Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than fifty years. Born in Washington, D. C. Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Although considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music rather than to a musical genre such as jazz; some of the jazz musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in the idiom. Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz; some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions.
Ellington recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizol's "Caravan", "Perdido", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. In the early 1940s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, as well as additional short pieces. Following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in several films, scored several, composed a handful of stage musicals. Ellington was noted for his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, for his eloquence and charisma, his reputation continued to rise after he died, he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize Special Award for music in 1999. Ellington was born on April 29, 1899, to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Ellington in Washington, D.
C. Both his parents were pianists. Daisy played parlor songs and James preferred operatic arias, they lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place, NW, in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D. C. Duke's father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on April 15, 1879, moved to Washington, D. C. in 1886 with his parents. Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D. C. on January 4, 1879, the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy; when Ellington was a child, his family showed racial pride and support in their home, as did many other families. African Americans in D. C. worked to protect their children from the era's Jim Crow laws. At the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellington's childhood friends noticed that his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman, began calling him "Duke."
Ellington credited his friend Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke."Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt would come by on his horse sometimes, stop and watch us play", he recalled. Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D. C, he gained his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games. In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café, Ellington wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag", he created the piece by ear, as he had not yet learned to write music. "I would play the'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz and fox trot", Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew. I was established as having my own repertoire." In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress, Ellington wrote that he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent.
Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at the age of fourteen. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington's love for the instrument, he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, Harvey Brooks. Ellington began listening to, imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D. C. but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months. He would sometimes hear strange music played by those who could not afford much sheet music, so for variations, they played the sheets upside down. Henry Lee Grant, a Dunbar High School music teacher, gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, improve his technique.
Ellington was inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. In New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and aro
Kevin Kwan Loucks
Kevin Kwan Loucks, D. M. A. E. M. B. A. is a Korean–American classical pianist and arts entrepreneur. He is Director of Innovation and Program Development at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, he is Co-Founder of Chamber Music | OC and is a founding member of the award-winning piano trio Trio Céleste. He served as President of the Music Teachers' Association of California, Orange County Branch. Loucks, a Korean adoptee, grew up in Santa Rosa, where he was active in the instrumental music program as an honors student at Santa Rosa High School, he attended the University of California, where he received the Dean's Award for Excellence upon graduating with a bachelor of music degree in 2004. While a student at UC Irvine, Loucks attended the Aspen Music Festival and Music@Menlo where he worked with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. Loucks moved to New York City to continue his piano studies with Julian Martin at The Juilliard School where he studied chamber music with pianists Yoheved Kaplinsky, Seymour Lipkin, cellist Fred Sherry.
At Juilliard, he received the Luba and George Goldberg Prize and the Susan Rose Fellowship before graduating with a master of music degree in 2006. He took a year off to concertize before enrolling in the doctoral program at Stony Brook University in New York where he served as head of piano for the Pre-College Division and was teaching assistant for the Emerson String Quartet and the university's graduate chamber music department, he worked with pianist Christina Dahl, violinists Pamela Frank and Philippe Graffin, cellist Colin Carr, the Emerson String Quartet, was awarded a doctor of musical arts degree from the university in 2014. He was the recipient of the Dean's Fellowship for Professional Activities, the Ackerman Memorial Award for Service in Chamber Music, the Distinguished Travel Award from Stony Brook's Graduate Student Organization. During his studies at Stony Brook, Loucks attended programs at The Banff Centre in Canada where he worked with pianists Marc Durand and Robert McDonald.
