Francis Albert Lai ( 26 April 1932 – 7 November 2018) was a French composer, noted for his film scores.

While in his twenties, Lai left home and went to Paris, where he became part of the lively Montmartre music scene. In 1965 he met filmmaker Claude Lelouch and was hired to help write the score for the film A Man and a Woman. Released in 1966, the film was a major international success, earning a number of Academy Awards. The young Lai received a Golden Globe Award nomination for "Best Original Score". This initial success brought more opportunities to work for the film industry both in his native France, where he continued to work with Lelouch on scores to films such as Vivre pour vivre (1967), Un homme qui me plaît (1969), Le voyou (1970) and La bonne année (1973), as well as in Great Britain and the United States. He is known for his support of Mireille Mathieu in many compositions and recordings. In 1970 he wrote the score for director René Clément's film, Rider on the Rain ("Le passager de la pluie"). It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc in September 1971. In 1970 Lai won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for the film Love Story. In the United States, the soundtrack album went to No. 2 in the Billboard album charts and the film's theme, "Where Do I Begin", was a hit single with lyrics by Carl Sigman for traditional pop singer Andy Williams. The song would also be recorded successfully by Lai himself, with a full orchestra, and by Henry Mancini and Shirley Bassey. Lai's "Love Story" theme was heard in the 1978 Love Story sequel titled Oliver's Story, although the main score was composed by Lee Holdridge. His movie scores include films as diverse as Mayerling, Three into Two Won't Go, International Velvet, Édith et Marcel, and Michael Winner films such as I'll Never Forget What's'isname and Hannibal Brooks. Lai has also had success with music written for softcore erotic films like Emmanuelle 2 (1975) and Bilitis (1977). He earned high praise for the latter film's score and its sound-track sold over a million copies throughout the world. His composition "Aujourd'hui C'est Toi" (Today It's You) is probably best known in the UK as the theme music for the long-running BBC television current affairs documentary series Panorama. In a career spanning forty years, Lai also wrote music for television programs and alone or in collaboration with others has composed music for more than one hundred films and has personally written more than six hundred songs. Notably, he penned the music for the Perry Como hit "I Think of You" (lyrics by Rod McKuen). He died on 7 November 2018, aged 86. WIKIPEDIA

Richard Gill (conductor)

Richard James Gill AO (4 November 1941 – 28 October 2018) was an Australian conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic works. He was known as a music educator and for his advocacy for music education of children. 

Richard_Gill_(conductor)

Randolph Henning Hokanson (June 22, 1915 – October 18, 2018) was an American pianist

Randolph Henning Hokanson was an American pianist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was noted for his recordings of Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and gave over 100 performances, including the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas. WIKIPEDIA

Montserrat Caballé (12 April 1933 – 6 October 2018)

WIKIPEDIA

Montserrat Caballé, born Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepción Caballé i Folch, was a Spanish operatic soprano. She sang a wide variety of roles, but is best known as an exponent of the works of Verdi and of the bel canto repertoire, notably the works of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. Wikipedia

 

Stelvio Cipriani

Cipriani became prolific in the Italian film world and was awarded a Nastro d'Argento for Best Score for The Anonymous Venetian (1970).

One of Cipriani's most famous scores is from the 1973 film La polizia sta a guardare (The Great Kidnapping). The main theme was recycled by Cipriani in 1977 for the score to Tentacoli, and was brought to the public's attention again in 2007 when it was featured in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof.

Cipriani's scores for the films of the "La Polizia..." series were different arrangements over the same theme. Some of those themes were used in the soundtrack of the couple Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani's first feature Amer. 

wiki/Stelvio_Cipriani

Claudio Scimone (23 December 1934 – 6 September 2018) was an Italian conductor.

Claudio Scimone

Claudio Scimone was born in Padua, Italy and studied conducting with Dmitri Mitropoulos and Franco Ferrara.He has established an international reputation as a conductor, as well as a composer. He has revived many baroque and renaissance works. His discography includes over 150 titles, and he has won numerous prizes, including the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros.

Claudio Scimone was the founder of I Solisti Veneti (the ensemble with which most of his recordings have been made) and at the time of his death was the honorary conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal.

With the Philharmonia of London, he conducted the first recording of Muzio Clementi’s Symphonies.

