Oliver Davies (1804-1882)

Oliver Davies was born in Marylebone, London, in early December, 1804, the son of another Oliver Davies, a professor of music, and his wife, Mary Hoare. Originally from the Welshpool area .........

Olivia Buckley Dussek (1799-1847)

Olivia Buckley Dussek was the daughter of two distinguished musicians. Her father was the famous Bohemian pianist and composer, Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812), whilst her mother was Sophia Corri Dussek (1771-1847), harpist, pianist, composer and singer, and a former pupil of Dussek, whom she had married in 1792, when she was just seventeen years old ...........

Sébastien Erard (1752-1831)

An important anniversary has come, and an important anniversary has gone—seemingly unnoticed. Was I the only person in this whole wide harp world who, on 5 April 2002, was celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sébastien Erard? ........

Gareth Glyn (b. 1951)

Gareth Glyn was born in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, in 1951; he is a music graduate of Merton College Oxford and a Composer Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music .........

Andres Izmaylov (b. 1974)

Born in Narva, Estonia, in 1974, Andres Izmaylov comes from the third generation of a dynasty of harpists. His grandmother, Lidia Gordzevich, was an Honoured Artist of Russia .........

Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1747-1790)

1790, and revolutionary Paris was a city in turmoil. On the night of 19 February, in a final dramatic gesture of despair, Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz threw himself from the Pont-Neuf into the Seine and drowned. Whether his suicide was a desperate response to his wife’s infidelity, or whether it was the result of the infinitely stressful situation brought about by the ever-burgeoning threat of instability and civil unrest in the city, will never really be known ..........

Elias Parish Alvars (1808 - 1849)

With the bi-centenary of his birth falling on 28 February 2008, harpists the world over celebrate the dawn of a New Year – The Year of Parish Alvars

‘Eli, son of Joseph and Mary Ann Parish, born 28 February, baptised 13 March ............

John Parry, Parri Ddall/Blind Parry, (1710-1782)

Bewigged and powdered, John Parry was a Master of the High Baroque. Born in about 1710, and almost certainly on the Cefn Amwlch estate at Bryn Cynan on the Lleyn Peninsula, he was blind from birth. His first patrons were the Griffiths family, owners of the estate, and they provided the young blind boy with the harp which was to give him the means of making a livelihood ........

Derek Smith (b. 1930)

Derek Smith won composition prizes at University College School. He was an early member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYO) where he met tutor Malcolm Arnold with whom he subsequently studied composition. Norman Del Mar taught him conducting, other influences being Colin Davis and Lennox Berkeley with whom he occasionally played chamber music ......

Louis Spohr (1784 - 1859)

Born and brought up in the North German duchy of Brunswick, and the eldest of six children, Louis Spohr became one of the towering talents of the first half of the nineteenth century, winning a brilliant reputation as virtuoso violinist, teacher, composer and conductor .....

David Evan Thomas

David Evan Thomas has been honored with two McKnight Foundation Fellowships, an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra .......