A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely of instruments, such as the jazz quartet or the orchestra. Other music ensembles consist solely of singers, such as choirs and doo wop groups. In both popular music and classical music, there are ensembles in which both instrumentalists and singers perform, such as the rock band or the Baroque chamber group for basso continuo and one or more singers. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles. Some ensembles blend the sounds of a variety of instrument families, such as the orchestra, which uses a string section, brass instruments, woodwinds and percussion instruments, or the concert band, which uses brass, woodwinds and percussion.
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families, including
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cognition, rhythmic theory, pitch space, and cognitive constraints on compositional systems. He has written many orchestral and chamber works, three of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Time after Time in 2001, String Quartet No. 3 in 2010, and Arches in 2011.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Daniel Dorff is an American classical composer.
Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell was an English composer of classical music. Arnell composed in all the established genres for the concert stage, and his list of works includes six completed symphonies and six string quartets. At the Trinity College of Music, he "promoted a pioneering interest in film scores and electronic music" and jazz.
Eric Ewazen is an American composer and teacher.
Anthony Gilbert is a British composer and academic, long associated with the Royal Northern College of Music.
Albrecht Mayer is a German classical oboist. The principal oboist of the Berlin Philharmonic, he is internationally known as a soloist and chamber musician and has made many recordings.
Kenneth Daniel Fuchs is a Grammy Award-winning American composer. He currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut (Storrs).
Peter Goddard Lieberson was an American classical composer.
Allan Gilliland is a contemporary Canadian composer.
Jan Bach was an American composer. He taught at the University of Tampa (Florida) from 1965 to 1966 and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois from 1966 to 2002. His primary performing instrument was the horn, and he was renowned among hornists for his horn pieces. He also played the piano.
David C. Sampson is an American contemporary classical composer.
Harmonie is a German word that, in the context of the history of music, designates an ensemble of wind instruments employed by an aristocratic patron, particularly during the Classical era of the 18th century. The Harmonie would be employed for outdoor or recreational music, or as a wind section of an orchestra. Music composed for Harmonie is often called Harmoniemusik.
Jiří Družecký was a Czech composer, oboist, and timpanist.
Kerry Turner is an American composer and horn player. Turner is a recognized name in the horn and brass industry. Turner’s major ensembles with whom he performs include the American Horn Quartet, the Virtuoso Horn Duo, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. Turner has performed internationally as a soloist and clinician. Turner also sings tenor in a semi-professional octet.
