Francis Travis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Francis Travis (born July 9, 1921 in Detroit , Michigan ; † April 28, 2017 in Munich ) was a Swiss conductor and university professor of American origin.

Career

Travis studied at Wayne University in Detroit, Michigan State University in East Lansing, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and finally at the University of Zurich , where he earned a doctorate in musicology with a dissertation on Verdi under Paul Hindemith and Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez attained. In addition, he was a student for five years, later assistant to Hermann Scherchen .

From 1953 he worked as a freelance conductor. He has worked as a guest conductor with more than eighty orchestras across Europe as well as in Japan, China and Korea and has performed at numerous European music festivals as well as on radio and television. His repertoire ranged from works of the early baroque to the avant-garde of the 20th century. In addition to works of classical modernism ( Arnold Schönberg , Alban Berg , Anton Webern , Edgar Varèse , Igor Stravinsky ), he conducted world premieres of several hundred works by contemporary composers, in particular at the concerts of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), whose Swiss section he from 1974 to 1978 as president, and of concert series of contemporary music in Oslo, Stockholm, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne.

During his CD recordings, Travis concentrated on rarely recorded works, e.g. B. by Joachim Raff and contemporary composers such as Bo Nilsson , Isang Yun and Mathias Spahlinger and worked with soloists such as Heinz Holliger , Hildegard Behrens and Sonia Theodoridou .

Travis worked for twenty-five years as a professor of orchestral conducting at the Freiburg University of Music . His students included Douglas Bostock , Eberhard Dietz , Hortense von Gelmini , Robert HP Platz , Burkhard Rempe , Leendert Runia and Arturo Tamayo .

He was then chief conductor at the Basler Theater and the Theater Trier as well as permanent guest conductor of the Nederlandse Opera Stichting in Amsterdam. From 1990 to 1995 he lived in Tokyo, where he conducted various Japanese orchestras and choirs and taught conducting at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music .

More recently he has devoted himself increasingly to opera and has conducted at the Royal Opera House in London, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Most recently he lived in Munich, where he died at the age of 95.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bereavement Travis Francis . todeszügeportal.ch - Obituaries Switzerland, accessed on May 12, 2017.
  2. ↑ On the history of the SGNM. iscm-switzerland.ch
personal data
SURNAME Travis, Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss conductor of American origin
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 2017
Place of death Munich , Germany