Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, impresario, and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, Vivaldi is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, being paramount in the development of Johann Sebastian Bach's instrumental music. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than fifty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part, 1980 television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles, and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David Oyster, Richard Wells, Tom Weidlinger, and others. It covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.
The Four Seasons is a group of four violin concertos by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year. These were composed around 1718−1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua. They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione.
A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day. Many major composers have contributed to the violin concerto repertoire, with the best known works including those by Bach, Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Khachaturian, Mozart, Paganini, Prokofiev, Sarasate, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi.
The Ospedale della Pietà was a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice. Like other Venetian ospedali, the Pietà was first established as a hospice for the needy. A group of Venetian nuns, called the Consorelle di Santa Maria dell’Umiltà, established this charitable institution for orphans and abandoned girls in the fourteenth century. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Pietà - along with the three other charitable Ospedali Grandi - was well known for its all-female musical ensembles that attracted tourists and patrons from around Europe.
Iona Brown, OBE, was a British violinist and conductor.
G3 is a concert tour organized by guitarist Joe Satriani featuring him alongside two other guitarists. Since its inception in 1995, G3 has toured most years and has featured many guitarists, including Steve Vai, Marco Ciaravolo, Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, Robert Fripp, Paul Gilbert, Steve Morse, Steve Lukather, Uli Jon Roth, Michael Schenker, Adrian Legg and many other special guests, including Tony MacAlpine, Johnny Hiland, Keith More, Chris Duarte, Andy Timmons, Neal Schon, Gary Hoey, Brian May, Billy Gibbons, Johnny A, George Lynch, Patrick Rondat, Guthrie Govan, Alejandro Silva, and Eric Sardinas.
F major is a major scale based on F, with the pitches F, G, A, B♭, C, D, and E. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative minor is D minor and its parallel minor is F minor.
L'estro armonico, Op. 3, is a set of 12 concertos for stringed instruments by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, first published in Amsterdam in 1711. Vivaldi's Twelve Trio Sonatas, Op. 1, and Twelve Violin Sonatas, Op. 2, only contained sonatas, thus L'estro armonico was his first collection of concertos appearing in print. It was also the first time he chose a foreign publisher, Estienne Roger, instead of an Italian. Each concerto was printed in eight parts: four violins, two violas, cello and continuo. The continuo part was printed as a figured bass for violone and harpsichord.
Uli Jon Roth is a German guitarist who became famous for his work with Scorpions and is one of the earliest contributors to the neoclassical metal genre. He is also the founder of Sky Academy and designer of the Sky Guitar. He is the older brother of fellow guitarist and artist Zeno Roth (1956–2018).
Beyond the Astral Skies is the third and final album by Electric Sun. It was released in 1985 on EMI.
Fabio Biondi is an Italian violinist and conductor. He is a specialist in Baroque and early music.
AVIE Records is a UK-based independent classical music recording company founded in 2002 by Simon Foster and Melanne Mueller who devised a unique business model based on artist ownership. Foster and Mueller continue to run the company together with executives Barry McCann and Steve Winn. The label maintains offices in the UK and US.
Anne Akiko Meyers is an American concert violinist. Meyers was the top-selling classical instrumentalist of 2014 on Billboard's traditional classical charts.
Vivaldi’s Cello is an album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman as conductor, released in 2004 on Sony Classical Records. It contains various arrangements taken from Antonio Vivaldi's operas and oratorios.
Andrew Shulman is an English virtuoso cellist, conductor and composer. He is currently the principal cellist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and maintains his cello studio at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, California.
GTaranaki, also known as G-TARanaki, was New Zealand's first international guitar festival held in New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand annually from July 2008. The week-long festival brings some of worlds best guitarists to Taranaki to perform, educate and inspire Kiwi guitarists and music fans around New Zealand. G-TARanaki features a celebration of all things guitar with guitarists and bands from a range of genres including Rock, Funk, Classical, Jazz, Blues and Metal.
Sky Academy is the title given to guitar innovator Uli Jon Roth's tuition seminars and concerts.
Liz Vandall is a Swedish rock vocalist, and songwriter. She has recorded and performed as a member of the hard rock band Sahara, and recorded and toured extensively with Uli Jon Roth. A press release dated 7 April 2011 stated Vandall would be doing session work for the heavy metal opera project Lyraka.
Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons is a composition that features on a 2012 album by neo-classical composer Max Richter, released on August 31, 2012 on Universal Classics and Jazz (Germany), a division of Universal Music Group, and Deutsche Grammophon, and further recorded by Fenella Humphreys and released on Rubicon Classics in 2019. The piece is a complete recomposition and reinterpretation of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
