Ross Barbour of The Four Freshmen has died

Mr. Barbour died at 82 on Saturday, August 20, 2011, at his home in Simi Valley, CA. He was the last of the founding members of the Four Freshmen. The Four Freshmen had a fresh approach to close harmony, influencing the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, the Lettermen, the Manhattan Transfer and other groups. Their sound was characterized by long, lush chords — Mr. Barbour called them “purple chords” — and an improvisational style that made four voices seem like five or six. Each of the singers also played at least one instrument.

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Starlight Symphony conductor Cyril Ornadel, died on June 22 aged 86, wrote the score for the musical Pickwick

Cyril Ornadel, for many years conducted the orchestra for Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the most popular television variety show of the 1950s. Ornadel had enjoyed an earlier hit song with Portrait of My Love. Recorded under duress by the balladeer Matt Monro, who disliked it intensely on first hearing, it went to No 3 in 1960, and has become a modern songbook standard. Cyril Ornadel was born in London on December 2 1924, the son of a dress manufacturer who assumed he would join the family business. When Cyril went his own way, his father effectively had him thrown out of the Royal College of Music by telling it that his son was in breach of the rules by playing piano in a nightclub and dating a fellow student. Ornadel recorded several MGM albums of standards with the studio orchestra known as The Starlight Symphony.

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Forvever Young and the Music of Victor Young
The Best of the British on Broadway

Jose-Luis Garcia, has died aged 67, a Spanish violinist and conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra.

José-Luis Garcia was born in Madrid on February 25 1944, to a Catholic family steeped in music. He began studying the violin at the age of six with his father. After taking first prize in the Sarasate Competition in Pamplona, in 1960, he moved to London to take lessons with his compatriot Antonio Brosa at the Royal College of Music, where he took the Stoutzker Prize, the College’s main violin award.

Jose-Luis Garcia made his Proms debut, aged only 19, in Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent (his fellow soloists were Kenneth Sillito, Roy Malan and Ronald Thomas) For more than twenty years he was first violin-conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra, with which he led a very active artistic life and made important recordings, such as the Mozart concertos for violin and orchestra and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
In 1992 he joined the staff of the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía (Queen Sofía College of Music) and one year later acceded to the Chair of Violin.

José-Luis Garcia, who died on August 11, 2011 was a great jazz enthusiast, often retiring to Ronnie Scott’s after a London concert. His marriage to Joanna Milholland took place on the day that England won the World Cup in 1966, causing some disruption to the nuptial celebrations as guests endeavoured to keep abreast of the score. She survives him, as do a son and a daughter.

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Nikolai Petrov, a Top Soviet-Era Pianist, Dies at 68

Nikolai Arnoldovich Petrov (14 April 1943 – 3 August 2011)

Petrov suffered a stroke in May while touring in Belarus and had been in the hospital since then.

Nikolai Arnoldovich Petrov was born on April 14, 1943, into a family of musicians. He started touring in the early 1960s and performed with the New York Symphony Orchestra, the Washington National Symphony Orchestra and top European orchestras. He made his New York City debut at Carnegie Hall in 1965. But he always regarded the Moscow Conservatory as his main stage.

Petrov was born in Moscow, the son of the cellist Arnold Ferkelman and the grandson of the operatic bass Vasily Rodionovich Petrov, and began learning the piano at the age of three. At the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory his teacher was Tatyana Kestner and in 1961 Petrov entered the class of Yakov Zak at the Conservatory itself.[1][2] He subsequently won second prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas and won second prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels'



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Paul Franke, tenor, died age 93.

Paul Franke, [photo, in makeup] a tenor who was one of the Metropolitan Opera’s most stalwart, ubiquitous and enduring performers, appearing there nearly 2,000 times in four decades, died on July 21, 2011 at his home in Queens. He was 93.

NYTIimes Obit