Dean Shostak | |
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 Dean Shostak playing his glass handbells. | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Williamsburg, Virginia, United States |
| Instrument | Crystallophone |
| Website | www |
Dean Shostak is an American crystallophone-player and violinist. He regularly performs his Crystal Concerts which consist of music played on his glass instruments, such as the glass violin, the glass armonica, [1] and the crystal handbells. [2]
Shostak began performing at age 14 in Colonial Williamsburg in the Music Teacher's Shop. He earned a B.A. in Music from the University of Virginia and learned to play the pocket or kit violin and the hurdy-gurdy. In 1991 he became involved in the revival of the glass armonica. He has performed throughout the United States and his music has been featured in notable programs such as NPR's All Things Considered , BBC's Good Morning Television , and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood . He has also written original scores for films for the National Park Service, City of Chattanooga, State of Tennessee, and the Norfolk Botanical Garden. Shostak currently lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife Valerie, and they have two daughters, and one son.
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols, may employ lyrics about the nativity of Jesus Christ, traditions such as gift-giving and merrymaking, cultural figures such as Santa Claus, or other topics. Many songs simply have a winter or seasonal theme, or have been adopted into the canon for other reasons.
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni was a German physicist and musician. His most important work, for which he is sometimes labeled as the father of acoustics, included research on vibrating plates and the calculation of the speed of sound for different gases. He also undertook pioneering work in the study of meteorites and is regarded by some as the father of meteoritics.
The Baschet Brothers were two French artists named François Baschet and Bernard Baschet who collaborated on creating sound sculptures and inventing musical instruments, such as the Cristal Baschet. François Baschet was a sculptor and Bernard Baschet an engineer. The Baschet Brothers invented the inflatable guitar, the aluminum piano and many other experimental musical instruments. They created an "Baschet Educational Instrumentarium" for exposing young people to musical concepts.
The glass harmonica, also known as the glass armonica, glass harmonium, bowl organ, hydrocrystalophone, or simply the armonica or harmonica, is a type of musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction. It was invented in 1761 by Benjamin Franklin.
Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor. He is currently music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
A handbell is a bell designed to be rung by hand. To ring a handbell, a ringer grasps the bell by its slightly flexible handle – traditionally made of leather, but often now made of plastic – and moves the arm to make the hinged clapper strike the inside of the bell. An individual handbell can be used simply as a signal to catch people's attention or summon them together, but handbells are also often heard in tuned sets.
"Carol of the Bells" is a popular Christmas carol, which is based on the Ukrainian New Year's song "Shchedryk." The music for the carol comes from the song written by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1914; the English-language lyrics were written in 1936 by Peter Wilhousky.
Noye's Fludde is a one-act opera by the British composer Benjamin Britten, intended primarily for amateur performers, particularly children. First performed on 18 June 1958 at that year's Aldeburgh Festival, it is based on the 15th-century Chester "mystery" or "miracle" play which recounts the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark. Britten specified that the opera should be staged in churches or large halls, not in a theatre.
Black Angels, subtitled "Thirteen Images from the Dark Land", is a work for "electric string quartet" by the American avant-garde composer George Crumb. It was composed over the course of a year and is dated "Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 " as written on the score. The Latin phrase in tempore belli, in time of war, written into the score by Crumb is a reference to the Vietnam War taking place at the time when Black Angels was composed.
The Cristal Baschet is a contemporary musical instrument developed in 1952 by the brothers Bernard and François Baschet. Models of the crystal organs range from 3.5 to 6 octaves and are made of 56 chromatically tuned glass rods. To play it, musicians rub the rods with wet fingertips.
Thomas Bloch is a classical musician specializing in the rare instruments ondes Martenot, glass harmonica, and Cristal Baschet.
Bradley Ellingboe is an American composer, conductor, and bass-baritone singer.
Dennis James is an American musician and historic preservationist. Beginning in 1969, he presented historically informed live accompaniments for silent films, with piano, theatre organ, chamber ensemble and full symphony orchestras, throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and overseas. He is now primarily active as a noted multi-instrumentalist, specializing on Franklin glass armonica and the theremin, prominently performing in New York at the Metropolitan Opera, for Hollywood film scorings, and repeat performances at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival plus performing at the Tanglewood Festival with the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing the intricate glass armonica complete part in the U.S. debut of George Benjamin's opera "Written on Skin".
Prayer Bells is a choral concert piece by Tasmanian (Australian) composer Constantine Koukias featuring dozens of handbells cast for the celebration of Australia's 2001 Centenary of Federation. Also comprising three solo cantors and a small male choir, the one-hour work premiered at the Federation Festival of Melbourne in 2001. Since then it has been performed in Australia in Launceston, Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart, Wollongong and Sydney. It had its USA premiere at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Truelove's Gutter is the sixth studio album from musician Richard Hawley, released on 21 September 2009 in the UK and on 22 September 2009 in the US. The album title refers to an ancient street in Hawley's native Sheffield, now thought to be the location of present-day Castle Street, which was allegedly named after 18th-century innkeeper Thomas Truelove, who used to charge local people to dump their rubbish in the gutter in the street that then flowed down to the River Don. Thematically, Truelove's Gutter is Hawley's darkest album to date. Hawley told the BBC that the album was inspired by particularly dark periods in his life and those of others. The album features some uncommon instrumentation, such as the waterphone, megabass, and cristal baschet.
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Martin Ellis is an American church, concert and theatre organist. He is currently the organist for Rose City Park Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. He was Principal Organist and Assistant Music Director at North United Methodist Church, and Senior Staff Pianist/Organist, Staff Arranger and Orchestrator for the Indianapolis Children's Choir and Youth Chorale in Indianapolis, Indiana until August, 2014. He works with Gresham High School's Theatre Arts Department as their resident piano accompanist.
Curtis Curtis-Smith, better known as C. Curtis-Smith or C.C. Smith, was a modernist American composer and pianist.
This family of musical instruments includes those whose primary material is glass. They may be played using percussive techniques, such as striking the glass to produce a sound, or by utilizing friction to generate a resonant sound. Many glass instruments produce an ethereal, otherworldly timbre. A well-known glass instrument is Ben Franklin's glass harmonica.
Messe de minuit pour Noël, H.9, is a mass for four voices and orchestra by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, written in 1694 based on the melodies of ten French Christmas carols. Charpentier called for eight soloists, a duo of two sopranos and two trios of alto, tenor and bass, but it can be performed by five soloists. Choir and orchestra are in four parts, scored for flutes, strings, organ and basso continuo. The mass is regarded as unique in both the composer's work and in the genre. While in Charpentier's time, the mass was performed by all-male choirs, it has later been performed and recorded also by mixed choirs with modern instruments.
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