Search Results

(b Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, ?Nov 28, 1844; d Havana, ?Dec 31, 1918). Pianist, music teacher, arranger, conductor, composer, and lawyer of Cuban birth, naturalized American. Born into a prominent family in Puerto Príncipe, Cuba (present-day Camagüey), Agramonte strongly supported the movement for independence from Spain. He studied music and the law in Cuba, Spain, and France. After vocal studies with Enrico Delle Sedie (1822–1907) and François Delsarte (1811–71) at the Paris Conservatory, he immigrated to the United States, settling in New York in 1869, where he remained until after Cuban independence in 1898. He became a US citizen in 1886.

In the 1870s and 1880s, Agramonte taught music at the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx. In the 1890s he taught with Dudley Buck and William Mason at the Metropolitan College of Music and ran his own School of Opera and Oratorio at his home, teaching singers such as ...

(b Oak Park, IL, May 3, 1954). American composer, conductor, educator, and author. Camphouse is one of the leading composers of works for wind band. He has served since 2006 on the faculty of George Mason University, where he conducts the Wind Symphony and teaches conducting and composition. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University, where his teachers included John Paynter (conducting), Adolph Herseth and Vincent Cichowicz (trumpet), and Alan Stout (composition).

He has composed more than 25 band works, including A Movement for Rosa; Whatsoever Things; Watchman, Tell of the Night; The Shining City; To Build a Fire; and Symphony from Ivy Green for soprano and wind orchestra. He conceived and edited the four-volume series Composers on Composing for Band. Camphouse is a member of the American Bandmasters Association and is a frequent guest conductor and clinician. He served as director of bands at Radford University (...

(b Dumfries, Scotland, April 21, 1933; d London, Feb 25, 2009). English trumpeter, flugelhorn player, bandleader, composer, writer, and teacher, brother of Mike Carr. His mother played ukulele and banjo. Carr grew up in northeast England, where he took piano lessons from the age of 12 and taught himself trumpet from 1950. After studying at King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne (1952–60, degree, English literature, diploma, education) he served in the army (1956–8), then played with his brother in a band, the Emcee Five (1960 – August 1962). He briefly joined Don Rendell in November 1962 and, after recovering from illness, formed a long-lived quintet with Rendell from 1963 to July 1969; during this period he also worked with Joe Harriott (recording in 1969), Don Byas, and John McLaughlin. In September 1969 he formed his own band, Nucleus, which rapidly became recognized internationally for its experiments with jazz-rock. As a result of its performance at the Montreux International Jazz Festival in ...

(b Melbourne, Australia, July 28, 1958). Australian drummer, percussionist, teacher, bandleader, and composer. He began playing professionally at the age of 12 and made his recording début with Brian Brown in 1976. The following year he was a founder of the fusion band Pyramid, following the breakup of which, in 1983, he moved to Sydney. There he worked with Don Burrows and taught at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music until 1993 (it became the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1990). He played with Lee Konitz in 1989 and worked with the pianist Mark Isaacs. In 1991 he formed AtmaSphere as a vehicle for his keen interest both in superimposed time signatures and in the meditative applications of music. It also provided an outlet for his cleverly conceived, virtuoso, and often comical solo playing. In 1995, with the pianist Kevin Hunt and Steve Hunter, he formed the trio Tree, and from ...

[Charles Frank ]

(b Rochester, NY, Nov 29, 1940). American jazz flugelhorn player, composer, and bandleader. While studying at the Eastman School (BMEd 1963) he recorded with his brother, the pianist Gap Mangione, for the Riverside label as the Jazz Brothers. With an early style that bore similarities to early Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, his work with bandleaders such as Woody Herman (1965), Maynard Ferguson (1965), and Art Blakey (1965–7), drew wider attention. Following a brief tenure on the Eastman faculty (1968–1972), Mangione concentrated on flugelhorn, and his work began to synthesize jazz elements, string arrangements, and a pop sensibility. Following the success of his album Land of Make Believe (1973, Mer.), he moved to Herb Alpert’s A&M label to record Bellavia (1975, A&M) and won his first Grammy Award, for Best Instrumental Composition, for its title track. He began to draw a large following with performances of catchy original melodies, particularly “Land of Make Believe” and “Feels So Good,” with simplified arrangements and a reduced improvisational element that attracted widespread radio airplay. Strong sales for a jazz artist, including an extraordinary two million copies of his album ...

(b Forest Lake, MN, Jan 12, 1929; d Jacksonville, FL, June 24, 1993). American euphonium player, educator, conductor, composer, and arranger. He learned piano from the age of three and brass instruments from the age of five. In 1946 he performed on euphonium and valve trombone. Two years with army bands (1950–52) were followed by studies on tuba and euphonium at the University of Iowa; he then taught high school in Durant, Iowa, and in 1957 moved to Las Vegas. There he performed on bass trumpet, played the tuba in a walking bass style with Bob Scobey (1958), and worked with the Dukes of Dixieland for two years (1959–61). In 1967 he conducted the Brothers Castro Big Band in Mexico City. He joined the faculty of North Texas State University in 1973. In 1976 he founded, with the tuba player Harvey Phillips, the Matteson–Phillips Tubajazz Consort, which consisted of three euphoniums, three tubas, and rhythm section. In ...

(b Ipswich, Dec 23, 1878; d Nutfield, Surrey, Dec 10, 1935). English composer, conductor, organist and teacher. He was an assistant to Sir Frederick Bridge, the organist of Westminster Abbey from 1897 to 1904. Sanderson was subsequently organist at various London churches before moving to Doncaster in 1904 to become organist at the parish church, a post he held until 1923. He also conducted the Doncaster Amateur Operatic Society (1910–35), the Doncaster Musical Society (1912–24) and the Doncaster Thespian Amateur Operatic Society (1922–31). His pupils at this time included the baritone Topliss Green, later to become Director of Singing Studies at the RCM. Sanderson went on to work for the publisher Cramer, examine for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and adjudicate at music festivals.

Most notably Sanderson composed songs, usually ballads, which became popular and are still performed: ...

(b Rome, Nov 20, 1946). Italian double bass player, leader, educator, and composer. A cousin of Giovanni Tommaso, he began to play free jazz in 1967 with Mario Schiano. In 1972 he studied jazz at the Conservatorio di S. Cecilia in Rome, from which he graduated in double bass in 1973 and where he later studied composition. In addition to his affiliation with Schiano, which continued until 1974, he worked as a sideman with Franco D’Andrea’s Modern Art Trio (1969–72), the quintet led by the trumpeter and flugelhorn player Cicci Santucci and the tenor saxophonist Enzo Scoppa (1970–72), Nunzio Rotondo’s group (1970–73), the pianist Martin Joseph (1973–4), Enrico Pieranunzi (1974–9), the quintet led by Dino Piana and Oscar Valdambrini (1978–9), and, most significantly, Giorgio Gaslini (1973–6). In the mid-1970s he began to conduct big bands, first at the Scuola Popolare di Musica del Testaccio in Rome (...