Brian Coffill

Colonial Song Percy Grainger Born: July 8, 1882, Melbourne, Australia Died: February 20, 1961, White Plains, New York Original Instrumentation: Two Voices (Soprano and Tenor), Harp, and Full Orchestra Composed: 1911 Arranged: 1918, Percy Grainger Duration: 6 minutes The first, and eventually only, composition in Grainger's intended "Sentimentals" series, the band score is inscribed with the description, “This military band dish-up [arrangement] as Loving Yule-Gift to Mumsie,

Vanity Fair (A Comedy Overture, In Which Several Characters From Thackeray’s Novel are Portrayed) Percy Fletcher Born: December 12, 1879, Derby, United Kingdom Died: December 10, 1932, London, United Kingdom Composed: 1924 Edited: 2006, Brant Karrick Duration: 7 minutes Percy Fletcher's Vanity Fair is a light overture, first published in London in 1924, based upon William Makepeace Thackeray's eponymous novel. Fletcher's musical version, a fast-slow-fast, single-movement form

Charles Edward Ives, the convention-shattering American modernist composer, was born 142 years ago today, October 20th, 1874, in Danbury, Connecticut. Ives would later pen some of the most remarkable music every composed, anticipating many later twentieth-century musical innovations by decades, and establishing himself as one of the first true American master composers. Ives had early musical training from his father, a creative Civil War bandmaster named George Ives, who was

"Classical music is dying" is a familiar trope, with many high-profile orchestras struggling to find audiences and fund their institutions. The recent trend of strikes, lockouts, and high-stakes labor negotiations between ensemble administrations and musicians has been in the news again lately, with the announcement this weekend that both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia orchestra musicians would walk out on the very beginnings of their season. The New York Times highlighted this