1. biografia

[amministratore_1]

Judith WEIR
via
London, Great Britain
tf/cell:
mail:
http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/comp ... udith-Weir
luogo e data di nascita: Cambridge (Great Britain), 1954

She trained with John Tavener while still at school (North London Collegiate School) and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976. Her music often draws on sources from medieval history, as well as the traditional stories and music of her native Scotland. She is best known for her operas and theatrical works, although she has also achieved international recognition for her orchestral and chamber works. From 1995 to 2000, she was the Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London. She held the post of Composer in Association for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1995 to 1998. She received the Lincoln Center's Stoeger Prize in 1997 and in 2001 the South Bank Show music award. In 2007, Weir was the third recipient of The Queen's Medal for Music.
Weir's musical language is fairly conservative in its mechanic, with a "knack of making simple musical ideas appear freshly mysterious." Her operatic musical writing is sometimes compared to Britten's, and has been described as alternating "twee rhyming couplets and inert blank verse". Her first stage work, The Black Spider, was a one act opera which premiered in Canterbury in 1985 loosely based on the short novel of the same name by Jeremias Gotthelf. She has subsequently written one more "micro-operas", three full length operas, and an opera for television. In 1987, her first half length opera, A Night at the Chinese Opera, premiered at Kent Opera. This was followed by her other two full length operas The Vanishing Bridegroom (1990) and Blond Eckbert (1994), the latter commissioned by the English National Opera. In 2005 her opera Armida, an opera for television, premiered on Channel Four in the United Kingdom). The work was made in co-operation with Margaret Williams. Weir's commissioned works most notably includewoman.life.song (2000) for Jessye Norman and We are Shadows (1999) for Simon Rattle. In January 2008, Weir was the focus of the BBC's annual composer weekend at the Barbican Centre in London. The four days of programmes ended with a first performance of her new commission, Concrete, a choral motet. The subject of this piece was inspired by the Barbican building itself - she describes it as ‘an imaginary excavation of the Barbican Centre, burrowing through 2,500 years of historical rubble’.