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(b Sydney, Feb 8, 1947). Australian singer. She first studied piano. From 1968 to 1971 she sang with a cooperative group, the Affair, touring Australia and England, after which she joined the Daly–Wilson Big Band and worked as a studio musician and in cabaret. In 1973–4 she toured North America, where she appeared on television and performed with her ensemble Compared to What. Following her return to Australia she presented her own radio program, “Kerrie Biddell and Friends,” for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. During the 1970s she recorded three albums as a leader. In 1982 she formed a duo with the pianist Julian Lee and joined the faculty of the New South Wales Conservatorium in Sydney to teach jazz. She remained active through the 1990s. Biddell possesses a powerful voice with an uncommonly wide range and is a gifted improviser; she may be heard to particular advantage on the track ...

(b Vera de Bidasoa, Navarre, April 4, 1895; d San Sebastian, May 1976). Spanish.tenor . He studied at the Parma Conservatory and in 1920 made his début at Madrid in Samson et Dalila, subsequently creating a strong impression in the world première of Guridi’s Amaya at Bilbao. His first Wagnerian role was Siegmund in ...

(Thomas )

(b Hollywood, CA, April 13, 1945; d Arlington, VA, June 29, 1979). American Rock singer, songwriter, guitarist, and leader of the group Little Feat.

Georgia, University of. State university founded in Athens in 1785. The university’s current enrollment exceeds 34,000 students. The Department of Music was established in 1928 with the hiring of alumnus Hugh Hodgson as the first professor of music, and was later named the Hodgson School of Music. The first degree programs were established between 1930 and 1941. Currently the school offers the BA and BM in composition, education, therapy, performance, and theory, and a certificate program in music business. Graduate degrees include the MA, MM, MME, EdS, DMA, EdD, and PhD in musicology, composition, conducting, performance, music literature, education, theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology. In 2009 enrollment reached 450 students (300 undergraduates, 150 graduate students) guided by a faculty of 65. The Music Library holds over 130,000 titles, including the archival collections of Guido Adler, ...

[Rhodes (née Guy), Helen M.]

(b Château Hardelot, nr Boulogne, c1858; d London, Jan 7, 1936). French composer, pianist and singing teacher. She was the daughter of an English sea captain and the singer Helen Guy. At the age of 15 she was taken to Paris, where she studied at the Conservatoire under Renaud Maury, and success came in her early 20s with the song Sans toi (words by Victor Hugo). Gounod and Massenet were among those who encouraged her in composition, and those who introduced her songs included Nellie Melba, Victor Maurel and Pol Plançon, as well as Emma Calvé, with whom she went to the USA in 1896 as accompanist. After marrying an Englishman she settled in London, where she continued to produce sentimental songs, about 300 in all, notable for their easy melody and typical dramatic climax. They include Three Green Bonnets (H.L. Harris; 1901), Because (E. Teschemacher; ...

(b Vienna, Aug 28, 1901; d Toronto, Jan 10, 1994). Canadian soprano . She studied at the Neues Konservatorium in Vienna with Victor Fuchs. Her début was in Teplice in 1930 as Elsa in Lohengrin, after which she appeared in Brno, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Munich, Philadelphia, Prague and San Francisco. In ...

(b New York, NY, Jan 29, 1939; d Tijuana, Mexico, Oct 25, 2000). American jazz singer, lyricist, composer–improviser, multidisciplinary artist, and educator. During her 40-year career she performed internationally and recorded more than 40 albums, working with such artists as Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Enrico Rava, Andrew Cyrille, Roland Kirk, Jimmy Lyons, Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, Cecil Taylor, and Reggie Workman. Her vocal style reflects the influence of early mainstream jazz vocalists, including Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, and the intellectualism of postwar avant-garde jazz and experimental music. Starting in the 1960s Lee forged a new path in multidisciplinary performance that fused the aesthetics of modern dance, vocal improvisation and sound poetry (intonation, non-verbal utterances, and vocalizations), and visual arts (paintings, slide projections, and film). In the 1970s she established Earthforms Rituals, a nonprofit corporation that promoted concerts and educational programs. She also completed an MA in education at New York University in ...

