Born Today! 09.09.2024

Jean-Baptiste-Maurice Quinault (9 September 1687, Verdun – 30 August 1745, Gien) was an 18th-century French actor and musician. The eldest son of actor Jean Quinault, he made his debut at the Comédie-Française 6 May 1712 in the part of Hippolyte in Racine's Phèdre. Received on 25 June, he played leading parts from 1718 only. After he created numerous roles, he retired in 1734. He also composed entertainments and interludes for theatre, including those of the Nouveau Monde, which were a great success. In 1729, he had Les Amours des déesses, ballet héroïque on a libretto by Louis Fuzelier played at the Académie royale de musique The Regent granted him letters of nobility.

Josef Stránský (September 9, 1872 – March 6, 1936) was a Czech conductor, composer, and art collector/dealer who moved to the United States and conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 to 1923.

Jesús Castillo Monterroso (1877-1946) was a Guatemalan composer. He is the older brother of composer Ricardo Castillo. He was the first musician to collect a sizable amount of Guatemalan folk music, which he later used in works such as his opera Quiché Vinak, as well as ouvertures and symphonic poems. His piano music, as well as his orchestral output, reflects the fusion of his contemporary art with Mayan mythology such as legends and myths from the Popol Vuh. The national youth orchestra of Guatemala, the Orquesta Sinfónica Jesús Castillo (established in 1997), was named in his honor.

Vytautas Bacevičius (9 September 1905, in Łódź, Poland [then Russian Empire] – 15 January 1970, in New York City, United States) was a Lithuanian composer of radical and modernistic leanings. Most of his works are in an atonal idiom of his own devising. He developed a theory of 'cosmic music' and came to regard Schoenberg's 12-note music as out-dated, regarding himself as a successor to Scriabin, André Jolivet and Varèse. Bacevičius studied in Łódź with, among others, Kazimierz Sikorski and moved to Kaunas in Lithuania in 1926. In 1927 he went to Paris, where he studied composition with Nikolai Tcherepnin and graduated from the Paris Conservatory in 1928. Returning to Lithuania in 1928, he established himself as a pianist and composer and teacher. He became the Chair of the Lithuanian Section of the ISCM. He was on tour in Argentina in 1939 when the Germans invaded Lithuania, rendering him an exile in America. He moved to the United States in 1940 and lived mainly in New York, continuing to give recitals but mainly supporting himself by teaching. He made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall on November 28, 1940. He maintained studios in New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Although born in Poland, he adopted the Lithuanian form of his name (Bacevičius); he was the brother of the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, to whom he dedicated his Second Symphony, della Guerra, in 1940. Bacevičius regarded his orchestral works as the most important part of his output, and composed six symphonies in all as well as four piano concertos, a violin concerto and numerous works for piano solo.

Andrzej Dobrowolski (September 9, 1921 – August 8, 1990) was a Polish composer and teacher. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatoire during the war and afterwards in the State High School of Music in Kraków. He went on to teach theory and, later, composition in Kraków and then Warsaw at the State Higher School of Music, becoming a Professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz in 1976, where he taught composition and electronic music. Dobrowolski was one of the first Polish composers to concentrate on music for tape, and one of the first to pioneer the combination of pre-recorded tape and live performers. He was one of the first composers to use the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio in Warsaw, which was founded in 1958.

Michael Alec Rose composes chamber and symphonic music. He is Professor of Composition at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. His awards and commissions include the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation’s chamber music commission, for which he composed his String Quartet No. 2, premiered by the Meliora Quartet at Lincoln Center and the Library of Congress; a commission from the International Spoleto Festival for a violin-cello duo; twenty-five consecutive annual awards in composition from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, 1986–2010; string quartet commissions from the Blair and Mendelssohn Quartets; and three commissioned performances by the Nashville Symphony, including Symphony No. 1—Paths of Peace (2000). Rose’s Interferon, or Piano Concerto was performed by two orchestras in the Czech Republic in 2001. Two ballets commissioned by the Nashville Ballet were premiered in 2003–2004. The Pedagogy of Grief (Viola Sonata No. 3) was first performed at the Peabody Institute of Music, Baltimore, in 2005. Arguing with God: Concerto for Klezmer and Chamber Orchestra received its first performance in March 2007, by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and Brave Old World, the Klezmer group. This concerto was the culminating event of that year's American Jewish Music Festival. Graces, Furies, commissioned for the Carolina Piano Trio, was premiered by them in three cities in North Carolina in May 2007, with further performances throughout the United States in 2008. Rose is the co-founder and co-director of an international exchange program involving the Royal Academy of Music in London and Glasgow (RAM and RSAMD) and the Blair School of Music: "Collaborative Composition in London". He has twice visited RAM as Guest Composer, with performances of his music at various London sites. Several of his works have also been featured at the Tate St. Ives Gallery in Cornwall. Among the many new works commissioned for these U.K. performances are Hubbert Peak: Three Gas Stations for String Quartet and Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage: Pantomime for Violinist and Cellist (both for members of the Kreutzer Quartet, in residence at RAM). Both these works were premiered in the spring of 2008 at London’s recently rediscovered Victorian vaudeville theatre, Wilton’s Music Hall. Other works by Rose sprung from the exchange program have been performed in Mexico, Kosovo, Macedonia, under the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum. Rose’s Pastoral Concerto for Violin and Orchestra—commissioned by his exchange program co-director, violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved—was premiered with Sheppard Skærved as soloist and the Vanderbilt Orchestra, under the direction of Robin Fountain, in November 2008. A further outgrowth of Rose’s exchange program work is The Periodic Table (Chamber Concerto for Piano and Eight Players), for pianist Aaron Shorr, Head of Keyboards at the RSAMD in Glasgow, where the concerto was premiered in June, 2009. Two more works were premiered in Wiltons Music Hall in 2009: Everything Under the Sun: Four Seasons for Two Violins, and An Arch Never Sleeps for Violin and Double Bass, featuring virtuoso bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku. In 2010, Rose published Audible Signs: Essays from a Musical Ground (Continuum Books) and composed Five Bucolics for tenor Tony Boutté, a setting of poems by Maurice Manning. Rose graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning composers George Crumb and Richard Wernick, as well as with George Rochberg and Samuel Adler. Rose has won several major teaching awards at Vanderbilt, including the prestigious Chair of Teaching Excellence.

Urmas Sisask (9 September 1960 – 17 December 2022) was an Estonian composer.