3 posts tagged “composer”
Diamanda Galás Website
Wikipedia entry
She composes, plays the piano, sings several languages impeccably, and can make her voice do unearthly things. Her new album "Guilty Guilty Guilty" will be released on March 31, 2008 tomorrow and is available for pre-order now.
As a performer, she does not seem to know what fear is.
I was not fortunate enough to witness the performances she created in the period after her brother Philip-Dimitri contracted HIV. The recordings from that period are to this day no less visceral and unforgettable.
She
continues to tour, perform, and collaborate with other artists. Her art
helped me exorcise psychological traumas caused by the huge domestic
and international disasters of the years 2003-2007.
Though
celebrated as a composer for the piano, Isaac Albéniz by no means
confined himself to piano music. Indeed he devoted more than a decade
of his almost forty-nine years to writing music for the stage (which
recently received attention with the revival of his operatic works
Pepita Jiménez and Merlin). Intermittently throughout his career he
wrote songs – more than two dozen of them – as well as several
orchestral and chamber works.
Born in Camprodón, Gerona on May 29 1860, Albéniz began life as a prodigy and after many adventurous concert tours that took him as far away from home as the Americas (trips that constantly interrupted his classes at the Madrid Conservatory), he settled down to a serious course of studies in Belgium. With a pension from King Alfonso XII of Spain, he entered the Brussels Conservatory in 1876, graduating in 1879 with first prize in piano, which was awarded unanimously. He returned to Spain to establish himself as an accomplished virtuoso; in addition he began to compose and conduct. He soon became director of a traveling zarzuela company and wrote three zarzuelas (none of which survives today). In 1883 he settled in Barcelona, studying composition with Felipe Pedrell. Increasingly Albéniz incorporated his own compositions on his recitals. In 1885 he moved to Madrid where his works would be published by the leading music publishers of the day: Benito Zozaya and Antonio Romero.
Albéniz's reputation as a pianist and a composer continued to grow. In the spring of 1889 he traveled to Paris, appearing with the Colonne Orchestra in a concert that included his Piano Concerto, op. 78. From Paris he proceeded to England, where his performances brought him instant success and return engagements. In 1890 he came in contact with the entrepreneur Henry Lowenfeld who contracted Albéniz's services both as a performer and composer. As a result, Albéniz moved with his family (his wife, Rosina, and three children) to London and through Lowenfeld eventually became involved with musical theater. For approximately a decade Albéniz devoted much of his talent and energies to the creation and production of music for the stage. During this time he had moved from London to Paris.
In the French capital he came in contact with Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Charles Bordes, and later Paul Dukas and Gabriel Fauré, forming close ties with the French musical community. From 1898 to 1900 he taught advanced piano at the Schola Cantorum, but in 1900, because of poor health, he returned to the warmer climate of Spain. He became involved with Enrique Morera and the promotion of Catalan lyrical works. When, however, his efforts failed to have his own stage works produced, he returned to Paris where his music was accepted, praised, and performed. Albéniz's Paris residence became a haven for Spanish artists (among them Joaquín Turina and Manuel de Falla); here they found support and encouragement for their own endeavors.
Albéniz's preoccupation with larger musical forms brought about a change in his compositional style from the basically light, attractive pieces of his early career to a more complex art. Although he did not stop performing, his appearances diminished as he became absorbed with the composition and production of his operatic works.
As Coutts began to tire of writing librettos, Albéniz gradually returned to the piano and his native landscape for inspiration. La Vega (1896-98) foreshadows his later style, which blossomed with his masterpiece, Iberia (1905-1908). The compositional texture and language that define Iberia are characteristic of Quatre mélodies (to poems by Coutts), Albéniz's last vocal work and last completed pieces. Suffering from nephritis, Albéniz died in Cambo-les-Bains in the French Pyrenees on May 18, 1909.
Watch Gabriela on YouTube (3 mins)
Gabriela's Published Scores at Schirmer's
I have a copy of her fantastic Sonata Andina, which is dedicated to Ginastera, and has Ginastera's ideal marriage of Latin influence and European (or modern) keyboard technique.
It seems she was granted a Carnegie Hall Commision recently. Way to go! Thanks to Sarah Cahill are in order for steering me in Gabriela's direction.
