Erika Fox (born 3 October 1936) is a British composer and teacher. Born in Vienna, she grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. In 1939 at the age of three, Fox emigrated to England as a refugee. There she went on to study composition at the Royal College of Music with Bernard Stevens, and later with Jeremy Dale Roberts and Harrison Birtwistle. [1]
Fox was active in modern music circles from the 1970s, working with the Fires of London, the Nash Ensemble, Dartington and the Society for the Promotion of New Music. For two decades she enjoyed considerable success, with works such the Kaleidoscope quartet (for flute, harp, vibraphone and cello, 1983) and her puppet music drama The Bet (1990), which was performed at the Purcell Room, the Almeida Theatre, the Huddersfield Festival and the Norwich Puppet Theatre. [2] But her music faded from view in the mid-1990s.
A revival of interest resulted in the issue of a CD recording in 2019, the first recordings of her music. [3] Her orchestral work Osen Shomaat was recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2020. [4] [5] David Spielt Vor Saul a new concerto for piano and large ensemble, was commissioned by the BBC and first performed by Julian Jacobson and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Geoffrey Paterson, at City Halls, Glasgow, on 13 January 2022. [6]
Her musical style shows the influence of Eastern European folk music combined with ancient modal liturgical chant and Jewish Chassidic music. [2] She has taught as the Centre for Young Musicians in Pimlico, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and as Visiting Composer and Teacher at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. [2]
Fox writes for stage and vocal as well as instrumental performance, and her compositions incorporate elements of Jewish traditional music. Selected works include:
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. She was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
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.
Chen Yi is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.
Elena Olegovna Firsova is a Russian composer.
Simon Holt is an English composer.
Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
Onutė Narbutaitė is a Lithuanian composer.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).
Gary Alan Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002.
Marti Epstein is an American composer. She is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Ruth Shaw Wylie was a U.S.-born composer and music educator. She described herself as “a fairly typical Midwestern composer,” pursuing musical and aesthetic excellence but not attracting much national attention: “All good and worthy creative acts do not take place in New York City,” she wrote in 1962, “although most good and worthy rewards for creative acts do emanate from there; and if we can’t all be on hand to reap these enticing rewards we can take solace in the fact that we are performing good deeds elsewhere.” She was among the many twentieth-century American composers whose work contributed to the recognition of American “serious” music as a distinct genre.
Enid Luff was a Welsh musician, music educator, and composer.
Eleanor Deanne Therese Alberga is a Jamaican contemporary music composer who lives and works in the United Kingdom. Her most recent compositions include two Violin Concertos, a Trumpet Concerto and a Symphony.
Betty Olivero is an Israeli composer and music educator.
Ivana Stefanović is a Serbian composer.
Irina Olga Hasnaş is a Romanian composer. She was born in Bucharest, Romania, and studied at the Ciprian Porumbescu Academy of Music with Ştefan Niculescu, Aurel Stroe, Alexandru Paşcanu and Nicolae Beloiu. She continued her studies with composer Theodor Grigoriu, and in 2000 received a doctorate in music from the Cluj-Napoca Academy of Music. After completing her studies, Hasnas worked as a composer and an editor for Romanian National Radio. Her works have been performed internationally.
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.
Nicole Lizée is a Canadian composer of contemporary music. She was born in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan and received a MMus from McGill University. She lives in Montreal, Quebec. At one time, she was a member of The Besnard Lakes, an indie rock band from Montreal.