George Henry Crumb Jr. was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical language which "range[s] in mood from peaceful to nightmarish". Crumb's compositions are known for pushing the limits of technical prowess by way of frequent use of extended techniques. The unusual timbres he employs evoke a surrealist atmosphere which portray emotions of considerable intensity with vast and sometimes haunting soundscapes. His few large-scale works include Echoes of Time and the River (1967), which won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and Star-Child (1977), which won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition; however, his output consists of mostly music for chamber ensembles or solo instrumentalists. Among his best known compositions are Black Angels (1970), a striking commentary on the Vietnam War for electric string quartet; Ancient Voices of Children (1970) for a mixed chamber ensemble; and Vox Balaenae (1971), a musical evocation of the humpback whale, for electric flute, electric cello, and amplified piano.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a public land-grant research university in Champaign and Urbana, Illinois, United States. It is the flagship institution of the University of Illinois system and was founded in 1867. Enrolling over 56,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the University of Illinois is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the country.
PLATO, also known as Project Plato and Project PLATO, was the first generalized computer-assisted instruction system. Starting in 1960, it ran on the University of Illinois' ILLIAC I computer. By the late 1970s, it supported several thousand graphics terminals distributed worldwide, running on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. Many modern concepts in multi-user computing were first developed on PLATO, including forums, message boards, online testing, email, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer video games.
The Continuum Fingerboard or Haken Continuum is a music performance controller and synthesizer developed by Lippold Haken, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, and sold by Haken Audio, located in Champaign, Illinois.
Alice Anne LeBaron is a United States composer and harpist.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
Christopher P. Granner is a freelance music composer, best known for composing music for video games and pinball games.
Caroline Léonardelli is a French-Canadian concert harpist. Born in France, she graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris at age of 18 and came to Canada to study at McGill University where she completed an Artist Diploma. Based in Canada's National Capital Region, she performs for CBC national broadcasts and for Radio Canada. Her recordings are featured by Apple Music in the top ten playlist of master harp recordings and her recording label is distributed worldwide by NAXOS. She is the Principal Harpist with the Ottawa Symphony and Orchestre symphonique de Gatineau.
Herbert Brün was a composer, pioneer of electronic and computer music, and cybernetician. Born in Berlin, Germany, he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1962 until he retired, several years before his death.
Symbolic Sound Corporation was founded by Carla Scaletti and Kurt J. Hebel in 1989 as a spinoff of the CERL Sound Group at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Originally named Kymatics, the company was incorporated as Symbolic Sound Corporation in March 1990. Symbolic Sound's products are being used in sound design for music, film, advertising, television, speech and hearing research, computer games, and other virtual environments. The company is based in Bozeman, Montana.
Tod Machover, is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist.
Kyma is a visual programming language for sound design used by musicians, researchers, and sound designers. In Kyma, a user programs a multiprocessor DSP by graphically connecting modules on the screen of a Macintosh or Windows computer.
Yehuda Yannay is a composer. He was born in Timișoara, Romania, and emigrated to Israel in 1951. In Israel, he studied at the Rubin Academy, Tel Aviv. He subsequently studied at Brandeis University, the Tanglewood Music Center and the University of Illinois, before becoming a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–M). He is now an emeritus professor of music at UW–M.
Lindsay Vickery is an Australian composer and performer.
The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music (SACAM) documents American music through historical artifacts and archival records in multiple formats. The center is part of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's library system and the University of Illinois School of Music.
Margaret Mara Helmuth is an American composer. She studied at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and then continued her studies at Columbia University, graduating with a doctorate in music.
Barton McLean is an American composer, performer, music reviewer, and writer.
Florence Wightman was an American harpist of the 20th century. She began her orchestral career in Philadelphia theaters, and then served as Principal Harp for the Cleveland Orchestra, making her the first woman to hold a principal position in the USA, though for only one season. She departed Cleveland to serve as Principal Harp for the Roxy Theater Orchestra in New York City. She later played for the NBC Radio Symphony Orchestra, and served as Principal Harp for the Metropolitan Opera, while simultaneously performing weekly solo recital programs on several national radio networks.
The Experimental Music Studios (EMS) is an organization or center for electroacoustic and computer music, focusing on synthesis and concert performance of art music, founded by Lejaren Hiller at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1958.
Scott L. Miller is an American composer best known for his electroacoustic chamber music and ecosystemic performance pieces.
