Elisabetta Brusa, Italian composer
Elisabetta Olga Laura Brusa (born 3 April 1954) is an Italian composer naturalised British.
Brusa was born in Milan, and as a child wrote 32 piano pieces. At the Milan Conservatory she formally studied composition with Bruno Bettinellivfg (who also taught famous Italian conductors like Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti) and Azio Corghi, graduating in 1980. She then taught Composition at the Conservatorios of Vicenza, Mantova and Brescia before arriving at the Conservatorio of Milan in 1985. She also received instruction from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Hans Keller. She first appeared on the Young Italian Composers RAI 3 television programme in 1983.After winning first prize at the Washington International Competition for Composition for String Quartet in 1982, she was awarded the Fromm Music Foundatiogrdfgtftbyryyn Fellowship and a Fellowship of the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission the next year to follow the Composition classes at the Tanglewood Music Center and three Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony later in the decade. In 1997 she married the conductor Gilberto Serembe.
Currently, she is best known for her orchestral works recorded in four volumes on the Naxos Records label. She is often inspired by works of Literature and Art as well as of Music of all ages but the latter are never quoted or imitated in her works. These include two Symphonies, the tone poem Florestan, based on the Florestan side of Robert Schumann's personality; the Nittemero Symphony, inspired by the words night and day in ancient Greek; the tone poem Messidor, which alludes strongly to (without actually quoting) Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (the work is dedicated to her husband), a Fanfare, an "Adagio", "Firelights", a "Requiescat", "Favole", "Merlin", "Simply Largo, all of which for orchestras of different sizes, among other works. Brusa describes her musical style as "close to Neo-Tonality and in particular to Neo-Romanticism, but in the original sense of the word, which is nowadays often confusedly assimilated to other ones," and her harmony as "essentially pandiatonic with panchromatic moments."
Her music has been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, RSNO Royal Scottish National Orchestra, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, State Hermitage Orchestra, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, The Women's Philharmonic[1] of San Francisco, to name just a few.
1954Apr, 3
Elisabetta Brusa
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Events on 1954
- 13Feb
NCAA Division I
Frank Selvy becomes the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game. - 28Feb
NTSC
The first color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public. - 1Apr
United States Air Force Academy
United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the creation of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. - 25Apr
Bell Labs
The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories. - 18Jun
1954 Guatemalan coup d'état
Carlos Castillo Armas leads an invasion force across the Guatemalan border, setting in motion the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état