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Willem Breuker (23 July)
The well-known Dutch musician and composer Willem Breuker has died, 65 years old. He had been ill for some time.
Breuker was an important figure in the international improvised music scene. He founded his own orchestra in 1974. This "Willem Breuker Kollektief" was one of the first ensembles in The Netherlands that brought improvised music for a big audience. The orchestra played around the whole world.
Breuker has won many music prizes,among which the VPRO/Boy Edgar Prize in 1993.
[source: www.limburger.nl]
Go to Willem Breuker page.Edward Elgar (1 July)
As of today (1 July 2010) the British will no longer be able to pay with the £20 bank note picturing Edward Elgar. It is being replaced by one with the image of economist Adam Smith.
The removal of this composer from the bank notes means that the arts are no longer represented on British paper money, much to the dislike of some.
[source: www.journallive.co.uk]
Go to Edward Elgar page.Philip Glass (29 June)
Phillip Glass is one of four recipients of the 2010 Opera Award of the NEA. The award is $25,000. The Opera Honors of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were launched three years ago, and has been awarded earlier to singers Leontyne Price and Marilyn Horne, composers John Adams and Carlisle Floyd, and conductors James Levine and Julius Rudel.
The awards ceremony, which is open to the public, will take place on 22 October at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
[source: weblogs.baltimoresun.com]
Go to Philip Glass page.Arvo Pärt (9 June)
On Monday the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has been awarded the the second honoree of this year’s İstanbul International Music Festival.
Pärt received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the 38th festival from the hands of the Turkish President Abdullah Gül and his Estonian colleague, Toomas Hendrik Ilves. This took place during a ceremony ahead of the premiere performance of “Adam’s Lament,” Pärt’s newest symphonic work.
The composition is dedicated to İstanbul, and had its world premiere at the historic Aya İrini Museum.
[source: www.todayszaman.com]
Go to Arvo Pärt page.Arne Nordheim (8 June)
Last Saturday, 5 June, the Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim died in Oslo. He was 78 years old.
Nordheim studied in Oslo, Copenhagen and Paris. He also studied electronic music with Gaudeamus in Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
[source: www.nrc.nl]
Go to Arne Nordheim page.Benjamin Lees (2 June)
Benjamin Lees, who taught composition in the early 1960s at the Peabody Institute and later worked on the faculties of Juilliard and Manhattan schools of music, died of heart failure on 31 May.
Lees was born in Manchuria of Russian parents, but grew up in California, USA.
[source: weblogs.baltimoresun.com]
Go to Benjamin Lees page.Leopold Mozart (28 May)
The well-known Mozart expert Cliff Eisen has now published catalogue of Leopold Mozart’s compositions.
Eisen, who is Professor of Music at King’s College in London and also a member of the Akademie für Mozartforschung in Salzburg, has compiled the catalogue. It also contains works which Leopold Mozart copied or arranged.
The compositions of Leopold were hard to trace back as they had been dispersed all over. Though he has composed quite some pieces, the works of fis famous son Mozart always have received much more attention.
The Leopold-Mozart-Werkverzeichnis (LMV) is avalaible at the German Amazon webshop here.
[source: www.kleinezeitung.at]
Go to Leopold Mozart page.Olivier Messiaen (26 May)
The French pianist Yvonne Loriod, born in Houilles, on the north-western outskirts of Paris, died on 17 May 2010. She was second wife of Olivier Messiaen; a great pianist, who performed many of her husband's compositions, and of his contemporaries.
Two years after Messiaen's first wife, the composer and violinist Claire Delbos, died in 1959, Loriod and Messiaen married. For the last 30 years of Messiaen's life — he died in 1992 — she acted not only as wife, but also as proofreader, manager, travel agent, interpretator. Then and after his death she kept on plyng and promoting Messiaen's compositions.
[source: www.guardian.co.uk]
Go to Olivier Messiaen page.Ennio Morricone (25 May)
The Italian composer, arranger and conductor Ennio Morricone has been awarder the 2010 Polzar Music Prize. He studied trumpet, and after that composition unde Goffredro Petrassi. He has gained world fame for his film music compositions, but he also wrote in other genres.
A quotation from the jury: “Ennio Morricone’s congenial compositions and arrangements lift our existence to another plane, making the mundane feel like dramatic scenes in full Cinemascope.”
[source: www.polarmusicprize.org]
Go to Ennio Morricone page.Benjamin Britten (30 March)
The Britten 100 project has received support from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop the 17th century “The Red House”, in which Benjamin Britten lived with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears.
The Britten 100 project aims, among other things, to open the house, its collections and Britten's composition studio as never before.
Britten and Pears lived in “The Red House”, Aldeburgh, between 1956 and 1976. In 2013, when the 100th birthday of Britten will be celebrated, the project should be finished.
[source: www.edp24.co.uk]
Go to Benjamin Britten page.