In 2017, Loucks graduated with an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California where he studied entrepreneurship, finance and strategy. He finished his executive education at Stanford Graduate School of Business where he studied marketing and innovation, brand management, digital marketing strategy. Loucks has concertized as both soloist and chamber musician throughout Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, South Korea, Spain and the United States, he performed as soloist with the Bratislava Chamber Orchestra, the Seoul National University Virtuosi, the California Chamber Orchestra, has been featured in prominent international concert venues including Chicago Cultural Center, the Daejeon Cultural and Arts Center, the Kennedy Center, Kumho Art Hall, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Martinu Hall in Liechtenstein Palace, Merkin Concert Hall, the Moulin d'Andé, Prösels Castle, Soka Performing Arts Center, IBK Chamber Hall and the Recital Hall at Seoul Arts Center, as well as both Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
As a collaborative artist, Loucks has been featured in recital performances with Rachel Barton Pine, Denis Brott, James Campbell, Colin Carr, Paul Coletti, Robert deMaine, Glenn Dicterow, Karen Dreyfus, Eugene Drucker, Philippe Graffin, Alan Kay, Edgar Meyer, Frank Morelli, Johannes Moser, Lara St. John, Kyung Sun Lee, Stephen Prutsman, Roger Tapping, Raphael Wallfisch, Carol Wincenc, Peter Zazofsky, he has appeared with numerous ensembles including the Afiara, Beaubliss, Jupiter, Rus, YUL String Quartets, has performed and recorded as a member of Gruppo Montebello, an All‐Star Ensemble of acclaimed faculty and alumni from The Banff Centre. In 2004 Loucks met concert violinist and future wife Iryna Krechkovsky at a music festival in Italy where the two were scheduled to perform together; that year they formed the award-winning Krechkovsky/Loucks Duo and have since performed hundreds of recitals together throughout North America and Asia. They have performed the majority of the violin/piano repertoire with particular interest in the music of Bach, Brahms, Debussy, Janacek, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky.
The Duo has premiered numerous compositions written for them by composers including Samuel Adler and Philip Lasser, have worked with John Corigliano in New York City. At the recommendation of pianist Wu Han, Loucks formed Trio Céleste in 2012 with Krechkovsky and cellist Ross Gasworth who performed together with Krechkovsky during their graduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2006 and 2007; the trio has since established itself as one of the most active and dynamic chamber music ensembles in the country with major recital performances in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Toronto. In their inaugural season, Trio Céleste was selected as winners of the prestigious Beverly Hills Auditions in Los Angeles and were appointed Artists-in-Residence at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, where they direct the annual Summer Chamber Music Festival; the ensemble makes up the core of Chamber Music | OC, both as principal performers and as organizational administrators.
The trio’s first major performance project, “The Complete Piano Trios of Ludwig van Beethoven” included three separate performances of the entire piano trio cycle of Beethoven in Irvine, San Francisco, Toronto, as well as multiple performances of the Triple Concerto with t
Sarah Chang
Sarah Chang is an American classical violinist. Recognized as a child prodigy, she first played as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1989, she enrolled at Juilliard School to study music, graduated in 1999, continued university studies. During the 1990s and 2000s, Chang had major roles as a soloist with many of the world's major orchestras. Chang was born in Philadelphia and raised in Cherry Hill and Voorhees Township, New Jersey, she is the daughter of Myoung-Jun, a composer, Min-Soo Chang, a violinist and music teacher. Chang's parents moved to the United States from South Korea in 1979 for her father's advanced music degree at Temple University, her mother took composition classes at the University of Pennsylvania. Chang has said that although she "never lived in Korea... I do still feel strongly it's where my roots are." Her younger brother Michael has a degree from Princeton University. In 1986, when Chang was 5 years old, she auditioned for and was accepted to the Juilliard School by performing the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor.
