Macdowell Biography

Edward Alexander MacDowell (December 18, 1860 – January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches," "Sea Pieces," and "New England Idylls." "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose." In 1904 he was one of the first seven Americans honored by membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Edward MacDowell was born in New York City. He received his first piano lessons from Juan Buitrago, a Colombian violinist who was living with the MacDowell family at the time. He later received lessons from friends of Buitrago, including Teresa Carreño, a Venezuelan pianist.

His family later moved to Paris, France, where in 1877 he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire. He then continued his education at Dr. Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany where he studied piano with Carl Heymann and composition with Joachim Raff. When Franz Liszt visited the conservatory in 1879 and attended a recital of student compositions,

Who is Jay Chou?

Jay Chou (born 18 January 1979) is a Taiwanese musician, singer-songwriter, music and film producer, actor and director who has won the World Music Award four times. In 1998 he was discovered in a talent contest where he displayed his piano and song-writing skills. Over the next two years, he was hired to compose for popular Mandarin singers. Although he was trained in classical music, Chou combines Chinese and Western music styles to produce songs that fuse R&B, rock and pop genres. He composes all his own songs, as well as songs for other singers.

In 2000, Chou released his first album, titled Jay, under the record company Alfa Music. Since then he has released one album per year except in 2009, selling several million copies each. His music has gained recognition throughout Asia, most notably in regions such as Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and in overseas Asian communities, winning more than 20 awards each year. He has sold more than 28 million albums worldwide up to 2010. He debuted his acting career in Initial D (2005), for which he won Best Newcomer Actor in both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards,

Indonesian Pianist - Ananda Sukarlan

Ananda Sukarlan (born June 10, 1968, Jakarta) is an Indonesian pianist.

He is the son of Sukarlan and Poppy Kumudastuti. He started his music lessons at the age of 5 from his older sister, Martani Widjajanti. After graduating from Kolese Kanisius(Canisius College, Jakarta) in 1986, he continued to study in University of Hartford in Connecticut, under a scholarship from Petrof Piano.

He then went to Europe when he was 17, graduated with summa cum laude in 1993 from the Royal Conservatory of Den Haag under the guidance of Naum Grubert and was a prize winner of many international competitions, such as the Nadia Boulanger Award of Orleans. He has performed in many overseas festivals with symphony orchestras and ensembles of Berlin, Rotterdam, nearly all symphony orchestras in Spain, Paris, Wellington as well as appearances in radios and TVs throughout Europe. He was the first Indonesian artist who established the cultural relationship between Portugal and Indonesia by performing as a soloist with the Portuguese National Symphony Orchestra in 2000, right after the re-opening of the diplomatic relationship between the two countries. He is the only Indonesian listed in the book "2000 outstanding musicians of the 20th century" and "The International Who's Who in Music" published by Cambridge.

About Carl Maria Von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18–19 November 1786 – 4–5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school.

Weber's operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon greatly influenced the development of the Romantic opera in Germany. Der Freischütz came to be regarded as the first German "nationalist" opera, Euryanthe developed the Leitmotiv technique to a hitherto-unprecedented degree, while Oberon anticipated Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream and, at the same time, revealed Weber's lifelong interest in the music of non-Western cultures. This interest was first manifested in Weber's incidental music for Schiller's translation of Gozzi's Turandot, for which he used a Chinese melody, making him the first Western composer to use an Asian tune that was not of the pseudo-Turkish kind popularized by Mozart and others.

About Hiromi Uehara

Hiromi Uehara (上原ひろみ, born 26 March 1979), known as Hiromi, is a jazz composer and pianist born in Hamamatsu, Japan. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blend of musical genres such as jazz, progressive rock, classical and fusion in her compositions.

Hiromi started learning classical piano at age 6. She was introduced to jazz by her piano teacher Noriko Hakita when she was 8. At age 14, she played with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. When she was 17, she met Chick Corea by chance in Tokyo, and was invited to play with him at his concert the next day. After being a jingle writer for a few years for Japanese companies such as Nissan, she enrolled to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. There, she was mentored by Ahmad Jamal and had already signed with jazz label Telarc before her graduation.

Biography of Ray Charles

Ray Charles was born September 23, 1930, Albany, Georgia, U.S.—died June 10, 2004, Beverly Hills, California. He is an American pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader, a leading black entertainer billed as “the Genius.” Charles was credited with the early development of soul music, a style based on a melding of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz music.

When Charles was an infant his family moved to Greenville, Florida, and he began his musical career at age five on a piano in a neighbourhood café. He began to go blind at six, possibly from glaucoma, completely losing his sight by age seven. He attended the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, where he concentrated on musical studies, but left school at age 15 to play the piano professionally after his mother died from cancer (his father had died when the boy was 10).

