De Staat

De Staat is a Dutch alternative rock band, formed in Nijmegen in 2006. Their name translates as "The State".

Biography

De Staat were started as a one-man project by lead singer, Torre Florim, who later brought the band together. Their first demo was recorded in Florim's apartment in 2007. While still unsigned, the one-man project grew to a full grown band, due to well-received live performances in the Netherlands.

In 2008, the band were the support act for popular Belgium band dEUS. De Staat were signed by Excelsior Recordings later that year. They released their debut album Wait for Evolution in January 2009. All the songs on this album were written and produced by Florim. He wrote the album as a graduating project for a "Music Production" course. During this time, front man Florim also produced the debut EP of Go Back To The Zoo, another band from Nijmegen.

Within a year De Staat's popularity rose and they were performing at festivals such as Dot to Dot,Glastonbury,Sziget and Lowlands.

Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrvo ˈpært]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. Pärt has been the most performed living composer in the world for 5 consecutive years.

Life

Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia, and was raised by his mother and stepfather in Rakvere in northern Estonia. He began to experiment with the top and bottom notes as the family's piano's middle register was damaged. His first serious study came in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School, but less than a year later he temporarily abandoned it to fulfill military service, playing oboe and percussion in the army band. While at the Tallinn Conservatory, he studied composition with Heino Eller. As a student, he produced music for film and the stage. During the 1950s, he also completed his first vocal composition, the cantata Meie aed ('Our Garden') for children's choir and orchestra. He graduated in 1963. From 1957 to 1967, he worked as a sound producer for Estonian radio.

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945).

Born in Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy was Born in 1934. With the premiere of Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden, he wrote "chamber operas" for small forces, suitable for performance in venues of modest size. Among the best known of these is The Turn of the Screw (1954). Recurring themes in the operas are the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society, and the corruption of innocence.

Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen (Dutch pronunciation: [luˈi ˈɑndrisə(n)]; born 6 June 1939) is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He was a composition teacher at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He was recipient of the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1959.

Life and career

Andriessen was born in Utrecht into a musical family, the son of the composer Hendrik Andriessen (1892–1981), brother of composers Jurriaan Andriessen (1925–1996) and Caecilia Andriessen (born 1931), and nephew of Willem Andriessen (1887–1964).

Andriessen originally studied with his father and Kees van Baaren at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, before embarking upon two years of study with Italian composer Luciano Berio in Milan and Berlin. He later joined the faculty of the Royal Conservatory. See: List of music students by teacher: A to B#Louis Andriessen.

In 1969 Andriessen co-founded STEIM in Amsterdam. He also helped found the instrumental groups Orkest de Volharding and Hoketus, both of which performed compositions of the same names. He later became closely involved in the ongoing Schonberg and Asko ensembles and inspired the formation of the British ensemble Icebreaker.

Nederlands Kamerkoor

The Netherlands Chamber Choir (Dutch Nederlands Kamerkoor) is a full-time and independent professional Dutch choir. It was founded in 1937 by a young musician nl:Felix de Nobel as the Chorus Pro Musica to perform Bach cantatas for the Dutch radio. Famous composers as Francis Poulenc, Frank Martin, Rudolf Escher, Hendrik Andriessen and Henk Badings has written works for the choir. More recently also Sir John Tavener, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Mauricio Kagel and James MacMillan. In 2014 en 2015 the choir has sung works by Lerav Auerbach, Michel van der Aa, Martin Smolka, Nico Muhly, en Sir George Benjamin.

Discography

References