U.S. composer and performer Nancy Bloomer Deussen died on 16th November. She was 88. Bloomer Deussen, a prominent Californian, was co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area National Association of ...
Described by John Adams as ‘One of the few whose music will last’, American composer Christopher Rouse died on Saturday. He was 70. Rouse was born in Baltimore, studying at ...
The death has been announced of French pianist, conductor and composer Roger Boutry. He was 87. Boutry studied at the Conservatoire de Paris where his many awards – he took ...
It has been reported that French composer Ivo Malec died on 14th August. He was 94. Malec was born in Zaghreb, Croatia. He received a classical training there before a ...
Tragic news, with the death of French composer Julien Gauthier, who was attacked and killed by a bear whilst on a field recording expedition in the remote Northwest Territories of Canada. He ...
Belarusian composer and organist Anna Korotkina has died. She was just 57. Korotkina graduated from the Minsk Institute of Culture and the State Academy of Music. She was a member ...
Australian composer Barrington Pheloung died on 31st July. He was 65. Pheloung was best known for his theme music for the detective series Inspector Morse. A lover of puzzles, in ...
More sad news with the death of Danish composer and organist Ib Nørholm, who died on Monday aged 88. Nørholm was born in Søberg, Denmark. He began his study of ...
Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström died on Monday. He was 76. Following studies of art history and musicology, Sandström studied composition with Ingvar Lidholm at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm. ...
The death has been reported of British-Canadian composer Derek Holman. Born in Cornwall he was educated at Truro School, the Royal Academy and the University of London. Various teaching posts ...
Belgian composer Dominique Lawalrée has died. He was 64. Lawalrée was born in Brussels, studying at the Institut Supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie in Namur. He began composing in ...
German composer, arranger and conductor Martin Böttcher died on 19th April. He was 91. His early years were dominated by the war; a period in the Luftwaffe was followed by time as ...
André Previn died last night at his home in Manhattan. He was 89. Born in Berlin, Germany, Previn showed phenomenal musical talent at an early age. His father, a lawyer, ...
Israeli composer Ami Maayani died on 16th February. He was 83. Born near Tel-Aviv, Maayani studied conducting, violin and viola playing at the Academy of Music in Jerusalem (1951–53) and ...
French singer, pianist and composer Michel Legrand died in Paris on 26th January. He was 86. Legrand’s early training suggested the path of a classical musician – the Paris Conservatoire ...
The death has been announced of German composer and pianist Helmut Bieler. He was 78. Bieler studied composition with Franz Xaver Lehner and piano with Friedrich Wührer and Aldo Schoen ...
British-South African composer John Joubert died on 7th January. He was 91. Joubert was born in Cape Town, South Africa and educated in the Anglican Diocesan College in Rondebosch. He ...
Israeli composer, conductor and teacher Noam Sheriff died on 25th August. He was 83. As a composer Sheriff fused elements of Eastern and Western music in a broadly atonal style. ...
The musical world today mourns the loss of one of the outstanding figures in contemporary British music, composer and conductor Oliver Knussen, CBE. He was just 66. Ever self-critical his ...
US composer and guitarist Glenn Branca died on May 13th. He was 69. Branca studied theatre at Emerson College, Boston. After spending time in the UK in 1973, he returned ...
New York-based composer Matt Marks died on May 11th. He was just 38. Not just a composer but also a mean arranger, singer and horn player, Marks was a founding ...
American composer, pianist and academic Donald H. Keats died on 27th April. He was 88. Keats was a graduate of Yale University, where he studied with Quincy Porter and Hindemith, ...
Composer and academic James Wishart has died of a stroke aged 61. Wishart was a lecturer in composition at the University of Liverpool from 1980 to 2013. He was also active ...
Canadian composer Robert Joseph Rosen died on Monday 19th March in Ottawa. He was 61. Rosen studied in Canada with Violet Archer, Malcolm Forsyth and Bruce Mather. He attended the ...
