Brave Heart

Michael Kim (born 1968) is a Canadian concert pianist and professor. He is currently Professor and Director of the University of Minnesota School of Music, Twin Cities. He was Dean of the School of Music at Brandon University and earlier Chair of the Keyboard Department, and faculty associate to the President at Lawrence University, Wisconsin.

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Jason Nett is a Canadian composer, producer, and guitarist born in New Westminster, British Columbia. He was the resident composer for the Vancouver Island Symphony. He also works as a producer and performs internationally.

Jason Nett's commissioned works are frequently performed in Vancouver's "classical" community by orchestras, chamber ensembles, choirs etc.(listed below). Nett fuses the classical styles of composers like Bach and Beethoven with influences from Rock and Jazz. Nett's music integrates an emphasis on vibrant rhythm in many of his works. About his Vancouver Island commissioned work, Sonic Blue, Jason Nett says, "The piece is very up-tempo, very rhythmic, something you would find in blues-rock guitar today..."

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Jason Nett is a Canadian composer, producer, and guitarist born in New Westminster, British Columbia. He was the resident composer for the Vancouver Island Symphony. He also works as a producer and performs internationally.

Jason Nett's commissioned works are frequently performed in Vancouver's "classical" community by orchestras, chamber ensembles, choirs etc.(listed below). Nett fuses the classical styles of composers like Bach and Beethoven with influences from Rock and Jazz. Nett's music integrates an emphasis on vibrant rhythm in many of his works. About his Vancouver Island commissioned work, Sonic Blue, Jason Nett says, "The piece is very up-tempo, very rhythmic, something you would find in blues-rock guitar today..."

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Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought the music of Norway to international consciousness, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius and Bedřich Smetana did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively.

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The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868, was the only concerto Grieg completed. It is one of his most popular works and is among the most popular of all piano concerti.

The work is among Grieg's earliest important works, written by the 24-year-old composer in 1868 in Søllerød, Denmark, during one of his visits there to benefit from the climate.

The concerto is often compared to the Piano Concerto of Robert Schumann: it is in the same key; the opening descending flourish on the piano is similar; and the overall style is considered to be closer to Schumann than any other single composer. Incidentally, both composers wrote only one concerto for piano. Grieg had heard Schumann's concerto played by Clara Schumann in Leipzig in 1858, and was greatly influenced by Schumann's style generally, having been taught the piano by Schumann's friend Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 [O.S. 25 April] – 6 November [O.S. 25 October]1893), was a Russian composer of the romantic period, whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. He was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension.

Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a musical career in Russia at that time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five, with whom his professional relationship was mixed.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, was written between 1877 and 1878. Its first performance was at a Russian Musical Society concert in Moscow on February 22 (or the 10th using the calendar of the time), 1878, with Nikolai Rubinstein as conductor. In Middle Europe it sometimes receives the nickname "Fatum", or "Fate".

During the composition of the symphony, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, that he wanted "very much" to dedicate it to her, and that he would write on it "Dedicated to My Best Friend". He had begun composing the symphony not long after Meck had entered his life. He would complete it in the aftermath of his catastrophic marriage and claimed she would find in it "an echo of your most intimate thoughts and emotions."^] The dedication was significant in more than one way. One important facet of the paternalistic nature of Russian society was that, in artistic patronage, patron and artist were considered equals. Dedications of works to patrons were not gestures of humble gratitude but expressions of artistic partnership. By dedicating the Fourth Symphony to her, he was affirming her as an equal partner in its creation.

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Michael Kim (born 1968) is a Canadian concert pianist and professor. He is currently Professor and Director of the University of Minnesota School of Music, Twin Cities. He was Dean of the School of Music at Brandon University and earlier Chair of the Keyboard Department, and faculty associate to the President at Lawrence University, Wisconsin.

Read more on Wikipedia.org...