Alexej Gerassimez (born 1987 in Essen) is a German solo percussion player and composer.
Gerassimez was born in Essen, Germany. [1] His brothers are also musicians: Nicolai Gerassimez is a pianist and Wassily Gerassimez is a cellist. [2] He studied at the Cologne Conservatory of Music, the Berlin Conservatory and the Munich Conservatory of Music. [1]
In 2010 he won the TROMP Percussion Competition for solo percussion [3] as well as the Audience Award and the Press Prize. [4] In 2015 he took up a tutoring position at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in England. [3]
He has performed with orchestras in Europe including the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Bochum Philharmonic, as well as internationally in Japan, in the US with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, and in New Zealand. [3] [5]
In 2022 he performed the New Zealand premiere performance of New Zealand composer John Psathas's work Leviathan for orchestra and solo percussion. [5] The work takes its inspiration from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and was commissioned in 2020 by the Tonhall Düsseldorf and dedicated to Gerassimez. The premiere performance took place in 2021 with the Berlin Radio Symphony under Markus Poschner. [6] [7]
Gerassimez has made numerous recordings and CDs and is also a composer. [1]
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, having abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions. His best-known work is the orchestral piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the fame of which has eclipsed that of his other surviving works. Among these are the opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, his Symphony in C and Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, the Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau, and a ballet, La Péri.
Carl Adolph Schuricht was a German conductor.
John Stanley Body was a New Zealand composer, ethnomusicologist, photographer, teacher, and arts producer. As a composer, his work comprised concert music, music theatre, electronic music, music for film and dance, and audio-visual gallery installations. A deep and long-standing interest in the music of non-Western cultures – particularly South-East Asian – influenced much of his composing work, particularly his technique of transcribing field recordings. As an organiser of musical events and projects, Body had a significant impact on the promotion of Asian music in New Zealand, as well as the promotion of New Zealand music within the country and abroad.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
John Psathas, is a New Zealand Greek composer. He has works in the repertoire of such high-profile musicians as Evelyn Glennie, Michael Houstoun, Michael Brecker, Joshua Redman and the New Juilliard Ensemble, and is one of New Zealand's most frequently performed composers. He has established an international profile and receives regular commissions from organisations in New Zealand and overseas.
Hans Abrahamsen is a Danish composer born in Kongens Lyngby near Copenhagen. His Let me tell you (2013), a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, was ranked by music critics at The Guardian as the finest work of the 21st-century. His opera The Snow Queen was commissioned and premiered by the Royal Danish Theatre in 2019.
Wellington's Victory, or the Battle of Vitoria, Op. 91, is a 15-minute-long orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the Marquess of Wellington's victory over Joseph Bonaparte at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain on 21 June 1813 and the German campaign of 1813 in Germany thus ending the rule of Bonaparte's Confederation of the Rhine and the birth of the German Confederation. It is known sometimes as "The Battle Symphony" or "The Battle of Vitoria", and was dedicated to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. Composition stretched from August to first week of October 1813, and the piece proved to be a substantial moneymaker for Beethoven.
The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered in London on March 19, 1896, by the English cellist Leo Stern.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 by Camille Saint-Saëns was composed in 1868 and is probably Saint-Saëns' most popular piano concerto. It was dedicated to Madame A. de Villers. At the première on 13 May the composer was the soloist and Anton Rubinstein conducted the orchestra. Saint-Saëns wrote the concerto in three weeks and had very little time to prepare for the première; consequently, the piece was not initially successful. The capricious changes in style provoked Zygmunt Stojowski to quip that it "begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach."
Martin Berkofsky was an American classical pianist, known primarily for his interpretations of music by Franz Liszt and Alan Hovhaness.
Errollyn Wallen is a Belize-born British composer and musician.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
Vinko Globokar is a French-Slovenian avant-garde composer and trombonist.
String Quartet in Wellington formed in 1995 from the ranks of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. The players were: Liz Patchett & Janet Armstrong – violins, Peter Barber – viola, & Robert Ibell – cello. The group performed a varied repertoire and included in their programmes works by New Zealand composers Anthony Ritchie, John Psathas and Nigel Keay.
Richard Ayres is a British composer and music teacher.
Kati Ilona Agócs is a Canadian-American composer and a member of the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Marcel Wengler is a Luxembourg composer and conductor. From 1972–1997, he headed the Conservatoire de Luxembourg. Since 2000, he has been director of the Luxembourg Music Information Centre. His compositions include symphonies, concertos, chamber music and musicals.
Charlotte Bray is a British composer. She was championed by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been performed by many notable conductors such as: Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Daniel Harding, and Jac van Steen.
Emil Simon was a Romanian conductor and composer.
Wassily Gerassimez is a German cellist and composer.