Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. The main film series consists of four short films and one feature-length film, and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and made public in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actors Peter Sallis and Ben Whitehead. Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Tasmin Elizabeth Little is an English classical violinist. She is a concerto soloist and also performs as a recitalist and chamber musician. She has released numerous albums, winning the Critics Award at the Classic Brit Awards in 2011 for her recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto.
Jacqueline Mary du Pré was a British cellist. At a young age, she achieved enduring mainstream popularity. Despite her short career, she is regarded as one of the greatest cellists of all time.
Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor. He plays the Gibson Stradivarius.
Haydn Wood was a 20th-century English composer and concert violinist, best known for his 200 or so ballad style songs, including the popular Roses of Picardy.
Leonidas Kavakos is a Greek violinist and conductor. As a violinist, he has won prizes at several international violin competitions, including the Sibelius, Paganini, Naumburg, and Indianapolis competitions. He is an Onassis Foundation scholar. He has also recorded for record labels such as Sony/BMG and BIS. As a conductor, he was an artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg and has been a guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Nicola Joy Nadia Benedetti is an Italian-Scottish classical solo violinist and festival director. Her ability was recognised when she was a child, including the award of BBC Young Musician of the Year when she was 16. She works with orchestras in Europe and America as well as with Alexei Grynyuk, her regular pianist. Since 2012, she has played the Gariel Stradivarius violin. She became the first woman to lead the Edinburgh International Festival when she was made Festival Director on 1 October 2022.
Hugh Wood was a British composer.
David Bruce is a British composer and a YouTuber.
Iain Farrington is a British pianist, organist, composer and arranger. He performs regularly with some of the country's leading singers, instrumentalists and choirs, as well as giving solo recitals.
A Matter of Loaf and Death is a 2008 British stop-motion animated short film produced by Aardman Animations, created by Nick Park, and is the fourth short to star his characters Wallace and Gromit, the first one since A Close Shave in 1995.
Iain Sutherland is a British conductor. He was Conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra 1966-1972. Previously he had been an orchestral and session violinist in London playing in the LPO, Philharmonia, RPO and ECO under such conductors as Boult, Sargent, Groves, Solti and Klemperer. A major restructuring was initiated by BBC in 1972 to reduce its coverage of "light" music, in favour of "pop" music. Iain Sutherland's remit with the BBC SRO included TV as well as Radio, and he was Musical Director for many Light Entertainment series with Stanley Baxter, Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson and Andy Stewart The BBC SRO was officially closed down in 1981, when the BBC management sacked all 6 regional and 2 London light orchestras. In 1973 Sutherland returned to London and became the regular conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra for the "Friday Night Is Music Night" programme, and up until the disbanding in 1981,he freelanced for the BBC, while regularly conducting other orchestras across Europe and the UK. In another move during the '80s, the BBC combined the two London light orchestras into a large, studio-style recording orchestra, the BBC Radio Orchestra, of which Sutherland was appointed the Conductor, but it,too, was disbanded in 1993.He had, however, become a successful guest conductor in Europe as well as the UK, and even further afield. These orchestras included the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The Hallé,English Chamber Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Slovak Philharmonic, Graz Symphony, BRTN Philharmonic (Brussels), NDR Philharmonic (Hannover), Dessau Philharmonic, Brazilian National Symphony (Rio),Flemish Radio Philharmonic, Maribor Philharmonic, BR Radio Orchestra (Munich), Cape Philharmonic Orchestra and the orchestras of SWF (Kaiserslautern), NRK (Oslo) and NOS (Hilversum), and the national youth orchestras of Scotland and Norway. During these decades his international career included giving the world premieres of Malcolm Arnold's "Irish Dances", Edward Harper's "Etude for Orchestra ", Robert Farnon's Third Symphony (Edinburgh), John Dankworth's "Escapade" for jazz quartet and chamber orchestra, the British premiere of Darius Millhaud's "A Frenchman in New York", the Scandinavian premiere of Korngold's Violin Concerto, alongside premieres of the symphonic version of the Mike Oldfield/ David Bedford "Tubular Bells" in Glasgow, "Movimentos para Don Jose Haydn" by Rene Staar in Graz and "Rhapsody Brasillieros" by Ney Rosauro in Rio de Janeiro. In 1988 he was invited to form the City of Glasgow Philharmonic Orchestra, in preparation for Glasgow City of Culture 1990. His unique "Pops at the Philharmonic" concerts inspired by the Boston Pops proved to be very successful drawing full houses which he continued to conduct until he resigned in 1997. Between 1988 and 2008 he conducted annually at Kenwood House, Glamis Castle and other stately homes during the annual Summer Proms Season. From 1999 until 2008 he was principal guest conductor at the annual English Haydn Festival, which ran for two weeks in the lovely market town of Bridgnorth under the direction of the eminent Austrian Professor H.C Robbins-Landon. Changes to the funding, co-incidental with the death of John Reid, the leader of the unique period-instrument orchestra, brought about the demise of this internationally famous corner of English culture.
Watson Douglas Buchanan Forbes was a Scottish violist and classical music arranger. From 1964 to 1974 he was Head of Music for BBC Scotland.
Benjamin Whitehead is an English actor. He is best known as the current voice of Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit franchise following Peter Sallis' retirement and subsequent death.
There has been more than one Horrible Histories Prom in the BBC's annual Proms concert series. The Horrible Histories entertainment franchise is aimed at children, and these concerts have introduced children to classical music.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
Eugen Sârbu is a Romanian-born classical violinist. He has had an international career as a soloist, recitalist and conductor. In 1978, he won both the Paganini Competition and the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. He has premiered works from living composers including Einojuhani Rautavaara, and has recorded Sibelius and Mozart.
Arthur Hinton was an English composer and conductor. His wife was the internationally famous pianist Katharine Goodson, who gave the first performance of his Piano Concerto in D minor in 1905.
