Curations in
Curations out
Who's taking you?
- Curation by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Hopkinson Smith
- City: Basel
- Country: Switzerland
My Life
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Bio:
Born in New York in 1946, Swiss-American lutenist Hopkinson Smith graduated from Harvard with Honors in Music in 1972. His instrumental studies took him to Europe where he worked with Emilio Pujol, a great pedagogue in the highest Catalan artistic tradition, and with the Swiss lutenist, Eugen Dombois, whose sense of organic unity between performer, instrument, and historical period has had lasting effects on him. He has been involved in numerous chamber music projects and was one of the founding members of the ensemble Hespèrion XX. Since the mid-80’s, he has focused almost exclusively on the solo repertoires for early plucked instrument, producing a series of prize-winning recordings for Astrée and Naïve, which feature Spanish music for vihuela and baroque guitar, French lute music of the Renaissance and baroque, English and Italian music of the 16th early 17th century and music from the German high baroque.
The recording of his lute arrangements of the Bach solo violin Sonatas and Partitas, released in the year 2000, has been universally acclaimed by the press. Gramophone magazine called it “the best recording of these works on any instrument”. A Dowland recording, released in early 2005, won a Diapason d’Or and was called ‘wonderfully personal’ in a review in the New York Times. A recording with music from the world of Francesco da Milano, was awarded a Diapason d’Or de l’Année (the French equivalent of a Grammy award) in November 2009 and has been called “the first recording to do justice to Francesco’s reputation.” A CD with the first three Bach Cello Suites played on the German Theorbo was released in early 2013, has also won a Diapason d’Or and was called “totally riveting” in the BBC Music Magazine.
Hopkinson Smith has performed and given master classes throughout Eastern and Western Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan sometimes combining the life-style of a hermit with that of a gypsy. In 2007 and 2009, he gave concerts and workshops in Palestine under the auspices of the Barenboim-Said Foundation and the Swiss Arts Council. In 2010, he received the music prize from the Italian Region of Puglia with the inscription “maestro dei maestri, massimo interprete delle musiche per liuto dell’antica Europa Mediterranea”. He lives in Basel, Switzerland where he teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
My Media
- Website: http://www.hopkinsonsmith.com
Click to Listen on Spotify
- (album/podcast 1): http://open.spotify.com/album/0Q7LaJRUEDL5TP4YKXcMdl
- (album/podcast 2): http://open.spotify.com/album/7N3GAlanFTPIyntEbQJD3P
- (album/podcast 3): http://open.spotify.com/album/03DIodWT7tCGMsNEUsTi5M
Contact Information
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Address:
Oberer Batterieweg 84
CH-4059 Basel
Switzerland
►The matrix puts artists in discoverable reach of each other and the world via the m.o. of artists creating pathways to other artists.
► Human society is a small-world network, hence "six degrees of separation".
►The matrix is a small-world network too.
► In a small-world network...most nodes can be reached from every other node by a small number of hops or steps. (Wikipedia)
► In the matrix, hops/steps are recommendations, and nodes are artists. In the matrix, most artists are transitable steps away from most others . QED
► The matrix has its origins as an extension of a record shop opened to divulge the little known music of the people of the Recôncavo and sertão (subject of this interview with David Dye for broadcast on U.S. National Public Radio), per below. If everybody can now be found, they can too.
► According to Raimundo Sodré, in the sense of struggling under those with hands on the levers of society's power. The dictatorship of '64 to '85 got him. His protest song "A Massa" blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south before his career was destroyed, he was threatened with death, and forced into exile.
Music from the Center of the Sun (Nordeste do Brasil)
Dengo
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Add to my PlaylistSina de Cantador - Raimundo Sodré (6,839 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMagnetismo - Raimundo Sodré (6,323 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistSacando a Cana - Raimundo Sodré (5,933 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistA Massa - Raimundo Sodré (4,990 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMêrêrê - Raimundo Sodré (5,445 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistJardim do Amor - Raimundo Sodré (4,662 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistDebaixo do Céu - Raimundo Sodré (4,138 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistDesejo de Amar - Raimundo Sodré (3,849 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistOração pra Yá Oxum - Raimundo Sodré (3,729 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistYá África - Raimundo Sodré (3,498 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMeu Rio, Cadê o Papel - Raimundo Sodré (3,168 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistCasa de Trois - Raimundo Sodré (2,886 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMulher é Laço que Prende o Coração do Va... (2,547 plays)
► Pre Brazil our work (in NYC) included "rescuing" royalties for artists including Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Ray Barretto, Airto Moreira, Earl Carroll of The Cadillacs, Rob Royer of Bread, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin) and others.
► These people made it, for a while at least (in the case of Earl Carroll). But talent and even genius are more often than not insufficient to carry art away from its point of origin. And things can change (as they did for Earl and Raimundo and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos and how many others?). Hence the matrix.
