Brian Israel (February 5, 1951 - May 7, 1986), was an American composer, pianist, and conductor. He was a faculty member of the Syracuse University School of Music from 1975 until his death, at age 35, from leukemia. [1] He left a large number of symphonic, chamber, and solo works, several of which have been recorded for Spectrum, Redwood, Pro-Viva, Innova Records, and Albany Records. [2] [ full citation needed ] "His music is marked by extreme contrasts in tempo and mood, often following a witty or downright funny movement with one that is deadly serious." [3]
In his honor, the Syracuse Society for New Music awards the Brian Israel Prize every year to an emerging New York State composer. In addition, Syracuse University gives the Brian Israel Award each year to a deserving student composer at the university. [4] [ full citation needed ]
A native of the Bronx, New York, Brian Israel studied with Lawrence Widdoes, Ulysses Kay, Robert Moffat Palmer, Burrill Phillips and Karel Husa. He received his MFA and DMA degrees from Cornell University, and joined the Syracuse University School of Music faculty upon completion of his graduate studies. He remained at Syracuse University until his death from leukemia at age 35.[ citation needed ]
A prolific composer, he won several awards and received numerous commissions, among them a commission from the Society for New Music. Several of his works have been recorded on Spectrum, Redwood, and Pro-Viva. His "Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble" is regarded as his "most original creation," according to composer Daniel Godfrey in a 1986 interview. The movement titles are "Crystalnacht," "Coronach" and "Liberation." As a pianist, composer, and conductor, he performed with numerous ensembles, including, for many years, the Society for New Music.[ citation needed ]
Other notable works include a Piano Quartet (1984), his String Quartet No. 2 ("Music for the Next to Die"), and his final work: Symphony No. 6, for soprano, baritone, and orchestra, with texts from the Bible and Langston Hughes.[ citation needed ]
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music.
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. She was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and the University of California, San Diego; he teaches at Stanford University and is a regular lecturer in the summer courses at Darmstädter Ferienkurse. He has resided in California since 1987.
Evan Ziporyn is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Ziporyn has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, many types of chamber groups, and solo works, sometimes involving electronics. Balinese gamelan, for which he has composed numerous works, has compositions. He is known for his solo performances on clarinet and bass clarinet; additionally, Ziporyn plays gender wayang and other Balinese instruments, saxophones, piano & keyboards, EWI, and Shona mbira.
Richard Wernick is an American composer. He is best known for his chamber and vocal works. His composition Visions of Terror and Wonder won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Paul Schoenfield, also spelt Paul Schoenfeld or Pinchas Schoenfeld, was a classical composer and pianist known for combining popular, folk, and classical music forms. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and died in Jerusalem, Israel.
Meriwether Lewis Spratlan Jr. was an American music academic and composer of contemporary classical music.
Harold Meltzer was an American composer. Harold was inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he "seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution." The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 by Naxos on its American Classics label, was named one of the CDs of the year in The New York Times and in Fanfare; new all-Meltzer recordings issued from Open G Records (2017), Bridge Records (2018), and BMOP/Sound (2019). A Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2009 for his sextet Brion, Meltzer has been awarded the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize; a Guggenheim Fellowship, and both the Arts and Letters Award in Music and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Martin Boykan was an American composer known for his chamber music as well as music for larger ensembles.
Sean Hickey is an American composer and record label executive, born in 1970 in Detroit, Michigan, and based in Brooklyn, New York for decades. In 2022, he was appointed Managing Director of Pentatone.
Eric Gross AM was an Austrian-Australian pianist, composer and teacher.
Miroslav Miletić (Croatian pronunciation:[mǐrɔlaʋmîlɛitɕ]; was a Croatian composer and a violin and viola player and teacher.
Miguel del Águila is a prolific Uruguay-born American composer of contemporary classical music. He has been nominated three times for Grammys and has received numerous other awards.
Jason Eckardt is an American composer. He began his musical life playing guitar in heavy metal and jazz bands and abruptly moved to composing after discovering the music of Anton Webern.
Carol Edith Barnett is an American composer. She was born in Dubuque, Iowa, and studied at the University of Minnesota with Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler (composition), Bernard Weiser (piano) and Emil J. Niosi (flute). She graduated with a bachelor's degree in music theory and composition in 1972 and a masters in theory and composition in 1976.
Ayal Adler, is an Israeli composer. Active internationally, his works are continuously performed worldwide. Serves as Associate Professor in composition and theory at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Recipient of numerous awards, including: Two Prime- Minister Awards for Composers; Two Acum Prizes, and the first prize at the RMN International Composition Competition in London. Serves as the Chairman of the Israeli Composers' League.
Gene Pritsker is a Russian-born composer, guitarist, rapper and record producer living in New York City. He moved to the United States with his family in 1978 and lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He attended the Manhattan School of Music from 1990 to 1994 where he studied composition with Giampaolo Bracali.
The Society for New Music (SNM) is a contemporary classical music organization based in Syracuse, New York. SNM presents concerts devoted entirely to contemporary music, funds commissions, produces recordings and presents awards to young composers.
Andrea Clearfield is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Regularly commissioned and performed by ensembles in the United States and abroad, her works include music for orchestra, chorus, soloists, chamber ensembles, dance, opera, film, and multimedia collaborations.
Andy Akiho is an American musician and composer of contemporary classical music. A virtuoso percussionist based in New York City, his primary performance instrument is steel pans. He took interest in becoming a percussionist when his older sister introduced him to a drum set at the age of 9. Akiho first tried his hand at the steel pan when he became an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. He began taking several trips to Trinidad after college to learn and play music. From there, he started writing pieces of his own.