Charles Peter Wuorinen was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as pianist and conductor. Prolific, he composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas such as Brokeback Mountain. His work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless. Time's Encomium, his only purely electronic piece, received the Pulitzer Prize. Wuorinen taught at several institutions, including Columbia University and Manhattan School of Music.
Kathleen Deanna Battle is an American operatic soprano known for her distinctive vocal range and tone. Born in Portsmouth, Ohio, Battle initially became known for her work within the concert repertoire through performances with major orchestras during the early and mid-1970s. She made her opera debut in 1975. Battle expanded her repertoire into lyric soprano and coloratura soprano roles during the 1980s and early 1990s, until her eventual dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera in 1994. She later has focused on recording and the concert stage. After a 22-year absence from the Met, Battle performed a concert of spirituals at the Metropolitan Opera House in November 2016.
Richard Danielpour is an American composer.
Michael Mantler is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music.
Michael A. Levine is an American composer, music producer and screenwriter born in Japan and currently based in Los Angeles. He is best known for his work in film and television.
Michael Nathaniel Hersch is an American composer and pianist. He currently serves as faculty at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, where he completed his own studies in music composition. The New York Times has commented that he writes "extraordinarily communicative music" and that "Mr. Hersch's music speaks for itself eloquently".
Michael Charles Colgrass was an American-born Canada-based musician, composer, and educator.
The Clinton String Quartet is a string quartet based in the Syracuse, New York area. Active for over 15 years, their most prominent works have been the debuts of many 20th century classical recordings with the Syracuse Society for New Music. All four members are also members of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra.
Sir Gilbert Levine, GCSG is an American conductor. He is considered an "outstanding personality in the world of international music television." He has led the PBS concert debuts of the Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the PBS premieres of works including the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Bach Magnificat in D, Haydn Creation, and Bruckner Symphony 9.
Stephen Paulus was an American Grammy Award winning composer, best known for his operas and choral music. His style is essentially tonal, and melodic and romantic by nature.
Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
Founded in 1958 by Boris Koutzen and other musicians from the NBC Symphony who were residents of Chappaqua, New York and neighboring towns in Westchester County, the Chappaqua Orchestra annually presents a season of orchestral and chamber concerts. Renowned conductor Andrew Litton's first conducting directorship was with the Chappaqua Orchestra, and the orchestra has also been conducted by Norman Leyden, Wolfgang Schanzer, Jesse Levine, and James Sadewhite. The orchestra has premiered and commissioned works from composers such as Paul Creston, John Corigliano, Lowell Liebermann, Michael Jeffrey Shapiro, Emily Wong, and David Macdonald. Soloists such as Vanessa L. Williams, Ruth Laredo, Joseph Fuchs, Kikuei Ikeda, Jerome Rose, Jon Manasse, Tim Fain, and others have appeared with the orchestra. Michael Jeffrey Shapiro is currently the orchestra's Music Director and Conductor.
Ransom Wilson is an American flutist, conductor, and educator.
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra is one of the two full-time professional radio orchestras in Ireland that are part of RTÉ, the national broadcasting station. Since its formation as the Radio Éireann Light Orchestra in 1948, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, has grown from a small studio-based recording group to become an active 45-strong orchestra performing over eighty concerts annually. It is part of RTÉ Performing Groups. The orchestra performs classical, popular and big band evening and lunchtime concerts, covering a range of music from baroque to contemporary.
Founded as the Lexington Sinfonietta in 1995 by conductor Hisao Watanabe, the Lexington Symphony is a group of musicians from the Lexington, Massachusetts area.
Victoria Ellen Bond is an American conductor and composer in New York City.
The Concerto for Pedal Steel Guitar and Orchestra is the first documented concerto written for the solo pedal steel guitar, composed by Michael A. Levine. It was premiered on April 16, 2005 by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, with Gary Morse as soloist and Paul Gambill conducting. Other performances include play on Radio New Zealand and performance in the North Carolina Symphony's New Year's Eve Concert in 2005:
Wissam Boustany is a Lebanese/British concert flutist. Boustany has toured and collaborated with a number of symphony and chamber orchestras. Conductors Boustany has worked with include Claudio Abbado, Ivan Fischer, Bramwell Tovey, John Elliot Gardiner, Roger Norrington, George Solti, Peter Szilvay, Lubnan Baalbaki, James Judd, Jordi Mora, Volodymyr Sirenko, Levon Parikian, Nicholas Cleobury, Martyn Brabbins, Michel Brandt, Varujan Kodjan, Clark Rundell, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Evelyne Aiello, Ludwig Carrasco, Nader Abbassi, Andrew Morley and Toby Purser. He is a recipient of The Crystal Award, awarded to him in 1998 at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland.
Robert White is an American tenor and voice teacher who has had an active performance career for eight decades. If he is not better known to the general public, it is because his career, confined to art song and the concert stage, has not brought him the wider renown of singers who make their careers in opera; but he has long been cherished by connoisseurs of vocal music for the pure lyric sweetness of his voice and his scrupulous musicianship.