James Frazier (1940 [1] [2] – March 10, 1985 [3] ) was an American orchestral conductor. [4] Frazier was awarded the Cantelli Award in 1969. [5] [1] He went on to attain several prestigious engagements in Europe, the United States, and South America. He was one of the most successful African American conductors in the 1970s.
He was born to a Detroit sanitation worker and at 5 was enrolled in the Detroit Conservatory of Music. By 16, Frazier was conducting from memory in churches, conducting works like Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah and George Frideric Handel's Messiah . He received a degree in chemistry from Wayne State University. [3] During his senior year in college he conducted Elijah with William Warfield as soloist, and was urged to consider a professional career. [5] He attended National Music Camp in Michigan, and eventually was chosen with other three conductors to conduct in public. He then went on to conduct at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with encouragement from Eugene Ormandy. He later obtained his master's degree in music from the University of Michigan. [5]
In 1969, he won the Cantelli Award in Italy. [5] [1] This led him to conduct in several prestigious orchestras, including the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Belarusian State Philharmonic. Frazier garnered acclaim from the orchestras of Detroit and Minsk. [5]
Frazier composed King Requiem, a Requiem mass for Martin Luther King Jr., and conducted its premiere in Detroit on May 9, 1969, with Warfield as soloist. [6] He also composed a musical, 12th Street: A Soul Opera, telling about life in his Detroit, and created the special "Soul and Symphony", which was broadcast on NBC, in the anthology series Special Treat . In the 1970s, Frazier was teaching in public schools in Long Island City. [5]
By 1975 he had conducted, among others, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, London's New Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Belarusian State Philharmonic and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. [5] Later, he also conducted in South America. [7]
In 1981 he was named conductor of the Bogota Symphony. [7] He died in 1985 at the age of 44, after a year of ill health. [3]
The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a British choral and orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten, composed mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
Guido Cantelli was an Italian orchestral conductor. Toscanini elected him his "spiritual heir" since the beginnings of his career. He was named Musical Director of La Scala, Milan in November 1956, but his promising career was cut short only one week later by his death at the age of 36 in the 1956 Paris DC-6 crash in France on route to the United States.
Antal Doráti was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1943.
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor. From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 16. Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Lorin Varencove Maazel was an American conductor, violinist and composer. He began conducting at the age of eight and by 1953 had decided to pursue a career in music. He had established a reputation in the concert halls of Europe by 1960 but, by comparison, his career in the U.S. progressed far more slowly. He served as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, among other posts. Maazel was well-regarded in baton technique and possessed a photographic memory for scores. Described as mercurial and forbidding in rehearsal, he mellowed in old age.
Harold en Italie, symphonie avec un alto principal, as the manuscript describes it, is a four-movement orchestral work by Hector Berlioz, his Opus 16, H. 68, written in 1834. Throughout, the unusual viola part represents the titular protagonist, without casting the form as a concerto. The movements have these titles, alluding to a programme:
The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra is a Norwegian orchestra based in Bergen. Its principal concert venue is the Grieg Hall.
John M. McCollum was an American tenor who had an active singing career in operas, concerts, and recitals during the 1950s through the 1970s. As an opera singer he performed with companies throughout North America, mostly working with second tier opera houses. He was much more successful as a singer of oratorios and other works from the concert repertoire, and enjoyed a particularly productive and lengthy relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As a concert singer he sang a wide repertoire but drew particular acclaim for his performances in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.
Semyon Mayevich Bychkov is a Soviet-born American conductor. He currently holds the position of chief conductor and artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic.
Walter Hendl was an American conductor, composer and pianist.
Polish Requiem, also A Polish Requiem, is a large-scale requiem mass for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The Lacrimosa, dedicated to the trade union leader Lech Wałęsa, was written for the unveiling of a statue at the Gdańsk Shipyard to commemorate those killed in the Polish anti-government riots in 1970. He expanded the work into a requiem, writing other parts to honour different patriotic events over the next four years.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Sz. 95, BB 101 of Béla Bartók is a musical composition for piano and orchestra. The work, which was composed between 1930 and 1931, is notorious for being one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire.
Antonín Dvořák's Requiem in B♭ minor, Op. 89, B. 165, is a funeral Mass scored for soloists, choir and orchestra. It was composed in 1890 and performed for the first time on 9 October 1891, in Birmingham, England, with the composer conducting.
Alexander Prior is a British composer and conductor who studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was Chief Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2022, appointed at the age of 23.
Beverly Wolff was an American mezzo-soprano who had an active career in concerts and operas from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. She performed a broad repertoire which encompassed operatic and concert works in many languages and from a variety of musical periods. She was a champion of new works, notably premiering compositions by Leonard Bernstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, Douglas Moore, and Ned Rorem among other American composers. She also performed in a number of rarely heard baroque operas by George Frideric Handel with the New York City Opera (NYCO), the Handel Society of New York, and at the Kennedy Center Handel Festivals.
Eunice Alberts (1927–2012) was an American contralto who had an active career as a concert soloist and opera singer during the 1950s through the 1980s.
Andrew McKinley was an American operatic tenor, violinist, arts administrator, music educator, and school administrator. Although he mainly performed in the United States, he had an active international singing career with major opera companies and symphony orchestras from the 1940s through the 1960s. His repertoire spanned a wide range, from leading tenor parts to character roles.
Angel Romero is a Spanish classical guitarist, conductor and former member of the guitar quartet Los Romeros. He is the youngest son of Celedonio Romero, who in 1957 left Spain for the United States with his family.
Camellia Johnson was an American concert and opera singer. She began her career performing works from the mezzo-soprano repertoire, but after encouragement from the staff at the Metropolitan Opera retrained her voice as a soprano. She successfully made that transition after winning the Young Concert Artists competition in 1993. She went on to perform as a leading soprano with orchestras and opera companies internationally.
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.