 | |
| Author | text by Lemony Snicket; music by Nathaniel Stookey |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Carson Ellis |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | March 3, 2009 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
The Composer Is Dead is a 2009 composition for narrator and orchestra, released both as a musical recording and as a book with a CD insert, [1] with text by Lemony Snicket, music by Nathaniel Stookey, and illustrations by Carson Ellis. [1] It is a whodunnit about the orchestra.
The Composer Is Dead is a murder mystery about the killing of a composer. It takes place in an orchestra, and also is designed to help introduce children to instruments. The book also includes a bonus CD of one of Lemony Snicket's concerts.
The Composer Is Dead was originally created as an orchestral work by Nathaniel Stookey with narration by Lemony Snicket. The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and premiered at Davies Symphony Hall on July 8, 2006, with Lemony Snicket narrating and Edwin Outwater conducting. [2] It was first published by G. Schirmer/Associated Music Publishers.
The Composer Is Dead was inspired by Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf [3] and is similar to Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra in that it is intended to introduce young audiences to the instruments in the orchestra. [4] The world premiere recording by the San Francisco Symphony, with Handler narrating as Snicket and Edwin Outwater conducting, is to be included with every copy of the expanded book. [1]
After its premiere, The Composer Is Dead was immediately taken up by the Toronto Symphony's New Creations Festival and has since been programmed by many orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic,[ citation needed ] Orpheus Sinfonia and the Treasure Valley Symphony. [5] On January 26, 2008, Dino Antagonist led the Little Orchestra Society in the work's New York premiere at Avery Fisher Hall.[ citation needed ]
Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American author Daniel Handler. Handler has published various children's books under the name, including A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has sold over 60 million copies and spawned a 2004 film and Netflix TV series from 2017 to 2019 of the same name. Lemony Snicket also serves as the in-universe author who investigates and re-tells the story of the Baudelaire orphans in A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Daniel Handler is an American author, musician, screenwriter, television writer, and television producer. He is best known for his children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events and All the Wrong Questions, published under the pen name Lemony Snicket. The former was adapted into a film in 2004 as well as a Netflix series from 2017 to 2019.
Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé, known as Ferde Grofé was an American composer, arranger, pianist, and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement symphonic poem, Grand Canyon Suite, and for orchestrating George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for its 1924 premiere.
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography is a fictional "autobiography" of A Series of Unfortunate Events author and character Lemony Snicket. It was published on May 1, 2002.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of thirteen children's novels written by American author Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket. The books follow the turbulent lives of orphaned siblings Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. After their parents' death in a fire, the children are placed in the custody of a murderous villain, Count Olaf, who attempts to steal their inheritance and causes numerous disasters with the help of his accomplices as the children attempt to flee. As the plot progresses, the Baudelaires gradually confront further mysteries surrounding their family and deep conspiracies involving a secret society, which also involves Olaf and Snicket, the author's own fictional self-insert.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is a 2004 American black comedy adventure film directed by Brad Silberling from a screenplay by Robert Gordon, based on the first three novels of the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning (1999), The Reptile Room (1999), and The Wide Window (2000), by Lemony Snicket. It stars Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Catherine O'Hara, Billy Connolly, Cedric the Entertainer, Luis Guzmán, Jennifer Coolidge, and Meryl Streep, and Jude Law as the voice of Lemony Snicket.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate is a Chickasaw classical composer and pianist. His compositions are inspired by North American Indian history, culture and ethos.
The Harvard Din & Tonics are a signature, five-part jazz a cappella group from Harvard University, founded in 1979.
The San Francisco Boys Chorus (SFBC) is a choir for boys consisting of 230 members based in San Francisco with additional campuses in Oakland, San Mateo, and San Rafael. It is known officially as "San Francisco's Singing Ambassadors to the World".
Edwin Maurice Outwater is an American conductor.
Paul Festa is an American writer, filmmaker, and violinist. Born and raised in San Francisco, he currently resides there with his husband James Harker.
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Nathaniel Stookey is an American composer and musician.
This is a list of books by Lemony Snicket, the pen name of American author Daniel Handler. Works published under the name Daniel Handler are not included. Handler, as Snicket, has published 26 fiction novels, thirteen in the main A Series of Unfortunate Events franchise. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, and have sold more than 65 million copies.
Genesis Suite is a 1945 work for narrator, chorus and orchestra. A musical interpretation of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, the suite was a collaborative work by seven composers, some of whom wrote film music in Hollywood. The project was conceived by Nathaniel Shilkret, a noted conductor and composer of music for recording, radio and film. Shilkret wrote one of the seven pieces and invited the remaining composers to submit contributions as work-for-hire. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky wrote, respectively, the first and last parts. The Biblical text used in the spoken word narrative is the American King James Version. It was intended to be a crossover from art music to popular music.
All the Wrong Questions is a four-part children's book series and prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The series explores Snicket's childhood apprenticeship to the secret society V.F.D and expands the fictional universe introduced in the novel The Bad Beginning, the first of thirteen installments in the A Series of Unfortunate Events books.
Benjamin Shwartz is an American-Israeli orchestral and opera conductor, and music director of the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, Koblenz (Germany). Formerly he held the position of music director of the Wrocław Philharmonic known for his interest in and commitment to new music. Born in Los Angeles and raised there and in Israel, he attended the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California before enrolling in the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied composition with James Primosch. He continued his composition studies in Germany with Karlheinz Stockhausen. As a conducting student at the Curtis Institute of Music, he studied with Otto-Werner Mueller and worked closely with Christoph Eschenbach and Ned Rorem. Shwartz won numerous awards including the Presser Award, and Third Prize in the 2007 International Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany.
The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) is a youth orchestra organized by the San Francisco Symphony. The SFSYO performs an annual concert series and has made several recordings. The orchestra rehearses in Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall and has been directed by Radu Paponiu since the 2024-2025 season.
S&M2 (stylized as S&M2; an abbreviation of Symphony and Metallica 2) is a live album by American thrash metal band Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. It is a follow-up to S&M, a live collaborative album released in 1999. The album was recorded during a live performance in San Francisco at the Chase Center in 2019. The performance was also filmed and released theatrically on October 9, 2019.
Thomas Newman is an American composer known for his many film score. Most notably The Player (1992); The Shawshank Redemption (1994); American Beauty and The Green Mile ; In the Bedroom (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004); Cinderella Man (2005); WALL-E (2008); the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), 1917 (2019), and Elemental (2023).
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