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5 unusual facts about Samuel Barber


Just Be: Remixed

The tracks named Adagio for Strings are remixes of the famous song with the same name by Samuel Barber.

Presidio Brass

The group's repertoire is made up of classical and commercial music transcriptions, including selections from composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and George Gershwin to popular songs from jazz legend Dave Brubeck, the rock band Queen and the Broadway smash hit, West Side Story.

The Fatigues

Frank refuses, because he hasn't cooked since the Korean War, where he sickened his fellow troops by using bad meat and has become traumatized because of it (Frank's memory is dramatized with a reenactment in which the onset of food poisoning is set to Barber's "Adagio for strings", as in the film Platoon).

The Union Chapel Concert

David Jackson and Hugh Banton were unannounced guests and played a Soundbeam-medley and a Samuel Barber Adagio for strings on the church organ respectively.

Walking Distance

Orchestrator John Morgan enlarged all sections of the orchestra for the latter, referring to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings as Herrmann's main influence on the score in the liner notes.


Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

Her poems were set to music by many composers, including Samuel Barber, Noble Cain, Alice Reber Fish, Ethel Glenn Hier, Kirke Mechem, Frederick W. Vanderpool, Wintter Watts, and especially David Wendel Guion.

Katherine Ciesinski

Her professional orchestra debut was at 16, but her first professional operatic successes came at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 1976 in La traviata and her first notable American performances were at the Spoleto Festival USA in 1978 as Erika in Samuel Barber's Vanessa, one of the very first operas broadcast by the Great Performances series.

Ossabaw Island

Over the years the island's solitude and natural beauty served as the setting for such luminaries as: composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber; writers Ralph Ellison, Annie Dillard, Olive Ann Burns, and Margaret Atwood ; sculptor Harry Bertoia; and scientist Eugene Odum among many others.

Peter Sliker

On September 16, 1966 he appeared as the Sentinel in the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House with Leontyne Price as Cleopatra and Justino Díaz as Anthony.

Sydney Dance Company

The breakthrough work Some Rooms (1983), which received enormous acclaim, featured a selection of existing music by composers Keith Jarrett, Joseph Canteloube, Francis Poulenc, Benjamin Britten and Samuel Barber, whereas other works featured newly commissioned original music.

Theophilus Brown

Brown, who studied piano at Yale, was also close to a number of composers, including John Cage, Poulenc, Samuel Barber, and Igor Stravinsky.


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