John McCabe
John McCabe CBE (born 21 April 1939, Huyton, Merseyside) is an English composer and pianist. A prolific composer from an early age, John McCabe had written thirteen symphonies by the time he was eleven. After studies in Manchester and Munich he embarked upon a career as a composer and virtuoso pianist (he still tours internationally as a recitalist). He has worked in almost every genre, though large-scale forms lie at the heart of his catalogue with five symphonies, fifteen concertante works and eight ballet scores to his name.
Jennifer Higdon
Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music and flutist. Higdon was born in Brooklyn, but spent her first 10 years in Atlanta before moving to Tennessee. With almost no advanced flute training, she studied at Bowling Green State University towards a degree in flute performance. While at Bowling Green she met Robert Spano, who was teaching a conducting course there; Spano would go on to be the foremost champion of Higdon's music in the American orchestral community.
Unsuk Chin
Unsuk Chin (born 1961, Seoul) is a Korean woman composer of classical music in Germany. Chin studied in Hamburg with György Ligeti, and has adapted much of his musical style into her own. She uses both tradtional instruments, as well as electronics in her compositions. Chin began her musical career at age six on piano, but quickly switched her focus to composition because composition lessons were cheaper.
Dave Maric
Dave Maric (born 12 June 1970) is a British composer and musician. During the 1990s he regularly performed and recorded as a jazz and classical pianist with a number of new music ensembles including the London Sinfonietta and the Steve Martland Band. Since 2000 he has been regularly composing stylistically varied works for various instrumental combinations including music for classical soloists, chamber and orchestral ensembles and works for live performers with computer generated sound sources.
Henri Dutilleux
Henri Dutilleux (born January 22, 1916 in Angers, France) is one of the most important French composers of the second half of the 20th century, producing work in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Albert Roussel, but in a style distinctly his own. As a young man, Dutilleux studied harmony, counterpoint and piano with Victor Gallois at the Douai Conservatory before leaving for Paris.
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna, Italy. He was taught piano and violin by his father, who was a local piano teacher. He continued studying violin and viola with Federico Sarti at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, composition with Giuseppe Martucci, and historical studies with Luigi Torchi, a scholar of early music. In 1900, Respighi went to Russia to be principal violist in the orchestra of the Russian Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg during its season of Italian opera; while there he studied composition for five months with Rimsky-Korsakov.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja
Patricia Kopatchinskaja was born in Moldova to musician parents. She studied composition and violin in Vienna and Bern. 2000 she won the international Szeryng-Competition in Mexico and in 2002 the prestigious "International Credit Suisse Group Young Artist Award". During the Season 2002/3 she represented Austria in the concert series "Rising Stars" with debuts in New York and many European capitals.
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton, OM (March 29, 1902–March 8, 1983) was a British composer and conductor. His style was influenced by the works of Stravinsky, Sibelius and jazz, and is characterized by rhythmic vitality, bittersweet harmony, sweeping Romantic melody and brilliant orchestration. His output includes orchestral and choral works, chamber music and ceremonial music, as well as notable film scores.
The Philip Glass Ensemble
The Philip Glass Ensemble is a musical group founded by composer Philip Glass in 1968 to serve as a performance outlet for his experimental minimalist music. The Ensemble's instrumentation became a hallmark of Glass' early minimalist style. After Glass wrote his first opera, Einstein on the Beach, for the Ensemble in 1976, he began to compose for other instrumentation more frequently. While the Ensemble's exact instrumentation has varied over the years, it has generally consisted of amplified woodwinds, keyboard synthesizers, and solo soprano voice (singing solfege).