The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel, the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.
The balafon is a gourd-resonated xylophone, a type of struck idiophone. It is closely associated with the neighbouring Mandé, Senoufo and Gur peoples of West Africa, particularly the Guinean branch of the Mandinka ethnic group, but is now found across West Africa from Guinea to Mali. Its common name, balafon, is likely a European coinage combining its Mandinka name ߓߟߊ bala with the word ߝߐ߲ fôn 'to speak' or the Greek root phono.
Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer and conductor.
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. was an American jazz composer, conductor, and musician from Indianapolis, as well as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Baker is best known as an educator and founder of the jazz studies program. From 1991 to 2012, he was conductor and musical and artistic director for the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit.
Menahem Pressler was a German-born Israeli-American pianist and academic teacher. He was known for his work with the Beaux Arts Trio that he co-founded in 1955, playing until its dissolution in 2008, in hundreds of recordings and thousands of concerts. He taught at the Indiana University Bloomington. His playing was described as focused on elegance, delicacy and clarity.
Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988–93), Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993), Jackie O (1997), Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band (1997), UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) and for Symphonic Band (2000), Bells for Stokowski from Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra (2001) and for Symphonic Band (2002), Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2003) inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003), Ghost Ranch for Orchestra (2005), Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra (2007), Labyrinth of Love for Soprano and Chamber Winds (2012), American Gothic for Orchestra (2013), and Tales of Hemingway for Cello and Orchestra (2015). Daugherty has been described by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear."
Daniel Dorff is an American classical musician and classical composer.
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.
Frank Ticheli is an American composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and concert band works. He lives in Los Angeles, California, where he is a Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California. He was the Pacific Symphony's composer-in-residence from 1991 to 1998, composing numerous works for that orchestra. A number of his works have become standards in concert band repertoire.
The National Theatre was opened in 1992 to spearhead the Theatre movement in Ghana by providing a multi-functional venue for concerts, dance, drama and musical performances, screenplays, exhibitions and special events. In Ghana, theatre as an artistic form has existed for centuries in the traditional dramatic expressions of society, however, the National Theatre Movement (NTM) was conceived around the time of Ghana's independence in 1957 to help remold the new nation's cultural identity. The theatre is governed by the National Theatre Law 1991, PNDC Law 259. The building houses the three resident companies of the National Dance Company, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the National Theatre Players.
Buselli–Wallarab Jazz Orchestra is a jazz orchestra consisting of seventeen pieces.
Simon Arthur Sargon was a composer, pianist, conductor, music educator, and major creative figure in contemporary American Jewish music. His compositions include liturgical and secular pieces; opera and musical theatre; works for youth ensemble; choral and art song; and chamber ensemble and symphonic works.
Skaila Kanga is a harpist and Professor Emerita of Harp at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After winning a Junior Exhibition to the Royal Academy of Music for piano, she switched to harp studies at age 17. She studied with Tina Bonifacio, Sir Thomas Beecham's harpist in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bernard Howard Gilmore was an American composer, conductor, French horn player, and Professor Emeritus of music at the University of California, Irvine. He is best known for his compositions, including Five Folk Songs for Soprano and Band which has become a reputable work in contemporary band music repertoire.
The gyile is a type of West African xylophone, with seventeen keys constructed over gourds. It holds a place in the musical traditions of the Dagara and Birifor people of northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso.
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.
Songs of Paapieye is the fourth album by Ghanaian musician SK Kakraba, released in October 2015 by Awesome Tapes From Africa, becoming the first album of original material released by the typically reissue-centred label. The album showcases Kakraba's mastery of the gyil, a type of wooden, 14-slatted xylophone originating from Kakraba's native Ghana that features a distinctive, buzzy rattle with a slow decaying sound caused by spiders egg sac silk walls pulled across the gourds' holes, known in Kakraba's Lobi language as pappieye, which gives the album its name. It is smoother in sound than his previous album Yonye and is fast-paced, showcasing complex, intricate rhythms, drones and dialogue between lower, buzzing basslines and higher, syncopated notes. Many tracks feature several modes and move between different sections.
SK Kakraba is a Ghanaian musician and performer of the country's traditional music. He makes and performs gyils, a xylophone containing 14 suspended wooden slats stretched over calabash gourds containing resonators. He was taught to build the instruments using a rare wood known by the Lobi as neura. Kakraba explained: "It's a very hard process, because you have to get the wood from five different places, only found in Ghana’s forests. The trees fall on their own and when they do, you cut them, dry the wood and lay the keys." LA Weekly has referred to Kakraba as the "world's greatest" xylophone player, and he has toured worldwide playing the gyil.
Alan Lourens is a classical musician, composer, euphonium player and conductor from Perth, Western Australia. He is the head of the UWA Conservatorium of Music.
The Arcady Ensemble is a Canadian musical ensemble based in Brantford, Ontario founded in 1998 by composer and artistic director Ronald Beckett. The organization serves as an arts training organization that combines professional singers and instrumentalists from Southwestern Ontario with emerging artists and youth in rehearsal and performance. Its repertoire consists primarily of contemporary Canadian compositions by Ronald Beckett and emerging composers. It holds performances entitled There’s a Song in the Air and Voices of Summer in Brantford each year. The ensemble evolved from a group that performed historically informed concerts of early music. Arcady Ensemble still gives at least two early music performances annually, including Handel's Messiah at Lighthouse Festival Theatre in Port Dover, Ontario. The organization's roster includes some 150 Canadian musicians in total.