Scimone led the world to discover the importance of Vivaldi’s theatrical works, beginning with the first modern performance of Orlando furioso, featuring Marilyn Horne and Victoria de Los Angeles.

In the reborn Fenice Claudio Scimone directed the first modern revival of the Venetian version of Maometto secondo by Rossini.

He also gave the modern premieres of Moses in Egypt and Oedipus at Colonus by Rossini, and The Last Judgement by Salieri.

Claudio Scimone was awarded the title of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (the highest ranking honour of the Republic). He was also awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Padua. *from Wikipedia.

Guy Fallot (1927 – 25 july 2018) was a French cellist

Guy Fallot's father, Paul Fallot – a geologist and professor at the Collège de France – was also a great music lover and played the violin. The mother of Guy Fallot was a recognized amateur organist and held the organ of the cathedral of Nancy. Guy Fallot naturally began to learn the piano with his mother. She was very close to Guy Ropartz, hence the choice of the first name Guy for his son. He entered the Lausanne Conservatory at the age of 9, and obtained the virtuosity prize at 14. One year later, with his sister Monique, he won the first prize at the Geneva Sonata Competition. At the Conservatoire de Paris, he obtained the first prize in the class of Paul Bazelaire in 1946. He taught mainly at the Geneva and Lausanne conservatories, where he trained many pupils. He pursued an international career, interrupted for some time because of a hand problem, and played all over the world, in sonata with pianist Rita Possa, also his accompanist for his classes at the conservatory. Fallot died in Lausanne in 2018, aged 91...WIKIPEDIA

 

Oliver Knussen CBE (12 June 1952 - 8 July 2018) was a British composer and conductor.

Oliver Knussen was a British composer and conductor. Though Knussen began composing at about the age of six,; an ITV programme about his father's work with the London Symphony Orchestra prompted the commissioning for his first symphony (1966–1967). Aged 15, Knussen stepped in to conduct his symphony's première at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 7 April 1968, after István Kertész fell ill. After his debut, Daniel Barenboim asked him to conduct the work's first two movements in New York a week later. In this work and his Concerto for Orchestra (1968–1970), he had quickly and fluently absorbed the influences of modernist composers Britten and Berg as well as many mid-century (largely American) symphonists, while displaying an unusual flair for pacing and orchestration. It was as early as the Second Symphony (1970–1971), in the words of Julian Anderson, that "Knussen's compositional personality abruptly appeared, fully formed". He was awarded CBE in the 1994 Birthday Honours. Knussen was principal guest conductor of The Hague's Het Residentie Orkest (Residentie Orchestra) between 1992 and 1996, the Aldeburgh Festival's co-artistic director between 1983 and 1998 and the London Sinfonietta's music director between 1998 and 2002 – and became that ensemble's conductor laureate. In 2005 Knussen was the music director of the Ojai Music Festival. From September 2006, Knussen was artist-in-association to the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and from 2009 to the BBC Symphony Orchestra. His major works from the 1980s were his two children's operas, Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!, both libretti by Maurice Sendak. WIKIPEDIA

Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky, CBE 4 May 1931 – 16 June 2018) was a Soviet and Russian conductor.

Gennady Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow. His parents were the noted conductor and pedagogue Nikolai Anosov and soprano Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya. His given name was Gennady Nikolayevich Anosov, but he adopted his mother’s maiden name in its masculine form for his professional career so as to avoid the appearance of nepotism. His younger brother, the painter P.N. Anosov, retained their father's name.[2] He studied conducting with his father at the Moscow Conservatory and piano with Lev Oborin. Already known for having conducted Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre at the age of 20, he quickly established his reputation. He premiered many works of Soviet composers, including Edison Denisov's Le soleil des Incas (Sun of the Incas) (1964),[3] as well as giving the Russian premiere of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Western premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival. He became general artistic director of the Bolshoi Theatre in 2000, and in 2001 conducted the world premiere of the original version of Sergei Prokofiev's opera The Gambler. WIKIPEDIA

Jesús López Cobos (25 February 1940 – 2 March 2018) was a Spanish conductor.