Charles built a remarkable career based on the immediacy of emotion in his performances. After emerging as a blues and jazz pianist indebted to Nat King Cole's style in the late 1940s, Charles recorded the boogie-woogie classic “Mess Around” and the novelty song “It Should've Been Me” in 1952–53. His arrangement for Guitar Slim's “The Things That I Used to Do” became a blues million-seller in 1953. By 1954 Charles had created a successful combination of blues and gospel influences and signed on with Atlantic Records. Propelled by Charles's distinctive raspy voice, “I've Got a Woman” and “Hallelujah I Love You So” became hit records. “What'd I Say” led the rhythm and blues sales charts in 1959 and was Charles's own first million-seller.

Vanessa Carlton Biography

Vanessa Carlton was born in August 16, 1980 

Along with Michelle Branch and Nelly Furtado, Vanessa Carlton helped usher in a new era of female songwriters during the early 2000s. "A Thousand Miles," her first single, was one of the biggest songs of 2002, topping the pop charts in America and cracking the Top Ten in England. None of her subsequent singles came close to matching that song's success, but Carlton continued releasing albums into the following decade, fine-tuning a sweeping, cinematic pop sound that featured her vocals and piano skills at the forefront.

Raised in Milford, a tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania, Vanessa Carlton took piano lessons from her mother and composed her first song as an eight-year-old. Several years later, she was accepted into the School of American Ballet in New York. Despite being one of the best dancers in her class, she became frustrated with the strictness of the discipline and began to look elsewhere for inspiration, eventually winding up at the piano located inside her Manhattan dorm. Carlton began writing songs again, reaching beyond the classical music of her youth to incorporate influences from pop artists like Tori Amos and Fiona Apple. When it came time to graduate, she halted her dancing career and enrolled at Columbia University instead, where she continued to work on her songwriting. 

Joseph Haydn Biography

Franz Joseph Haydn is best remembered for his symphonic music, honored by music historians who have dubbed him the "Father of the Symphony." That is a well-known fact. But did you know that Haydn worked his way from peasant to Kapellmeister where he lived in the house of a prince? Did you know that although Austria was his home, he traveled to London to write his most famous symphonies? Did you know that Haydn's oratorio "The Creation" grew out of his love of nature, as he was an avid hunter and fisherman? Or did you know that Haydn was mentor to a young music student by the name of Mozart?

These are the lesser-known facts, the parts of Haydn's life that allow us to peek inside a great man's legacy to see what made him tick. Haydn was indeed a self-made man. Born in the small village of Rohrau, Austria on March 31, 1732, Franz Joseph Haydn was the second of twelve children. His father was a wagon maker by trade, but quite musical. On Sundays, the Haydn family often gave private concerts. Haydn's father played the harp while Haydn and his mother sang.

Samuel Feinberg Biography

Born: May 26, 1890 - Odessa, Russia Died: October 22, 1962 - Moscow, Russia

The eminent Russian pianist, pedagogue and composer, Samuel [Samuil] Feinberg, was born in Odessa and raised in Moscow. From an early age he exhibited an extraordinary talent on the piano. He enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory and studied piano with Alexander Goldenweiser. During his student years he took instruction in composition privately with Nikolai Zhilyayev. After his 1911 graduation from the Conservatory, Samuel Feinberg launched a career as a piano soloist while writing music on the side. Before he was sent off to war, Feinberg met Scriabin, who praised his pianism. His active participation in the Russian military ended abruptly when he became gravely ill and had to spend the remainder of the war recuperating in Moscow.

Schumann Biography

The son of a bookseller, publisher and writer, Robert Schumann showed early abilities in both music and literature, the second facility used in his later writing on musical subjects. After brief study at university, he was allowed by his widowed mother and guardian to undertake serious study of the piano with Friedrich Wieck, whose favourite daughter Clara was later to become Schumann’s wife. His ambitions as a pianist were thwarted by a weakness in the fingers of one hand, but the 1830s nevertheless brought a number of compositions for the instrument. The year of his marriage, 1840, was a year of song, followed by attempts in which his young wife encouraged him at more ambitious forms of orchestral composition. Settling first in Leipzig and then in Dresden, the Schumanns moved in 1850 to Düsseldorf, where Schumann had his first official appointment, as municipal director of music. In 1854 he had a serious mental breakdown, followed by two years in the asylum at Endenich before his death in 1856. As a composer Schumann’s gifts are clearly heard in his piano music and in his songs.

