Album of the Week #21: Women's Voices, by Elizabeth Maconchy, Nicola LeFanu, Hilary Tann, Eleanor Alberga, Barbara Jazwinski & Cecilia McDowall

Check out our new ALBUM OF THE WEEK! 

Each week, we will post a different album that will make your Wednesday way easier! This week, listen to:

Women's Voices, by Elizabeth Maconchy, Nicola LeFanu, Hilary Tann, Eleanor Alberga, Barbara Jazwinski & Cecilia McDowall

About the album:

Lontano Records Limited (Lorelt) presents the album "Women's Voices" with music by Elizabeth Maconchy, Nicola Lefanu, Hilary Tann, Eleanor Alberga, Barbara Jazwinski, and Cecilia McDowall. Performers include Jeremy Huw Williams (Baritone), Paula Fan (Piano, Harpsichord), Yunah Lee (soprano) Lauren Rustad Roth (violin), and Theodore Buchholz (cello). The Girl by the Ocean, by Barbara Jazwinski, features poetry of Maria Jazwinski, and is performed by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, who premiered the work in 2017. 

Source: American Composers Alliance

Get to know more about Eleanor Alberga, Hillary Tann, Elizabeth Maconchy and Nicola LeFanu on #Donne365

MAY 20

TSIPPI FLEISCHER - ISRAEL
Born 20 May

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EMMA JOHNSON - UK
Born 20 May

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 Check here last year's composers of the day

Album of the Week #17: Eleanor Alberga: String Quartets Nos. 1-3

Check out our new ALBUM OF THE WEEK! 

Each week, we will post a different album that will make your Wednesday way easier! This week, listen to:

Eleanor Alberga: String Quartets Nos. 1-3

About the album:

This work reunites pieces by Eleanor Alberga, a Jamaican composer. She started to compose at 10 years old and never stopped since then! After completing her studies, she performed as a concert pianist. In 2001 she ended her career as concert pianist to concentrate full-time on composition and was awarded a NESTA Fellowship.

STRING QUARTETS 1, 2 & 3 is a string quartet album like no other, taking listeners on a heart stopping journey through a composer’s richly creative mind and an ensemble’s cohesive, dynamic artistry. As the string quartet genre continues to evolve, one can be sure that Eleanor Alberga will remain at the forefront for years to come.

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APRIL 22

GUDRUN LUND - DENMARK
Born 22 April

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ELAINE ERICKSON - USA
Born 22 April

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 Check here last year's composers of the day

30 SEPTEMBER 2019

MONIC CECCONI BOTELLA - FRANCE

BORN 30 SEPTEMBER

Monic Gabrielle Cecconi-Botella (born 30 September 1936) is a French pianist, music educator and composer. She was born in Courbevoie and studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Maurice Duruflé, Jean Rivier and Henri Dutilleux. After completing her studies, she worked as professor of music theory at the Conservatoire of Aubervilliers. In 1983 became a professor of music analysis at the Paris Conservatoire.

In 1966 Cecconi-Botella won a First at the Grand Prix de Rome. Her opera Noctuaile won a Grand Prix du Disque French Academy. In 2008 she founded the Festival Seasons of the Voice in Gordes, Provence.

Cecconi-Botella explores multi-media arts in her compositions. Selected works include: Bucolique for flute and piano; Cérémonie for viola and piano; Noctuaile opera in two parts, libretto by René David; He Signed Vincent (about the life of Vincent van Gogh); The Woman of the Ogre, opera, book by Pierrette Fleutiaux and others.

Source: Wikipedia & Europeana

♫ LISTEN

Le Diplovegetaloordinatoanthropodocus by Monic Cecconi Botella

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ELEANOR ALBERGA - JAMAICA
BORN 30 SEPTEMBER

Eleanor Alberga (born 1949) is a Jamaican contemporary music composer. She decided at the age of five to be a concert pianist, though five years later she was already composing works for the piano.

In 1970 she won the biennial Royal Schools of Music Scholarship for the West Indies which she took up at the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying piano and singing. But a budding career as a solo pianist – she was was among the 3 finalists in the International Piano Concerto Competition in Dudley, UK in 1974 – was augmented by composition with her arrival at The London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1978. Under the inspirational leadership of its Artistic Director Robert Cohan, she became one of the very few pianists with the deepest understanding of modern dance and her company class improvisations became the stuff of legend. These in turn led to works commissioned and conceived for dance from the company, most notably the piano quintet CLOUDS (1984). Alberga later became the company’s Musical Director, conducting, composing and playing on all LCDT’s many tours.

The orchestral works, SUN WARRIOR (1990) written for the inaugural Women in Music Festival and her dramatic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES (1994) for large symphony orchestra and narrators, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in 1994 with Franz Welser Möst and the LPO, helped build her growing reputation.

Her works include Chamber music, both in the more traditional form of three String Quartets and a Piano Quintet, and for more unusual line-ups, abounds. An unfolding series of Nocturnes – notably, SHINING GATE OF MORPHEUS and SUCCUBUS MOON – featuring horn and oboe respectively with string quartet, is an expanding project. Works for voice have more recently come to the fore with a luminous setting of George Herbert’s THE GLIMPSE and most recently the song cycle THE SOUL’S EXPRESSION to poetry by George Eliot, Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Barret Browning; both premiered by the baritone Jeremy Huw Williams.

Alberga now lives in the Herefordshire countryside with her husband the violinist Thomas Bowes and together they have founded and nurtured an original festival – Arcadia.

Source: Wikipedia and Elleanor Alberga Official Website

♫ LISTEN

String Quartet n 1 by Eleanor Alberga

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