Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film scores, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Letters, Riddles and Writs; Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs; Facing Goya; Man and Boy: Dada; Love Counts; and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera over other forms of music.
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."
"Ashokan Farewell" is a piece of music composed by the American folk musician Jay Ungar in 1982. For many years, it served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps, run by Ungar and his wife Molly Mason, who gave the tune its name, at the Ashokan Field Campus of SUNY New Paltz in Upstate New York.
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical 1883–1885 novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Strauss conducted its first performance on 27 November 1896 in Frankfurt. A typical performance lasts thirty-three minutes.
Robert Tree Cody was an American musician, dancer, and educator. He graduated from John Marshall High School in 1969. Robert was an adopted son of Hollywood actor Iron Eyes Cody.
Hendrik Pienaar Hofmeyr is a South African composer. Born in Cape Town, he furthered his studies in Italy during 10 years of self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. While there, he won the South African Opera Competition with The Fall of the House of Usher. He also received the annual Nederburg Prize for Opera for this work subsequent to its performance at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1988. In the same year, he obtained first prize in an international competition in Italy with music for a short film by Wim Wenders. He returned to South Africa in 1992, and in 1997 won two major international composition competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition of Belgium and the first edition of the Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition in Athens. His 'Incantesimo' for solo flute was selected to represent South Africa at the ISCM World Music Days in Croatia in 2005. In 2008 he was honoured with a Kanna award by the Kleinkaroo National Arts Festival. He is currently Professor and Head of Composition and Theory at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, where he obtained a DMus in 1999.
Peter Ostroushko was an American violinist and mandolinist. He performed regularly on the radio program A Prairie Home Companion and with a variety of bands and orchestras in Minneapolis–Saint Paul and nationally. He won a regional Emmy Award for the soundtrack he composed for the documentary series Minnesota: A History of the Land (2005).
William P. Perry is an American composer and producer of television and film. His music has been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the symphonic orchestras of Cincinnati, Minnesota, Montreal, Calgary and Hartford as well as the Vienna Symphony, the Rome Philharmonic, the Slovak Philharmonic, the RTÉ National Symphony of Ireland and other orchestras in Europe.
Werner Wolf Glaser was a German-born Swedish composer, conductor, pianist, professor, music critic, and poet.
Pilgrims on the Heart Road is an album by Peter Ostroushko, released in 1997. It is the second of the three albums Ostroushko calls his "heartland trilogy" — Heart of the Heartland, Pilgrims on the Heart Road, and Sacred Heart.
Sacred Heart is an album by Peter Ostroushko, released in 2000. It is the final part of the trilogy Ostroushko calls his "heartland trilogy" — Heart of the Heartland, Pilgrims on the Heart Road, and Sacred Heart. In contrast to the first two albums, Sacred Heart is completely instrumental.
Postcards is an album by American musician Peter Ostroushko, released in 2006.
Minnesota: A History of the Land is an album by Peter Ostroushko, released in 2005. It is the original score to a four-part public television series aired in 2005.
Blue Mesa is an album by American fiddle and mandolin player Peter Ostroushko, released in 1989.
Gary 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. He currently teaches on the music faculty at the University of Toronto.
When the Last Morning Glory Blooms is an album by American musician Peter Ostroushko, released in 2010.
Gideon Gee-Bum Kim is a Korean-Canadian classical music composer, conductor, and music educator and founder of the Toronto Messiaen Ensemble. His music draws on his Christian faith and shows a connection of the rich musical heritage of Korea and new compositional techniques, especially in the field of heterophony texture and all of this with live and emotional imagination.
Rainy Sundays... Windy Dreams is Andy Irvine's first solo album, produced by Dónal Lunny and recorded at Dublin's Windmill Lane Studios in late 1979. It was released in January 1980 by Tara Records.
