AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

1930–2014 American conductor and composer A child prodigy, whose conducting won the praise of Toscanini, Maazel’s career began in earnest in Europe, and in 1960 he was the first American to conduct at Bayreuth. Directorships followed at the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra 1964–75, the Deutsche Oper, Berlin 1965–71, the Cleveland Orchestra 1972–82, the Orchestre ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical
• Producer

b. 1948 English composer and producer Lloyd Webber met the lyricist Tim Rice in 1965 and within three years they had written Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (1968), which displays a strong lyricism and a close affinity to pop. His most successful musical was Cats, based on the poems by T. S. Eliot, which was one of the ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Zhôrzh Be-za’) 1838–75 French composer When Bizet died at the age of 37, he was considered a failure by the French musical establishment. He had had several operas produced in Paris, but none of them had been wholly successful; now his latest work, Carmen, had caused a scandal. Bizet’s reputation was at its lowest ebb, but already ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

b. 1943 American conductor and pianist After studies at Juilliard, Levine became assistant to Szell at the Cleveland Orchestra 1964–70. In 1971 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, becoming principal conductor (1973) and then music director (1976). During a long tenure at the Met, he has also held posts with the Munich Philharmonic 1999–2004 and the ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

b. 1971 Russian pianist A child prodigy, he gave his first solo recital at the age of 10 and as a teenager worked with Karajan, later collaborating with Solti, Giulini, Abbado, Maazel and Ashkenazy among conductors, and with Martha Argerich, Isaac Stern and Joshua Bell in chamber music. But it is for solo performances ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

b. 1943 Latvian conductor Jansons studied at the Leningrad Conservatory and in Austria with Karajan before becoming associate (later associate principal) conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic 1973–97 and music director of the Oslo Philharmonic 1979–2000 (an orchestra whose international reputation he consolidated through tours and recordings) and the Pittsburgh Symphony 1997–2004, succeeding Maazel. He was then chief conductor of both ...

• Personalities
• Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival
• Country

(Vocals, guitar, b. 1942) Peter Rowan was a member of Bill Monroe And The Blue Grass Boys from 1964 to 1967 and that stint gave him a solid, traditional foundation for everything he did after that, no matter how wild, whether it was the art-rock band Earth Opera (with David Grisman), the folk-rock band Sea Train ...