Saturday, November 11, 2023 | Composer of the Week

Duke (Edward Kennedy) Ellington (“DUKE  EH-ling-ton”)

• Born in Washington, D.C. USA, 1899
• Died in 1974 at age 75
• Jazz Composer, Pianist and Band Leader

Compositions Include:

• Soda Fountain Rag, composed at age 15
• Mood Indigo
• Satin Doll
• It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQpZT3GhDg
• Black, Brown, and Beige which was a jazz symphony

Other Details:

• Began piano lessons at age 7; did not take his lessons seriously and liked playing baseball better
• When a bit older, got to hear professional pianists play ragtime music in Washington D.C., which made him try harder at music
• Moved to NYC in 1920s & started his own band
• Thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn,
• Ellington usually directed his band from the piano and rarely used a conductor’s baton
• Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969

Saturday, November 4, 2023 | Composer of the Week

Maurice Ravel  (“mah-REECE   ruh-VELL”)

• Born in France, 1875
• Died in 1937 at age 62
• Impressionism Period

Compositions Include:

• Bolero, originally composed as a ballet for orchestra, first performed at the Paris Opera in 1928
• Mother Goose Suite, originally composed for one piano, four hands; Ravel later notated it for orchestra
• Le tombeau de Couperin – a suite of six dances in Baroque forms, each one dedi­cated to a victim of World War I (WWI)
• Daphnis and Chloe – a ballet 
• Jeux d’eau – for piano solo 
• Piano Concerto for the left hand, composed for pianist Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right hand while fighting in WWI 
• Piano Concertos in D and G major 
• Sonatina – for piano solo

Other Details:

• entered Paris Conservatory at age 14
• Mother was Spanish, father was French 
• Ravel and his broth­er Edouard served in the military during WWI
• Orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, originally for piano solo
• Took composition lessons from French composer Gabriel Fauré
• Did not see himself as an Impressionistic composer, and thought that term only applied to visual artists

Saturday, October 28, 2023 | Composer of the Week

Igor Stravinsky  (“EE-gore   struh-VIN-ski”)

• Born in Russia, 1882
• Died in 1971 at age 88
• Modern Period

Compositions Include:

• Ballet: Firebird Suite
• Ballet: The Rite of Spring
• concertos
• symphonies

Other Details:

• Stravinsky’s father one of the leading Russian operatic basses of his day
• Igor studied law and philosophy at St. Petersburg University (graduating in 1905)
• In 1902 he showed some of his early pieces to composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rimsky-Korsakov was sufficiently impressed to agree to take Stravinsky as a private pupil, while at the same time advising him not to enter the conservatory for conventional academic training
• At the first performance of the ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, the audience was so unsettled that it provoked one of the more famous first-night riots in the history of musical theatre: Stirred by the unusual and suggestive choreography and Stravinsky’s creative and daring music, the audience cheered, protested, and argued among themselves during the performance, creating such a clamor that the dancers could not hear the orchestra
• Disney used "The Rite of Spring" in the movie Fantasia
• Disney movie Fantasia 2000 used music from "Firebird Suite"
• In 1940, Stravinsky was arrested in Boston because he wrote an arrangement of "The Star Spangled Banner" with different harmonies. Boston had a law at the time forbidding this. He was soon released
• During World War II, he moved to the United States and eventually became a U.S. citizen
• Received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame