Louis Joseph Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, big band jazz and the expressionism of Igor Stravinsky.
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film scores, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Letters, Riddles and Writs; Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs; Facing Goya; Man and Boy: Dada; Love Counts; and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera over other forms of music.
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for Bacchanale (1940), created for a performance in a Seattle venue that lacked sufficient space for a percussion ensemble. Cage has cited Henry Cowell as an inspiration for developing piano extended techniques, involving strings within a piano being manipulated instead of the keyboard. Typical of Cage's practice as summed up in the Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48) is that each key of the piano has its own characteristic timbre, and that the original pitch of the string will not necessarily be recognizable. Further variety is available with use of the una corda pedal.
John Douglas "Jon" Lord was an English keyboardist and composer. In 1968, Lord co-founded the hard rock band Deep Purple. Lord performed on most of the band's most popular songs; he and drummer Ian Paice were the only continuous members in the band between 1968 and 1976, and also from its revival in 1984 until his retirement in 2002. He also played for the bands Whitesnake, Paice Ashton Lord, the Artwoods, the Flower Pot Men and Santa Barbara Machine Head.
Trevor David Pinnock is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed Atlas, an opera, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival. Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers and Jean-Luc Godard. Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk's "Dolmen Music" on the song "Midnight in a Perfect World". In 2015, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama.
Sir John Milford Rutter is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music.
Denis ApIvor was a British composer, best known for his ballet score Blood Wedding. He had a parallel career as a consultant anaesthetist.
Bent Lorentzen was a Danish composer. He was one of the outstanding figures in contemporary Danish music. His works are frequently performed at festivals at home and abroad, and he had established particularly close links with musical life in Poland and Germany. He was honoured with several international prizes and was named Choral Composer of the Year in Denmark in 1989.
Patrick Hawes is a British composer, conductor, organist and pianist.
Dame Judith Weir is a British composer. She served as Master of the King's Music from 2014 to 2024. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir was the first woman to hold this office.
Edward Gregson is an English composer of instrumental and choral music, particularly for brass and wind bands and ensembles, as well as music for the theatre, film, and television. He was also principal of the Royal Northern College of Music.
John White was an English experimental composer and musical performer. He invented the early British form of minimalism known as systems music, with his early Machines.
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Hugh Shrapnel is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
Endymion, formerly Endymion Ensemble, is an English chamber music ensemble, founded in 1979 and dedicated to contemporary classical music.
Johann Sebastian Bach's music has been performed by musicians of his own time, and in the second half of the eighteenth century by his sons and students, and by the next generations of musicians and composers such as the young Beethoven. Felix Mendelssohn renewed the attention for Bach's music by his performances in the 19th century. In the 20th century Bach's music was performed and recorded by artists specializing in the music of the composer, such as Albert Schweitzer, Helmut Walcha and Karl Richter. With the advent of the historically informed performance practice Bach's music was prominently featured by artists such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt and Sigiswald Kuijken.
Kiefer Shackelford, known mononymously as Kiefer, is an American pianist and producer based in Los Angeles, California.
