. Allegro ma non troppo
- Piano Sonata No. 20 in G major, Op. 49 No. 2: II. Tempo di menuetto
Send this Playlist by SMS
Email this Page
How Indian is Zubin Mehta?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:15
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
Zubin Mehta, one of the greatest conductors of western classical music, talks to NDTV.
http://wn.com/How_Indian_is_Zubin_Mehta?
Zubin Mehta Vienna New Year's concert 2007
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:14
- Updated: 24 Nov 2012
Zubin Mehta Vienna New Year's concert 2007 Zubin Mehta Wien Neujhar koncert 2007
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta_Vienna_New_Year's_concert_2007
Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Zubin Mehta - Mozart Sinfonia Concertante - Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 27:27
- Updated: 24 Nov 2012
Violin: Itzhak Perlman Viola: Pincha Zukerman Zubin Mehta, Israel Philharmonic.
http://wn.com/Itzhak_Perlman,_Pinchas_Zukerman,_Zubin_Mehta_Mozart_Sinfonia_Concertante_Part_1
Che tempo che fa 19 11 2012 Daniel Barenboim e Zubin Mehta
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 22:01
- Updated: 22 Nov 2012
I Maestri Daniel Barenboim e Zubin Mehta da Fabio Fazio - Che tempo che fa 19.11.2012
http://wn.com/Che_tempo_che_fa_19_11_2012_Daniel_Barenboim_e_Zubin_Mehta
1(5) Concert 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim - Zubin Mehta 15/11/2012 Berliner Philharmonie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 23:17
- Updated: 24 Nov 2012
1(5) Concert 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim (piano) Zubin Mehta- Staatskapelle Berlin Berliner Philharmonie 15/11/2012 Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op.37 (Beethoven) Dialogues II (Elliot Carter) Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky) ARTE TV
http://wn.com/15_Concert_70th_Birthday_Daniel_Barenboim_Zubin_Mehta_15_11_2012_Berliner_Philharmonie
On the beautiful Blue Danube - By Zubin Mehta
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:00
- Updated: 06 Nov 2012
On the beautiful Blue Danube - By Zubin Mehta
http://wn.com/On_the_beautiful_Blue_Danube_By_Zubin_Mehta
Dvorak: Symphony No.8 Mov.I (Mehta) 1/4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:02
- Updated: 22 Nov 2012
THE USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IS USED UNDER THE GUIDELINES OF "FAIR USE" IN TITLE 17 § 107 OF THE UNITED STATES CODE. SUCH MATERIAL REMAINS THE COPYRIGHT OF THE ORIGINAL HOLDER AND IS USED HERE FOR THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION, COMPARISON, AND CRITICISM ONLY. Dvorak: Symphony No.8 G-Dur, Op.88 1. Allegro con brio Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta 1977
http://wn.com/Dvorak_Symphony_No8_MovI_Mehta_1_4
Daniil Trifonov, Zubin Mehta - Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 23:51
- Updated: 24 Nov 2012
Tel Aviv, 26.12.2011 Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini Daniil Trifonov (piano) Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Zubin Mehta
http://wn.com/Daniil_Trifonov,_Zubin_Mehta_Rachmaninov,_Rhapsody_on_a_theme_by_Paganini
Zubin Mehta Does Variations on "Happy Birthday"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:34
- Updated: 22 Nov 2012
I stole this bit from Redux because it was just too good not to share with my YouTube friends. It's Zubin Mehta doing a series of classical variations on the "Happy Birthday" song, rendering it as Bach would and Beethoven and on and on. Very funny.
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta_Does_Variations_on_Happy_Birthday
2(5) Concert 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim - Zubin Mehta 15/11/2012 Berliner Philharmonie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 22:33
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
2(5) 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim (piano) Zubin Mehta- Staatskapelle Berlin Berliner Philharmonie 15/11/2012 Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op.37 (Beethoven) Dialogues II (Elliot Carter) Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky) ARTE TV
http://wn.com/25_Concert_70th_Birthday_Daniel_Barenboim_Zubin_Mehta_15_11_2012_Berliner_Philharmonie
Bizet 'Carmen' Overture - Zubin Mehta, Royal Opera
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:34
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
G. Bizet Overture from 'Carmen' == Orchestra of The Royal Opera House conducted by ZUBIN MEHTA == Live at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London - Jan, 1, 1991.
http://wn.com/Bizet_'Carmen'_Overture_Zubin_Mehta,_Royal_Opera
Zubin Mehta rehearsing Schumann with Johannes Moser
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:55
- Updated: 27 Sep 2012
Watch the performance at www.digitalconcerthall.com Zubin Mehta rehearsing Schumann with Johannes Moser before the first rehearsal with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Solo cellist Olaf Manninger and Johannes Moser go through the second movement of the concerto.
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta_rehearsing_Schumann_with_Johannes_Moser
4(5) Concert 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim - Zubin Mehta 15/11/2012 Berliner Philharmonie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 30:00
- Updated: 22 Nov 2012
4(5) 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim (piano) Zubin Mehta- Staatskapelle Berlin Berliner Philharmonie 15/11/2012 Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op.37 (Beethoven) Dialogues II (Elliot Carter) Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky) ARTE TV
http://wn.com/45_Concert_70th_Birthday_Daniel_Barenboim_Zubin_Mehta_15_11_2012_Berliner_Philharmonie
Beethoven Symphony No.9 Zubin Mehta 1983
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 68:31
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
http://wn.com/Beethoven_Symphony_No9_Zubin_Mehta_1983
Brief Interview with Zubin Mehta
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:21
- Updated: 28 Oct 2012
We conducted a brief impromptu interview with Maestro Mehta during the break in rehearsals as he and the orchestra prepared for the season opening.
http://wn.com/Brief_Interview_with_Zubin_Mehta
Zubin Mehta (documentario)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 51:34
- Updated: 07 Oct 2012
Zubin Mehta (documentario)
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta_documentario
Zubin Mehta conducting the Australian World Orchestra 2013
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:55
- Updated: 03 Oct 2012
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta_conducting_the_Australian_World_Orchestra_2013
Zubin Mehta Conducts Israel Philharmonic with Viviane Hagner
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:34
- Updated: 18 Nov 2012
Zubin Mehta conducts the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) along with 14 year old violinist Viviane Hagner performing a piece by Camille Saint-Saens. This concert was in Tel Aviv in 1990
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta_Conducts_Israel_Philharmonic_with_Viviane_Hagner
Offenbach: Orpheus in the Underworld (Zubin Mehta, New York Philharmonic)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:46
- Updated: 18 Nov 2012
Offenbach: Overture to "Orpheus in the Underworld" New York Philharmonic Zubin Mehta, conductor New Year's Eve Concert, 1987
http://wn.com/Offenbach_Orpheus_in_the_Underworld_Zubin_Mehta,_New_York_Philharmonic
5(5) Concert 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim - Zubin Mehta 15/11/2012 Berliner Philharmonie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 20:17
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
5(5) 70th Birthday Daniel Barenboim (piano) Zubin Mehta- Staatskapelle Berlin Berliner Philharmonie 15/11/2012 Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op.37 (Beethoven) Dialogues II (Elliot Carter) Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky) ARTE TV
http://wn.com/55_Concert_70th_Birthday_Daniel_Barenboim_Zubin_Mehta_15_11_2012_Berliner_Philharmonie
Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Zubin Mehta - Mozart Sinfonia Concertante - Part 2 + Bonus
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:06
- Updated: 23 Nov 2012
Violin: Itzhak Perlman Viola: Pincha Zukerman Zubin Mehta, Israel Philharmonic. 7:25. Bonus - Haendel/Halvorsen, Passacaglia and Sarabanda Variations.
