Gerald Raphael Finzi (1901-1956) was an English composer, whose popularity has increased considerably in the years since his death. Born on 14th July 1901 in London, the son of an Italian Jewish father and a German Jewish mother, Finzi nevertheless became one of the most characteristically English composers of his generation. Despite being an agnostic, he wrote some inspired and imposing Christian choral music.
Brett Dean (b.1961) is a Grawemeyer Award-winning composer and viola player. Dean studied in Brisbane until 1984, when he moved to Germany to join the Berliner Philharmoniker’s viola section, a position he held for 15 years. He began composing in 1988, becoming established in his own right through works such as the clarinet concerto Ariel’s Music, which won a UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers award, the piano quintet Voices of Angels and Twelve Angry Men, written for the 12 cellists of the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Sally Beamish (born 26 August 1956, London) is a British composer of chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral music.
Beamish studied the viola at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she received lessons from Anthony Gilbert and Lennox Berkeley. She later studied in Germany with the Italian violinist Bruno Giuranna. As a violist in the Raphael Ensemble, she recorded four discs of string sextets.
Antoine Chessex is a Swiss saxophone player, improviser, composer and experimental musician born in 1980 in Vevey, Switzerland. His works are based on the exploration of the physicality of sounds and spaces. Nowadays Chessex plays mostly as a solo performer appearing either in fully acoustic settings where his circular breathing textures react with the sonic architecture of the space he is performing in or amplifying his horn with amps or PA systems and electronic devices often resulting in intense live actions.
Glenn Branca (born October 6, 1948 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is an avant-garde composer and guitarist. Branca studied theater at Emerson College in Boston in the early 1970s. While there, he began experimenting with sound as the founder of an experimental theater group called Bastard Theater. He moved to New York in 1976. His first encounter with the NYC music scene was with the N.DoDo Band whom he observed many times at their rehearsal space- Phil Demise's Gegenschein Vaudeville Placenter. This is where he first met jeffrey lohn who was playing electric violin with the N.
Jennifer Walshe is an Irish composer and conceptual artist of multiple virtual identities.
Tiny Leaves is the music of ambient, modern classical composer Joel Nathaniel Pike. He has developed his sound as a solo artist alongside years of writing and performing in bands. He describes his music as being rooted in narrative, but is often surprised at the undefinable end result. His music has a delicate, cinematic quality that brings a quiet hope.
Friedrich Cerha (born February 17, 1926 in Vienna) is an Austrian composer and conductor. Cerha received his education at the Viennese Music Academy (violin, composition, musician drawing) and at the University of Vienna (music sciences, German culture and language, philosophy). In 1958 he, together with Kurt Schwertsik, created the ensemble "die reihe", which was an important instrument for the spreading of contemporary music in Austria.
Born nr Cologne 1918. Enigmatic and difficult to categorise, Zimmerman was an early exponent of the stylistic pluralism so prevalent in what is now labelled post-modernism, but which, during his lifetime, was not considered to occupy the vanguard of the new. He studied at Bonn, Konigsdorf and Berlin Universities while working as a labourer and playing for dance bands, and later taught at Cologne University and Hochschule.
American composer Steve Layton was born in Pasco, Washington, in 1956. Long based in Seattle, in 2007 he relocated to Houston, Texas. Layton creates a kind of music that blurs the distinctions between electronic and acoustic art forms, as well as the notions of the traditional and the experimental. He invokes, alters, engages or dissolves questions of history, culture -- even "real" versus "unreal" -- in the mind and ear of the listener.