Chang spent her weekends attending music classes at Juilliard and shopping in New York City with her parents. When Chang was 6 years old, she started studying with Isaac Stern outside school, she continuously visits Stern's studio to learn new pieces with him. In 1989, she began working with Dorothy DeLay at her studio in New York where her father had received his musical lessons, at the Aspen Music Festival and School. A former student and assistant to DeLay, Hyo Kang provided training to Chang. Following her 1999 high school graduation in New Jersey, she returned to Juilliard for university and studied with DeLay. Chang learned from a family environment to speak Korean, she is fluent in German. Due to her musical accomplishments, Chang is among a small number of professional figures recognized as a child prodigy, her mother trained her to play one-finger melodies on the piano at age 3. For her fourth birthday, she was given a 1/16-sized violin. At age 8, she auditioned alongside Zubin Mehta and Riccardo Muti, who worked with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Both granted her immediate engagements. In 1991, when Chang was 10 years old, she recorded Debut. Chang rose to fame and became known on an international scale, performing up to 150 concerts a year. At the age of 17, she asked for a three-month break. In 2006, Newsweek ranked her as one of the Top Eight Achieving Females in the United States. In the interview accompanying the feature, she commented: "I think having a career at such an early age kept me focused. We schedule at least two to three years in advance in the classical industry. I felt so grounded and so grateful to know what it was that I wanted to do with my life." In 2002, she performed in North Korea. Chang commented: "The concert was full of government officials; every single last seat. It was invitation only. Frightening and exhilarating at the same time, and I just thought about. I am so fortunate to be a musician, at that moment, I genuinely felt that music is the one and only universal language."Chang took part in watchmaker Movado's global advertising campaign "The Art of Time" with Pete Sampras and composer Wynton Marsalis.
For the 2004 Olympics, she was selected to carry the Olympic Torch in New York. In 2005, Yale University dedicated a chair in Sprague Hall in Chang's name. Following this, Chang toured for a year with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a Sextet programme of summer festivals leading to a concert at the Berlin Philharmonie. Chang played a recital at Carnegie Hall on April 7, 2007, accompanied by the British pianist Ashley Wass, she has continued to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen and make appearances with the former at both the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall throughout 2008. On March 27 and 28 2008 she played for San Antonio, Texas audiences at the Majestic Theater, a performance, preceded by an appearance at Antonio Strad Violin in the same city. From May 2009 to June 2010, she held recital tours across Europe, North America and Asia with pianist Andrew von Oeyen. In the February 12, 2010 program, she held her recital at the Barbican Hall in London.
Chang made an appearance at the University of Southern California in March 2010, where she played Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26. She performed at the Hollywood Bowl in August 2010. Sarah Chang owns several violins, her main violin is the 1717 Guarneri del Gesu by the Cremonese luthier, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù which she inherited from her mentor, Isaac Stern. In another interview in 2013, she told the reporter that she bought the violin from Stern, not received it. Chang uses a variety of bows: she has said that she prefers a Pajeot for Mozart and Bach. Chang has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, orchestras in London and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Additionally, she has performed with the Los Angeles Philhar
James Conlon
James Conlon is an American conductor of opera, symphonic and choral works. He is Music Director of Los Angeles Opera and Principal Conductor of the Italian RAI National Symphony Orchestra, he was the long serving director of the two-week Cincinnati May Festival from 1979 through 2016. From 2005 to 2015, he was music director at the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he is known for his efforts in reviving music by composers suppressed during the Nazi regime. Conlon grew up in a family of five children on Cherry Street in Douglaston, New York City, his mother, Angeline L. Conlon, was a freelance writer, his father was an assistant to the New York City Commissioner of Labor in the Robert F. Wagner administration, his siblings were his parents. When he was eleven, he went to a production of La traviata by an amateur company founded by the mother of a friend, he became a treble in a children's chorus in an opera company in Queens. He dreamed about being a tenor a baritone, wanted to sing the role of Carmen at one point.
It dawned on him that the only way to do everything in opera was to become an operatic conductor. He entered the High School of Music & Art at the age of fifteen and at eighteen he was accepted into the Aspen Music Festival and School conducting program, in September, 1968 he entered the Juilliard School of music. In 1970, the Juilliard Orchestra took an educational tour to Europe and he was invited to Spoleto the next year as an assistant doing work as a répétiteur and chorus conductor. During that time, he conducted one performance of Boris Godunov, he recalled that he had fallen in love with this opera at a young age, had dreamed that it would be the first opera he would conduct. In 1972, at a scheduled Juilliard production of La bohème directed by Michael Cacoyannis, conductor Thomas Schippers pulled out. At the time, Maria Callas was doing a series of master classes at Juilliard and heard Conlon in rehearsal, she suggested to Peter Mennin, that Conlon should step in to conduct. Conlon received the conducting award of the American National Orchestral Association and in 1974 became the youngest conductor engaged for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's subscription series.
