MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
Topic: DOWNLOADS
MSR Classics is an independent record label committed to a culture of musical excellence and superlative support for the recording artist. Founded in 1997, MSR offers the recording artist the means to create a Compact Disc of the finest quality, and distribute it in a worldwide marketplace. In a time when major record labels are less willing and able to accommodate the recording aspirations of many classical musicians, such a service is invaluable. MSR Classics is managed by Robert LaPorta, a 20-year veteran of the recording industry, who has served as Classical Director of the EMI Classics and Virgin Classics labels, Manager of Marketing and Special Products at PolyGram Classics & Jazz (which included the Deutsche Grammophon, London-Decca, Philips Classics, ECM, Mercury and Verve labels), and Publicity Manager at ICM Artists management in New York. 
This year...a 20-day festival celebrating black cultural legacy at Carnegie Hall, which also will honor the 100th birthday year of composer Elliott Carter and present a complete cycle of Mahler symphonies in a 12-day period conducted by Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez. 
AS fast as news travels in a world of blogs, downloads and streaming audio, musicians’ reputations can still vary a lot from one place to another. In London and his native Moscow the 35-year-old conductor Vladimir Jurowski ranks as a star. 
Kenins passed away Sunday 20 JAN 2008 at age 88. The Latvian-born musician, a professor emeritus of the University of Toronto, was known for his chamber music as well for composing eight symphonies, 12 concertos, three cantatas, an oratorio, choral works and several educational pieces. Kenins left Latvia for France following the Second World War, landing in Toronto in 1951 to serve as organist and music director at St. Andrews Latvian Lutheran Church. He joined U of T the following year, inspiring music students and future talents including Edward Laufer, Bruce Mather, Imant Raminsh, Arthur Ozolins and James Rolfe. 
Sir Colin Davis — “the reluctant king of English music making,” the FT calls him — recounts in conversation a turning point in his life that sounds like a parable for each and all of us and maybe for great nations, too. The year must have been 1962. Davis, who’s now 80, was then 35, a tempestuous young superstar conductor with the BBC and other symphony orchestras in London. He had just come through “the last night at the Proms,” the traditional spring revels, when… 
Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has been named music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Salerno-Sonnenberg will lead four sets of subscription concerts each season for the 17-member string orchestra. The internationally known Salerno-Sonnenberg has played with a number of orchestras and was a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize in 1999. The New Century Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992. The orchestra performs without a conductor and makes musical decisions collaboratively. The music director chooses programs and guides the artistic vision of the group. 
She's a leading singer at the Metropolitan Opera, she's been knighted by the French government, and she's the most recorded mezzo-soprano of all time. But Jennifer Larmore insists she's not a diva. 
Pier Miranda Ferraro, an Italian tenor who sang in the 1960s and 1970s and was noted for his interpretation of Giuseppe Verdi's "Otello," died Friday 18 JAN 2008, at his home in Milan, family members said. He was 83. 
"Brigg Fair" is an English folk song. It is best known in a choral arrangement by Percy Grainger and a subsequent set of orchestral variations by Frederick Delius. In 1907, Delius heard the setting and was impressed by both the tune and the arrangement. With Grainger's permission, Delius used the song as the basis of an orchestral work. The first public performance was in Liverpool, on 18 January 1908, under Granville Bantock. There was an earlier private performance in 1907 shortly after completion in Basle under the direction of Hermann Suter. The work was dedicated to Grainger, who claimed to have suggested the form, which he described as in the manner of a passacaglia. 
