Search Results

(Alexandrovich)

(b St Petersburg, Russia, 16/29 Oct 1901; d Rome, Italy, 7 June 1983). Italian composer and conductor of Russian origin. A grandson of the composer Nikolay Sokolov and a brother of the cellist Massimo Amfitheatrof, he studied with Vītols in St. Petersburg and Křička in Prague, but the greater part of his training was undertaken in Rome, where he studied composition with Respighi at the Conservatorio di S Cecilia (diploma 1924) and the organ at the Pontifical Academy of Sacred Music. He was engaged as a pianist, organist, and chorus assistant at the Augusteo (1924–9), also conducting the orchestra under Molinari's supervision. Thereafter he was artistic director of the Genoa and Trieste radio stations and conductor and manager for Italian radio in Turin; he also conducted elsewhere in Europe. In 1937 he went to the United States as associate conductor of the Minneapolis SO, and in ...

(b Toronto, ON, 3 April 1918, d Toronto, ON, 20 April 2000). Canadian composer and arts administrator. He studied the piano with Boris Berlin, and theory and composition with Healey Willan, Ernest MacMillan, and Leonard B. Smith, before continuing composition studies with Roy Harris and Bernard Wagenaar in New York (1940–41). For the next eight years, Applebaum worked for the National Film Board of Canada, producing some 250 film scores. During this period he became increasingly concerned with improving the position of professional musicians in Canada. His combined interests in creative and socioeconomic development led to a career that influenced every aspect of Canadian music. During the 1960s he served as consultant for CBC television and chair of the planning committee for the National Arts Centre, Ottawa. His 1965 Proposal for the Musical Development of the Capital Region led to the formation of the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the University of Ottawa music department. Throughout the 1970s he served as executive director of the Ontario Arts Council and in ...

(b New York, NY, 19 April 1888; d Ukiah, CA, 13 Feb 1959). Composer and conductor. After private music study in Berlin, he conducted for Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company, which closed in 1910, and then for productions on Broadway. By 1921 he had become an assistant conductor at the Capitol Theater, where silent films were presented with full orchestral accompaniment; in 1923, in partnership with David Mendoza, he replaced Erno Rapée as principal conductor. In addition to conducting, he composed incidental film music for the Capitol as needed, including 57 pieces published in the Capitol Photoplay Series (New York, 1923–7). From 1925 to 1929 he collaborated with Mendoza in New York on compilation scores for at least 20 MGM films, beginning with The Big Parade. Their collaboration continued with the music for Don Juan (1926), the first feature film score to be presented using the Vitaphone process, which mechanically synchronized the playback of music recorded on wax discs with the projection of the film. In ...

(Seiko)

(b Seattle, WA, 9 July 1938). Composer. He studied composition with Robert Palmer (i) at Cornell University (MA in English literature 1961, DMA 1965), and continued his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1962–3), Ernst Pepping in Berlin (1965–6), and Gunther Schuller at the Berkshire Music Center (1966). He joined the faculty of UCLA in 1966 and was associate professor of music until 1976; during those years he founded and directed the Twice Ensemble, conducted the collegium musicum and was composer-in-residence for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (1971–4). He was Andrew Mellon Professor at the California Institute of Technology in 1975 and taught at the California Institute of the Arts (1976). In 1980 he became composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Ballet. He re-joined the UCLA faculty in 1996 and was Visiting Professor in 1999. He has written over 15 film scores and has worked as a consultant and arranger for stage musicals, including Duke Ellington's ...

(b Minneapolis, MN, 28 March, 1941). Composer for television, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator. Clausen grew up in Jamestown, ND, where he took up French horn and piano, as well as singing in school choirs. He attended North Dakota State University studying mechanical engineering before a summer in New York City, before being exposed to first-run Broadway musicals and other professional musical settings convinced him he should pursue music instead. He took up string bass and baritone sax and graduated with a degree in music in 1963, followed by a masters degree at Berklee College of Music.

After moving to southern California, his first high-profile professional gig was as an arranger for the second season of The Donny and Marie Show, and eventually conductor and music director for the show’s third season. He moved away from variety and into scripted drama with his work on Moonlighting; during this time he also scored the comedy series ...

(b Concord, NH, March 7, 1940; d Cheektowaga, NY, April 9, 2016). American filmmaker, composer, violinist, and media artist. He began playing violin in his youth and studied with Ronald Knudsen. He became fascinated with the physics of sounds and interested in intonation, the harmonic series, long-held tones, and the act of close listening. He attended Harvard University and received an AB in mathematics in 1962. While at Harvard he met Henry Flynt and Christian George Wolff and became involved with the post-Cagean avant garde based in New York. In 1959 Conrad met La Monte Young, who became a frequent collaborator in the mid-1960s. Conrad credited an encounter with the music of 17th-century composer and violinist Heinrich Ignaz Biber in the late 1950s with a profound transformation of his musical thinking, drawing his attention to variable tunings and the role of timbre as an aesthetic concern. Conrad’s exposure to the music of Ali Akbar Khan also heightened his interest in drones as a basis for musical performance....

