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Susan L. Nigro (born 1951) is an American contrabassoonist. Unlike most players of the instrument, Nigro's career is primarily as a solo recitalist and recording artist rather than an orchestral player. [1]
Nigro is a native of Chicago. She is an alumna of Northwestern University and Roosevelt University. [2] Her instructors included Burl Lane and Wilbur Simpson. [3] She is a member of several high-IQ societies, including Mensa and Intertel. [4] [5]
Her repertoire includes the Gunther Schuller and Daniel Dorff concertos for contrabassoon, as well as the Stamitz and Mozart concertos originally written for the bassoon. Nigro has premiered over 30 works since 1988, most of which were commissioned by her. [6] She has given more premieres than any other contra bassoonist.[ citation needed ]
She has appeared as a soloist with such groups as the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Rome Festival Orchestra, and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, as well as at multiple International Double Reed Society conferences. She has also performed as a recitalist and given masterclasses at dozens of universities and music festivals[ citation needed ].
In addition to her recording and recital careers, Nigro was the full-time substitute for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the 2005–2006 season and again during the 2008-2010 season. [7] She was also a guest artist with the Northwest Symphony. [8] [ failed verification ] She was among the founders of the Chicago Bassoon Quartet and the contrabassoon duo The Two Contras. [3]
She won a Pro Music International Career Development Grant, [2] [ failed verification ] and Illinois Arts Council grant.[ citation needed ]
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In this regard, she was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower. Its technique is similar to its smaller cousin, with a few notable differences.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
The Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191/186e, is a bassoon concerto written in 1774 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is the most often performed and studied piece in the entire bassoon repertory. Nearly all professional bassoonists will perform the piece at some stage in their career, and it is probably the most commonly requested piece in orchestral auditions – it is usually requested that the player perform excerpts from the concerto's first two movements in every audition.
Ruth Dorothy Louisa ("Wid") Gipps was an English composer, oboist, pianist, conductor and educator. She composed music in a wide range of genres, including five symphonies, seven concertos and many chamber and choral works. She founded both the London Repertoire Orchestra and the Chanticleer Orchestra and served as conductor and music director for the City of Birmingham Choir. Later in her life she served as chairwoman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.
Daniel Dorff is an American classical musician and classical composer.
A bassoon concerto is a concerto for bassoon accompanied by a musical ensemble, typically orchestra. Like bassoon sonatas, bassoon concerti were relatively uncommon until the twentieth century, although there are quite a few bassoon concerti from the Classical period. Some contemporary bassoon concerti are scored for solo bassoon and wind or string orchestras.
Walter Sinclair Hartley was an American composer of contemporary classical music.
David Shifrin is an American classical clarinetist and artistic director.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
The Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments was written by Igor Stravinsky in Paris in 1923–24. This work was revised in 1950.
Lisa Mae Pegher is an American drummer and solo percussionist. In her International career she has performed throughout the world as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.
Willard Somers Elliot was an American bassoonist and composer. He was the bassoonist with the Houston Symphony Orchestra (1946–1949), bassoonist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1951–1956), principal bassoonist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1956–1964), and principal bassoonist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1964–1997). Elliot composed and twice performed the Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under conductors Seiji Ozawa and Jean Martinon.
Ray Still was an American classical oboist. He was the principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 40 years, from 1953 to 1993.
Victor Bruns was a German composer and bassoonist. He played with the Leningrad Opera, the Volksoper Berlin and the Staatskapelle Berlin. As a composer, he is known for his ballets and for bassoon concertos and sonatas.
Raise the Roof is a one-movement concerto for timpani and orchestra by the American composer Michael Daugherty. The work was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for the opening of the Max M. Fisher Music Center. It was premiered in Detroit, October 16, 2003, with conductor Neeme Järvi leading the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and timpanist Brian Jones. Daugherty later arranged the piece for concert band in 2007; this arrangement was commissioned by the University of Michigan Symphony Band and was premiered under conductor Michael Haithcock at the National Conference of the College Band Directors National Association on March 30, 2007. Raise the Roof is one of Daugherty's most-programmed pieces and has been frequently performed as a concert opener since its publication.
The Low Brass Concerto is a concerto for four solo low brass instruments and orchestra by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for their renowned low brass section and co-commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was composed in 2017 and was first performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Riccardo Muti on February 1, 2018.
The bassoon repertoire consists of pieces of music composed for bassoon as a principal instrument that may be performed with or without other instruments. Below is a non-exhaustive list of major works for the bassoon.
Margaret Cookhorn is a British classical contrabassoonist and bassoonist. She is Principal Contrabassoon and Bassoon with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, bassoonist with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and, notably, has pursued a career as a contrabassoon soloist. John Woolrich's contrabassoon concerto Falling Down was written for her. She most recently performed the piece at the BBC Proms in 2015.
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