Jonathan Russell (composer)

Last updated
Jonathan Russell
Genres Classical
Occupation(s) Composer
Instrument(s)
Labels
Website http://jonrussellmusic.com

Jonathan Russell (born 1979) is an American composer of classical music, clarinetist, and bass clarinetist. Russell was the founder of the Switchboard Music Festival, which will hold its 10th anniversary in the summer of 2018. [1] [2] His primary teachers have included Paul Lansky, Barbara White, Steve Mackey, Elinor Armer, and Eric Ewazen.

Contents

Career

Composer

Russell has been commissioned by, worked with, and written for ensembles including the San Francisco Symphony, Prism Quartet, Symphony Number One, Empyrian Ensemble, Wild Rumpus, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, and the JACK Quartet. [3] [4]

The Imani Winds has a long-term relationship with Mr. Russell through the wind quintets Legacy Commissioning Project, which has led to three large scale arrangements of orchestral works for woodwind quintet. [5]

Clarinet and bass clarinet

Soloist

A frequent composer for various clarinets, Russell frequently solos as a bass clarinetist, performing his own and other works. Among his own works, he premiered his Sonata for Bass Clarinet and Piano with pianist Kate Campbell which Campbell herself commissioned. [6] Mr. Russell's performance of Debussy's Premiere Rhapsody was noted for giving, “increasing energy, leading to a smashingly tangy conclusion from a lurking opening. Russell is a real virtuoso with true command over his instrument’s range of expression…” [7]

Sqwonk

Along with his partner Jeff Anderle, the bass clarinet duo Sqwonk performed in the San Francisco area. [8] The ensemble has self-released several albums of original music for bass clarinet duo as well as works for small ensemble. [9]

Edmund Welles

Sqwonk members Anderle and Russell join with Cornelius Boots and Aaron Novik to form quartet Edmund Welles: The Bass Clarinet Quartet which themselves also have their own discography. [10]

List of works

Original works

Arrangements

Discography

More (Symphony Number One)

The Valley Sings: Choral Music by Composers of the Hudson Valley(Kairos)

High Art(The Living Earth Show)

Stravinsky: Rite of Spring(Imani Winds) (EP)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Andriessen</span> Dutch composer and pianist (1939–2021)

Louis Joseph Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esa-Pekka Salonen</span> Finnish orchestral conductor and composer

Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bass clarinet</span> Member of the clarinet family

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B♭ clarinet, it is usually pitched in B♭, but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B♭ clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare. Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, and occasionally in marching bands, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Conte</span> American composer

David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007 for his work The Nine Muses, and in 2016 he won the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for his work American Death Ballads.

John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Stucky</span> American composer

Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.

Tristan Keuris was a Dutch composer.

David Bruce is a British composer and a YouTuber.

Michael Blake is a South African contemporary classical music composer and performer. He studied in Johannesburg in the 1970s and was associated with conceptual art and the emergence of an indigenous experimental music aesthetic. In 1976 he embarked on 'African Journal', a series of pieces for Western instruments that drew on his studies of traditional African music and aesthetics, which continued to expand during two decades in London until he returned to South Africa in 1998. From around 2000 African music becomes less explicit on the surface of his compositions, but elements of rhythm and repetition remain as part of a more postcolonial engagement with material and form. He works in a range of styles including minimalism and collage, and now also forages for source material from the entire musical canon.

The Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments was written by Igor Stravinsky in Paris in 1923–24. This work was revised in 1950.

John Bruce Yeh is an American clarinetist. He has been the assistant principal clarinetist and E-flat clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1977. Yeh is the founder and director of the chamber ensemble, Chicago Pro Musica, whose first recording, Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat, won the 1985 Grammy Award for the Best New Classical Artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Dean (clarinetist)</span> Australian clarinetist, composer, conductor

Paul Dean is an Australian clarinetist, composer and conductor

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alissa Firsova</span> Russian composer

Alissa Firsova is a Russian-British classical composer, pianist and conductor.

Michael Schelle, born January 22, 1950, in Philadelphia, is a composer of contemporary concert music. He is also a performer, conductor, author, and teacher.

The Missouri Chamber Music Festival and Adult Chamber Music Intensive (ACMI) was founded in 2010. The goal of the MOCM Festival concerts is to present the fine art of small ensemble music to a wide audience through an accessible, community-based festival. The ACMI workshop is the educational portion of the festival, placing adult instrumentalists in chamber ensembles with Festival artists for coaching and performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohammed Fairouz</span> American composer

Mohammed Fairouz is an American composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woodwind section</span> Section of orchestra or concert band

The woodwind section, which consists of woodwind instruments, is one of the main sections of an orchestra or concert band. Woodwind sections contain instruments given Hornbostel-Sachs classifications of 421 and 422, but exclude 423

Valerie Coleman is an American composer and flutist as well as the creator of the wind quintet Imani Winds. Coleman is a distinguished artist of the century who was named Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the year and was listed as “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” in the Washington Post. In 2019, Coleman's orchestral work, Umoja, Anthem for Unity, was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Coleman's Umoja is the first classical work by a living African American woman that the Philadelphia Orchestra has performed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Endymion (ensemble)</span>

Endymion, formerly Endymion Ensemble, is an English chamber music ensemble, founded in 1979 and dedicated to contemporary classical music.

