| Frederic Rzewski |
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| 1938 births | |
| rzewski, frederic | |
| living people | |
| 20th century classical composers | |
| american composers | |
| 21st century classical composers | |
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BIOGRAPHY He attended , he commenced a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he became a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum . Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a Collective , Collaborative process, with Improvisation and live Electronic Instrument s prominently featured. In 1971 he returned to New York. (Sadie 1980) In 1977 Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège , Belgium . Occasionally he teaches for short periods at schools and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe, including Yale University , the University Of Cincinnati , The California Institute Of The Arts , the University Of California, San Diego , and the Royal Conservatory Of The Hague . (ibid) Most of Rzewski's works are overtly political (see: Music And Politics ) and feature improvisational elements. He is an unapologetic Marxist . Some of his better-known music includes '' The People United Will Never Be Defeated! '' (36 variations on the Sergio Ortega song '' El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido ''), a set of bravura piano variations written as a companion piece to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations ; ''Coming Together'', which is a setting of letters from an inmate at Attica State Prison, at the time of the famous riots there (1971); ''North American Ballads''; ''Night Crossing with Fisherman''; ''The Price of Oil'', and ''Le Silence des Espaces Infinis'', both of which use graphical notation; ''Les Moutons de Panurge''; and the ''Antigone-Legend'', which features a principled opposition to the policies of the State, and which was premiered, to the composer's amusement, on the night that the United States bombed Libya in April 1986 . (ibid) Nicolas Slonimsky (1993) says of him in ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'': "He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument." DISCOGRAPHY Composed By Rzewski
Played By Rzewski
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