Neill Sanders
Encyclopedia
Neill Sanders was a British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 horn player, principal hornist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...

 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation and one of the leading orchestras in Britain.-History:...

 and a member of the Melos Ensemble for 29 years. He was a professor in Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...

 and founded a chamber ensemble and a festival there.

Biography

Neill Sanders grew up in a musical family. At the age of 16 he was already on a tour with the tenor Richard Tauber
Richard Tauber
Richard Tauber was an Austrian tenor acclaimed as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. Some critics commented that "his heart felt every word he sang".-Early life:...

. At 18 he played principal horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

 in the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...

 for a short time. After the war he was principal hornist again with the orchestra and also with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He played second horn in the Philharmonia Orchestra
Philharmonia Orchestra
The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...

 for seven years with Dennis Brain
Dennis Brain
Dennis Brain was a British virtuoso horn player and was largely credited for popularizing the horn as a solo classical instrument with the post-war British public...

. They both appeared with The London Wind Players in a Cambridge Summer Festival in 1950. They also were members of the London Baroque Ensemble, founded and conducted by Karl Haas
Karl Haas (conductor)
Karl Wilhelm Jacob Haas , musician, musicologist and conductor, was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he studied at the Classical College, then at the Universities of Munich and Heidelberg....

, and recorded among others Serenades by Dvorak
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

 (1951) and Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 (1952), Sonatinas for Wind Instruments by C.P.E. Bach
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
right|250pxCarl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach...

, a Partita by Dittersdorf
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf
----August Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf was an Austrian composer, violinist and silvologist.-1739-1764:...

 and music by Haydn and Gounod in 1953. The two hornists were featured in a lecture recital on The Early Horn of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 in 1955. Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

 wrote an Elégie for Brain, first performed by Neill Sanders with Poulenc at the piano, in a BBC broadcast on 17 February 1958.

Melos Ensemble

Neill Sanders was a founding member of the Melos Ensemble in 1950 and played with them for 29 years. They participated in premières of numerous works by Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

 including the War Requiem
War Requiem
The War Requiem, Op. 66 is a large-scale, non-liturgical setting of the Requiem Mass composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed January 1962. Interspersed with the traditional Latin texts, in telling juxtaposition, are settings of Wilfred Owen poems...

. The composer conducted the Melos Ensemble in the first performance in Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

 in 1962 and also in the first recording in 1963. Neill was a personal friend of Benjamin Britten and played principal horn for the Aldeburgh Festival
Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings...

, taking part in the première and first recordings of the Church Parables Curlew River
Curlew River
Curlew River — A Parable for Church Performance is the first of three Church Parables by Benjamin Britten. The work is based on the Japanese noh play Sumidagawa of Juro Motomasa , which Britten saw during a visit to Japan and the Far East in early 1956...

, The Burning Fiery Furnace
The Burning Fiery Furnace
The Burning Fiery Furnace is one of the three Parables for Church Performances composed by Benjamin Britten, dating from 1966, and is his Opus 77. The other two 'church parables' are Curlew River and The Prodigal Son . William Plomer was the librettist.The work was premiered at Orford Church,...

 and The Prodigal Son
The Prodigal Son (Britten)
The Prodigal Son is an opera by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by William Plomer. Based on the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, this was Britten's third "parable for church performance", after Curlew River and The Burning Fiery Furnace. Britten dedicated the score to Dmitri Shostakovich.The...

.

Neill Sanders Mouthpiece

He designed a special wide, slightly concave mouthpiece
Mouthpiece (brass)
On brass instruments the mouthpiece is the part of the instrument which is placed upon the player's lips. The purpose of the mouthpiece is a resonator, which passes vibration from the lips to the column of air contained within the instrument, giving rise to the standing wave pattern of vibration in...

 for the instrument, to spread the pressure and to increase endurance. Known as the "Neill Sanders Mouthpiece" or the "Neill Sanders Rim", it was produced into the late 1980s and is still in demand.

Teaching in London and Michigan

In London he taught many students who became principal horn players. In 1970 he was appointed Professor for Horn at Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University is a public university located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo, and as of the Fall 2010 semester, its enrollment is 25,045....

 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He also taught as guest professor at Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...

. On the campus he played in the Western Brass Quintet (professors of music at the university) the first performance of Masques by Ramon Zupko (also professor of the university) on 15 February 1974.

Fontana Chamber Arts

Neill Sanders returned to London every year to play, especially to continue his part in the Melos Ensemble, until 1979. Then he founded a similar large chamber ensemble in Michigan, the Fontana Ensemble, consisting of a string quintet, a wind quintet, and piano. In 1980 he founded the Fontana Concert Society, and in 1980 six concerts were performed at a first summer festival. He was its Executive and Artistic Director until his death.

In 1993 composer Mark Schultz wrote Podunk Lake for Amplified Horn Solo for the Fontana Festival in memory of Neill Sanders. The Neill Sanders Endowment for New Music Fund in the Kalamazoo Community Foundation bears his name.

Recordings

His long discography includes many notable recordings with the Melos Ensemble. Some of the Philharmonia horn section recordings, including Haydn’s “Hornsignal“ Symphony are included on Sotone CD 103. CD 108 features chamber music with horn, Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...

 Trio in E-flat, Op. 40, Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

 Auf dem Strom and Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

 Adagio und Allegro, Op. 70.

Neill Sanders and other classical musicians participated in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

 (The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

' 1967 studio album), which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year
Grammy Award for Album of the Year
The Grammy Award for Album of the Year is the most prestigious award category at the Grammys. It has been awarded since 1959 and though it was originally presented to the artist alone, the award is now presented to the artist, the producer, the engineer and/or mixer and the mastering engineer...

, the first rock/pop album to receive that honor.
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