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(b Yerevan, March 8, 1932). Armenian cellist and teacher. She studied first at the Yerevan Central Music School (where her teachers were K. Khizanov and L. Grigoryan) and then with Grigoryan at the Komitas Conservatory in Yerevan (1950–53). She continued her studies with Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory (1953–6) and became a laureate of the H. Wihan International Cello Competition (1955). In 1956 she made her début as a soloist with the Armenian PO, and has performed regularly with the orchestra since then. In 1960 she became professor of cello at the Yerevan Conservatory. She has performed widely in Russia, the USA, Canada and Western Europe, as a soloist and during numerous festivals, specializing in 20th-century works, notably those by Armenian composers. She has given premières of some 100 works, a number of which are dedicated to her. Her playing is distinguished by refinement of intonation, a broad range of colour and a strong dramatic impetus....

(b Sibiu, Nov 3, 1940; d Munich, May 27, 2006). German composer of Romanian birth. He studied the piano, the organ and theory privately with Franz Xaver Dressler in Sibiu (1950–58). From 1959 to 1964 he studied composition with Toduta at the Cluj Academy of Music where, after receiving his diploma, he remained to teach composition and music theory. In 1969 he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany to teach at the Robert Schumann Conservatory, Düsseldorf (1969–72) and attend the Darmstadt summer course (1969). He was appointed to teach theory and composition at the Munich Musikhochschule in 1972, becoming professor of composition there in 1976. His awards included the composition prize of the Prague Spring Festival (1966), the Stuttgart Stamitz prize (1970), the city of Stuttgart composition prize (1971), the Stroud Festival composition prize, the Hitzacker prize (...

(Hans)

(b Mannheim, 4 March 1928). American composer and conductor of German birth.

Both of his parents were musical, his father being a cantor and composer of Jewish liturgical music. The family came to the United States in 1939 and Adler attended Boston University (BM 1948) and Harvard University (MA 1950). He studied composition with Aaron Copland, Paul Fromm, Paul Hindemith, Hugo Norden, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson; musicology with Karl Geiringer, A.T. Davison, and Paul A. Pisk; and conducting with Sergey Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center. In 1950 he joined the US Army and organized the Seventh Army SO, which he conducted in more than 75 concerts in Germany and Austria; he was awarded the Army Medal of Honor for his musical services. Subsequently he conducted concerts and operas, and lectured extensively throughout Europe and the United States. In 1957 he was appointed professor of composition at North Texas State University, and in ...

[Georgy]

(b Leningrad [now St Petersburg], May 13, 1932; d Cologne, Oct 31, 2002). Israeli conductor of Soviet birth. He studied at the Leningrad Central School of Music and the Leningrad Conservatory, and also with Natan Rakhlin and Kurt Sanderling. In 1956 he was appointed conductor of the Saratov PO; he also taught at the conservatory there and conducted his first operas. The next year he became conductor at Yaroslav, remaining there until his appointment as chief conductor of the Moscow RSO in 1964; his guest engagements included appearances with the Bol′shoy Ballet. Ahronovich left the USSR in 1972 and became an Israeli citizen. After concerts with the Israel PO he began touring, appearing in London with the RPO and with the New York PO in the USA. He made his operatic début in the West with Otello at Cologne, where he was conductor of the Gürzenich Concerts from ...

(b Mineola, NY, July 11, 1954). American harpist and pedagogue. She studied early with Marion Bannerman, Pearl Chertok, and Mario di Steffano, and in Paris with Lily Laskine in summer 1972. She received degrees from the Juilliard School (BM, MM), working with Marcel Grandjany, Jane Weidensaul, and Susann McDonald. She won first prize at the Fifth International Harp Competition in Israel (1973). Allen made her New York Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1975 and became head of the harp department at the Juilliard School in 1985. In 1999, she became principal harpist of the New York Philharmonic. She is also on the faculty of the Aspen Music School. She has performed solo concerts for more than 30 years throughout the world and has been the recipient of the National Endowment Solo Recitalist Grant and sponsorship by the Pro Musicis foundation. Allen appears regularly with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has appeared as soloist with numerous ensembles including the English Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Mostly Mozart Festival. She received a Grammy nomination in ...