http://wn.com/Itzhak_Perlman,_Pinchas_Zukerman,_Zubin_Mehta_Mozart_Sinfonia_Concertante_Part_2_+_Bonus
Wagner - Tannhauser - Rene Kollo - Jan-Hendrie Rooterking (Zubin Mehta) Bayerische Staatsoper
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 192:47
- Updated: 17 Nov 2012
English Subtitles
http://wn.com/Wagner_Tannhauser_Rene_Kollo_Jan-Hendrie_Rooterking_Zubin_Mehta_Bayerische_Staatsoper
Verdi - La Traviata - Eteri Gvazava - Jose Cura - Rolando Panerai - Zubin Mehta
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 125:12
- Updated: 23 Nov 2012
English Subtitles
http://wn.com/Verdi_La_Traviata_Eteri_Gvazava_Jose_Cura_Rolando_Panerai_Zubin_Mehta
photo: AP / Egyptian Presidency
23 Nov 2012
Opposition groups in Egypt have called for mass protests on Friday against President Mohammed Mursi's decree that gives him sweeping powers. They have described his move as a "coup against legitimacy" and accused the president of appointing himself Egypt's "new pharaoh". The decree states that the president's decisions cannot be revoked by any...(size: 4.6Kb)
photo: AP
23 Nov 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. I was fortunate to have been raised near an American Indian archaeological spot located on the Great Plains. In elementary school, a fellow classmate would periodically bring and show grinding stones, arrow- and spearheads, stone farming implements, and pictures of what the excavated site may have...(size: 7.1Kb)
photo: AP / Emilio Morenatti
22 Nov 2012
A new battle is underway in Pakistan with its powerful military front-and-centre, but the fight is not against armed insurgents or ideological extremists - this opponent is a muscle-flexing Supreme Court. For the first time in decades, the military's iron grip over the South Asian country has been challenged, and it remains to be seen if it will...(size: 23.7Kb)
photo: WN / Ahmed Deeb
23 Nov 2012
Israel and Hamas are seeking to solidify an Egyptian and US-brokered cease-fire halting eight days of aerial assaults that ravaged the Gaza Strip and made Tel Aviv a missile target. Announcing the truce in Cairo last night alongside Egypt's foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised U.S. assistance in seeking to "improve...(size: 5.4Kb)
photo: AP / Mohammed Asad
24 Nov 2012
Cairo. President Mohamed Morsi insisted on Friday that Egypt is on the path to “freedom and democracy” after granting himself sweeping powers, which sparked clashes between his supporters and foes and raised concerns abroad. “Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for,” he told a...(size: 4.8Kb)
Deccan Chronicle
25 Nov 2012
India has always been associated with the exotic, and played host to the world’s elite whenever they looked for vacations with a difference, be it to soothe their weary souls or rejuvenate their tired bodies. From the Beatles and Mick Jagger to Katy Perry and supermodel Naomi Campbell, the country has always been the go-to destination for holidays...(size: 3.2Kb)
The Guardian
15 Nov 2012
Pianist, conductor, Olympic flag-carrier, humanist, teacher … Daniel Barenboim is 70 today. Tom Service celebrates the great musician by picking his five favourite YouTube clips of him Daniel Barenboim conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle at Royal Festival Hall, London. Photograph: David Levene...(size: 5.8Kb)
The Examiner
08 Nov 2012
Related topics Theater ArticleMusic Advertisement ‘It’s All About Vibration’ when Rachael Worby and MUSE/IQUE continue their Uncorked series at Art Center College of Design. She will be joined by Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, crossover cellist Matt Haimovitz and Steven Colbert’s favorite Caltech physicist Sean Carroll on Monday, November 12,...(size: 7.9Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
07 Nov 2012
Gustavo Dudamel has been named musician of the year by Musical America, an online publication that covers classical music, and his photograph will grace the cover of its annual printed international directory of the performing arts for 2013. “Rarely has a young artist captured the public fancy so completely,” Sedgwick Clark, editor of...(size: 30.8Kb)
noodls
06 Nov 2012
ESA-PEKKA SALONEN AND THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA BRING BERG'S WOZZECK TO WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL The Performance Concludes the LA Phil's 2012/13 Visiting Orchestras Series TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012, AT 8 PM WHAT: LA Phil Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall with the...(size: 9.3Kb)
The Times of India
05 Nov 2012
The year was 1992. The Cold war had culminated with the breakup of the Soviet Union and collapse of the Berlin Wall in the preceding years. The first Gulf war had also ended and India finally established full diplomatic relations with Israel, exchanged ambassadors and set up the first-ever diplomatic mission in the country - definitely a milestone...(size: 3.6Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
02 Nov 2012
The remarkable story of the Holocaust-era formation of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra by famed, Polish-born violinist Bronislaw Huberman is engrossingly recounted in the documentary "Orchestra of Exiles." Writer-producer-director Josh Aronson (2000's Oscar-nominated "Sound and Fury") tracks Huberman's early life as a child prodigy performing...(size: 30.3Kb)
Indian Express
01 Nov 2012
Director Zubin Mehta was particularly occupied last month. From deciding the sets to the scripts, costumes, dialogues and rehearsals, he looked into every little detail of Parwaaz, Wings Theatre Academys first childrens theatre festival, involving young actors from 12 schools in the city in...(size: 1.9Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
01 Nov 2012
There was no mention of Sandy at the Israel Philharmonic's concert in Walt Disney Concert Hall Tuesday night. It wouldn't have hurt to play a little something in solidarity of the millions dealing with the storm's devastation, the Israelis having just appeared at Carnegie Hall last week. Then again, there was something comforting in an...(size: 33.8Kb)
Huffington Post
31 Oct 2012
It seems the Holocaust will never be done delivering its tales. From that era comes yet another story that both illumines humanity's darkest period from a fresh perspective while delivering the story of an astonishing hero little known in America. Orchestra of Exiles, by Academy Award-nominated Josh Aronson, chronicles the course of Polish...(size: 5.2Kb)
Review Journal
31 Oct 2012
One would expect perfection from maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and that is exactly what the audience received Monday night at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts. The orchestra played Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 3 in D major, D. 200; Frederic Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11; and Johannes Brahms'...(size: 2.6Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
30 Oct 2012
Wherever the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra goes, protests seem to follow. Concert-goers planning to attend Tuesday's performance by the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall can expect to see a colorful outdoor demonstration of activists who say they oppose Israel's policies toward Palestinians. A group of protesters is planning to congregate...(size: 29.9Kb)
The Independent
26 Oct 2012
First holiday memory? Probably the first time I left Italy was to travel by train to Lourdes. I went with my mother and my grandmother – who was a very religious person – so it was a pilgrimage of sorts. I remember it as a very intense, but beautiful experience. Favourite place in the British Isles? I mainly go to London to perform, but I fondly...(size: 3.6Kb)
Zubin Mehta (ज़ुबिन मेहता); pronounced [ˈzuːbɪn ˈmeːɦt̪aː] (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Contents |
Biography[link]
Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, British India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Mehta is an alumnus of St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist Daniel Barenboim.
Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964, they divorced.[1] Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Zubin's brother, Zarin Mehta, now the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress.[2] Mehta is a permanent resident of the United States, but retains his Indian citizenship.
Conducting career[link]
In 1958, Mehta made his conducting debut in Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. In 1961, he was named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; however, the orchestra's music director designate, Georg Solti, was not consulted on the appointment, and Solti subsequently resigned in protest;[3] soon after, Mehta himself was named Music Director of the orchestra, and held the post from 1962 to 1978.
In 1978 Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, becoming the longest holder of the post.
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) appointed Mehta its Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for Life in 1981.[4]
Since 1985, Mehta has been chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, Mehta was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The Munich Philharmonic named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the main conductor (together with Lorin Maazel) of the Palau de les Arts, the new opera house of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, in Valencia, Spain.
Mehta conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert in the years 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2007. He has also made a recording of Indian instrumentalist Ravi Shankar's Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
1990s[link]
In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever Three Tenors concert in Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles. In between those appearances he conducted the historic 1992 production of Tosca in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the title role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Act I was telecast live from Rome's basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle on Saturday, 11 July, at noon (Central European Daylight Savings Time); act II was telecast later that evening from the Palazzo Farnese at 9:40 p.m.; act III was telecast live on Sunday, 12 July, at 7:00 am from the Castel Sant'Angelo, also known as Hadrian's Tomb.
In June 1994, Mehta performed the Mozart Requiem, along with the members of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, in a fund raising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav wars. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in the German city of Weimar, with both the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. He toured his native country India and home city Mumbai (Bombay) in 1984, with the New York Philharmonic, and again in November–December 1994, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, along with soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998, Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a production of the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini which they took to Florence, Italy, and then to Beijing, China, where it was staged, in its actual surroundings, in the Forbidden City with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers. for nine historic performances. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called The Turandot Project which Mehta narrated.
2000s[link]
On 29 November 2005 Mehta appeared with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performing Bruckner's Symphony No. 8. On 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai (formerly called Madras) at the Madras Music Academy. This tsunami memorial concert was organised by the Madras German consulate along with the Max-Mueller Bhavan/Goethe-Institut. 2006 was his last year with the Bavarian State Orchestra.
Performance style[link]
Mehta received praise early in his career for dynamic interpretations of the large scale symphonic music of Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Franz Schmidt. His conducting is renowned as being flamboyant, vigorous and forceful.
Honors and awards[link]
Mehta's name is mentioned in the song "Billy the Mountain" on the 1972 album Just Another Band from L.A. by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.
At the Israel Prize ceremony in 1991, Mehta was awarded a special prize in recognition of his unique devotion to Israel and to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1995, Laureate of the Wolf Prize in Arts.
In 1999, Mehta was presented the "Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award" of the United Nations.
The Government of India honoured Mehta in 1966 with the Padma Bhushan and in 2001 with India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan.[5]
In 2005, he was voted the 117th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.[6]
In September 2006 the Kennedy Center announced Mehta as one of the recipients of that year's Kennedy Center Honors, presented on 2 December 2006.
On 3 February 2007, Mehta was the recipient of the Second Annual Bridgebuilder Award at Loyola Marymount University.
In 2007 he received the prestigious Dan David Prize.
Conductor Karl Böhm awarded Mehta the Nikisch Ring – the Vienna Philharmonic Ring of Honor.
Mehta is an honorary citizen of Florence and Tel Aviv. He was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997. In 2001 he was bestowed the title of "Honorary Conductor" of the Vienna Philharmonic and in 2004 the Munich Philharmonic awarded him the same title, as did the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2006. At the end of his tenure with the Bavarian State Opera he was named Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Wien, appointed him honorary member in November 2007.
In October 2008, Mehta received the Praemium Imperiale (World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu), Japan.
On 1 March 2011, Mehta received the 2,434th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
On 2 October 2011 he received the Echo Klassik in Berlin, for his life's work.[7]
Films[link]
Mehta's life has been documented in Terry Sanders' film Portrait of Zubin Mehta. A documentary film about Mehta, Zubin and I, was produced by the grandson of an Israeli harpist who played with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra before Mehta assumed the helm. The filmmaker joins the orchestra on a tour of Mumbai and meets with him for two interviews, in India and Tel Aviv.[8]
In Christopher Nupen's 1969 documentary The Trout about a performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet in London by Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman, Mehta plays the double bass.[9]
Educational projects[link]
In 2009, Mehta established Mifneh (Hebrew for "change"), a music education program for Israeli Arabs, in cooperation with Bank Leumi and the Arab-Israel Bank. Three schools, in Shfaram, the Jezreel Valley and Nazareth, are taking part in the pilot project.[10]
He and his brother Zarin constitute the Advisor Council of the Mehli Mehta Foundation.[11]
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ Gypsy Boy, Time
- ^ Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Music and Musicians
- ^ "Buffie & the Baton". Time. 14 April 1961. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872266,00.html. Retrieved 8 November 2007.
- ^ His life's work: Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic
- ^ "Padma Awards". Ministry of Communications and Information Technology). http://india.gov.in/myindia/advsearch_awards.php?start=0&award_year=&state=&field=3&p_name=Mehta&award=All. Retrieved 16 May 2009.
- ^ גיא בניוביץ' (20 June 1995). "הישראלי מספר 1: יצחק רבין – תרבות ובידור". Ynet. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3083171,00.html. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
- ^ "Zubin Metha erhält Echo Klassik-Preis". In: Saarbrücker Zeitung, 5 August 2011, p. B4
- ^ The redhead and the maestro
- ^ "Zubin Mehta" by John Allison, Opera
- ^ A baton that unites bankers and music lovers
- ^ "Advisory Council, Trustees & committees". Mehli Mehta Foundation. http://www.mmmfindia.org/committees.html. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
Bibliography[link]
- Martin Bookspan and Ross Yockey, Zubin: The Zubin Mehta Story
- Renate von Matuschka, Die Partitur meines Lebens.
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Zubin Mehta |
- Official website
- Zubin Mehta at Allmusic
- Zubin Mehta at the Internet Movie Database
- Dan David Prize laureate 2007
| Preceded by Jean Martinon (Music Advisor) |
Music Director, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra 1977–present (Music Advisor 1968–1977, now Music Director for Life) |
Succeeded by incumbent |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Mehta, Zubin |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Indian conductor |
| Date of birth | 29 April 1936 |
| Place of birth | Mumbai, India |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Zubin_Mehta
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://cs.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://es.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://ru.wn.com/Мета, Зубин
http://nl.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://pt.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://pl.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://fr.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://de.wn.com/Zubin Mehta
http://hi.wn.com/ज़ुबिन मेहता
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubin_Mehta
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
 |
This biographical article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2011) |
| Pinchas Zukerman | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1948-07-16) July 16, 1948 (age 63) |
| Genres | Classical |
| Occupations | Conductor, pedagogue, violinist, violist |
| Instruments | Violin, viola |
| Associated acts | National Arts Centre Orchestra |
| Notable instruments | |
| Violin Guarnerius del Gesù, 1742 |
|
Pinchas Zukerman (Hebrew: פנחס צוקרמן, born July 16, 1948) is a violinist, violist, and conductor of Israeli descent. He is considered to be one of the world's preeminent violinists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and his ongoing 45-year career has seen him perform with the world's best-known orchestras and record over 100 works.
