Paul Cantelon (born December 25, 1959) is an American contemporary classical music and popular music composer, a film score composer and an actor [1] He is also a violinist, pianist, and accordionist, and a founding member of the American alternative band Wild Colonials.
Cantelon was born in Glendale, California. He was a music prodigy who made his violin debut at the age of 13 at UCLA's Royce Hall. Inspired by the work of Donalee Reubenet, he started piano studies. He studied with Andre Gauthier at the Geneva Conservatory of Music in Switzerland, Jacob Lateiner at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and Vlado Perlemuter at the Conservatoire de Paris.
Over the course of his career, he has released a number of solo classical piano recordings, including the following:
He is a founding member of the American alternative band Wild Colonials, in which he plays violin, piano, and accordion, and has featured on their albums...
Since the 1990s, he has also recorded and performed with a diverse range of artists including Yo Yo Ma, Joe Cocker, The Kinks, Red Hot Chili Peppers, George Clinton, King Crimson, Everclear, and Ry Cooder. He has guested on Perla Betalla's debut album, Lili Haydn's Lili, Loup Garou's Dobb's Ferry, and Sara Sant'Ambrogio's Dreaming.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, he played piano in a jazz-inflected group that also featured Lili Haydn on violin, Martin Tillman on cello, and Satnam Singh Ramgotra on tablas. They released a self-titled CD under the name Luciana's Wish. In 2000, under the name Tryptich, they released an EP of cover songs called Curio, with vocals by Angela McCluskey.
In recent years, he is perhaps best known for his compositions for films, which include the following:
In addition, he composed a special centenary score for The Battleship Potemkin in 1995.
Cantelon's mother was a trumpeter in the Philadelphia Symphony, and his father was an evangelist. His brother is the multi-talented photographer/artist/writer/musician/activist, Lee Cantelon.
At age 17, Cantelon had a serious bicycle accident which left him in a coma. When he emerged from the coma a month later, he had significant amnesia. As a result, he had to relearn his musical skills.
Cantelon was married to Wild Colonials vocalist, Angela McCluskey. When they were in their early 20s, they met in London at the Star of India, where he was playing, and she was dining with British actor Hugh Grant.
The Classical Period was an era of classical music between roughly 1750 and 1820.
A concerto is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typical three-movement structure, a slow movement preceded and followed by fast movements, became a standard from the early 18th century.
In music, a sonata literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata, a piece sung. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until the Classical era, when it took on increasing importance. Sonata is a vague term, with varying meanings depending on the context and time period. By the early 19th century, it came to represent a principle of composing large-scale works. It was applied to most instrumental genres and regarded—alongside the fugue—as one of two fundamental methods of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert music. Though the musical style of sonatas has changed since the Classical era, most 20th- and 21st-century sonatas still maintain the same structure.
The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. The double bass is almost never used in the ensemble mainly because it would sound too loud and heavy.
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music. The term can also refer to a group of musicians who regularly play this repertoire together; for a number of well-known piano trios, see below.
Paul Schoenfield, also spelt Paul Schoenfeld or Pinchas Schoenfeld, was a classical composer and pianist known for combining popular, folk, and classical music forms. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and died in Jerusalem, Israel.
Sérgio Assad is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger who often performs with his brother, Odair, in the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad, commonly referred to as the Assad Brothers or Duo Assad. Their younger sister Badi is also a guitarist. Assad is the father of composer/singer/pianist Clarice Assad. He is married to Angela Olinto.
Bruce Adolphe is a composer, music scholar, the author of several books on music, and pianist. He is currently Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he has been a key figure since 1992. Adolphe performs his weekly "Piano Puzzler" segment on the nationally broadcast Performance Today classical music radio program hosted by Fred Child. "Piano Puzzler" was on National Public Radio starting in 2002, and is now on American Public Media. The program is also available as a podcast and from iTunes. Mr. Adolphe was also founding artistic director of Off the Hook Arts Festival, an interdisciplinary festival combining music, science, and visual arts, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, from 2010 to 2022.
Emanuel "Manny"Ax is a Grammy-winning American classical pianist. He is known for his chamber music collaborations with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinists Isaac Stern and Young Uck Kim, as well as his piano recitals and performances with major orchestras in the world.
Fruit of Life is the debut album by the Wild Colonials, released in 1994. "Spark" was released as a single and was a radio hit. The band supported the album with a North American tour, including shows with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Grant Lee Buffalo.
Behzad Ranjbaran is a Persian composer, known for his virtuosic concertos and colorful orchestral music. Ranjbaran's music draws from his cultural roots, incorporating Persian musical modes and rhythms.
"Ave Maria" is a setting of the Latin prayer Ave Maria, originally published in 1853 as "Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach". The piece consists of a melody by the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod that he superimposed over an only very slightly changed version of Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of his The Well-Tempered Clavier, 1722. The 1853 publication has French text, but it is the 1859 version with the Latin Ave Maria which became popular.
Wild Colonials are an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1992 by Angela McCluskey (vocals), Shark (guitar/vocals/percussion), Paul Cantelon (violin/piano), Scott Roewe (multi-instrumentalist) and Ian Bernard (drums/percussion). After 1993 members included Thaddeus Corea and Jason Payne on drums/percussion and Skip Ward on bass.
Shark is a Los Angeles–based musician, film composer, radio host, and is a founding member and guitarist for American alternative band Wild Colonials. He also records under the name Shark and Co.. The name Sharkey is an Anglicised form of the Gaelic "O'Searcaigh", composed of the elements "O", male descendant of, with "Searcach", a byname meaning "beloved". The name originated in County Tyrone, and is now to be found located in considerable numbers in various parts of Northern Ireland.
This Can't Be Life is the second album by the American band Wild Colonials, released in 1996. The first single was "Charm", which was an alternative radio hit. The band supported the album with a North American tour that included stints with Los Lobos and Chalk FarM. They also headlined the second stage at the inaugural 1997 Lilith Fair.
Angela McCluskey was a Scottish singer-songwriter based in California, United States. She performed as a solo artist and as a member of the folk rock group Wild Colonials. McCluskey also provided vocals for Curio and recorded the European dance hit and U.S. Mitsubishi commercial hit, "Breathe", among other songs with Télépopmusik. She also sang "Beautiful Things" for American Express and later her voice was heard on the Schick Quattro commercial singing "I'm Not the Girl". Her songs have appeared on the soundtracks for the films Rachel Getting Married (2008), Sherrybaby (2006), and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005). Her music has also been featured in the television series Grey's Anatomy.
Bruce Brubaker is a musician, artist, concert pianist, and writer from the United States.
David Froom was an American composer and college professor. Froom taught at the University of Utah, the Peabody Institute, and the University of Maryland, College Park, and he was on the faculty at St. Mary's College of Maryland from 1989 until his death in 2022. He has received awards and honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters,, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, the Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Barlow Foundation, and was a five-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the State of Maryland.
Andy Akiho is an American musician and composer of contemporary classical music. A virtuoso percussionist based in New York City, his primary performance instrument is steel pans. He took interest in becoming a percussionist when his older sister introduced him to a drum set at the age of 9. Akiho first tried his hand at the steel pan when he became an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. He began taking several trips to Trinidad after college to learn and play music. From there, he started writing pieces of his own.