Orchestral Music

Symphonies

Schumann completed four symphonies, after earlier unsuccessful attempts at the form. The first, written soon after his marriage and completed early in 1841, is known as ‘Spring’ and has a suggested programme. His Second Symphony followed in 1846 and the Third Symphony ‘Rhenish’, a celebration of the Rhineland and its great cathedral at Cologne, was written in Düsseldorf in 1850. Symphony No. 4 was in fact an earlier work, revised in 1851 and first performed in Düsseldorf in 1853. The Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Op. 52 was described by the composer as a ‘symphonette’.

About Billy Joel

William Martin Joel was born on May 9, 1949, in the Bronx, New York, to Howard and Rosalind Joel. Shortly after he was born, the family moved to a section of America's famous "first suburb," Levittown on Long Island. Although his father was an accomplished classical pianist, it was Joel's mother who pushed the young boy to study piano. He began playing at the age of four and showed an immediate aptitude for the instrument. By the time he was sixteen, Billy Joel was already a pro, having joined his third band before he could drive.

It wasn't long before the artist, inspired by the Beatles' iconic Ed Sullivan Show performance, committed heart and soul to a life in music. He dropped out of high school to pursue a performing career, devoting himself to creating his first solo album Cold Spring Harbor, which was released in 1970. The terms of Joel's contract with Family Productions turned out to be onerous and the artist was unhappy with the quality of the album they released. It wasn't a commercial success.

Schubert's Biography

Schubert was the son of a schoolmaster, his father an amateur but a keen musician. He was born in Vienna on January 31, 1797, initially learned violin from his father and piano from his elder brother. He showed great talent and interest in music that aged 11, he was accepted as a choir boy in the court chapel. He later became a school teacher, composing whenever time allowed.

As his talent for composing songs became more known, later gave up teaching to concentrate in composition. As a teenager, he produced piano pieces and string quartets. He also composed his first symphony, a three-act opera Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Pleasure Palace) and his first song, Gretchen am Spinnerade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel.)

Tchaikovsky Biography

Peter Tchaikovsky is the famous Russian composer who created the Nutcracker Suite That is the Tchaikovsky remembered by the world. But did you know that before he studied music, he first studied the law? Did you know that he had an odd friendship with a wealthy widow - a friendship to which he consented knowing of the stipulation that they never meet? Did you know he died because he drank unboiled water? These are the lesser known facts about the well known musician.

Even as a boy, Peter Tchaikovsky was said to be emotional, intense, and complex. From his earliest years, Peter's emotions spanned the gamut from extremely happy to intensely depressed. History recalls that Peter Tchaikovsky was a headstrong, impetuous youth. The complex boy became a complex man.

Biography of Vladimir Horowitz

Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (Russian: Владимир Самойлович Горовиц, Vladimir Samojlovich Gorovitz; Ukrainian: Володимир Самійлович Горовiць, Volodymyr Samiylovych Horovitz)  (October 1 [O.S. September 18] 1903 – November 5, 1989) was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were and remain legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.

Vladimir Horowitz was born in Kiev in the Russian Empire (now the capital of Ukraine). Some sources erroneously claim that Horowitz was born in Berdychiv, however Horowitz's birth certificate unequivocally states Kiev as his birthplace.

Horowitz was the youngest of four children of Samuil Horowitz and Sophia Bodik, who were assimilated Jews. Samuil Horowitz was a well-to-do electrical engineer and the distributor of electric motors for several German manufacturers. Horowitz's grandfather Joachim was a merchant (and an arts-supporter), belonging to the 1st Guild. This status gave exemption from having to reside in the Pale of Settlement. Horowitz was born in 1903, but in order to make him appear too young for military service so as not to risk damaging his hands, his father took a year off his son's age by claiming he was born in 1904. The 1904 date appeared in many reference works during the pianist's lifetime.

The Next Mozart ~ Emily Bear

Emily Bear is 9 years old and began piano studies at the age of five with Emilio del Rosario at The Music Institute of Chicago. She currently studies classical piano with Mary Sauer, Principal Keyboardist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and jazz improvisation with Alan Swain. Additional mentors include Yoheved Kaplinsky, head of the Juilliard Piano Department. Emily is equally comfortable playing jazz, classical, or her own compositions.

Emily made her professional debut performing a solo concert at the Ravinia Music Festival in July of 2007, when she was five years old. She played a solo 40 minute program mixing classical, jazz, and her own pieces. She is the youngest performer in Ravinia’s more than 100 year history. She was asked back to perform solo concerts in 2008 and 2009 as well.

