The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle, is a British composer of contemporary classical music. Among his many compositions, he is best known for The Triumph of Time (1972) and his operas, particularly The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991) and The Minotaur (2008). The latter was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third best piece of the 21st-century.
Tony Harrison is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Beeston, Leeds and he received his education in Classics from Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. He is one of Britain's foremost verse writers and many of his works have been performed at the Royal National Theatre. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem "V", as well as his versions of dramatic works: from ancient Greek such as the tragedies Oresteia and Lysistrata, from French Molière's The Misanthrope, from Middle English The Mysteries. He is also noted for his outspoken views, particularly those on the Iraq War. In 2015, he was honoured with the David Cohen Prize in recognition for his body of work. In 2016, he was awarded the Premio Feronia in Rome.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music.
Joanna Clare MacGregor is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London. She is currently artistic director of the International Summer School & Festival at Dartington Hall.
Yan Tan Tethera or yan-tan-tethera is a sheep-counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Northern England and some other parts of Britain. The words are numbers taken from Brythonic Celtic languages such as Cumbric which had died out in most of Northern England by the sixth century, but they were commonly used for sheep counting and counting stitches in knitting until the Industrial Revolution, especially in the fells of the Lake District. Though most of these number systems fell out of use by the turn of the twentieth century, some are still in use.
Nicolas Hodges is a pianist living in Germany.
Elgar Howarth, is an English conductor, composer and trumpeter.
Dominic Muldowney is a British composer.
Peter Zinovieff was a British engineer and composer. In the late 1960s, his company, Electronic Music Studios (EMS), made the VCS3, a synthesizer used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and White Noise, and Krautrock groups as well as more pop-orientated artists, including Todd Rundgren and David Bowie. In later life, he worked primarily as a composer of electronic music.
Punch and Judy is a chamber opera with music by Harrison Birtwistle and a libretto by Stephen Pruslin, based on the puppet figures of the same names. Birtwistle wrote the score from 1966 to 1967. The opera was first performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, which had commissioned the work, on 8 June 1968, with David Atherton conducting the English Opera Group. The premiere cast included John Cameron as Mr Punch.
The Second Mrs Kong is an opera in two acts, with music by Sir Harrison Birtwistle to a libretto by Russell Hoban. Glyndebourne Touring Opera first staged the opera on 24 October 1994. The cast included Philip Langridge, Helen Field and Michael Chance. Tom Cairns designed and directed the production, in collaboration with choreographer Aletta Collins. Elgar Howarth was the conductor. This production was recorded for the National Video Archive of Performance by the V&A Theatre Museum. This recording is available to view by appointment at the V&A Collections Centre and Reading Room in Olympia, London.
Rhian Samuel is a Welsh composer.
Adam Birtwistle is a British artist whose idiosyncratic portraits of composers and musicians are represented in the National Portrait Gallery.
Jane Marian Manning OBE was an English concert and opera soprano, writer on music, and visiting professor at the Royal College of Music. A specialist in contemporary classical music, she was described by one critic as "the irrepressible, incomparable, unstoppable Ms. Manning – life and soul of British contemporary music".
Eurydice was a character in Greek mythology and the Auloniad wife of Orpheus, who tried to bring her back from the dead with his enchanting music.
The Corridor is a chamber opera composed by Harrison Birtwistle to an English language libretto by David Harsent. It premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival on 12 June 2009. The title refers to the corridor through which Orpheus and Eurydice passed as he was leading her from the underworld.
Panic is a concertante work for alto saxophone, jazz drum kit, woodwinds, brass and percussion by Harrison Birtwistle. It was written in 1995 and premiered as part of the Last Night of the Proms on 16 September 1995 at the Royal Albert Hall, London. At the premiere the solo saxophone part was played by John Harle, the drum kit by Paul Clarvis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Andrew Davis.
The Triumph of Time, sometimes also referred to as Triumph of Time, is a composition for orchestra by British composer Harrison Birtwistle written 1971 and 1972. It is one of Birtwistle's best-known compositions, as well as one of the works that earned him international reputation.
Michael Hall was a violist, conductor, lecturer, broadcaster, musicologist, and writer.
