Hello, I'm Rick Jones. I was born in 1956, the second child in a London family of ten with origins in Wales. My great-great grandfather was a wheelwright who built the lychgate into the churchyard at Abergele for Queen Victoria's jubilee. It still stands, good as the day the last nail went in. His son Jesse Jones went to Oxford and became a priest. He was Rector of Gellygaer and Canon at Llandaff Cathedral from 1900 to 1930. My father and three of my brothers were choristers at the cathedral. As a late bed-wetter, I was not included in this. In 1992 we won a Yamaha keyboard after being voted Britain's Most Musical Family by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 2.
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I'm Suzanne Aspden and I grew up in New Zealand. I've been in the UK for over 15 years, and in 2005 I became a University Lecturer at Oxford University, and the Fellow in Music at Jesus College. I've published on the operas of Handel and his contemporaries in 18th-century London, and on musical identity politics (especially nationalism and stage persona); I also co-edit Cambridge Opera Journal. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to lead the online community for Handel in Composers of the Year, through this blog.
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My name is Denis McCaldin and I'm a conductor and a music historian. I'm Director of the Haydn Society of Great Britain and a professor of music at Lancaster University. I have conducted many major British orchestras including the Halle, Royal Philharmonic, and London Mozart Players.
I first got interested in Haydn when I was a student, playing viola in a string quartet that met every week on afternoons timetabled for sport! Since that time, I've edited a number of Haydn's works and one of my CDs (featuring his edition of the Little Organ Mass) has received a Gramophone Critic's Choice award. My next recording is of the Scherzandi, a set of pocket-sized symphonies due to appear early in 2009. I'm also an experienced broadcaster, mainly for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3, and I'm thrilled to be acting as the Composers of the Year blogger for Haydn - I look forward very much to your contributions to the blog.
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Welcome to Felixcitation - my name for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3's Mendelssohn Anniversary blog!
My name is Jessica Duchen, and I divide my writing time between fiction, journalism, stage works and my own Classical Music Blog https://jessicamusic.blogspot.com. My latest novel, Hungarian Dances, was published in 2008 by Hodder and the next is due out in summer 2009. After studying music at Cambridge I held editorial posts on a succession of music magazines, was the founding editor of the UK's first independent piano magazine and wrote biographies of Korngold and Fauré. I contribute to The Independent and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Music Magazine, among others, and I enjoy devising intriguing ways to combine words and music on stage. I live in London with my violinist husband and a cat named Solti.
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