Michael Kibbe is an American contemporary classical music composer born in San Diego, California. He has composed over 240 concert works and created numerous arrangements. His writing covers many musical styles, encompassing tonal, modal and non-diatonic languages. His style often incorporates modern structures but is still accessible to the popular classical listener. Some of his works come right of the Romantic Era yet his style in some writings has been compared to Prokofiev. There are influences of American composer Gershwin in the Serenade Number 2 for two clarinets that seem at once blues, jazz and classical. His music can often reflect themes that bring to mind different cultures.

References

  1. ↑ "San Francisco's Switchboard Music Festival Featuring Kronos Quartet, June 10". Amoeblog. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  2. ↑ Van Houten, Ben (2016-06-16). "Tyondai Braxton (ex-Battles) leads Saturday's Switchboard Music Festival - The Bay Bridged - San Francisco Bay Area Indie Music". The Bay Bridged - San Francisco Bay Area Indie Music. Archived from the original on 2018-02-03. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  3. ↑ "Classical & Opera Listings for May 22–28". The New York Times. 2015-05-21. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  4. ↑ "Events in New Jersey for April 13-19, 2014". The New York Times. 2014-04-10. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  5. ↑ "Legacy Commissioning Project". Imani Winds. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  6. ↑ "Sonata for Bass Clarinet and Piano | Jonathan Russell". jonrussellmusic.com. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  7. ↑ Bratman, David (March 28, 2014). "Oeninsula Symphony Rises to Musical Challenge". The San Mateo Daily Journal.
  8. ↑ Smoliar, Stephen (2016-07-29). "The Rehearsal Studio: Jonathan Russell Provides Engaging Music for the Latest Garret + Moulton Premiere". The Rehearsal Studio. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  9. ↑ "Sounds Heard: Sqwonk—Black". NewMusicBox. 2010-07-13. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  10. ↑ "Edmund Welles: the bass clarinet quartet" (PDF). Chamber Music America. Chamber Music America. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  11. ↑ VIAF   180533713
  12. ↑ Sigler, Andrew (2012-11-28). "String Quartet Smackdown! In Austin". NewMusicBox. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  13. ↑ Plum, Nancy. "Princeton University Orchestra Unveils 2014-15 Ensemble in Concerto Performance | Town Topics". www.towntopics.com. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  14. ↑ OCLC   870153244
  15. ↑ OCLC   819626771
  16. ↑ OCLC   752588318
  17. ↑ "A Taste of San Francisco's Switchboard Music Festival". WQXR. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  18. ↑ KlezDuo at Library of Congress
  19. ↑ "Wild Rumpus". wildrumpusmusic.org. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  20. ↑ "Composition | Jonathan Russell". jonrussellmusic.com. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  21. ↑ VIAF   295034143
  22. ↑ Walsh, Kelsey (2012-04-12). "Switchboard Music Festival 2012 at Brava Theater". I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  23. ↑ Cmiel, Scott. "Living Earth Show: A Striking Vision". San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  24. ↑ Gilman, Seth. "Review: Redshift at the Gershwin Hotel". New York Music Culture Examiner.
  25. ↑ Moalem, Beeri. "Musical Marathon". San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  26. ↑ OCLC   869921409
  27. ↑ OCLC   234315454
  28. ↑ Cmiel, Matthew (2011-04-08). "Dialing it up at the Switchboard Music Festival". NewMusicBox. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  29. ↑ Keebaugh, Aaron. "Boston Classical Review » Blog Archive » Boston New Music Initiative serves up a bracing array of works". bostonclassicalreview.com. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  30. ↑ McQuillen, James (July 3, 2013). "Classical review: Imani Winds at Kaul Auditorium". The Oregonian. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  31. ↑ Dalton, Joseph (2012-03-25). "Imani Winds @ Emma Willard School". Arts Talk. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  32. ↑ Waddington, Chris (2013-03-09). "Imani Winds triumph in New Orleans, tapping jazz and classical styles with soul and savvy". Times Picayune. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
  33. ↑ "More". Symphony Number One. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  34. ↑ Woolever, Lydia (February 8, 2017). "Music Reviews: February 2017 - The latest from PLRLS and Symphony Number One". Baltimore . Retrieved February 9, 2017.
  35. ↑ OCLC   819588410
  36. ↑ Living Earth Show, The. "High Art". Innova. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.