(b Harrisburg, PA, March 2, 1921; d Westport, CT, Sept 16, 2017). American singing actress, producer, stage director, and teacher. Possessing a wide range of performing skills, she was known for undertaking challenging operatic roles such as Birdie and Regina in Mark Blitzstein’s Regina (1949, 1953, and 1958) and Lizzie in Jack Beeson’s Lizzie Borden (1965). She worked on Broadway, in light opera, on radio and television, and at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Lewis attended Penn State University and was encouraged by its Glee Club director to audition for a scholarship at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she went on to study with Emilio de Gogorza. After her teacher suddenly left the Institute, Lewis auditioned and made her debut with the Philadelphia Opera Company at the age of 19 in the role of the Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. A remarkably quick study, Lewis absorbed music and words in any language almost on the spot, a gift to which she attributed most of her early success. In ...

(b New York, April 21, 1880; d New York, Sept 25, 1970). American soprano and teacher. Trained in Paris by Mathilde Marchesi and in Berlin by Selma Nicklass-Kempner, she made her début at the Dresden Hofoper in the title role of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the age of 18. She then sang with the Stuttgart Opera and at the Opéra-Comique, and appeared three times at the Metropolitan Opera (...

[Pasmore, Harriet Horn ]

(b San Francisco, CA, May 12, 1892; d Sonoma, CA, Jan 25, 1986). American Contralto, teacher, and music therapist. After attending the University of California, Berkeley (BA, French, 1914), she taught piano and then voice at Pomona College in Claremont, California (1914–20). After study and concert performances in Europe (1920–25) she returned to the United States and performed and taught privately in New York (1925–35) and Hollywood, California (1936–40). During the 1930s Pazmor was noted for her performances of contemporary American art songs. Her programs regularly included works by Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, John Cage, Ernst Bacon, Ruth Crawford, Roger Sessions, Lou Harrison, Aaron Copland, and William Grant Still. She gave recitals for organizations such as the League of Composers and the Pan American Association of Composers, and at academic institutions including the New School for Social Research, Columbia University, Princeton University, and Harvard University. She studied music therapy at Boston University (MM ...

(Ferrée )

(b New York, NY, Feb 18, 1943). American composer, opera singer, and educator. She studied literature and music at Columbia University, earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Her primary voice teachers were soprano Helen Merritt and Marina Ahmed Alam, a Hindustani raga singer. She studied composition with vladimir Ussachevsky, whom she first encountered in an undergraduate counterpoint course, and otto Luening. Ussachevsky eventually taught her the methods he developed for studio electronics and became her principal supervisor. During her student years she collaborated with Ussachevsky on film and television scores, including Line of Apogee and Incredible Voyage, which combined pure electronic and concrète sound sources; Shields also embraced this approach for many of her electronic music-theater pieces and operas. Her DMA in composition was conferred in 1975 with the completion of the third segment of a tripartite opera, begun in 1970, entitled The Odyssey of Ulysses the Palmiped...

(b Vienna, Dec 5, 1822; d Berlin, Feb 19, 1895). Austrian singer and teacher . The son of a bass singer, Kaspar Sieber (1796–1827), who appeared in theatres in Vienna, Berlin and elsewhere, he was a pupil of J. A. Miksch in Dresden and had some career as a singer in Detmold and other German cities before studying in Italy under Ronconi and Farini. He appeared in Spain, Russia and in Germany before settling in 1854 as a teacher and critic in Berlin, where he had great influence through his numerous publications. He composed songs and other works, especially solfeggi (of which he wrote 696). His didactic works include Völlständiges Lehrbuck der Gesangskunst (Magdeburg, 1858, 2 /1878), Die Aussprache des italienischen in Gesang (1860), Katechismus der Gesangskunst (1862, 6 /1903), a series of volumes Kurze Anleitung zum gründlichen Studium der Gesangskunst...

[née Silverman, Judith; Lovano, Judith Silverman]

(b Philadelphia, May 8, 1951). American singer. Her professional name is a combination of her maiden name and her married name. She studied education at Temple University, Philadelphia (BS 1974), and toured the USA and Europe in various modern dance groups (1972–6); from 1973 to 1975 she was an adjunct faculty member at Temple and at Antioch College, Ohio. She later studied arranging with Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Albam (both 1992–4) and performance with Barry Harris (1992–5). In 1976 Silvano moved to New York, where she continued to work as a dancer. In 1981 she began performing with Joe Lovano, whom she married, and Kenny Werner, and from 1982 to 1987 she and Lovano led the Windance Ensemble, which combined jazz and modern dance. From the late 1980s she recorded and toured with a number of Lovano’s groups, notably World Ensemble (from ...