Croatian composer, conductor and teacher Milko Kelemen died on 8th March in Stuttgart. He was 93. Kelemen was a composition pupil of Stjepan Šulek, later studying in Paris with Messiaen ...
Hungarian composer László Melis died on 12th February. He was 65. Melis studied the violin at the Liszt Academy, Budapest, before performing extensively as a founding member of the contemporary ...
Icelandic composer Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson died suddenly at his apartment on 9th February. He was just 48. He is best known for his film scores, including Prisoners (2013), The Theory of Everything (2014) Sicario (2015), Arrival (2016) and The ...
Photo: Pavel Antonov Sad news, with the death yesterday of the great Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Whilst not a great exponent of contemporary music, he was known for his ...
Czech-American composer Ladislav Kubík died on 27th October. He was 71. Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Kubík studied at the Prague Academy of Music. He established a significant career in Europe—with ...
French composer and conductor Jean-Jacques Werner died on 22nd October aged 82. A native of Strasbourg, in his youth he studied the harp, horn and conducting before completing his higher ...
Swiss composer Klaus Huber died in Perugia, Italy on October 2nd. He was 92. Born in 1924, Huber attended the Zürich Conservatory, studying the violin with Stefi Geyer and composition ...
Sad news with the dead of two renowned British composers. Derek Bourgeois (1941–2017) Derek Bourgeois died on 6th September aged 75. Born in Kingston upon Thames, he was educated at ...
Sad news with the loss of composers Pēteris Plakidis and Marian Varga, both on 8th August. Pēteris Plakidis (1947–2017) was Latvian, a graduate from the Jāzeps Vītols State Conservatory in ...
French composer Pierre Henry died on Wednesday at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Paris. He was 89. Henry was known as one of the pioneers of noise in music, his interest beginning ...
French composer and organist Jacques Charpentier died on 15th June, aged 83. Partly self-taught, he was also decisively influenced by Indian music and by Olivier Messiaen. The fullest evidence of ...
Chilean composer José Vicente Asuar died on 11th January. He was 83. Asuar studied in his native Chile and subsequently in Germany, later taking charge of electronic studios in both ...
Belgian composer Tristan Clais died on 4th January aged 87. He studied music and theatre at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles and from 1958 presented musical programmes on Belgium television, ...
American composer Elliott Schwartz died on Wednseday aged 80. He taught for over 40 years at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine and was performed widely in the US. He held a ...
France is mourning the loss of composer Jean-Claude Risset, who died on Monday aged 78. He is often mentioned alongside French electronic pioneers Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer and is ...
The Welsh musical community felt a deep sense of shock today at the news of the sudden death of composer Peter Reynolds. He was one of those figures that seemed ...
I was away doing other things when the death of Sir Neville Marriner came through on Sunday, so it feels a little belated to be mentioning it now. Even if ...
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was one of a handful of composers truly to have dominated British cultural life, also winning a worldwide reputation with his substantial body of work. Sometimes ...
The death of Pierre Boulez marks the end of a remarkable, and often controversial, era in Western music. The last, and arguably greatest, composer of the postwar avant garde, he ...
Many readers will not have heard of Mervyn Burtch, a Welsh composer who died on 12th May aged 85. For Welsh musicians his is a very familiar name indeed. His ...
Though especially associated with early music, I cannot let today pass without lamenting the loss of Christopher Hogwood, one of our finest conductors. For me he was the man who ...
It was with great sadness that I learnt of Claudio Abbado’s death on Monday. He is perhaps best known for being appointed as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic following ...
John Tavener, who died yesterday aged 69, was one of contemporary music’s most remarkable figures: his ability, especially, to write works that connected with ordinary people was unsurpassed in the ...
Mortuos plango, I mourn the dead. Though annus horribilis is, perhaps, an exaggeration, the grim reaper has done his work unusually well in 2012. This has especially been the case ...