Born in Tel Aviv to Yehuda and Miriam Lieberman Zukerman, Zukerman began his musical studies at age 4, on the recorder. His father then taught him clarinet, and picked up the violin at age 8. Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals learned of Zukerman's violin talent during a 1962 visit to Israel. Zukerman subsequently moved to the United States that year for study at the Juilliard School,[1] under the tutelage of Stern and Ivan Galamian. He made his New York début in 1963. In 1967, he shared the Leventritt Prize with the Korean violinist Kyung-wha Chung. His 1969 debut recordings of the concerti by Tchaikovsky (under the direction of Antal Dorati, with the London Symphony Orchestra) and Mendelssohn (with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic) launched a successful recording career that continues to the present day and boasts over 110 releases.
Zukerman launched his conducting career in 1970 with the English Chamber Orchestra, and served as director of London's South Bank Festival from 1971 to 1974. In the USA, Zukerman was music director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from 1980 to 1987. He later directed the summer festivals of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1991–1995) and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (1996–1999). In 1999,[2] he became Music Director of Ottawa's National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO). In March 2012, the NACO announced the scheduled conclusion of his music directorship in 2015.[3] He has served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra since 2009.
Zukerman is on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and is the head and founder of the Zukerman Performance Program at the school. His former students have included Koh Gabriel Kameda, Julian Rachlin, and Guy Braunstein. In 1999 he founded the National Arts Centre Young Artists Programme, which counts young musicians such as Viviane Hagner, Jessica Linnebach, Antal Szalai, and Caitlin Tully as alumni. In 2006 Zukerman began his involvement in the Rolex Artistic Mentorship programme.
Zukerman plays the "Dushkin" Guarnerius del Gesù violin of 1742. His honours include the King Solomon Award, the National Medal of Arts (presented by President Reagan in 1983), the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence, and an honorary doctorate from Brown University. His recordings have received 21 Grammy nominations, and 2 Grammy wins. He has collaborated with filmmaker Christopher Nupen on several projects, and was the subject of Nupen's "Pinchas Zukerman: Here to Make Music" documentary of 1974. In 2003 he founded a string quintet, the Zukerman Chamber Players, which has released 3 CD recordings in addition to its roster of live performances.
Zukerman has been married three times. His first marriage was to the flutist and novelist Eugenia Zukerman, from 1968 to 1985. The marriage produced two daughters, Arianna and Natalia, who are now both musicians. Arianna Zukerman is a classical soprano, while Natalia Zukerman is a folk singer and guitarist. Zukerman's second marriage was to actress Tuesday Weld from 1985 to 1998. Both marriages ended in divorce. Zukerman and his third wife, Amanda Forsyth, the NACO's principal cellist, live in the Rockcliffe Park area of Ottawa.
References[link]
- ^ Slonimsky, Nicolas (1978). "Zukerman, Pinchas". Baker's Biographical dictionary of musicians. (6th ed.). New York: Schirmer Books. p. 1952. ISBN 0-02-870240-9.
- ^ "World renowned violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman announces he will step down as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in 2015" (Press release). National Arts Centre. 5 March 2012. http://www4.nac-cna.ca/en/media/news.cfm?ID=2426. Retrieved 2012-03-07.
- ^ Mark Brownlee (2012-03-06). "The maestro steps down". Ottawa Citizen. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/maestro+steps+down/6255306/story.html#ixzz1oLXPW7OW. Retrieved 2012-03-07.
Sources[link]
- Boris Schwarz: Great Masters of the Violin. From Corelli and Vivaldi to Stern, Zukerman and Perlman. Simon and Schuster, New York 1983.
- Darryl Lyman: Great Jews in Music. J. D. Publishers, Middle Village, NY 1986.
- Stanley Sadie, H. Wiley Hitchcock (Ed.): The new Grove dictionary of American music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, New York, N.Y 1986.
- Kurtz Myers: Index to record reviews 1984-1987. G.K. Hall, Boston, Ma. 1989.
- Alan Rich: Masters of Music: Great artists of work. Preface by Nicolas Slonimsky, foreword by Isaac Stern, photographs by James Arkatov. Capra Press, Santa Barbara, Ca. 1990.
External links[link]
- Pinchas Zukerman on Charlie Rose
- Pinchas Zukerman at the Internet Movie Database
- Works by or about Pinchas Zukerman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Pinchas Zukerman collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Profile at New York Philharmonic
- Profile at Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
| Preceded by Dennis Russell Davies |
Music Director, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra 1980-1987 |
Succeeded by Christopher Hogwood |
| Preceded by Trevor Pinnock |
Music Director, National Arts Centre Orchestra 1999-present |
Succeeded by incumbent |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Zukerman, Pinchas |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Israeli classical musician |
| Date of birth | July 16, 1948 |
| Place of birth | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Pinchas_Zukerman
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Цукерман, Пинхас
http://fr.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
http://nl.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
http://pt.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
http://de.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
http://it.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
http://cs.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
http://es.wn.com/Pinchas Zukerman
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinchas_Zukerman
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
 |
A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (May 2012) |
| Daniel Barenboim | |
|---|---|
 Daniel Barenboim in Vienna, 2008 |
|
| Born | (1942-11-15) November 15, 1942 (age 69) Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Citizenship | Argentine, Israeli, Spanish, Palestinian |
| Occupation | Pianist and conductor |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Website | |
| www.danielbarenboim.com | |
Daniel Barenboim, KBE (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings.
Currently, he is general music director of La Scala in Milan,[1] the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. Barenboim is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire,[2] France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz and Willy Brandt Award,[3] and, together with the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. He has won seven Grammy awards for his work and discography.
Contents |
Biography[link]
Daniel Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to parents of Russian Jewish descent. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On August 19, 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert in his hometown, Buenos Aires.[4]
In 1952, Barenboim moved to Israel with his family. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim.[5] Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the second world war for a child of Jewish parents to be performing in Berlin.[6] In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.[4]
On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Israel at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism.[7] Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness,'" Mehta recalled.[8] Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim began a relationship with the Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova, with whom he has two sons born in Paris prior to du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim tried to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Their son David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael is a classical violinist.[9]
Barenboim holds citizenship of Argentina and Israel, as well as citizenship of Spain and Palestine,[10] and lives in Berlin.[11]
Career[link]
.jpg)
After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955 he performed in Paris, in 1956 in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter.
In June 1967, Barenboim and his then fiancée du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beer Sheva before and during the Six Day War.[12]
His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their Schubert "Trout" Quintet.[13]
Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989 he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music.
Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988 he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opera-Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé.[14] Barenboim was then appointed music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra.[9]
Since 1992 he has been music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera) and the Berlin Staatskapelle, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the Staatsoper. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style.[15] In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Berlin Staatskapelle.[16] On 15 May 2006 Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation.[17] In October 2011 he took over as music director,[1] lining up a starry opening cast in Mozart's Don Giovanni.[18]
In 2006, Barenboim was the BBC Reith Lecturer, giving five lectures called 'In the Beginning was Sound' from London, Chicago, Berlin, and twice from Jerusalem in which he meditated on music.[19] In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University entitled 'Sound and Thought'.[20]
In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the NYP's music director.[21] Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position",[22] repeating his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or their newly created principal conductor position in April 2007.[23] Barenboim made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde on 28 November 2008.
In 2009, he conducted the New Year Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic.[24] In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 will be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East.[25]
Musical style[link]
Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. An example is his recording of Beethoven's symphonies showing his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar).[26] Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as composer metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. The general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, reflecting this belief, usually adhere to early twentieth-century practices, and are not influenced by faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington.
In Barenboim's recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier he makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favored by pianist Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, one voice is often played considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord, which according to some scholarship, began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book The Iconic Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach, that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance that existed in Bach's time:
The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time...[27]
Barenboim's performances have been criticized. Among musicians, he has a reputation for arrogance and aloofness. Reviews of his work often cite inconsistencies in interpretation and tempo.[28]
Recordings[link]
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart's and Beethoven's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta).
Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Gustav Mahler;[29] he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth Symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo and Heitor Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist.
By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz,[30] and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played.[31]
Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during his tenure there, and the Clarinet Trio of Mozart with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle.
Conducting Wagner in Israel[link]
The Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra had performed Wagner's music in Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era.[32] But after the Kristallnacht,[33] Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Palestine because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings,[34] following an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it.[35] In 1974,[36] and again in 1981, Zubin Mehta planned to lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience and the music was not played.[37]
Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival,[38] had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works.[39] In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous," and feels it must be faced, and argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."
In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered," Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?"[40] Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures,[41] which took place on December 27 "before a carefully screened audience."[42]
In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.[43] At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.)[44] The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the July 7 concert.[45] Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Robert Schumann and Igor Stravinsky.
However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist." In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde overture.[46]
In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem.[47]
Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the July 7 concert as a political statement, and said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner when a news conference he held the previous week was interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.[48] "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said.[49]
A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music.[50] The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset.[51] Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don’t want to harm anyone."[52]
In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled, "Wagner, Israel and Palestine".[53] During the two-hour speech, Barenboim "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism."[54]
In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favorite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight."[55]
Over the years observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue.[56] In late May 2012, it was announced that a concert with works by Wagner will be performed on 18 June 2012 in Tel Aviv by a full symphony orchestra as part of a day of discussion and music entitled "An Academic Musical Encounter: Herzl-Toscanini-Wagner," which, according to the announcement, will explore "the interesting and intriguing connection between the seer of the state, the conductor Arturo Toscanini and Wagner's music", thus breaking the boycott against Wagner's work in Israel. The discussion will examine the influence Wagner's opera Tannhauser had in inspiring Theodor Herzl during his first draft of his book "The Jewish State," and the way anti-Fascist conductor Arturo Toscanini used Wagner's work to give expression to his humanistic outlook.[57]
Political views[link]
Barenboim, a supporter of Palestinian rights, is an outspoken critic of Israel's right-wing governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner which was, "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong", and, "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel."[58] However, in 1967 at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks.[59]
West-Eastern Divan[link]
In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West-Eastern Divan orchestra.[60][61] It is an initiative to bring together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab countries to promote mutual reflection and understanding.[62][63][64] Barenboim and Said were recipients of the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations." Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall.[65]
In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite".[66]
After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of “Sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world” after a campain in the media against him,[67] accusing him of “being a Zionist”.[68]
In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra will play a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, the ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London Olympic Games.[69]
Wolf Prize[link]
In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel.[70] Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat,[71] but the ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party.[72] In his acceptance speech, Barenboim took the opportunity to express his opinions on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948:
"I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice?"[73]
Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had merely cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.[74] In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..."[75]
Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip[link]
Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank, in 1999 at Bir Zeit University and several times in Ramallah.[76]
In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from England, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza.[77] Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel-Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter.[77] The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity.[77] Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty."[77]
In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace.[78] Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion."[79]
In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians’ safety."[80]
In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris—at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles.[81] The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause.[82] The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause".[83]
Awards and recognition[link]
- Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz, 2002
- Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said)
- Tolerance Prize, Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, 2002
- Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin)
- Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004
- Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth)
- Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005[84]
- Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006
- Cavaliere di Gran Croce Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007[85]
- Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, 2007[86]
- Goethe Medal, Praemium Imperiale, 2007
- Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008[87]
- International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008[88]
- Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008[89]
- Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009[90]
- Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009[91]
- Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East
- Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010.
- Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011[92]
- Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award in The Netherlands[93]
- KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), 2011[94][95]
- Doctor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003
- Doctor of Music – D.Mus., University of Oxford, 2007
- Doctor of Music – D.Mus., SOAS, University of London, 2008
- Doctor of Music – D.Mus., Royal Academy of Music, 2010
Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording:
- Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003)
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance:
- Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995)
- Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991)
Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance:
- Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992)
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra):
- Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002)
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra):
- Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983)
- Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album)
In 2005, he was voted the 111th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.[96]
In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame.[97]
References[link]
- ^ a b "Daniel Barenboim to be La Scala's musical director". AFP. October 2011. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gfqtpIoH8w6bqQ51AtdzNIhttuXw?docId=CNG.8d379ab35fae43da3f5517d7bf0e1907.c1.
- ^ "News just in: Barenboim is knighted". 24 June 2011. http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/06/news-just-in-barenboim-is-knighted.html.
- ^ "Socialist award for Daniel Barenboim". http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/09/socialist-award-for-daniel-barenboim.html.
- ^ a b "Daniel Barenboim". danielbarenboim.com. http://www.danielbarenboim.com/index.php?id=7. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ Daniel Barenboim (November 2004). Daniel Barenboim "Why Wilhelm Furtwängler Still Moves Us Today". danielbarenboim.com. Translation from an article originally published in Der Tagesspiegel. http://www.danielbarenboim.com/journal_furtwangler.htm Daniel Barenboim. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
- ^ "Festrede von Daniel Barenboim beim Festakt zur Eröffnung der Salzburger Festspiele 2010" (in german). Land Salzburg, Präsidialabteilung. 26 July 2010. https://service.salzburg.gv.at/WebRoot/LandSalzburgDB/Shops/Landversand/4C4D/6F54/5030/CFC4/1151/0A01/047B/1C31/barenboim10.pdf#page=5. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
- ^ "Barenboim, Daniel," Who’s Who in World Jewry. Baltimore: WWIWJ, Inc., 1987, p. 28
- ^ Zubin Mehta, The Score of My Life. New York: Amadeus Press, 2009, pp. 90, 25-26.
