Album of the week: Anna Bon Di Venezia, by Drama Musica, Vladimir Soares & Fabian Grosch

Our new ALBUM OF THE WEEK is...

Anna Bon Di Venezia, 

by Drama Musica, Vladimir Soares & Fabian Grosch

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Happy listening!

About the album:

Anna Bon di Venezia is a fascinating figure among women composers in the 1700’s. Among the rarity of women composers, she is an enigma because not much is known of her.

Her only biography is available from the frontispieces and from the dedications of the only three works printed by her and published between 1756 - the year Mozart was born, and 1759 at the "Vedova di Baltas Schmidt in Norimerga".

Vladimir Soares and Fabian Grosch perform the the six sonatas for flute op. 1 composed by Anna in 1756 at the age of 16. Anna Bon made herself heard offor the first time with this publication. Each of the sonatas is in three movements: a fast centre movement is framed by a slow introductionand a slow closing movement. This formal pattern shows more German than Italian influence. Stylistically, the sonatas are best perhaps comparable to works by J. J. Quantz and C. Ph. E. Bach, musicians at the Prussian court of Friedrich the Great, where Anna Bon stayed as a child.

Read more and buy the album here

SEPTEMBER 16

NAGAKO KONISHI - JAPAN

Born 16 September

More about her

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CANARY BURTON - USA

Born 16 September

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 Check here last year's composers of the day

16 SEPTEMBER 2019

NADIA BOULANGER - FRANCE

BORN 16 SEPTEMBER

Juliette Nadia Boulanger  was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She is notable for having taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century. She also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist.

From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her male students were those who became leading composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Astor Piazzolla, Quincy Jones, and Michel Legrand. Her female students included Grażyna Bacewicz, Louise Talma and Elaine Bearer.

Boulanger taught in the US and England, working with music academies including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Longy School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92.

Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Hallé, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia orchestras. She conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky.

Source: Wikipedia and Open Culture

♫ LISTEN

3 Pieces for Cello and Piano by Nadia Boulanger

➺ Find out more scores from Nadia Boulanger.

PERI MAUER - USA
BORN 16 SEPTEMBER

Hailed as an “irrepressibly tuneful composer” by New York Music Daily/Lucid Culture, composer Peri Mauer has written works for solo instruments, chamber music ensembles, orchestra, and theater. A native New Yorker, she holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music and Bard College, and is a graduate of the High School of Music and Art. Her music has received performances in Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Bargemusic’s Here and Now Winter and Labor Day Festivals, New York Composers Circle Concerts of New Music at Symphony Space, LeFrak Performing Arts Center, St. Peter’s Church and St. Mark’s Church, Music With A View Festival at the Flea Theater for which she also served as cellist and conductor, Composers Concordance Composers Play Composers Festival, Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music in Bowdoin, ME, NYU Composers Forum, among others. Her commissioned orchestral work All Along the Heights was recently premiered by the Jackson Heights Orchestra to critical acclaim. 

She also recently received a commission from the Music Department of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts to compose a piece for the LaGuardia Junior Band, resulting in her symphonic band work Red Sky. 

She was honored to be a featured composer in the 2017 Composers Now Festival which took place during the month of February 2017. Scholastic awards include a National Collegiate Music Prize and membership into Pi Kappa Lambda, the National Honor Society of Music.

Also a professional cellist, Ms. Mauer has worked with such groups as American Symphony Orchestra, Encompass New Opera Theater, Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, Darmstadt Ensemble, Orchestra of St. Peter by the Sea, NYU Contemporary Players, American Chamber Opera, Gateway Classical Music Society, The Chelsea Symphony, Playwrights Horizons, New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, among many others, and can be seen playing her cello in the Golden Globe and Emmy winning Amazon TV series Mozart in the Jungle.

Source: New Musicusa

♫ LISTEN

Thoughts Torsion by Peri Mauer

➺ Find out more about Peri Mauer