In 1976 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut and his British debut with the Scottish Opera, in 1979 he debuted at Covent Garden. He was named director of the Cincinnati May Festival in 1979, a position he retained until 2016. After engagements with the Paris Opéra, Maggio Musicale in Florence, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Lyric Opera, Conlon became chief conductor of the Cologne Opera in 1989. In 1996 he was appointed music director of the Opéra National de Paris while serving concurrently as Music Director of the city of Cologne, Germany. Since his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974 at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, Conlon has appeared with every major North American and European orchestra, he has appeared with many of the world's major opera companies, including Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Associated for 30 years with the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in 1976, he has conducted more than 250 performances there, leading a wide range of works from the Italian, French and Czech repertoires.
Conlon has held several major European posts, including Principal Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, General Music Director of the City of Cologne, where he was Music Director of the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera, Principal Conductor of the Paris National Opera, where his Paris tenure was the longest of any conductor there since 1939. His leadership is associated with an increase in artistic standards, overall productivity and attendance, which, in an era of diminishing audiences, has increased exponentially in the past decade. In 2015, he was named Principal Conductor of the Italian RAI National Symphony Orchestra. Conlon has been Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera since the 2006/07 season, his work there has included a series called "Recovered Voices", a multi-year project during which Conlon presented operas by composers affected by the Nazi regime. The series included a double-bill of Alexander von Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg and Viktor Ullmann's Der zerbrochene Krug, operas by composers such as Schreker and Braunfels.
In an effort to establish a Wagnerian tradition in Los Angeles, Conlon has conducted seven of Wagner's works thus far, including the first performances in LA of Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2008/09. In 2013, whose lifelong fascination with Benjamin Britten was reflected in a personal three-year performance cycle of the composer's works in America and Europe, spearheaded Britten 100/LA: A Celebration, a Los Angeles countywide collaboration featuring performances and exhibitions. Conlon was Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2015, he was Music Director of the two-week Cincinnati May Festival from 1979 to 2016 providing artistic leadership for more May Festivals than any other music director in the festival's history and holds a place among the longest-tenured music directors of any major classical music institution in the United States. Conlon completed a two-year artist residency with his alma mater, the Juilliard School. During the residency, Conlon worked with the school's young artists in its three d
Conrad Tao
Conrad Yiwen Tao is an American composer and pianist and former violinist. Tao's piano and violin performances since childhood brought him early recognition at music festivals and competitions, he is receiving critical praise for his recitals and concerts with symphony orchestras. At age 13, he was featured on the PBS TV series From the Top – Live from Carnegie Hall as violinist and composer, he won eight consecutive ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Among his compositions have been commissions by the New York Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony and Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Among other honors, Tao is a U. S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, a Davidson Fellow Laureate and a Gilmore Foundation Young Artist, he was the only classical artist named by Forbes magazine in 2011 as one of the "30 Under 30" in the music industry. In 2012, Tao released a solo piano EP, The Juilliard Sessions: Conrad Tao Plays Debussy and Stravinsky, a synthpop album, Eyelids; that year, he was an Avery Fisher Career Grant awardee.