- ^ a b Michael Shelden (15 July 2004). "My affair? I don't think Jackie knew". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/07/15/bmbare15.xml. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ AFP. "Conductor Barenboim to be Nobel nominee". Argentina: Dawn.com. http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/11/conductor-barenboim-to-be-nobel-nominee.html. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
- ^ "Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to perform with orchestra in Gaza". Haaretz. 2 May 2011. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-conductor-daniel-barenboim-to-perform-with-orchestra-in-gaza-1.359476. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ Helga Dudman, "Music with much love," Jerusalem Post, June 9, 1967, p. 5.
- ^ Julian Lloyd Webber (21 July 2005). "Why make war when you can make music?". Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/07/21/bmjulian21.xml. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ John von Rhein (14 May 1989). "Barenboim Backlash. The Cso's Henry Fogel Defends Solti's Successor". Chicago Tribune. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-05-14/entertainment/8902010053_1_bastille-opera-paris-opera-french-culture. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
- ^ Kate Connolly (15 November 2002). "Barenboim in battle to save Berlin opera house". Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1413393/Barenboim-in-battle-to-save-Berlin-opera-house.html. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ Michael Henderson (20 June 2006). "Goodbye Chicago, hello world". Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/06/20/bmboim20.xml. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ Barbara McMahon (16 May 2006). "Barenboim to be La Scala's guest". The Guardian (London). http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1775781,00.html. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/10/breaking-barenboim-to-open-as-la-scala-boss-with-netrebko-debut.html
- ^ a) Michael Henderson (1 April 2006). "Daniel in the circus lions' den". Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/01/do0106.xml. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
b) Kate Connolly (9 March 2006). "Maverick maestro plays a different tune". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/09/blberlin09.xml&view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=P30&blog=berlin. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
c) Daniel Barenboim (8 April 2006). "In the beginning, there was sound. Then came Muzak". Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/04/08/bmbaren08.xml. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
d) Peter Beaumont (2 April 2006). "Maestro of the Middle East". The Observer (London). http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1745075,00.html. Retrieved 23 April 2007. - ^ Richard Dyer (January–February 2007). "Ideas, Appassionato". Harvard Magazine: pp. 14–15. http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/010773.html. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ Daniel J. Wakin (29 November 2006). "Unprompted, Lorin Maazel Nominates His Successor". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/arts/music/29phil.html?ex=1167973200&en=f112858e726b9c69&ei=5070. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ Mark Landler (30 November 2006). "Proposed Philharmonic Candidate Is Flattered, if Coy". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/arts/music/30bare.html?ex=1322542800&en=9ce05f6877e2282c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
- ^ Wakin, Daniel J. (25 April 2007). "Philharmonic to Add a Position at the Top". Nytimes.com. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/arts/music/25phil.html. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
- ^ Daniel Barenboim. "On Conducting the New Year’s Day Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic". Wiener Philharmoniker. http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/upload/files/0901_njk09_db_journal.pdf. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ "Neujahrskonzert 2009 - Daniel Barenboims sanfte Revolution" (in German). Kleine Zeitung. 1 January 2009. http://www.kleinezeitung.at/nachrichten/kultur/1708688/index.do. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ^ Barenboim's liner notes for his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, Teldec, ASIN B00004S1EV, 2000.
- ^ Ich bin mit Bach aufgewachsen ("I was reared on Bach"), Barenboim's liner notes for his recordings of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Translated by Gery Bramall.
- ^ "A conversation with Daniel Barenboim". http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/a-conversation-with-daniel-barenboim/Content?oid=885581.
- ^ Daniel Barenboim (31 August 2001). "Love, the hard way". guardian.co.uk. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,734719,00.html. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
- ^ Stephen Moss "Daniel in the lion's den", The Guardian, 22 October 1999.
- ^ Article in Argentinian newspaper "Clarín", 31 December 2006 (in Spanish)
- ^ "Bronislaw Szulc at Levant Fair Concert Hall [Tel Aviv]," Palestine Post, July 20, 1938, p. 6
- ^ Chaim Gans (2003). "Moralische Aspekte des Israelischen Wagner-Boykotts". In Moshe Zuckermann (in German). Medien - Politik - Geschichte. Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte. Verlag Wallstein Verlag. p. 385. ISBN 3892446571. http://books.google.ch/books?id=zEHvO9Mz5IMC&pg=PA385#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, ed. (1995). The Jew in the Modern World. Oxford University Press. p. 230, fn1 to Richard Wagner, "Jewry in Music," translation and excerpt of "Das Judenthum in der Musik," pp. 327-331. http://books.google.ch/books?id=0Bu5GnLZCw0C&pg=PA330#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ "Haifa Symphony Orchestra Cancels Wagnerian Concert on 'Crystal Night,'" Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 11, 1963.
- ^ "Philharmonic Drops Wagner from Program to Avoid Disturbances," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 25, 1974
- ^ Hugh Orgel, "Controversy Flares over Playing of Wagner's Music by the IPO," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 23, 1981.
- ^ "News Brief," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 7, 1985
- ^ Hugh Orgel, "Israeli Philharmonic Rehearses Two Pieces of Richard Wagner," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 2, 1989.
- ^ Helen Kaye, "Berlin orchestra won't play Wagner," Jerusalem Post International Edition, November 11, 1989, p. 7.
- ^ Hugh Orgel, "Chorus of Protest Erupts in Israel over IPO Decision to Perform Wagner," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 16, 1991.
- ^ Hugh Orgel, "IPO Goes Ahead and Plays Wagner, in Guise of a Rehearsal Concert," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 29, 1991.
- ^ News Brief, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 30, 2000.
- ^ Ohad Gozani, "Israeli battle over Wagner," The Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2001. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
- ^ News Brief, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 31, 2001; Larry Derfner, "Aryan virtues vs. musical greatness," Chicago Jewish Star, May 25, 2001, pp.7-8.
- ^ Zipi Shohat, "Wagner gets in through the back door. Some are angry about Daniel Barenboim's decision to conduct Wagner, but call it a historic occasion nonetheless," Haaretz, 18 July 2001; Inigo Gilmore, "Barenboim shatters Israel taboo on Wagner," The Daily Telegraph, 9 July 2001; Will Hodgkinson, "Orchestral manoeuvres," The Guardian, 13 August 2004.
- ^ Gila Wertheimer, "Subscribers turning a deaf ear to CSO," Chicago Jewish Star, September 14, 2001, p. 2; Letters, Chicago Jewish Star, September 28, 2001, p. 4.
- ^ Daniel Barenboim, "Those who want to leave, do so," The Guardian, 6 September 2002.
- ^ Joel Greenberg, "Playing a Bit of Wagner Sets Off an Uproar in Israel," New York Times, July 9, 2001, p. A4; Associated Press, "Barenboim plays Wagner," Chicago Sun-Times, July 8, 2001, p. 2A.
- ^ News Brief, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 25, 2001.
- ^ Zipi Shohat, "Mehta slams Knesset boycott of Barenboim," Haaretz, 26 July 2001.
- ^ Jason Keyser, "Apology (sort of) delivered, now Barenboim will get prize," Chicago Sun-Times, December 17, 2003, p. 80.
