Gustave-Auguste Besson (1820-1874) was a musical instrument manufacturer and innovator. He created the Besson brand in Paris, France, in 1837. Besson is credited with more than 50 original inventions. His alterations to the cornet were particularly notable. [1]
Besson's instruments were revolutionary in their design and quality, and as such became famous across Europe. After a series of lawsuits with Adolphe Sax, Besson left Paris in 1858 and relocated to London. [1] He continued to manufacture instruments in Paris and London and had distribution warehouses in Brussels, Charleroi, Madrid and Barcelona. After Besson's death in 1874, the company changed its name in France to become Fontaine-Besson in 1880. [2] It remained Besson in Great Britain.
The euphonium is a medium-sized, 3 or 4-valve, often compensating, conical-bore, tenor-voiced brass instrument that derives its name from the Ancient Greek word εὔφωνος euphōnos, meaning "well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced". The euphonium is a valved instrument. Nearly all current models have piston valves, though some models with rotary valves do exist.
Luc Paul Maurice Besson is a French filmmaker. He directed or produced the films Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), and La Femme Nikita (1990). Associated with the Cinéma du look film movement, he has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Léon: The Professional (1994) and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element (1997). He wrote and directed the sci-fi action film Lucy (2014) and the space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).
The Fifth Element is a 1997 English-language French science fiction action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson, as well as co-written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. It stars Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, and Chris Tucker. Primarily set in the 23rd century, the film's central plot involves the survival of planet Earth, which becomes the responsibility of Korben Dallas (Willis), a taxicab driver and former special forces major, after a young woman (Jovovich) falls into his cab. To accomplish this, Dallas joins forces with her to recover four mystical stones essential for the defence of Earth against the impending attack of a malevolent cosmic entity.
La Femme Nikita, also called Nikita in France, is a 1990 French-language action thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. The film stars Anne Parillaud as the title character, a criminal who is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering policemen during an armed pharmacy robbery. Her government handlers fake her death and recruit her as a professional assassin. After intense training, she starts a career as a killer, where she struggles to balance her work with her personal life. She shows talent at this and her career progresses until a mission in an embassy goes awry.
The contrabass clarinet (also pedal clarinet, after the pedals of pipe organs) and contra-alto clarinet are the two largest members of the clarinet family that are in common usage. Modern contrabass clarinets are transposing instruments pitched in B♭, sounding two octaves lower than the common B♭ soprano clarinet and one octave below the bass clarinet. Some contrabass clarinet models have extra keys to extend the range down to low written E♭3, D3 or C3. This gives a tessitura written range, notated in treble clef, of C3 – F6, which sounds B♭0 – E♭4. Some early instruments were pitched in C; Arnold Schoenberg's Fünf Orchesterstücke specifies a contrabass clarinet in A, but there is no evidence such an instrument has ever existed.
Mantes-la-Ville is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris 48.6 km (30.2 mi) from the center.
Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume was a French luthier, businessman, inventor and winner of many awards. His workshop made over 3,000 instruments.
Conn-Selmer, Inc. is an American manufacturer of musical instruments for concert bands, marching bands and orchestras. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments and was formed in 2003 by combining the Steinway properties, The Selmer Company and United Musical Instruments.
Buffet Crampon SAS is a French manufacturer of wind instruments based in Mantes-la-Ville, Yvelines department. The company is the world market leader in the production of clarinets of the Boehm system. Its subsidiary, Buffet Crampon Deutschland GmbH, founded in 2010 and based in Markneukirchen, Vogtland, Sachsen, is the world market leader in the manufacture of brass instruments. To manufacture and sell its products, the BC Group employed around 1000 people worldwide at the beginning of 2021, 470 of them as employees of BC Germany alone. The management of the group has been in the hands of Jérôme Perrod since 2014.
Besson is a manufacturer of brass musical instruments. It is owned by Buffet Crampon, which bought Besson in 2006 from The Music Group.
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher, purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and woodwind musical instruments.
Jacques Besson (1540?–1573) was a French Protestant inventor, mathematician, and philosopher, chiefly remembered for his popular treatise on machines Theatrum Instrumentorum (1571–1572), which saw many reprints in different languages.
Eric "Bibo" Bergeron is a French animator and film director. His work includes The Road to El Dorado (2000), Shark Tale (2004) and A Monster in Paris (2011).
The subcontrabass tuba is a rare instrument of the tuba family built an octave or more below the modern contrabass tuba. Only a very small number of these large novelty instruments have ever been built. Most are pitched in thirty-six-foot (36′) BBB♭ an octave lower than the BB♭ contrabass tuba, their fundamental note B♭-1 corresponding to a frequency of 15 Hz – such a slow vibration that it can scarcely be perceived as a note.
EuropaCorp S.A. is a French motion picture company headquartered in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and one of a few full-service independent studios that both produce and distribute feature films. It specializes in production, distribution, home entertainment, VOD, sales, partnerships and licenses, recording, publishing and exhibition. EuropaCorp's integrated financial model generates revenues from a wide range of sources, with films from many genres and a strong presence in the international markets.
Antoine Beaussant, is a French entrepreneur, businessman and oboist. He was President of Buffet Crampon since November 2007 and was replaced in July 2014 by Jérôme Perrod.
Virginie Besson-Silla is a Canadian-French film producer. She has made a variety of different films including action films, romantic films, comic adaptations, biographical films and an animation.
The Cité du Cinéma or Studios of Paris is a film studio complex originally supported and founded by the film director and producer Luc Besson, located in Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, in a renovated power plant, commissioned in 1933 to power the Parisian metro. The studio complex is intended to be a competitor of Cinecittà in Rome, Pinewood in London and Babelsberg in Berlin. It was inaugurated on 21 September 2012. In February 2022 Tunisian-French film producer Tarak Ben Ammar finalized a deal to purchase Studios de Paris.
Besson Rock is the rock off the northwest coast of Nelson Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica extending 45 m in southeast–northwest direction and 32 m in southwest–northeast direction. Its surface area is 0.09 ha. The vicinity was visited by early 19th century sealers.