(b New York, NY, 5 July 1912; d Rancho Mirage, CA, 30 Dec 1993). Lyricist and composer. He attended Cornell University for two years, then left to study law briefly at St. John's University, soon giving up these pursuits to follow his love for songwriting. He started writing lyrics for popular songs in the early 1930s, achieving his first major successes (1939–40) in partnership with André Kostelanetz. He subsequently wrote over 1000 songs, including many for film and television, receiving eight Academy Award nominations, the first in 1950 for his song “Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo” from the Walt Disney animated film of Cinderella. In the early 1950s he wrote songs with Jerry Livingston for three musicals for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; other collaborators have included Ellington, Bacharach, Basie, Gold, and Mancini. His composing style was flexible enough to produce hits for The Shirelles, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Judds as well as theme music for ...

(b Hartford, CT, 3 Aug 1906; d Los Angeles, CA, 26 Sept 1972). Conductor, composer, arranger, and film producer. He attended Loyola College, later studying with Joseph Schillinger and Ernst Toch. Beginning in 1927, he conducted Broadway musicals by several of its leading songwriters, including Schwartz (Flying Colors, 1932), Romberg (May Wine, 1935), Arlen (Hooray for What?, 1937), Porter (Leave it to Me, 1938), Kern (Very Warm for May, 1939), and Berlin (Louisiana Purchase, 1940). He also appeared frequently as a network radio conductor during the 1930s. He joined Paramount in 1941 and worked on several dozen films, variously as composer, arranger, conductor, or musical director, including Holiday Inn (1942), Lady in the Dark (1944), and Blue Skies (1946). He also served as producer for the lavish Paramount musicals White Christmas...

(b New York, NY, Aug 5, 1953). American composer and media artist. He studied film and video art at the State University of New York at Buffalo (MA 1976) and composition with Pauline Oliveros (1974), La Monte Young (1974–6), and finally Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University (MA 1982). He has directed and composed music for a number of his own ensembles, including the Orchestra of Excited Strings, the first iteration of which formed in 1979. Among the most rock-oriented of minimalist composers, he has experimented with performance techniques, explored original systems of tuning, and modified or created new instruments to achieve specific timbral effects. In 1984 he moved to Berlin, where he became composer-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Since arriving in Europe he has expanded his creative activities: staging multi-day performances (The Memory Projects, 1995–2001); creating installations such as From the Archives...

(Joseph)

(b Toronto, ON, 24 July 1917; d Guernsey, 23 April 2005). Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor. He began his career as a trumpet player in dance bands and later worked for Percy Faith's CBC Orchestra. By 1942 he had composed two symphonies, and in 1944 he came to Britain as conductor of the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force, alongside Glenn Miller and George Melachrino fronting the US and British bands. He took his army discharge in Britain, where Decca contracted him to work with their leading singers such as Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields; the BBC granted him a radio series with his own orchestra. He began composing for the cinema, and early successes out of some 40 scores included Spring in Park Lane, Maytime in Mayfair, and Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. The emergence of LPs provided orchestra leaders such as Farnon the opportunity to develop their arranging and composing talents more fully, and his Decca albums from the 1950s have become highly prized by admirers, especially fellow musicians in the United States. Many have acknowledged his influence, including John Williams, Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones, and Johnny Mandel. Farnon's light orchestral cameos are among the finest to have been written since World War II, notably ...

(William)

(b San Francisco, CA, 3 May ?1902; d Los Angeles, CA, 17 May 1981). American orchestrator and composer. He gave up early study towards an artistic career in favor of a musical training, first as a cellist, and then as an arranger and orchestrator. During the 1920s he studied with Domenico Brescia and worked as an arranger for theater and cinema orchestras, before joining Fox Studios in 1929 as an arranger for early sound film scores. These collaborative projects prepared him for his move to Warner Bros. in 1934 where he worked as principal orchestrator for Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner. He orchestrated 16 of Korngold's 17 original film scores, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940), and 54 of Steiner's 77 scores for Warner Bros. between 1936 and 1947, notably including Now, Voyager, which won the Academy Award in ...

(b Milan, Oct 22, 1929; d Parma, Italy, July 29, 2014). Italian composer, pianist, and conductor. Having studied the piano from a young age, he began to appear at the age of 13 as a conductor and orchestral pianist specializing in light music, and in jazz groups. After the war, while establishing himself as a jazz musician, he completed his studies of the piano, composition, and conducting at the Milan Conservatory (with, among others, Renzo Bossi, Antonino Votto, and Giulini) and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena (with Paul Van Kempen). Active for many years as a conductor of various musical groups and as a composer, his growing interest in jazz led him during the second half of the 1950s to attempt to combine jazz and classical music composition.

A key work was the octet Tempo e relazione (1957) – a piece in five movements based on two 12-note series – and from that point on Gaslini became recognized as a major figure of the Italian and wider jazz avant garde. His music continued to be characterized by a determination to integrate different idioms, including free jazz, serialism, pop, and electronics. Alongside this ‘multi-lingual’ approach, set apart from the American Third Stream, he made manifest a political commitment to working-class and student left-wing movements after ...

