The Disney Music Group (formerly Buena Vista Music Group) is a collection of affiliated record labels all subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company. The chairman of the group is Bob Cavallo, who reports will report to Alan F. Horn, the future chairman of the Walt Disney Studios.
The group includes:
In 1989, the label was renamed to its current branding. The label now releases a broad range of Disney-themed music for kids, teens and families such as soundtracks to movies made by Walt Disney Pictures, original music from artists such as They Might Be Giants, and compilations of music made popular by Radio Disney. Disney classic film soundtracks originally issued on LP have been transferred to CD under this label, rather than on the Disneyland Records or Buena Vista labels.
Disney Music Group did not have its own distribution network, both in its native market of the US or internationally. It had a licensing deal with Warner Bros. Records from 1995 to 2005. Furthermore, Sony Music Entertainment has been a distributor of Hollywood Records in mainland Asia. Since the expiration of the Warner Bros. agreement, the group relied on both Universal Music Group and EMI Music, given the territory.
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music, typically known by a distinct name. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families (such as piano, strings, and wind instruments) or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles. In jazz ensembles, the instruments typically include wind instruments (one or more saxophones, trumpets, etc.), one or two chordal "comping" instruments (electric guitar, piano, or organ), a bass instrument (electric bass guitar or double bass), and a drummer or percussionist. In rock ensembles, usually called rock bands, there are usually guitars and keyboards (piano, electric piano, Hammond organ, synthesizer, etc.) and a rhythm section made up of a bass guitar and drum kit.
In Western Art music, commonly referred to as classical music, smaller ensembles are called chamber music ensembles. The terms duet, trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet and dectet are used to describe groups of two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten musicians, respectively. A group of eleven musicians, such as found in The Carnival of the Animals, is called either a "hendectet" or an "undectet" (see Latin numerical prefixes). A solo is not an ensemble because it only contains one musician.
Idina Kim Menzel ( /ɪˈdiːnə mɛnˈzɛl/; born Mentzel on May 30, 1971) is an American actress, singer and songwriter.
She rose to prominence for her performance as Maureen Johnson in the Broadway musical Rent, a role which she reprised for the 2005 film adaptation. In 2004 she won the Tony Award for originating the role of Elphaba in the hugely successful Broadway blockbuster Wicked.
Menzel was born in Queens, New York. Her mother, Helene, is a therapist, and her father, Stuart Mentzel, worked as a pajama salesman. Her family is Jewish; her grandparents immigrated from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Her family lived in East Brunswick, Somerset and Marlboro, New Jersey from when she was in kindergarten to third grade, but she considers herself raised in Syosset, New York, with her younger sister Cara. Idina changed her last name to Menzel to better reflect the pronunciation the Mentzel family had adopted in America. When Menzel was 15 years old, her parents divorced and she began working as a wedding and bar mitzvah singer, a job which she continued throughout her time at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Drama at NYU prior to being cast in Jonathan Larson's rock musical Rent. She was friends with actor Adam Pascal before they worked together in Rent.
Henry Pryce Jackman (born 1974 in Hillingdon, Middlesex) is a film score composer and keyboard player.
Jackman studied classical music at St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School, Eton College, Framlingham College and University of Oxford.
Jackman has done programming and production work with artists including Mike Oldfield (Voyager), Sally Oldfield (Flaming Star), Trevor Horn/Art of Noise (The Seduction of Claude Debussy), Elton John and Gary Barlow. He co-produced Seal's unreleased 2001 album Togetherland. "This Could Be Heaven", released from the album, was also co-written by Jackman and used on the movie The Family Man and included on the deluxe edition of Seal's compilation album Hits.
Jackman has released three albums, Utopia (2003), Transfiguration (2005) and Acoustica (2007; with Augustus Isadore).
Jackman had various minor roles on film scores since 2006, generally working with mentor Hans Zimmer, including for The Da Vinci Code (music programmer), The Dark Knight (music arranger) and additional music for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, At World's End, The Simpsons Movie, Kung Fu Panda and Hancock. In 2009, Jackman, Zimmer and John Powell won the 2008 Annie Award for Music in an Animated Television Production or Short Form for their work on DreamWorks Animation's Secrets of the Furious Five (a sequel to Kung Fu Panda). He has since composed soundtracks for Monsters vs. Aliens, Henri IV, Gulliver's Travels, X-Men: First Class and Winnie the Pooh.