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Gerald Barry '"Gerald Barry is a composer of strange and rare device" |
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Gerald Barry was born in Ireland in 1952 and studied with Stockhausen and Kagel. He first came to public attention in 1979 with his radical ensemble works '_______' and Ø. Many of his works have been commissioned by the BBC, including ‘Chevaux-de-frise’ for the 1988 Proms, ‘Hard D’ for Orkest de Volharding, ‘The Conquest of Ireland’ and ‘Day’ for the BBCSO, and ‘The Eternal Recurrence’, a setting of Nietzsche for voice and orchestra. Thomas Ades conducted the Russian premiere of ‘Chevaux de frise’ with the Mariinsky Orchestra in St Petersburg in 2007. His first opera, ‘The Intelligence Park’ (recorded on NMC) was first performed at the 1990 London Almeida Festival, and a second, ‘The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit’ opened the 2002 Aldeburgh Festival followed by performances in London and the Berliner Festwochen. It received its North American premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2006, followed by performances in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. In 1997 ‘The Road’ was written for the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Bavarian RSO gave the German premiere of ‘The Conquest of Ireland’ in 1998. Barry has had a long association with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group for whom he wrote ‘Wiener Blut’, ‘Dead March’ and ‘Beethoven’. ‘Wiener Blut’ received its German premiere with the Frankfurt RSO in June 2006. In 2005 the stage premiere of ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’ (recorded on RTÉ) was given at English National Opera and the German language premiere at Basle in 2008. A one act opera for Radio France, ‘La Plus Forte’ (The Stronger), was written for the 2007 Festival Presences and given it's American premiere with the New World Symphony in Miami in 2008. The American patron, Betty Freeman, commissioned ‘Le Vieux Sourd’, a work for solo piano premiered by Gloria Cheng in Los Angeles in 2008. Portrait concerts of Barry's music took place recently at Columbia University and the Isabelle Gardner Museum in Boston. A new orchestral work, ‘No other people’, was commissioned by RTÉ for 2009. Gerald Barry is exclusively published by Schott Music as of September 2009. (biography © Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland) |
| Composer web site: www.oup.co.uk/music/repprom/barry/ |
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