Pierre Benjamin Monteux was a French conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as an orchestral player and occasional conductor, he began to receive regular conducting engagements in 1907. He came to prominence when, for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company between 1911 and 1914, he conducted the world premieres of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and other prominent works including Petrushka, The Nightingale, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, and Debussy's Jeux. Thereafter he directed orchestras around the world for more than half a century.
Julius Baker was one of the foremost American orchestral flute players. During the course of five decades he concertized with several of America's premier orchestral ensembles including the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
The 2nd Armored Division was an armored division of the United States Army. The division played important roles during World War II in the invasions of Germany, North Africa, and Sicily and in the liberation of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. During the Cold War, the division was primarily based at Fort Hood, Texas, and had a reinforced brigade forward stationed in Garlstedt, West Germany. After participation in the Persian Gulf War, the division was inactivated in 1995.
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music. In 1944, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4, and received numerous other awards including the George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music in 1946.
Leon Botstein is a Swiss-American conductor, educator, and scholar serving as the President of Bard College.
Cultural diplomacy is a type of public diplomacy and soft power that includes the "exchange of ideas, information, art, language and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding". The purpose of cultural diplomacy is for the people of a foreign nation to develop an understanding of the nation's ideals and institutions in an effort to build broad support for economic and political objectives. In essence "cultural diplomacy reveals the soul of a nation", which in turn creates influence. Public diplomacy has played an important role in advancing national security objectives.
Peter Mennin was a prominent American composer, teacher and administrator. In 1958, he was named Director of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and in 1962 became President of the Juilliard School, a position he held until his death in 1983. Under his leadership, Juilliard moved from Claremont Avenue to its present location at Lincoln Center. Mennin is responsible for the addition of drama and dance departments at Juilliard. He also started the Master Class Program, and brought many artists to teach including Maria Callas, Pierre Fournier and others.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
World War II was the first conflict to take place in the age of electronically distributed music.
Henry Jay Lewis was an American double-bassist and orchestral conductor whose career extended over four decades. A child prodigy, he joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 16, becoming the first African-American instrumentalist in a major symphony orchestra and, later, the first African-American symphony orchestra conductor in the United States. As musical director of the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, he supported America's cultural diplomacy initiatives in Europe after World War II.
The Portland Symphony Orchestra was established in 1923 in Portland, Maine as the Amateur Strand Symphony Orchestra. Started by a small group of musicians who had sent out invitations to join their organization to people in the area, they had their first rehearsal the following year with 75 instrumentalists, giving their first concert a month later at the Strand Theater. In 1927 the orchestra changed its name to the Portland Municipal Orchestra, and again in 1932 to the Portland Maine Symphony. In 1969, the orchestra's name was changed to the Portland Symphony Orchestra, after that name became available when an older orchestra in Portland, Oregon, relinquished it in favor of a new name. Today the Portland Symphony Orchestra is recognized to be one of the top orchestras of its size in the country. The concert season runs from September to May and during July, and performs a variety of concerts in their home concert hall Merrill Auditorium.
John E. Ferritto was an American composer, conductor, and music professor.
John Browning was an American pianist known for his reserved, elegant style and sophisticated interpretations of Bach and Scarlatti and for his collaboration with the American composer Samuel Barber.
Alfredo Antonini was a leading Italian-American symphony conductor and composer who was active on the international concert stage as well as on the CBS radio and television networks from the 1930s through the early 1970s. In 1972 he received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Religious Programming on television for his conducting of the premiere of Ezra Laderman's opera And David Wept for CBS television during 1971. In addition, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1980
The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of Israel. Since the 1980s, the JSO has been based in the Henry Crown Symphony Hall, part of the Jerusalem Theater complex.
Williston Birkhimer Palmer was a United States Army four-star general who served as Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1955 to 1957; Deputy Commander in Chief, United States European Command from 1957 to 1959; and was the first Director of Military Assistance, 1959 to 1962. His brother, Charles D. Palmer, was also a four-star general, the first pair of brothers in United States Army history to achieve this, and his grandfather, William E. Birkhimer, was a brigadier general and Medal of Honor recipient.
Xanadu: The Marco Polo Musical is an original musical written and produced in 1953 by Seventh Army Special Services in Germany, the first of the numerous stage musicals, film musicals and songs inspired in part by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Kubla Khan with its opening lines:
The Symphony No. 2 in D-flat major, Opus 30, W45, "Romantic", was written by Howard Hanson on commission from Serge Koussevitzky for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930, and published by Carl Fischer Music.
United States Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF) is an Army Service Component Command (ASCC) /Theater Army responsible for directing United States Army operations throughout the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) area of responsibility.
Black conductors are musicians of African, Caribbean, African-American ancestry and other members of the African diaspora who are musical ensemble leaders who direct classical music performances, such as an orchestral or choral concerts, or jazz ensemble big band concerts by way of visible gestures with the hands, arms, face and head. Conductors of African descent are rare, as the vast majority are male and Caucasian.
