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
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.
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.
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'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 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 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
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.
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
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
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
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.
Award-winning composer for film and TV -- via Variety. He won the Golden Globe for "The Stunt Man," He did "Hang 'em High," and "Freebie and the Bean." On TV, he created catchy ditties for shows such as "The Outer Limits," "The Rat Patrol," the unintentionally hilarious "Strike Force," and "The Invaders.."
He is known for composing the theme and much of the music for the first season of the television series The Outer Limits.
Frontiere died Thursday December 21, 2017 in Tesuque, N.M. He was 86. Frontiere was a fixture on the film- and TV-music scene throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s .
Žermēna Heine-Vāgnere (23 June 1923 – 7 December 2017) was a Soviet operatic soprano.
She was born on 23 June 1923 in Riga, to singer Erna Heine. An uncle, Alberts Verners, was a leading baritone for the Latvian National Opera in the 1930s for which Heine-Vāgnere also performed. She studied under singers Hertas Lūses and Marijas Bolotovas.
Heine-Vāgnere began her career in 1950 and appeared in Macbeth as Lady Macbeth, Cavalleria rusticana as Santuca, Otello as Desdemona, Eugene Onegin as Tatyana, Der Ring des Nibelungen as Brynhildr, and Lohengrin as Ortrud. Other performances included roles in Alfrēds Kalniņš's Banuta, Salome, and Turandot. She retired in November 1975, having sang in 39 distinct roles.
Heine-Vāgnere was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1969 and also received the Order of the Three Stars, third class. She was married to architect Nikolajs Vīgners and died on 7 December 2017, aged 94. (WIKIPEDIA)
William Leonard Blankenship (7 March 1928 Gatesville, Texas – 2 December 2017 Vienna, Austria) was an American operatic tenor, music pedagogue at the collegiate level, stage and television actor, and stage director.
In Europe, Blankenship sang roles at the opera houses in Vienna (Vienna Volksoper & Vienna State Opera), Stuttgart, Hamburg, Braunschweig (1957–1960), Bern (1960), Mannheim, Brunswick, Munich (from 1965), Berne, Klagenfurt (1956 European debut), Bregenz (1972 as Phoebus in The Fairy-Queen by Henry Purcell). In the United States, he sang with the Santa Fe Opera, San Antonio, San Diego (1968), Dallas Opera, and Houston Grand Opera. He has sung in international festivals in Moscow, Salzburg, Vienna, Munich, and Rio de Janeiro. He performed concerts with major orchestras on radio and television.
He was the father of Rebecca Blankenship, an American operatic soprano. (Wikipedia)
SLIPPED DISC, Vienna Opera link
Mayer was born in New York City, the son of Dorothy (née Ehrich) and John C. Mayer. He entered Yale University in 1944, but his college years were interrupted by military service (he served as a counter-intelligence agent in US-occupied Japan). Upon his discharge he re-entered Yale and graduated in 1949, then trained at the Juilliard School and the Mannes College of Music, studying with Roger Sessions and Felix Salzer, and later with Otto Luening, Emanuel Balaban and Izler Solomon.
The composer has written three stage works in addition to his prize-winning A Death in the Family, and a variety of orchestral, chamber, choral and vocal works.
WIKIPEDIA
In 1979, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Senta in The Flying Dutchman, in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production, opposite José van Dam.
She sang with the Met until 1993, in such operas as Tosca, La bohème, Un ballo in maschera (with Carlo Bergonzi), Don Giovanni, Manon Lescaut, Falstaff (with Giuseppe Taddei).
Neblett was born in Modesto, California and raised in Redondo Beach. She studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1969 she made her operatic debut with the New York City Opera, playing the part of Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. With that company, she continued to sing many leading roles, in Mefistofele (with Norman Treigle), Prince Igor (conducted by Julius Rudel), Faust, Manon, Louise (opposite John Alexander, later Harry Theyard), La traviata, Le coq d'or, Carmen (as Micaëla, with Joy Davidson, staged by Tito Capobianco), The Marriage of Figaro (as the Contessa Almaviva, with Michael Devlin and Susanne Marsee), Don Giovanni (as Donna Elvira), L'incoronazione di Poppea (with Alan Titus as Nerone), Ariadne auf Naxos (directed by Sarah Caldwell), and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt (in Frank Corsaro's production).
WIKIPEDIA
Izabella Jadwiga Ostaszewska was born in Klimkówka, Podkarpackie Voivodeship and attended primary school in Sanok and at the Lyceum of the Ursuline Convent in Lvov, graduating in 1929. She took piano lessons from Klaudia Rylska. In 1930 she went to Belgium to continue her education in the Ursulines Institute at Wavre-Notre-Dame, where she studied French and music.
WIKIPEDIA
Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky PAR (Дми́трий Алекса́ндрович Хворосто́вский, 16 October 1962 – 22 November 2017) was a Russian operatic baritone. His operatic debut in the West was at the Nice Opera in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades (1989). In Italy he debuted at La Fenice as Eugene Onegin, a success that sealed his reputation, and made his American operatic debut with the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1993) in La traviata.
He subsequently sang at virtually every major opera house, including the Metropolitan Opera (debut 1995), the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Berlin State Opera, La Scala and the Vienna State Opera. He was especially renowned for his portrayal of the title character in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin; The New York Times described him as "born to play the role.
Hvorostovsky died on 22 November 2017 in London after a two-and-a-half-year battle with brain cancer.
WIKIPEDIA
The Oscar-winning composer known for his work in Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' and 'Django Unchained' was 84. Luis Enríquez Bacalov (30 August 1933 – 15 November 2017) was an Argentine-born Italian composer of film scores. Early on in his career, he composed scores for Spaghetti Western films. In the early 1970s, he collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands. Bacalov has been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Original Score, winning it in 1996 for Il Postino. Bacalov has composed significant works for chorus and orchestra. Before his death he was the artistic director of the Orchestra della Magna Grecia in Taranto, Italy.
WIKIPEDIA
Robert De Cormier (January 7, 1922 – November 7, 2017) was an American musical conductor, arranger, and director. He arranged music for many singers and groups, including Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul, and Mary, and worked with Milt Okun.
vpr.net
He has directed concerts and recordings for television specials, and was choral director for a television special and recording starring Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle, conducted by James Levine.
De Cormier was the conductor and leader of The Belafonte Folk Singers during most of its lifetime from 1957 to 1965. He also headed The Robert De Cormier singers, who performed extensively in the mid-1960s and then on and off until the mid-1990s
Robert De Cormier was Music Director and Conductor of the New York Choral Society from 1970–1987 and is a Music Director Emeritus. In 1993, De Cormier helped to found the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and remains its director.