López Cobos was born in Toro, Zamora, Spain. He studied at Complutense University of Madrid and graduated with a degree in philosophy. Later he studied conducting with Franco Ferrara and with Hans Swarowsky at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. From 1981 to 1990 he was general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and from 1984 to 1988 he was music director of the Orquesta Nacional de España. From 1986 to 2001 he served as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and from 1990 to 2000 he was principal conductor of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. From 2003 to 2010 he served as music director of the Teatro Real in Madrid. He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. López Cobos died in Berlin, Germany, on 2 March 2018, age 78 of cancer-related causes.

Anshel Brusilow (14 August 1928 – 15 January 2018) was an American violinist, conductor, and music educator at the collegiate level.

Brusilow was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He began his violin study at the age of five with William Frederick Happich (1884–1959) and subsequently studied with Jani Szanto (1887–1977). Brusilow entered the Curtis Institute of Music when he was eleven and studied there with Efrem Zimbalist. Throughout most of his childhood and adolescence, he was known as "Albert Brusilow," Later, at the urging of his girlfriend (who would later become his wife), he returned to using his birth name, Anshel. Brusilow attended the Philadelphia Musical Academy and at sixteen was the youngest conducting student ever accepted by Pierre Monteux. A 4th prize winner of the Jacques Thibaud-Marguerite Long Violin Competition in 1949, he performed as a soloist with numerous major orchestras in the United States. While serving as concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Brusilow founded in 1961, and from 1961 to 1965, conducted the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, an organization composed of musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra. But December 1964, Brusilow announced his resignation as concertmaster, effective June 1966, over a dispute with the Orchestra Association forbidding players from forming independent musical groups. WIKIPEDIA

Colin Brumby (18 June 1933 – 3 January 2018) was an Australian composer and conductor.

Brumby was born in Melbourne and educated at the Glen Iris State School, Spring Road Central School, and Melbourne Boys' High School. He studied at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, from which he graduated in 1957 with a diploma in education. In 1953 he was a finalist in the Australian Youth Aria competition, eventually winning the Lieder Award. He was organist at St. Oswald's Glen Iris from 1950 to 1953. Before travelling to Europe in 1962 he taught in Queensland schools and was for a time the head of music at Kelvin Grove Teacher's College. He went to Spain to study advanced composition with Philipp Jarnach, and to London to study with Alexander Goehr. On his return to Australia, he joined the staff of the Music Department at the University of Queensland, and was based in Brisbane ever since. He became Associate Professor with the University of Queensland, from which he retired in 1998. He, along with Philip Bračanin, are two Brisbane-based composers who have attained an international reputation, beginning in the 1970s, and joined more recently by composers such as Gerard Brophy, Stephen Cronin, Robert Davidson, Kent Farbach, Stephen Leek, Peter Rankine and Nigel Sabin who have attained similar renown. Brumby was Musical Director of the Queensland Opera Company from 1968 to 1971. WIKIPEDIA

Robert Mann (July 19, 1920 – January 1, 2018) was a violinist, composer, conductor, and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet

Mann was a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, the first violinist at Juilliard, served on the school's string quartet for over fifty years until his retirement in 1997. Mann played and performed on many instruments, including those made by Antonio Stradivari and John Young. Mann was the subject of a 2014 documentary, titled Speak the Music. Mann was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His father worked as a tailor and a grocer. Mann began his study of the violin at age nine; at 13, he was accepted into the class of Edouard Hurlimann, concertmaster of the Portland Symphony. He attended the Portland Youth Philharmonic, but had planned to become a forest ranger in his youth. In 1938, at the age of eighteen, he moved to New York City to enroll in the Juilliard School, where he studied violin with Edouard Dethier, composition with Bernard Wagenaar and Stefan Wolpe, and conducting with Edgar Schenkman. Mann won the prestigious Naumburg Competition in 1941 and made his New York debut two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Shortly after his graduation from Juilliard, he was drafted into the US Army. WIKIPEDIA

Maurice Peress (18 March, 1930 – 31 December 2017) was an American orchestra conductor, educator and author.

After serving as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein beginning in 1961, Peress went on to stand as leader of the orchestra in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1962. In 1970, he also became leader for two years of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In 1974, he left Texas to take over the Kansas City Philharmonic, where he remained until 1980.

WIKIPEDIA