(b Baltimore, MD, 31 Jan 1937). American composer. Philip Glass is considered one of the founding figures of minimalist music. After studying at the University of Chicago (1952–6) and the Juilliard School (1957–62) he received a Fulbright scholarship that supported him to develop his craft with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1964–6). During this period, he served as Ravi Shankar’s music assistant for the film Chappaqua, which depicts the life of its director and protagonist, Conrad Rooks, and his struggles with drug addiction. On returning to the United States, Glass collaborated with the Chicago-based Kartemquin Film company on Inquiring Nuns and Marco (see Eaton, 2013). This period of soundtrack production was short-lived, however, as he later concentrated on concert music and opera, producing such key works as Music in Twelve Parts (1971–4) and Einstein on the Beach (1975–6)....

(b Vienna, Austria, 13 July 1921; d Santa Monica, CA, 17 March 1999). Composer of Austrian birth. He studied piano with his grandfather and violin with his father, later enrolling in the Vienna Music Academy. He immigrated with his family to the United States in 1938, where he studied harmony and orchestration with Otto Cesana and conducting with Leon Barzin at the National Orchestra Association, New York. Earning a living as an accompanist and song writer, his early hit “Practice Makes Perfect” (1940) was followed by “Accidentally on Purpose” and “They Started Something.” After settling in Hollywood in 1945 to work as an arranger, conductor, and composer in the film industry, he studied with George Antheil (1946–8) and conducted the Santa Barbara Civic Opera (1958–60). In 1964 he founded the Senior Citizens Orchestra, Los Angeles. He was the first film composer to have his name engraved on Hollywood's “Walk of Fame.”...

(b Salt Lake City, UT, 26 March 1907; d Long Beach, CA, 10 Dec 1969). Composer and conductor. He studied music at the University of Utah and took private piano and organ lessons with the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, J. Spencer Cornwall. After working for radio stations in his native city, he moved to California (1928), where he arranged music and conducted for radio stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. From 1932 to 1941 he worked for Walt Disney, writing for the Silly Symphony series and many other short films. He also composed for Disney's first two animated feature films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio; for the latter he won Academy Awards for best original score and best song (“When you Wish upon a Star”). After leaving Disney he worked at various studios (mainly RKO and 20th Century-Fox), composing, conducting, and arranging for more than 120 feature films and several television programs. Although sometimes typecast as a scorer of comedies, Harline was a skillful, imaginative, and often original craftsman, whose best work reveals a genuine dramatic flair. Two of his Disney scores, ...

[Leonard](George)

(b New York, NY, 13 Feb 1908; d Los Angeles, CA, 24 April 1971). Musical director, conductor, and arranger. He began his career as a pianist, playing and arranging for jazz artists, in particular for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in the late 1920s. His arrangements of classic songs for Whiteman, such as “Nobody's Sweetheart,” are considered among the finest of their era, blending jazz instruments with those of the traditional orchestra. His later arrangement of “Star Dust” provided a hit in the early 1940s for clarinetist Artie Shaw. In 1940 he became musical director for Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios before moving to Twentieth Century-Fox in 1953. He was involved in arranging scores for a number of films and musicals, including The Harvey Girls (1945) and The Pirate (1948); the arrangements reflect the complexity achieved in his work for Whiteman, although film music had only recently incorporated jazz into its idioms. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his work on several notable musicals, including ...

(b Haverstraw, NY, 25 Aug 1908; d Los Angeles, CA, 3 Feb 1980). Musical director, orchestrator, and conductor. His association with cinema music began as a young man with employment as a pianist and organist for a silent movie theater in Mechanicsville, New York. He became a protégé of Leo Forbstein, the first musical director at Warner Bros.’ studios, after helping with the scoring of the first sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927). He effectively served his apprenticeship with Warner Bros., rising through the music department as a performer and orchestrator-arranger. During this period he orchestrated for Max Steiner on Daughters Courageous (1939). When Forbstein retired in 1947, Heindorf succeeded him, remaining as head of the department until 1959, although he continued to conduct and arrange scores. He was nominated for 18 Academy Awards between 1942 and 1968 and received three: for the musical direction on ...

(Roy)

(b Los Angeles, 14 Aug 1953; d Santa Barbara, CA, 22 June 2015). American film composer and conductor. The son of the Bohemian American production designer Harry Horner, James Horner studied at the RCM, where his teachers included György Ligeti. He moved to California in the early 1970s and attended the University of the Pacific and then USC. He then earned the master’s degree in composition and music theory at UCLA, where he also taught music theory and worked on a doctorate; his professors included Paul Chihara. In 1978 Horner scored a series of films for the American Film Institute (including The Watcher), and in 1979 he began scoring feature-length films, including work for B-movie producer Roger Corman.

Horner often incorporates electronic elements, choral or solo vocal music (including wordless female voices), and Celtic and other ‘world music’ elements. He has scored a large number of science fiction and action films, and also many dramas and children’s films, totaling nearly one hundred feature film scores as of ...