(b Lisbon, May 21, 1940). Portuguese composer and conductor. He began his music studies with Marina Dwander, Artur Santos and Joly Braga Santos. In 1959 he completed his higher degree in piano studies with Campos Coelho at the National Conservatory, Lisbon. In 1960 he was awarded a grant from the Instituto de Alta Cultura to study piano with Schiske at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik. While there he also studied with Wladyslaw Kedra and Dieter Weber. He also studied composition with Cerha on a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He was the cultural attaché in Vienna (1974–81) and founded the Almeida-Pluhar-Marinoff Trio in 1983. He lectured both at the University of Oporto and at the House Museum of A’lvaro de Campos.

Almeida is a versatile artist whose activities range from improvisation to television scores, film-making, fiction and essay-writing. He has a wide public following within Portugal and distances himself from the institutional circles of Portuguese composition. His extensive output is somewhat uneven. Although the dominant idiom in his compositions is a wide tonality, with visible influence from Stravinsky, Hindemith, Eisler and Prokofiev, he often uses more modern means such as electro-acoustics....

(b Detroit, MI, April 13, 1953). American composer and pianist. As a teenager, she studied piano with Pearl Roberts McCullom. She received bachelor and master’s degrees in music composition at Wayne State University, studying with James Hartway. In 1983, she became the first female African American composer to receive the DMA in composition from the University of Michigan, where she studied with William Bolcom, Eugene Kurtz and Leslie Bassett. She also worked in electronic music with George Wilson for several years.

Alston taught briefly at Wayne State University (1983), Oakland University (1987), and Eastern Michigan University (1988). In 1991, she rejoined the faculty at Oakland University, where she is an associate professor in music composition. Her music has been performed in the United States and abroad. Alston’s Four Moods for Piano and Three Rhapsodies for Piano were selected for New York premieres by the North/South Consonance Ensemble. ...

(b Chicago, IL, Oct 13, 1967). American composer, pianist, and educator. Applebaum grew up in a musical family in Chicago. His father, Bob Applebaum, a high school physics teacher, studied classical music and composes. Applebaum graduated from Carleton College (BM 1989); his senior thesis took him to Mexico City to interview Conlon Nancarrow. He received his Masters (1992) and his Doctorate (1996) in composition from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), studying with Brian Ferneyhough, Joji Yuasa, RAND STEIGER, and ROGER REYNOLDS. He taught at USCD, Mississippi State University, and Carleton College before his current faculty position at Stanford University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Stanford Improvisation Collective.

Applebaum’s solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electro-acoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia at numerous new music festivals. His music is mercurial, highly detailed, disciplined, and exacting, but it also features improvisational and whimsical aspects. As such, he is considered as much in the experimentalist camp exemplified by composers such as Cage and Zappa as part of the European modernist lineage represented by his principal teacher Brian Ferneyhough. He has drawn inspiration from jazz pioneers and maverick composers such as Nancarrow and Partch, who found it necessary to use or invent unusual instruments to realize their artistic visions....

(Eugene)

(b West Hempstead, NY, April 26, 1956). American music educator, choral arranger, editor, and conductor. He was a member of the American Boychoir (1969–71), and received degrees from St Olaf College (BM 1978), the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (MM 1980), and Michigan State University (DMA 1987). He was on the summer faculty of the American Boychoir School and now serves on the Board of Trustees. He taught at Calvin College (1980–90) before becoming the fourth conductor of the St Olaf Choir and the Harry R. and Thora H. Tosdal Endowed Professor of Music (1990–). Armstrong is the editor for Earthsongs publications and co-editor of the St. Olaf Choir Series. He chronicled the history of the St Olaf Choir in his doctoral dissertation. He is featured on an instructional video for adolescent singers, Body, Mind, Spirit, Voice (2002...

(b Tuzla, Bosnia, Aug 18, 1951). Bosnian conductor and music educator. He graduated from the Department of Music Theory and Pedagogy (1974) and from the Conducting Department in the class of Teodor Romanić (1979) at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo. He completed postgraduate studies in 1982. His conducting career started at the High School of Music in Sarajevo upon his graduation (1974). He has appeared with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, Radio-Television Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra, Mostar Symphony Orchestra, and Radio-Television Bosnia and Herzegovina Chamber Orchestra. He has led a number of choral ensembles, including the children’s choir of Radio-Television Sarajevo, and amateur choirs in Sarajevo (‘Slobodan Princip Seljo’, ‘Vaso Miskin Crni’, ‘Miljenko Cvitković’), Mostar (‘Džemal Bijedić’, ‘Abrašević’), and Goražde (Mixed municipal choir). He successfully led the female ensemble, ‘Preporod’, and the academic female choir ‘Gaudeamus’, for which he prepared a few collections of harmonizations and stylizations of folk songs. Since ...