- ^ "Daniel Barenboim Discusses Music as a Bridge for Peace in the Middle East," Columbia University events, 24 January 2005. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
- ^ Rachel Pomerance, "Barenboim Comments Spark Anger As Controversy at Columbia Builds," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 26, 2005; Liel Lebovitz, "Maestro Maelstrom At Columbia," The Jewish Week, January 28, 2005.
- ^ Associated Press, "Israeli conductor Barenboim wants to 'liberate' Wagner from Nazi association," Haaretz, 3 December 2010.
- ^ Supporting Barenboim's position: Editorial, "Keep Wagner on the program," Chicago Sun-Times, December 18, 1991; Karl E. Meyer, "Wagner, Israel – and Herzl," New York Times, December 19, 1991, p. A18; Leonard Bernstein, "Wagner’s Music Isn't Racist," New York Times, December 26, 1991; Editorial, "A grim Holocaust memory… but don't censor Wagner," Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2001. Opposing Barenboim's position: "Wagner in Israel," The Jewish Star, Calgary edition, November 20, 1981, p. 4; Gideon Hausner, "The case against Wagner," Jerusalem Post International Edition, Oct. 25-31, 1981, p. 15; Eugene Blum, "Don't play Wagner," International Jerusalem Post, November 10, 2000; Manuela Hoelterhoff, "Should Israel Switch Off Wagner?" Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2001, p. A10; Martin Sherman, "With friends like Daniel," International Jerusalem Post, September 20, 2002, p. 13; Editorial, "Bye-bye, Daniel. As a high profile critic of Israel, Mr. Barenboim's departure [from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra] brings relief," Chicago Jewish Star, June 23, 2006, p. 4; Terry Teachout, "Why Israel Still Shuts Wagner Out," Wall Street Journal, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 2009, p. W1.
- ^ Noam Ben-Zeev (May 30, 2012). "Israeli orchestra to break boycott against Wagner's works for first time". Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-orchestra-to-break-boycott-against-wagner-s-works-for-first-time.premium-1.433230#. Retrieved 2012-05-31.
- ^ "Norman Lebrecht, "Daniel Barenboim – Playing Politics". ''La Scena Musicale". Scena.org. 3 December 2003. http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/031203-NL-Barenboim.html. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
- ^ "Conducting a one-man experiment in peace. Profile: Daniel Barenboim". The Sunday Times (London). 21 August 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article557356.ece?token=null&offset=12&. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
- ^ Suzie Mackenzie (5 April 2003). "In harmony". guardian.co.uk. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,928744,00.html. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
- ^ Daniel Barenbolm (25 October 2004). "Sound and vision". Arts.guardian.co.uk. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1335260,00.html. Retrieved 1 September 2011.
- ^ Martin Kettle, "Everything to play for". The Guardian, 4 August 2001
- ^ Geraldine Bedell, "Daniel's codes of conduct". The Observer, 17 August 2003
- ^ Avi Shlaim, "Playing for peace". New Statesman, 31 October 2005
- ^ Michael Kennedy, "A duet for solo voice". Telegraph, 23 February 2003
- ^ "Conductor Barenboim in radio row". BBC. 3 September 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4211444.stm.
- ^ Smadar Perry (1 May 2012). "'Zionist' Barenboim's Qatar concert cancelled". YNetnews. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4222648,00.html. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ^ Omar Barghouti. "view all Israeli-Arab Normalization Hits a Snag". Al-Akhbar English. http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/6756/. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ^ "Barenboim to open 2012 Olympics with Beethoven 9th". http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/09/breaking-barenboim-to-open-2012-olympics-with-beethoven-9th.html. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ^ Ohad Gozani (17 December 2003). "Barenboim changes tune". Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1449671/Barenboim-changes-tune.html.
- ^ "Daniel Barenboim to apologize, receive Wolf Award". Haaretz. Associated Press. 16 December 2003. http://www.haaretz.com/news/daniel-barenboim-to-apologize-receive-wolf-award-1.108908. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ Alon, Gideon (5 May 2004). "Rivlin to boycott Barenboim prize award". Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/rivlin-to-boycott-barenboim-prize-award-1.121454.
- ^ Daniel Barenboim, "The Statement of Daniel Barenboim on May 9th 2004 at the Knesset on the Occasion of Receiving the Wolf Prize"
- ^ "Barenboim Irks Israelis With Criticism". Associated Press, 10 May 2004.
- ^ Oestreich, James R. (2 March 2007). "Musing on the Barenboim X-Factor". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/arts/music/02bare.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fB%2fBarenboim%2c%20Daniel. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ Jonathan Steele (with Reuters), "Barenboim defies Israeli opinion". The Guardian, 11 September 2002
- ^ a b c d "Conductor Barenboim slams Israel after musician barred from entering Gaza". Associated Press. Haaretz. 17 December 2007. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/935452.html. Retrieved 17 December 2007.
- ^ Israeli pianist Daniel Barenboim takes Palestinian citizenship, Haaretz, January 15, 2008
- ^ "Israeli pianist Barenboim takes Palestinian passport". 14 January 2008 newspaper=Ynetnews. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3493612,00.html.
- ^ Itzkoff, Dave (6 January 2009). "Barenboim Cancels Middle East Concerts". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/arts/music/07arts-BARENBOIMCAN_BRF.html?ref=arts.
- ^ Michael Kimmelman (4 May 2011). "Mozart Leaps Perilous Hurdles to Reach an Audience in Gaza". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/arts/music/daniel-barenboim-the-israeli-conductor-in-gaza.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
- ^ "Conductor Daniel Barenboim holds Gaza 'peace concert'". BBC. 3 May 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13264688. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ Conal Urquhart (3 May 2011). "Daniel Barenboim brings 'solace and pleasure' to Gaza with Mozart concert. Israeli conductor voices support for non-violence and Palestinian state during performance for schoolchildren and NGO workers". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/03/daniel-barenboim-orchestra-gaza-concert. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf. Retrieved 17 May 2011.
- ^ Barenboim Maestro Daniel. Presidenza della Repubblica
- ^ President Chirac's Speech on 2007-03-25 (in french only)
- ^ "Conductor Daniel Barenboim Honorary Guide of the Raelian Movement". Raelianews. http://www.raelianews.org/news.php?item.258.6. Retrieved 20 July 2009.
- ^ Daniel Barenboim
- ^ "Gold Medal for Daniel Barenboim". The Royal Philharmonic Society. 29 January 2008. http://www.royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/?page=index.html&id=69. Retrieved 29 January 2008.
- ^ "37th International İstanbul Music Festival ends". Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. 30 June 2009. http://www.iksv.org/muzik/english/muzik.asp?cid=105. Retrieved 20 July 2009.
- ^ "Årets-Næste prismodtager Daniel Barenboim, pianist og dirigent" (in Danish). Léonie Sonnings Musikfond. 29 January 2009. http://www.sonningmusik.dk/cms/view/index.asp?ipageid=3. Retrieved 28 February 2009.
- ^ "Cérémonie de remise des insignes de Grand Officier de la Légion d'honneur à M. Daniel Barenboim". Présidence de la République – Élysée. 28 February 2011. http://www.elysee.fr/president/mediatheque/photos/2011/fevrier/ceremonie-de-remise-des-insignes-de-grand-officier.10761.html?search=Daniel+Barenboim&xtmc=Daniel_Barenboim&xcr=. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
- ^ "Oeuvreprijs Klassiek voor Daniel Barenboim". 29 March 2011. http://www.edisons.nl/klassiek/nieuws/oeuvreprijs-klassiek-voor-daniel-barenboim.
