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G. W. Hunt

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George William Hunt (c.1837 – 1 March 1904), known in later life as Jingo’ Hunt, was an English writer of music hall songs, best known for “MacDermott’s War Song” also known as the “Jingo Song”. Biography He was born in Finsbury, London, and taught himself to play piano and harmonium as a child. He spent some time in South Africa before returning to England, where at one time he was the manager of the Canterbury Music Hall on Westminster Bridge Road. He started to write songs for music hall performers, and was one of the first to write both words and music - previously words had usually been written to fit existing tunes. Hunt wrote over 50 songs performed by Leybourne, including “Awfully Clever”, “Up in a Balloon”, and “Don’t Make a Noise Or Else You’ll Wake the Baby”. He also wrote songs for many of the other popular performers of the period, including Alfred Vance, Herbert Campbell, Jenny Hill, Annie Adams, and Fred French. After initially rejecting the song, MacDermott changed his mind and bought the song from Hunt for five pounds. Some years later, Hunt said: My breakfast was half an hour late that morning, so I sat down and wrote the whole chorus. After breakfast I wrote the

Gwen Laster

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gwen Laster (born 1957/1958) is an American violinist and composer. Born and raised in Detroit, she obtained her music degrees at the University of Michigan and performed as a jazz violinist. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, her work includes three albums, as well as a “Black Lives Matter Suite”. Biography Laster was born in 1957 or 1958 raised in a working-class family. She obtained her BM and MM at the University of Michigan. In 1992, she won the Cognac Hennessy Best of Detroit Jazz Search contest as part of the group Gwen Laster Featuring Larry Fratangelo. She released two albums through her own label Muffymarie: Sneak Preview (1996) and I Hear You Smiling (2004). In June 2006, she played for a concert at Somers High School raising funds for the Costa Rican refugee camp La Carpio. In 2008, she performed at a concert for the first inauguration of Barack Obama. Laster had been inspired to write the “Black Lives Matter Suite” of their album Blue Lotus by her experiences in police custody, where she recalled passing out and being traumatized with a near-death experience. while Haviland S Nichols of Chronogram called it proof that “black lives still matter”. During the COVID-19 pandemic in

Gwilym Gwent

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gwilym Gwent (born William Aubrey Williams on November 28, 1834) was a Welsh-born composer who immigrated in mid-life to the United States. He died on July 3, 1891. Early life William Aubrey Williams was born at Tredegar in 1834, where as a boy he sang in a choir with his uncle. Williams trained as a blacksmith, but as a young man moved to Blaenau Gwent where he became conductor of a local orchestra. He was one of the most popular and prolific composers in Wales in his time, composing “part-songs”, anthems and solos. In 1865, Williams won prizes for two compositions at the Aberystwyth eisteddfod, including a prize for a duet for female voices, and a ten-pound prize for his cantata, “Y Mab Afradlon”. With David Lewis (1828–1908), Williams edited Llwybrau Moliant, a collection of hymn-tunes for use by Welsh Baptists, a volume which contains several hymn-tunes of his own composition. Coal mines and music In 1872, Williams and his wife, Cecilia, emigrated from Wales. They settled at Plymouth, in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley, where (like many other Welsh immigrants) Williams found work in the anthracite coal mines. While working as a blacksmith at the Nottingham Colliery, he wrote musi

Gwilym Simcock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gwilym Simcock (born 24 February 1981) is a Welsh pianist and composer working in both jazz and classical music. He was chosen as one of the 1000 Most Influential People in London by the Evening Standard in 2009. He was featured on the front cover of the August 2007 issue of the UK’s Jazzwise magazine. Early life Simcock was born in Bangor, Gwynedd. At the age of eleven he attained the highest marks in the country for his Associated Board on both piano and French horn. He studied classical piano, French horn, and composition at Chetham’s School, Manchester, where he was introduced to jazz by pianist and teacher Les Chisnall and bassist and teacher Steve Berry. He studied jazz piano at The Royal Academy of Music, London with John Taylor, Nikki Iles, Nick Weldon, and Geoff Keezer. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and won the “Principal’s Prize” for outstanding achievement. At the Royal Academy of Music he studied with Milton Mermikides. Career In 2006, he was the first jazz musician to be selected for the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme, and this was extended to 2008. It involved broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 as solo performances, and his trio appearance at the Wigm

Gwyneth Herbert

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gwyneth Herbert (born 26 August 1981) is a British singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. Initially known for her interpretation of jazz and swing standards, she is now established as a writer of original compositions, including musical theatre. She has been described as “an exquisite wordsmith” with “a voice that can effortlessly render any emotion with commanding ease” and her songs as being “impressively crafted and engrossing vignette s of life’s more difficult moments”. to Mary and Brian Herbert, she was brought up in Surrey and Hampshire in the south of England. She began playing the piano at the age of three and was writing basic songs at the age of five. She also learned the French horn, achieving Grade 8 by the age of 15. and, for her sixth form studies, to Alton College in Hampshire, where her musical tastes moved more towards jazz. While she was studying at St Chad’s College, University of Durham, she met up with fellow student Will Rutter and together they began to write and perform in the cafés and bars of North East England as a jazz duo called Black Coffee. The Herbert/Rutter song “Sweet Insomnia” featured guest vocals from Jamie Cull

Gwyneth Van Anden Walker

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Gwyneth Van Anden Walker (born 22 March 1947) is an American music educator and composer. Biography Walker was born in New York to a Quaker family and grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut. She began her first efforts at composition at an early age and went on to receive BA (1968) from Brown University, and MM (1970) and DMA (1976) degrees in Music Composition from the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, where she studied under Arnold Franchetti. She taught music for fourteen years at Hartt School of Music, the Hartford Conservatory and the Oberlin College Conservatory, and then moved to a dairy farm in Vermont and went to work as a full-time composer. In 1988, she helped found the Consortium of Vermont Composers and later became the director of the organization. Walker currently spends time in New Canaan, Connecticut, Sarasota, Florida, and Randolph, Vermont. The Chord The original Gwyneth Walker Chord is heard in the opening bars of Gwyneth Walker’s Earth-Shaking Choral piece ‘Tell the Earth to Shake’ for SATB Chorus and Chamber Orchestra or Piano. It is made up of the notes A, Bb, D, and E: Awards *1999 Brock Commission (American Choral Directors Association) *2000 Lifet