[Gennaro, Peter]

(b Staten Island, NY, Jan 14, 1923; d Chicago, Oct 29, 2008). American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and ballet company director. He began to study dance after meeting Robert Joffrey while on military service in Seattle, and continued this study in New York at the School of American Ballet and with the modern dancers May O’Donnell and Gertrude Shurr. He became a founding member of the faculty of Joffrey’s school, the American Dance Center, and of Joffrey’s first dance group, which later became the Joffrey Ballet. He also performed on Broadway and with New York City Opera. After retiring as a performer in 1964, he focused on the choreographic work he had begun in 1961 with the ballet Ropes, to music by Charles Ives. As chief choreographer of the Joffrey Ballet, he created ballets that celebrated the company’s youthful verve and vitality, frequently utilizing scores by American contemporary composers. Among his most popular ballets were ...

(Issac)

(b Seattle, June 27, 1953). American composer and conductor. He studied composition with Stephen Albert, Ronald Perera and Randall McClellan at Hampshire College (BA 1975). His teachers at Yale University (MM 1977) included Druckman and MacCombie (composition), and Arthur Weisberg (conducting). He also studied composition with Schuller at the Berkshire Music Center (1979) and with Yun at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1980). He served on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory from 1980 to 1986. A UK Fulbright Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1987–8) enabled him to work in London from 1986 to 1988, where he was a visiting lecturer at City University. He joined the faculty of the University of Arizona in 1988. He has conducted the university-based Arizona Contemporary Ensemble, founded and co-directed the New York contemporary music ensemble Musical Elements (1977–) and served as composer-in-residence for the Phoenix SO (...

[Gedé ]

(b Kaliungu Kaja, Denpasar, 1955). Balinese composer, performer, teacher and musicologist. Born into a musical family, he is the brother of I Komang Astita and the cousin of Wayan Sadra and I Wayan Yudana, all well-known composers. He has taught composition and gamelan performance at the Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia and Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia in Bali since 1981. He is a graduate of these same institutions (1974 and 1980 respectively) and also holds a graduate degree (SSKar) from the Institut Seni Indonesia in Yogyakarta, as well as an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he wrote his thesis on Balinese gambuh drumming under the direction of Mantle Hood (1991). He directed the Balinese gamelan programme at the University of Maryland while a student there (1988–91), and since that time has taught gamelan at the University of Montreal (...

(b Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, Oct 27, 1952). Bulgarian composer, pianist, harpsichord player, and pedagogue. He graduated in piano (under Prof. Sturshenov) in 1977 and in composition under Prof. Hadzhiev. He continued with postgraduate studies under Yvonne Lefébure, Zuzana Růžičková (1983), and Milan Schlechta (1977). He is a prize winner from the A. Casagrande International Piano Competition in Terni, Italy (1976), and holder of the third prize in the piano duo category (1980). He is a keen performer of 17th- and 18th-century music as well as of 20th-century works.

He is a professor of composition (2000) and has also served as Dean of the Faculty of Instrumental Music at the National Music Academy in Sofia (1993–9). He is a composer with an individual style in the sphere of tonal and modal experimentation that combines folklore and features of the contemporary instrumental score. His Piano Concerto no.2 was awarded a prize at the New Music Festival in St Petersburg (...

(b Brockton, MA, USA, Nov 4, 1925). Albanian tenor and pedagogue. Born in the large Albanian immigrant colony in New England (USA), Athanasi returned as a child to his parents’ hometown of Korça, where he participated in its vibrant prewar choral, theatre, and sports scenes. During World War II, he performed with resistance groups singing patriotic and partisan songs and, in 1948, he was selected as a soloist in the newly formed National Army Ensemble by director Gaqo Avrazi. Athanasi was among a handful of young men in this ensemble to receive a scholarship to study in the Soviet Union, and following the completion of his degree in vocal performance at the Moscow State Conservatory in 1958, he was appointed soloist at Tirana’s Theatre of Opera and Ballet. He performed leading roles in premières of Albanian operas, and was active as a recitalist, performing a broad range of art music works from the Western European and Albanian repertories as well as arranged folk songs into the 1980s. In ...

(b Kongsberg, Oct 22, 1948). Norwegian pianist. He gave his first recital in Oslo at the age of 15 and later studied in Paris, New York, Munich and London. In 1970 he became the first non-French pianist to win the Concours National de la Guilde Française des Artistes Solistes in Paris, and he gained international attention in 1971 when he won the Olivier Messiaen Competition for contemporary music. Austbö’s repertory is large and exceptionally wide-ranging, but he has won particular renown for his playing of Skryabin and Messiaen both in concert and on disc. A gifted and dedicated teacher, he joined the piano faculty at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht in 1980, and that of the Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam, in 1994. His playing combines a broad tonal palette with an acute and flexible rhythmic profile and is notable alike for its emotional range and its penetrating intellectual command....

(b Bolzano, Jan 15, 1967). Italian bassoonist and teacher. After studying with Romano Santi in Bolzano from 1978 to 1985, he spent four years in Hanover with Klaus Thunemann. Following success in various international competitions and a brief spell as an orchestral player, he embarked on what has been a spectacular career as soloist, teacher and chamber artist. At the age of 22 he was appointed professor at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule, exchanging this for a similar appointment in Basle in ...

(Nathaniel)

(b Indianapolis, IN, Dec 21, 1931; d Bloomington, IN, March 26, 2016). American composer and jazz cellist. He received both the BME (1953) and MME (1954) degrees from Indiana University and studied privately with J.J. Johnson, Bob Brookmeyer, George Russell, Janos Starker, John Lewis, and Gunther Schuller, among others. Unable to play the trombone professionally following a 1953 accident, Baker turned exclusively to the cello and pioneered the use of that instrument in jazz with such artists as Maynard Ferguson, Quincy Jones, George Russell, John Montgomery, and Lionel Hampton. He taught at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, at Indiana Central University, Indianapolis, and in the Indianapolis public schools. In 1966 he joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he served as Distinguished Professor of Music and Chairperson of the Jazz Department. At IU, he established the 21st-Century Bebop Band, a student group dedicated to the preservation of bebop literature. He received honorary doctorates from Wabash College, Oberlin College, and the New England Conservatory of Music. In ...

(b São Paulo, Brazil, Dec 17, 1944; d Paraty, Brazil, Feb 23, 2022). Brazilian guitarist, arranger, and teacher. Barbosa-Lima performed for over 50 years in important venues around the world. He started playing the guitar at age 7 and two years later began studying with Isaías Sávio, one of the foremost guitar teachers in Brazil. His concert career started with his debut in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro at age 13. After his successful 1967 concert tour in the United States, he received scholarships to participate in Andrés Segovia’s 1968 masterclasses in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He produced more than 40 recordings, with a repertoire ranging from classical and contemporary music to jazz and Brazilian popular music, and published books on guitar techniques and repertoires in collaboration with John Griggs. He also published and recorded works dedicated to him by composers such as Guido Santórsola, Francisco Mignone, and Alberto Ginastera. His transcriptions and performances of works by Domenico Scarlatti, Claude Debussy, George Gershwin, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Scott Joplin, and Stephen Sondheim are remarkable for their clarity of textures, in which the melody and bass lines are clearly distinguished from countermelodies and harmonies. Formerly a member of the guitar faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, he conducted masterclasses throughout the world. He published several books on guitar techniques and repertoires in collaboration with John Griggs....

(b Bronx, NY, Dec 15, 1932; d San Rafael, CA, Feb 22, 2023). American composer, writer, and performer. After gaining the BA (1954) from Queens College, CUNY, she studied composition with Fine, Shapero, and Arthur Berger at Brandeis University (MFA 1956, PhD 1971) and with Blacher at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1956–7). She taught at various colleges and universities before joining the composition and theory faculty at UCLA (1974), where she remained until 1994. For three decades she was a major contributor and adviser to Perspectives of New Music; she also wrote extensively on 20th-century music for other journals. In her compositions as well as her writings and presentations she gave attention to women and gender issues.

In about 1978 Barkin turned from using 12-note and serial techniques to explore compositional processes involving collaboration, interactive performance, and improvisation. In notes written about her ...