Chen Yi is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.
David Wynne was a prolific Welsh composer, who taught for many years at Cardiff University and wrote much of his best-known music in retirement.
Louis Calabro was an Italian American orchestral composer.
Pehr Henrik Nordgren was a Finnish composer.
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
Zdeněk Lukáš was a Czech composer. He authored over 330 works.
Robert Comrie Turner, was a Canadian composer, radio producer, and music educator. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from McGill University in 1943. While there he studied with Douglas Clarke and Claude Champagne. He continued his studies briefly at Colorado College in 1947, where he met his wife, percussionist Sara Scott. They married in 1949. In 1947, Turner transferred to Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied with Roy Harris. He graduated in 1950 with a master's degree. During this time, Turner spent two summers studying with Herbert Howells and Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music and one summer at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood studying with Olivier Messiaen. He returned to McGill University in 1951, graduating with a doctorate two years later.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Victor Legley was a Belgian violist and composer of classical music, of French birth. He first studied in Ypres with Lionel Blomme (1897–1984). In 1935 he matriculated at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, and there won awards in the study of viola, fugue, counterpoint and chamber music.
Gary Alan Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002.
Steven Roy Gerber was an American composer of classical music. He attended Haverford College, graduating in 1969 at the age of twenty. He then attended Princeton University with a fellowship to study musical composition.
Jan Tausinger was a Romania-born ethnic Czech violist, conductor and composer.
Andreas Makris was a Greek-American composer and violinist, born in Kilkis, Greece, on March 7, 1930. He was a Composer-in-Residence for many years at the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC, working with conductors such as Howard Mitchell, Mstislav Rostropovich, Antal Dorati, and Leonard Slatkin. He composed around 100 works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, including the Aegean Festival Overture, which, transcribed for concert band by Major Albert Bader of the USAF Band, became a popular piece with US bands. Grants and awards he received include the Damroch Grant, National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Award, ASCAP Award, the Fulbright Scholarship, and citations from the Greek Government.
Otomar Kvěch was a Czech music composer and teacher.
Ruth Shaw Wylie was a U.S.-born composer and music educator. She described herself as “a fairly typical Midwestern composer,” pursuing musical and aesthetic excellence but not attracting much national attention: “All good and worthy creative acts do not take place in New York City,” she wrote in 1962, “although most good and worthy rewards for creative acts do emanate from there; and if we can’t all be on hand to reap these enticing rewards we can take solace in the fact that we are performing good deeds elsewhere.” She was among the many twentieth-century American composers whose work contributed to the recognition of American “serious” music as a distinct genre.