- ^ "Conductor Barenboim to accept British knighthood". AFP. 23 June 2011. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hTAXQ4mMrh8rXly3yBmyOk0YHPpA?docId=CNG.436300006124f4b5cbc7fecc0f68b6d5.4f1. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
- ^ "Conductor Daniel Barenboim receives honorary knighthood". BBC. 24 June 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13891509.
- ^ גיא בניוביץ' (20 June 1995). "הישראלי מספר 1: יצחק רבין – תרבות ובידור". Ynet. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3083171,00.html. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
- ^ "Daniel Barenboim (pianist and conductor)". http://www.gramophone.co.uk/HallofFame/ArtistPage/Barenboim. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
External links[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Daniel Barenboim |
- Daniel Barenboim official website
- Daniel Barenboim at Allmusic
- Daniel Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com
- Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002
- In harmony, [Guardian] newspaper feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003
- In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures.
- BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991
- Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks
- Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube
- Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
- Westphalian Peace Prize
- Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com
- Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety
| Preceded by Sir Georg Solti |
Music Director, Orchestre de Paris 1975–1989 |
Succeeded by Semyon Bychkov |
| Preceded by Sir Georg Solti |
Music Director, Chicago Symphony Orchestra 1991–2006 |
Succeeded by Riccardo Muti |
| Preceded by Otmar Suitner |
Music Director, Berlin State Opera 1992–present |
Succeeded by incumbent |
|
|||||
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
See also: Barenboim
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Barenboim, Daniel |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 15 November 1942 |
| Place of birth | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Daniel_Barenboim
Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://cs.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://es.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://ru.wn.com/Баренбойм, Даниэль
http://nl.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://pt.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://pl.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://fr.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
http://de.wn.com/Daniel Barenboim
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Barenboim
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
Daniil Trifonov (Russian: Даниил Трифонов, born March 5, 1991 in Nizhny Novgorod) is a Russian concert pianist.
Biography[link]
Trifonov is a top prize winner of several major international piano competitions, including the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. At the age of 21, he is quickly emerging as one of the most outstanding pianists of his generation, having the potential to build a major international performing career.
At 17, he won Fifth Prize at the 4th International Scriabin Competition in Moscow, and the first prize at the 3rd International Piano Competition of San Marino,where he also received the Special Prize for the best performance of Chick Corea’s composition.[1]
In 2010, Trifonov became a medalist of the distinguished XVI International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, where he won Third Prize and the Special Prize of Polish Radio for the best mazurkas performance.[2]
In 2011, Trifonov won the First Prize at the 13th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel-Aviv, winning also the Pnina Salzman Prize for the Best Performer of a Chopin piece, the Prize for the Best Performer of Chamber Music and the Audience Favorite Prize .[3]
A few weeks after winning the Rubinstein Competition, Trifonov was awarded the First Prize, Gold Medal, and Grand Prix at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Trifonov also won the Audience Award and the Award for the Best Performance of a Chamber Concerto. [4]
He recently completed studies at the Gnessin Special School of Music in the class of Tatiana Zelikman, and is currently a student of Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Other scholarships and awards received include the Yuri Rozum International Charity Foundation Scholarship, the Scriabin Scholarship, the “New Names” Scholarship, the “Young Talents of Russia” Foundation Scholarship and the Guzik Foundation Award.
Trifonov has performed around the world, including Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Orchestras with which he has performed include the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Israel Camerata Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta Beersheva, Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonietta de Lausanne, Republic of San Marino Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Siberian Symphony Orchestra, Nizhniy Novgorod Philharmonic Orchestra, Yaroslavl Philharmonic Orchestra, and the “Musica Viva” Chamber Orchestra.
Trifonov has also participated in numerous music festivals, including Rheingau Musik Festival (Germany), Easter Festival, Crescendo (Russia), Arpeggione (Austria), Musica in Villa (Italy), Dame Myra Hess Series (USA), the Round Top Festival Institute (USA), International Keyboard Institute & Festival (USA), Santo Stefano (Italy), Rimini Meeting (Italy), Brighton Festival (UK), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival, Austria), and “Trio di Trieste” Piano Festival (Italy), International Music Festival “Chopin and his Europe” (Poland), International Chopin Piano Festival in Duszniki Zdroj (Poland).
Trifonov played his Carnegie Hall debut in May 2009, and has also performed at other prestigious concert venues like the Auditorium di Milano (Milan, Italy),Teatro la Fenice (Venice, Italy), Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Barbican Hall and Wigmore Hall (London, UK), as well as the Rathausplatz in Vienna's Town Hall Square,[5] where he was awarded Third Prize representing Russia in the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition 2010. In addition to developing an important performing career, Daniil Trifonov is also active as a composer of piano, chamber and orchestral music.
His first CD[6] was released on Decca in 2011, featuring a selection of Chopin solo piano works. He has also made a number of television recordings in Russia, Poland, Japan, the USA and Italy.
Martha Argerich about Daniil Trifonov (Financial Times): “Last night I listened to him again on YouTube – he has everything and more. What he does with his hands is technically incredible. It’s also his touch – he has tenderness and also the demonic element. I never heard anything like that.”[7]
References[link]
- ^ "Results of the 3rd International Piano Competition of San Marino". http://www.allegrovivo.org/focus_eng/default.asp?id=1086.
- ^ "Results of the XVI International Chopin Piano Competition". http://konkurs.chopin.pl/en/edition/xvi/verdicts/1978_results_of_the_competition.
- ^ "Results of the XIII Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition". http://www.arims.org.il/competition2011/pages/english/prizes.php.
- ^ "Final Results of the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition". http://www.tchaikovsky-competition.com/en/2011/piano/Final-Results.
- ^ "Eurovision Young Musicians - Final". http://www.youngmusicians.tv/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=11&Itemid=10.
- ^ "TRIFONOV PLAYS CHOPIN - Decca - Universal Music". http://www.universalmusic.it/classica/artista/discografia/?ida=613672.
- ^ "Strains of mood music - Martha Argerich interview – Financial Times". http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9370c7e4-a31f-11e0-a9a4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1ZWaDG200.
External links[link]
- Facebook Fan Page
- Official website(English)
- Official blog(English)
- Official website (Russian)
- Artist detail - Studiomusica
- Artist detail - Opus3 Artists
- Artist detail - Intermusica
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Trifonov, Daniil |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 5 March 1991 |
| Place of birth | Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Daniil_Trifonov
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Трифонов, Даниил Олегович
http://fr.wn.com/Daniil Trifonov
http://it.wn.com/Daniil Trifonov
http://pl.wn.com/Daniił Trifonow
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniil_Trifonov
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
Johannes Moser (born 1979) is a German-Canadian cellist who has performed with many of the world's leading orchestras.
External links[link]
 |
This article on an individual musician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Moser |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1979 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Johannes_Moser
Related pages:
http://de.wn.com/Johannes Moser
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Moser
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
