Anis Fuleihan (April 2, 1900 - October 11, 1970) was a Cypriot-born American composer, conductor and pianist. [1]
A native of Kyrenia, Fuleihan belonged to a Christian Lebanese family; he attended the English School in that town before coming to the United States in 1915. [1] He settled in New York City, taking further piano lessons with Alberto Jonas; he also taught himself composition at this time. His debut of "Oriental Fantasies" at the Aeolian Hall in 1919 was well received. [2] He became a United States citizen in 1925. [1]
Fuleihan toured the US and the Middle East from 1919 until 1925, living for a time in Cairo before returning to the United States in 1928. [1] Resettling in New York, he began to compose music for ballets put on by various contemporary dance organizations; he also found work as a conductor for radio at this time. Beginning in 1932 he worked for G. Schirmer, continuing in this capacity until 1939. [1] In 1945 he began to teach at Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, [1] where composer Mary McCarty Snow was one of his students. [3] In 1953 he assumed the directorship of the Beirut Conservatory in Lebanon. [1] In 1962 he went to Tunis as part of a program organized by the State Department; [1] in 1963 he organized the Orchestre Classique de Tunis, remaining there until 1965. [1]
As a composer, Fuleihan attracted the attention of Eugene Goossens, who premiered his Mediterranean Suite, [1] and who assisted in his reception of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He obtained several commissions and teaching posts in the Middle East. [1] Fuleihan's music generally avoided serial structures, and was heavily influenced by Middle Eastern folk music. [1] One of his works is a concerto for theremin, premiered by the New York Philharmonic under Leopold Stokowski in 1945; [1] the soloist was Clara Rockmore. [4]
Fuleihan died in Palo Alto, California in 1970. [5]
Lev Sergeyevich Termen, better known as Leon Theremin, was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His secret listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.
The theremin is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer. It is named after its inventor, Leon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928.
Max Bruch was a German Romantic composer, violinist, teacher, and conductor who wrote more than 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a prominent staple of the standard violin repertoire.
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, was the only concerto Grieg completed. It is one of his most popular works, and is among the most popular of the genre. Grieg, being only 24 years old at the time of the composition, had taken inspiration from Robert Schumann's only concerto, also being in A minor.
Leopold von Auer was a Hungarian violinist, academic, conductor, composer, and instructor. Many of his students went on to become prominent concert performers and teachers.
Clara Reisenberg Rockmore was a Lithuanian classical violin prodigy and a virtuoso performer of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument. She was the sister of pianist Nadia Reisenberg.
The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a school of music in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.
Freiherr Hans Guido von Bülow was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. As one of the most distinguished conductors of the 19th century, his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, especially Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms. Alongside Carl Tausig, Bülow was perhaps the most prominent of the early students of the Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and conductor Franz Liszt; he gave the first public performance of Liszt's Sonata in B minor in 1857. He became acquainted with, fell in love with and eventually married Liszt's daughter Cosima, who later left him for Wagner. Noted for his interpretation of the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, he was one of the earliest European musicians to tour the United States.
Leo Salkeld Sowerby was an American composer and church musician. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1946 and was often called the “Dean of American church music” in the early to mid 20th century.
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.
Horacio Gutiérrez is a Cuban-American classical pianist known for his performances of works in the Romantic Repertoire.
Jacques Singer was an American virtuoso violinist, symphony orchestra conductor, and music educator who flourished from about 1925 until a few months before his death in 1980.
Dalit Hadass Warshaw is a New York-based composer, pianist, thereminist. Previously on the composition and music theory faculty of Boston Conservatory, she currently serves on the composition faculty at Juilliard and CUNY-Brooklyn College. Her works have been performed by dozens of orchestral ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Y Chamber Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. In April 2006, her piece After the Victory for orchestra and chorus, was premiered by the Grand Rapids Symphony and the North American Choral Company. Her first recording, entitled "Invocations" was released by Albany Records in 2011. Her first piano concerto, Conjuring Tristan, was commissioned by the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2014. The work was inspired by Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, as well as by Thomas Mann's novella Tristan. The piece received its world premiere in January 2015, with Warshaw as the soloist.
Nadia Reisenberg Sherman was an American pianist of Lithuanian birth.
Michael Dalmau Colina is a Grammy-winning American musician, composer, producer and engineer. He has written music for television, film, theatre, dance and live performances on concert stages throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. Colina is best known as producer and writer on recordings for musicians Bob James, David Sanborn, Michael Brecker, Marcus Miller, Bill Evans and Michael Franks. He has won three gold albums, has received four Grammy Award nominations, and won three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
Robert Sherman was an American radio broadcaster, author, music critic, and educator. He achieved success as a host of such radio programs as the folk music show Woody's Children, which started on WQXR and was later broadcast by WFUV, and classical music shows The Listening Room and Young Artists Showcase, which were broadcast by WQXR in New York City. As an author, he was a music critic and columnist for The New York Times for more than forty years as well as a writer of numerous books, including two bestsellers he co-authored with pianist and comedian Victor Borge. In May 2023, Sherman retired from radio. A month later, he died at age 90.
Albert Glinsky is an American composer and author. His music has been performed internationally by soloists, ensembles, and dance companies. His book, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage won the 2001 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, and is regarded as the standard work on the life of Leon Theremin. In 2009 Glinsky was invited by the family of synthesizer pioneer, Bob Moog, to create Moog's biography. Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution, with a Foreword by Francis Ford Coppola, was released by Oxford University Press on September 23, 2022.
Us Conductors is a debut novel by Canadian writer Sean Michaels. Published in 2014 by Random House in Canada and Tin House in the United States, the novel is a fictionalized account of the relationship between Léon Theremin, the inventor of the theremin, and Clara Rockmore, the musician regarded as the instrument's first virtuoso player.
Thorwald Jørgensen is a Dutch classical musician who specialises in the theremin, an electronic musical instrument.
The Woman's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago was an American orchestra based in Chicago. In addition to its regular radio broadcasts which spanned 1925–1948, the Woman's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago also toured.
7. Concerto for Theremin & orchestra Composed by Anis Fuleihan ... with Clara Rockmore