The great American composer, pianist and conductor George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, NY, on 26 September 1898. Son of poor Jewish immigrants, his parents Moshe Gershovitz and Rose Bruskin emigrated from the St. Petersburg region in Russia. They settled

The Council of Europe represents 47 member states, and roughly 800 million Europeans. Celebrating Europe’s rich linguistic diversity, the Council celebrated the European Year of Languages in 2001. At the end of this campaign the Council of Europe’s Committee of

Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 25 September 1906, Dmitry Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. His father was studying physics and mathematics at St Petersburg University, and subsequently worked as

Perhaps some of you don’t know that the great cellist and pedagogue János Starker began his illustrious career as an orchestral musician. He played in Broadway orchestras too. Born in Budapest July 5, 1924, as a wunderkind, Starker performed all

Leningrad / St. Petersburg composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) was considered to be one of the most gifted of the students of Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich. She studied with him from 1937 to 1947 and it is rumoured that he even

The American composer Charles Ives has often been associated with experimental music, or rather advanced music. One does not simply immerse himself in the academic music world through him. Indeed, his works include polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements and

The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly. It is dedicated to world peace, and specifically to the absence of war and violence, “such as might be occasioned by a temporary ceasefire in

The English composer Gustav Holst was born in Cheltenham on 21 September 1874. His father Adolph von Holst was an excellent pianist and organist, and he was musically active in his local community. He married his piano student Clara Lediard,