CLScapades http://cls.posterous.com City of London Sinfonia blog posterous.com Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:41:00 -0700 Spotlight on...Darius Milhaud http://cls.posterous.com/composer-focus-darius-milhaud http://cls.posterous.com/composer-focus-darius-milhaud

Our final CLoSer concert on Wednesday 25 April has a distinct jazz flavour to it and includes a performance of Darius Milhaud's jazz inspired La creation de monde. But who was this most prolific of twentieth century composers? Here's a quick snapshot:

Name
Darius Milhaud

Age
120 (if still alive today)

Nationality
French

Background
Born in France and spent time living abroad in Brazil during the First World War. When the Nazis occupied France early in World War II, Milhaud, a prominent Jew, was forced to flee to the US. He had developed severe rheumatoid arthritis, which often confined him to a wheel chair, which compounded the need to escape the Nazi regime. 

Darius_milhaud_crop
Known as..
A “member” of Les Six - an informal group of six composers working in Montparnasse, whose music came to be seen as a rejection of prewar impressionism, and particularly the musical style of Richard Wagner and the impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Repetoire
Wrote music for nearly every genre imaginable.  His major works span several ballets and operas, to more commercial film and theatre scores. He also composed twelve symphonies and eighteen string quartets.

CLoSer performance
La création du monde
The Creation of the World uses ideas and idioms from jazz, and was originally cast as a ballet in six continuous dance scenes. It tells the story of creation through African folk mythology. The piece is highly influenced by the then newly arrived American jazz scene.

Listen to La création du monde on our Spotify playlist.

CLoSer: Jazz Finale
Weds 25 April, 7.30pm
Village Underground, Shoreditch

Tkts: 020 7377 1362/spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk


 

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Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:17:00 -0800 Concert Focus: John Adams & Shaker Loops http://cls.posterous.com/concert-focus-john-adams-shaker-loops http://cls.posterous.com/concert-focus-john-adams-shaker-loops

Find out about the music behind the concert, with our quick guide to John Adams' Shaker Loops, to be performed at our first CLoSer concert on Tuesday 22 November. 

Shaker Loops
Written in 1978 by American composer John Adams, hailed as one of the great composers of minimalist music, Shaker Loops is one of his most popular and performed compositions.

Formed of four movements:

I. Shaking and Trembling
II. Hymning Slews
III. Loops and Verses
IV. A Final Shaking

Adams says of the piece "the four sections, although they meld together evenly, are really quite distinct, each being characterized by a particular style of string playing. The outside movements are devoted to ’shaking,’ the fast, tightly rhythmicised motion of the bow across the strings.

Portrait_2_small

image: Margaretta Mitchell

Part II is deliberately slower and languid followed by the melodic third movement, with "the celli playing long, lyrical lines (which are nevertheless loops themselves) against a background of muted violins, an activity which gradually takes speed and mass until it culminates in the wild push-pull section that is the emotional high of the piece.” 

The piece takes its name from both the distinctive 'shaking' of the strings as they oscillate between notes, and the image Adams’ had of ‘Shakers’ (members of the Millennial Church), dancing and worshipping to repetitive, energetic music.

John Adams occupies a unique position in American music, with his works renowned for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. His operatic works include Doctor Atomic and The Death of Klinghoffer and his composition On the Transmigration of Souls written for the New York Philharmonic to mark the first anniversary of the World Trade Centre attack, won three Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003.

He has said of London audiences "they are my ideal listeners - sophisticated, musically literate, enthusiastic and of course a little bit insane!"

Listen to our Spotify playlist for a preview of Shaker Loops.

CLoSer
Tuesday 22 November, 7.30pm
Village Underground, EC2A

Tickets: £15 (includes a free drink)
Box office: 020 7377 1362/spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk

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