He produced and hosted a three-night music festival, the UNPLAY Festival, in New York City from June 11–13, 2013. In 2013, he released two albums, Gordon Getty: Piano Pieces and Voyages, he was artist-in-residence for Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2015/16 and Hong Kong Philharmonic in 2017. Tao travels around the U. S. and abroad performing concerts and, at the same time, he attends the Columbia University–Juilliard School joint Bachelors degree program. Tao was born in Urbana, Illinois to Sam Tao, an engineer, Mingfang Ting, a research scientist. Both parents earned doctorates from Princeton University. Hearing his older sister Connie's piano lessons, Tao began to plink out children's songs on the piano, by ear, at the age of 18 months, he gave his first piano recital at age 4. At age 8, he made his concerto debut with the Utah Chamber Music Festival Orchestra, performing Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major. At the age of 9, Tao moved with his family to New York City, he began studying in the Juilliard School's Pre-College Division and at the Professional Children's School.
He won the 2003 Walgreens National Concerto Competition as a violinist. In 2004, 2007 and 2011, Tao was featured on the PBS and NPR series From the Top as violinist and composer. Tao won eight consecutive ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards from 2004 to 2011. At age 10, his piano composition Silhouettes and Shadows won the BMI Carlos Surinach Prize, his first piano concerto, The Four Elements, was premiered in 2007 by the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, Ohio. In 2008, Tao was named a Davidson Fellow Laureate for his project, "Bridging Classical Music from the Past to the Future as Pianist and Composer". In reviewing a 2008 piano recital in Berkeley, where Tao gave the U. S. premiere of his "Fantasy-Sonata", the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "The four movements of the piece tumble forth in a way that supports its hybrid title, suggesting both a free flow of ideas and an overarching structural framework. There are melodies for the ear to grab onto – in the slow movement, set against rippling left-hand accompaniment – and Tao varies and subverts them with glee.
Other early compositions include many pieces for solo piano and chamber music such as Tao's 2009 piano trio. He won both the Juilliard Pre-College Gina Bachauer Piano Competition and the Prokofiev Concerto Competition in 2006. At the 2007 Festival del Sole, the 13-year-old Tao substituted for the ailing Italian pianist Fabio Bidini to play Serge Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Russian National Orchestra. One critic wrote, "nothing could prepare us for the talent. Command of one of the classical repertoire's most difficult works was amazing." By the age of 16, Tao had appeared as a piano soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Utah Symphony and San Francisco Symphony, among many others. In 2008, Tao performed both Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor and Piano Concerto No. 1 in the same concert with the Miami Piano Festival Orchestra. He repeated that feat nine times the next year with the Symphony of the Americas in Boca Raton.
The same year, critic Harris Goldsmith, in Musical America, called Tao "the most exciting prodigy to come my way. His promise is limitless." The Wall Street Journal wrote of a 2008 concert: "In Mozart's dark-hued Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, Mr. Tao showed appealing freshness in his use of telling, expressive details that distinguish one interpretation from the next – a slight decrescendo here, a change of tonal color there, a heartfelt response to the piece; the crossed-hand passages and rapid scale runs were performed with consummate ease." In 2009, Tao's venues included Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre. Of a 2009 performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major, the San Francisco Classical Voice commented: "The first movement was full of thrills: laser-sharp articulation and accuracy, powerful glissandos... and, what's more, heartfelt expression.... Expressiveness came more to the fore in the second movement. Never have I heard a left hand with such hypnotic affect, with right-hand legato melodies as smooth as a trip down the Seine."
Tao has long studied piano with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Choong Mo Kang at Juilliard and composition with Christopher Theofanidis of Yale University. For five years he studied violin with Catherine Cho at Juilliard's Pre-College Division, he studied for six summers at the Aspen Music Festival and School from 2004 to 2009 playing violin, although "he has moved his focus away from violin
James Levine
James Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is known for his tenure as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a position he held for 40 years, he was formally terminated by the Met from all his positions and affiliations with the company on March 12, 2018 over sexual misconduct allegations that he denies. Levine has made numerous recordings, as well as television and radio broadcasts, with the Met. Levine has held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, he has trained promising singers and musicians for professional careers. After taking an two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015/16 season to become Music Director Emeritus. On December 2, 2017, The New York Times published a front-page story containing detailed accounts of four men in their 40s to 60s alleging their long-term sexual abuse by Levine occurring decades earlier, while each was a music student of his in his teens or early 20s.
The following day, the Met cancelled his future scheduled engagements. The Ravinia Festival promptly severed all ties with Levine, as did the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which announced that Levine would never again "be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future." Following an investigation that ended in March 2018, having "found credible evidence", the Met terminated its relationship with Levine, for "sexually abusive and harassing conduct". Levine was born in Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family, his maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, his mother was an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He has a brother Tom, two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, with whom he is close, he employs Tom as his business assistant, his brother is a painter as well. He has a younger sister, a marriage counselor.
He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. Levine subsequently studied music with first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School, he graduated from an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, took courses in conducting with Jean Morel, he graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City. From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra, he served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970.
That year, he made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers. In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season; this concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész, he made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, major works of Gershwin, Berg, Beethoven and others.
In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut at age 28 on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Tosca. Following further appearances with the company, he was named principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in February 1972, he became the Met's principal conductor in 1973, its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members, he became the company's first artistic director in 1986, relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million. During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into the realms of recording, separate concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles f
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a German writer and statesman. His works include four novels. In addition, there are numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, nearly 3,000 drawings by him extant. A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782 after taking up residence there in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, he was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe was a member of the Duke's privy council, sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver mines in nearby Ilmenau, implemented a series of administrative reforms at the University of Jena, he contributed to the planning of Weimar's botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace. In 1998 both these sites together with nine others were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site under the name Classical Weimar. Goethe's first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants, was published after he returned from a 1788 tour of Italy.
In 1791, he was made managing director of the theatre at Weimar, in 1794 he began a friendship with the dramatist and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, whose plays he premiered until Schiller's death in 1805. During this period, Goethe published Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, his conversations and various common undertakings throughout the 1790s with Schiller, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Johann Gottfried Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, Wilhelm von Humboldt, August and Friedrich Schlegel have come to be collectively termed Weimar Classicism. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer named Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship one of the four greatest novels written, while the American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson selected Goethe as one of six "representative men" in his work of the same name. Goethe's comments and observations form the basis of several biographical works, notably Johann Peter Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. Goethe's father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire.
Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, he was not involved in the city's official affairs. Johann Caspar married Goethe's mother, Catharina Elizabeth Textor at Frankfurt on 20 August 1748, when he was 38 and she was 17. All their children, with the exception of Johann Wolfgang and his sister, Cornelia Friederica Christiana, born in 1750, died at early ages, his father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time languages. Goethe received lessons in dancing and fencing. Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not. Although Goethe's great passion was drawing, he became interested in literature, he had a lively devotion to theater as well and was fascinated by puppet shows that were annually arranged in his home. He took great pleasure in reading works on history and religion, he writes about this period: I had from childhood the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginnings of books, the divisions of a work, first of the five books of Moses, of the'Aeneid' and Ovid's'Metamorphoses'....
If an busy imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither, if the medley of fable and history and religion, threatened to bewilder me, I fled to those oriental regions, plunged into the first books of Moses, there, amid the scattered shepherd tribes, found myself at once in the greatest solitude and the greatest society. Goethe became acquainted with Frankfurt actors. Among early literary attempts, he was infatuated with Gretchen, who would reappear in his Faust and the adventures with whom he would concisely describe in Dichtung und Wahrheit, he adored Caritas Meixner, a wealthy Worms trader's daughter and friend of his sister, who would marry the merchant G. F. Schuler. Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from 1765 to 1768, he detested learning age-old judicial rules by heart, preferring instead to attend the poetry lessons of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Anna Katharina Schönkopf and wrote cheerful verses about her in the Rococo genre.
In 1770, he anonymously released his first collection of poems. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Christoph Martin Wieland. At this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen; the restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Faust's 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the only real place in his closet drama Faust Part One. As his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August 1768. Goethe became ill in Frankfurt. Durin