She most recently made her Carnegie Hall, debut, performing original music solo, and with orchestra, including the world premiere of her composition, "Peace - we are the future" with 100 piece orchestra,

Biography of Bach

Born into a musical family, Bach received his earliest instruction from his father. After his father's death in 1695, Bach moved to Ohrdruf, where he lived and studied organ with his older brother Johann Christoph. He also received an education at schools in Eisenach, Ohrdruf, and Lüneburg. Bach's first permanent positions were as organist in Arnstadt (1703-1707) and Mühlhausen (1707-1708). During these years, he performed, composed taught, and developed an interest in organ building. From 1708-1717 he was employed by Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar, first as court organist, and after 1714, as concertmaster. During this period, he composed many of his best organ compositions; in his capacity as concertmaster, he was also expected to produce a cantata each month. In Weimar, Bach's style was influenced by his study of numerous Italian compositions (especially Vivaldi concertos).

Chopin Biography

Frédéric Chopin, a Polish composer (a writer of music) and pianist, was one of the creators of the typically romantic character piece. All of his works include the piano.

Frédéric François Chopin was born on February 22, 1810, near Warsaw, Poland. He was the second of four children of Nicholas Chopin, a Frenchman, and his Polish wife, Justina, who had been a well-educated but poor relative in the Skarbek household, where Nicholas had been a tutor. At an early age, Chopin displayed artistic talents—he was an artist, wrote poetry, and played piano without any formal instruction. The gifted child also began composing his own music and had his first piece of music published when he was just seven years old.

Young Chopin had a good education and later studied music privately with Joseph Elsner, founder and director of the Warsaw Conservatory. In 1817 Chopin's first composition was performed publicly. A year later he himself performed in public, playing a concerto (music written for one or more instruments) by Adalbert Gyrowetz. By this time the young Chopin began drawing comparisons to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), another composer who had demonstrated spectacular talent at a young age.

In 1826 Chopin became a full-time student at Elsner's conservatory, where he received an excellent foundation in theory, harmony, and melody. Elsner, after recognizing that Chopin's style was too original to force into traditional patterns, granted Chopin the freedom to develop along clear personal lines.

About David Foster

David Walter Foster, OC, OBC (born November 1, 1949), is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter and arranger, noted for discovering successful singers Celine Dion, Josh Groban, and Michael Bublé and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world.

Foster was a keyboardist for the pop group Skylark discovered by Eirik Wangberg. The band's song “Wildflower” was a top ten hit in 1972. He has worked as a producer with a wide range of musical stars, including Andrea Bocelli, Céline Dion, Mariah Carey, Charice Pempengco, Gloria Estefan, Nsync, Neil Diamond, Whitney Houston, Cher,Kenny Loggins, Prince, Chicago, Earth Wind and Fire, Chaka Khan, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Kenny Rogers, Boz Scaggs, Olivia Newton-John, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Beyonce Knowles, Destiny's Child, The Bee Gees, Bryan Adams, Christina Aguilera and many other people. He produced Japanese singer Seiko Matsuda's 1988 album "Citron", also arranging and co-writing all the songs on the album, including the number one single "Marrakech".

Together with Jay Graydon he formed the band Airplay, which is often labeled the most important album within the Westcoast AOR genre.

He has produced debut albums for The Corrs, Michael Bublé, Renee Olstead, Josh Groban which were released under his own record label, 143 Records, and distributed through Warner Music. Foster helped launch Kevin Sharp's career after the two met through the Make-A-Wish Foundation and he produced David Hayes singing a song by composed by Ed Scheid and Laramy Smith title "Friend".

About William Joseph

William Joseph is a pianist and recording artist from Phoenix, Arizona.

William Joseph won, at age 8, a full music scholarship provided by the Boys Club of America, enabling him to study piano with Russian pianist Stella Saperstein.

He was the first teacher hired by Piano Warehouse in Phoenix, Arizona and taught for the company Arizona Music Lessons later to be renamed Arizona Music Academy, for which he still performs short teaching periods.

Debussy Biography

Some people call Claude Debussy a musical Impressionist, comparing his music with the paintings of Monet and Renoir. Others speak of him as a musical Symbolist, using sounds to stir feelings and sensations in the listener's mind in much the same way as Symbolists poets, such as Baudelaire and Verlaine, used words and phrases. Regardless of how one interprets Debussy's music, it undeniably has a subtle and a magical power over the imagination.

Claude Debussy was born 22 August, 1862, at St. Germain-en-Laye, France. From the age of ten on, Debussy was a brilliant student at the Paris Conservatoire de Musique, where he won the highest prizes for composition - including the Prix de Rome for his cantata L'Enfant prodique.

He was also a rebel and would often alarm his professors by sitting at the piano and playing chords that broke every textbook rule. What he was beginning to do was search for a new musical language, and slowly but surely he found it.