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[Myra Ellen]

(b Newton, NC, Aug 22, 1963). American alternative-rock singer-songwriter, pianist, and record producer. She emerged in the early 1990s amid a resurgence of female singer-songwriters and has been one of the few well known alternative-rock artists to use the piano as her primary instrument. She attended the preparatory division of the prestigious Peabody Conservatory but left the school at the age of 11. She began to play her own music in nightclubs at 14, chaperoned by her father, who was a preacher. After Amos moved to Los Angeles in her late teens to pursue a recording career, her band Y Kant Tori Read released a self-titled album (Atl., 1987). Although this was unsuccessful, Atlantic Records retained her six-album contract.

Amos’s debut solo album, Little Earthquakes (Atl., 1992), earned her critical acclaim for her vocal expressivity, pianistic virtuosity, and fearless exploration of a wide range of personal themes, notably female sexuality, personal relationships, religion, sexual violence, and coming of age. The album ...

(b Port Jefferson, NY, April 15, 1923; d New York, June 26, 1981). American cornet and trumpet player and teacher. Because of damage at birth resulting in a withered right arm, he learned to play on instruments that were specially adapted for left-hand playing. Beginning lessons with his father at age five, by the time he was seven he was already performing as a soloist. At thirteen he studied with Del Staigers, considered one of the world’s great cornet soloists. In 1938 he began lessons with Ned Mahoney, cornet soloist with the Goldman Band, who convinced him to study at the Ernest Williams School of Music. In 1943, at the age of twenty, Burke was invited to join the Goldman Band, playing some 1100 solos over the next 32 years. In addition to the Goldman Band, Burke performed with the Cities Service Band of America (1948–56), the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra and the Baltimore SO....

String quartet. It was founded in Budapest in 1909 by Imre Waldbauer (b Budapest, 13 April 1892; d Iowa City, 3 Dec 1953), János Temesváry (b Szamosújvár, 12 Dec 1891; d Budapest, 8 Nov 1964), the composer and musicologist Antal Molnár (b Budapest, 7 Jan 1890; d Budapest, 7 Dec 1983) and Jenő Kerpely (b Budapest, 1 Dec 1885; d Los Angeles, 1954). Known locally as the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, it had some 100 rehearsals before giving the premières of the first quartets of Kodály and Bartók in Budapest on 17 and 19 March 1910. Later that year Debussy’s Quartet was performed with the composer present (his only Budapest concert) and in 1911 the ensemble toured the Netherlands. In 1912 Molnár was replaced on viola by another musicologist, Egon Kornstein (b Nagyszalonta, 22 May 1891; d Paris, 3 Dec 1987). The Hungarian Quartet became its country’s leading chamber ensemble, performing the standard repertory as well as introducing home audiences to a wide range of new music. Its other premières included Bartók’s Second, Third and Fourth Quartets and Kodály’s Second. After ...

(b Olomouc, 3 May 1967). Czech violinist. Raised in a musical family, she studied at the People’s School of Art in Opava with Marcela Kuvíková, then at the Ostrava Conservatory with Vítězslav Kuzník and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) with the professors Jiří Vlach, Jiří Novák, and Ivan Štraus. She also took part in master classes with Josef Gingold in Greensboro, NC and with Wolfgang Marschner in Weimar. In 1990 she received a scholarship to the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland, where she studied with Alberto Lysy.

In 1997, she became a laureate of the Prague Spring International Violin Competition. She has also received the Gideon Klein Prize, the Bärenreiter Prize, the Supraphon Prize, the Prize of the City of Prague, and the Prague Spring Foundation Prize. In 2005 she represented the Czech Republic at the World Exhibition in Aichi, Japan, together with the Prague Philharmonic....

German string quartet. It was founded in 1988 by Andreas Seidel and Tilman Büning (violins), Ivo Bauer (viola) and Matthias Moosdorf (cello). Seidel, Büning and Bauer were section leaders in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, who in 1991 gave up their positions to devote themselves full-time to the quartet. In its early years the group studied with Gerhard Bosse, the Amadeus Quartet, Hatto Beyerle and Walter Levin, and won several prizes, including the Busch and Siemens (1991 and 1992). One of the most versatile and technically accomplished of quartets, the Leipzig String Quartet is renowned both for its performances of the Austro-German Classical and Romantic repertory, and for its dedication to contemporary music. In 1991 it initiated its own annual concert series, ‘Pro Quatuor’, at the Gewandhaus, in which it has given the world premières of works by Furrer, Ofenbauer, Rihm, Schleiermacher, Jörg Widmann and others. The group also plays as part of the larger Leipzig-based Ensemble Avantgarde. It has toured extensively in Europe, Africa, Central and South America, Australia, Japan and South-East Asia, including appearances at many of the major festivals. Among its recordings, many of which have won international awards, are the complete quartets of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn (a cycle unsurpassed for its mingled fire and grace), Brahms, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Eisler, and works by Hindemith, Weill, Cage and Berio....

(b Plovdiv, 19 Dec 1937). Bulgarian composer, pianist, conductor, arranger, and bandleader. He was internationally acknowledged for his innovative ideas, cross-cultural experiments, and contribution to the concept of fusion and free improvisation. Classically trained at the Bulgarian State Conservatory (1955–60) under Pancho Vladigerov (composition) and Andrey Stoyanov (piano), he is the author of numerous compositions in styles and genres including jazz, pop, symphony, chamber, film, and theatrical music. He conducted the Radio and Television Big Band in Sofia (1962–6) and led his own avant-garde quartet, Jazz Focus’65 (1965–8), which won the Critic’s Prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967. In 1970 he left Bulgaria for political reasons and moved to the USA where he joined the Don Ellis Orchestra (1971–8), and later collaborated with the classical/jazz quartet Free Flight. He also played with outstanding jazz musicians including Art Pepper, Billy Cobham, and Dave Holland, among many others....

British string quartet. It was formed in 1988 by Thomas Bowes and David Angel (violins), Martin Outram (viola) and Michal Kaznowski (cello) and made its début at the Wigmore Hall, London, the following year. Its name derives from the sixteenth-century Brescian violin maker Giovanni Paulo Maggini, one of whose instruments is played by Angel. Bowes left the group in 1992, to be replaced as leader by David Juritz, who in turn was replaced by Laurence Jackson in 1994.

Renowned above all for its passionately expressive performances of British music, the Maggini has made its reputation through frequent concert tours in Britain, Europe and (since 1991) the USA, and through its numerous recordings for Naxos. It has commissioned works from several leading composers, including James MacMillan (his Second String Quartet), Robert Simpson (the Cello Quintet, his last composition) and Eleanor Alberga. In October 2002 it gave the acclaimed première of Peter Maxwell Davies’s First String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall, initiating a project to perform and record a cycle of ten string quartets by the composer. In its British Music series for Naxos the Maggini has recorded works by Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Bax, Bliss, Bridge, Moeran, Walton and Britten. Several of these have won international awards....