David Firman is a British orchestral conductor, musical director, composer and arranger. [1]
David Firman is a British orchestral conductor, musical director, composer and arranger. [1]
Firman was born in London and educated at Trinity College of Music and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Organ Scholar. He graduated in English and Music. Whilst at Cambridge he was musical director of Footlights Dramatic Club.
Firman conducted the original West End productions of Jesus Christ Superstar , Evita , Cats , Chicago , Singing in the Rain , Dancin' , The Pirates of Penzance , Children of Eden , Phantom of the Opera , Enter the Guardsman , Metropolis. [2] [3] The reviewer for The Independent called Firman's orchestrations for Enter the Guardsman , "superb", noting that they "add(ed) colour to an elegant score in Jeremy Sams's neat production." [4] As a keyboardist he played on the recording sessions for Return of the Jedi, Superman, Supergirl, Medicine Man, First Blood, Rambo ll, Basic Instinct, Tombstone, DARRYL, and Total Recall. He conducted the soundtracks of Savage Islands, The Tall Guy, Rambo 3 (final reel), A Long Day Closes, and The Tie That Binds.
For television he acted as musical director and arranger for Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV , Dinnerladies , Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings , Bryn Terfel at Christmas , The Mike Doyle Show (3 series), Parkinson with Victoria Wood, and Victoria Wood BAFTA tribute. Firman was Principal Guest Conductor for the Danish Sinfonietta from 1990 until their dissolution in December 2014. He arranged and conducted many of their concerts and broadcasts, including performances with Tommy Körberg, Simply Red, Ray Davies, Katie Melua, Westlife, Shu-bi-dua, Stig Rossen, Inger dam Jensen, Jerry Hadley, Harolyn Blackwell, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Robin Gibb, Paddy Moloney, Sissel Kyrkjebo, Sir Christopher Lee, The Bootleg Beatles, Lars Lillholt, Jean-Michel Jarre and Elaine Paige. In London Firman conducted the annual concert series Night of a 1000 Voices at the Royal Albert Hall (director Hugh Wooldridge), and Chess in Concert with Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, Marti Pellow, Kerry Ellis, and Clarke Peters. Firman also conducts the Best of Broadway series at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and conducts the orchestra frequently in other venues. [3] [5]
He conducted the world premiere performances of Frozen - Live in Concert, [6] and the British premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean - Live in Concert, both at the Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, [7] and has also conducted Disney's Fantasia with the same orchestra, along with the European premiere of Beauty and the Beast - Live in Concert. He has conducted orchestras in Hanover, Singapore, Bangkok, Beijing, Ottawa, Sydney, Tokyo, Odense, Aalborg, Antwerp, [8] Aarhus, Stockholm, Rome, Barcelona, and Copenhagen. Firman composed the orchestral score for the ballet Kom Bamse, nu balletter vi! which is part of the repertoire for the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen.
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH was a British conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is a music organisation based in Liverpool, England, that manages a professional symphony orchestra, a concert venue, and extensive programmes of learning through music. Its orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, is the UK's oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra. In addition to the orchestra, the organisation administers the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company and other choirs and ensembles. It is involved in educational and community projects in Liverpool and its surrounding region. It is based in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, an Art Deco concert hall built in the late 1930s.
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra because of a new rule requiring players to give the orchestra their exclusive services. The LSO itself later introduced a similar rule for its members. From the outset the LSO was organised on co-operative lines, with all players sharing the profits at the end of each season. This practice continued for the orchestra's first four decades.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras.
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.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London, that performs and produces primarily classic works.
Sir Henry Joseph Wood was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works. The musical ensembles with which he was associated included the Ballets Russes, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Sargent was held in high esteem by choirs and instrumental soloists, but because of his high standards and a statement that he made in a 1936 interview disputing musicians' rights to tenure, his relationship with orchestral players was often uneasy. Despite this, he was co-founder of the London Philharmonic, was the first conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic as a full-time ensemble, and played an important part in saving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from disbandment in the 1960s.
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert Newman together with Henry Wood. The hall had drab decor and cramped seating but superb acoustics. It became known as the "musical centre of the [British] Empire", and several of the leading musicians and composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries performed there, including Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss.
André Cluytens was a Belgian-born French conductor who was active in the concert hall, opera house and recording studio. His repertoire extended from Viennese classics through French composers to 20th century works. Although much of his career was spent in France, he was the first French conductor at Bayreuth in 1955; he also conducted The Ring and Parsifal at La Scala.
Christian Badea is a Romanian-American opera and symphonic conductor.
Albert Louis Wolff was a French conductor and composer of Dutch descent. Most of his career was spent in European venues, with the exception of two years that he spent as a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and a few years in Buenos Aires during the Second World War. He is most known for holding the position of principal conductor with the Opéra-Comique in Paris for several years. He was married to the French mezzo-soprano Simone Ballard.
Gavin Sutherland is a conductor, composer/arranger, pianist and musicologist. He is currently Principal Guest Conductor for English National Ballet.
John Wilson is a British conductor, arranger and musicologist, who conducts orchestras and operas, as well as big band jazz. He is the artistic director of Sinfonia of London.
Martin Yates is a British conductor. After attending Kimbolton School, he studied at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music, London, where his teachers included Bernard Keeffe (conducting), Richard Arnell (composition), Ian Lake, Jakob Kaletsky and Alan Rowlands (piano), and Douglas Moore and John Burden.
Iain Sutherland is a British conductor. In 1966 he was appointed Conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra) in Glasgow. Previously he had been an orchestral and session violinist in London playing in the LPO, Philharmonia, RPO and ECO under such conductors as Boult, Sargent, Groves, Solti and Klemperer. Sutherland was the conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra until a major restructuring was initiated by BBC in 1972 to reduce its coverage of "light" music, in favour of "pop" music. His remit with the BBC SRO included TV as well as Radio. He was Musical Director for many Light Entertainment series with Stanley Baxter, Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson and Andy Stewart The orchestra was officially closed in 1981.
Julian Seymour Clifford was an English conductor, composer and pianist particularly associated with the orchestras at Harrogate and Hastings, which he carried to a high level of accomplishment, introducing new works by English composers and encouraging soloists of national standing to perform in the provinces.
Kenneth Alwyn Wetherell was a British conductor, composer, and writer. Described by BBC Radio 3 as "one of the great British musical directors", Alwyn was known for his many recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra on Decca's first stereophonic recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. He was also known for his long association with BBC Radio 2's orchestral live music programme Friday Night is Music Night, appearing for thirty years as a conductor and presenter, and for his contribution to British musical theatre as a prolific musical director in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and married the actress Mary Law in 1960. His website and the first volume of his memoirs A Baton in the Ballet and Other Places were both published in 2015. The second volume Is Anyone Watching? was published in 2017.
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.
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