Deborah Ann Gibson is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She released her debut album Out of the Blue (1987) at age 16, writing and largely producing the material. The album spawned several international hits, later being certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. One of those singles, "Foolish Beat", made Gibson the youngest female artist to write, produce, and perform a Billboard Hot 100 number-one single. Her double-platinum second album Electric Youth (1989) gave Gibson another U.S. number-one hit with "Lost in Your Eyes". Gibson is the sole songwriter on all of her singles to reach the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. She was recognized by ASCAP as Songwriter of the Year, along with Bruce Springsteen, in 1989.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, he announced his resignation from the San Francisco Symphony upon the expiration of his contract in 2025.
Krystian Zimerman is a Polish concert pianist, conductor and pedagogue who has been described as one of the greatest pianists of his generation. In 1975, he won the IX International Chopin Piano Competition.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
David Lang is an American composer living in New York City. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. Lang was nominated for an Academy Award for "Simple Song #3" from the film Youth.
Eric Christian Olsen is an American actor. He is known for his portrayals of Investigator Marty Deeks on the CBS television series NCIS: Los Angeles, Austin in the film Not Another Teen Movie, and Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.
William Edward Childs is an American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor from Los Angeles, California, United States.
Vijay Iyer is a composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, writer, and professor based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014, he was jointly appointed with tenure to Harvard University's departments of music and African American studies as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts.
Stephen Cohn is an American composer of concert and film music living in Los Angeles, California. His compositional style embraces an expanded tonality with a 21st-century perspective.
The 1998 MTV Video Music Awards aired live on September 10, 1998, honoring the best music videos from June 17, 1997, to June 12, 1998. The show was hosted by Ben Stiller at Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.
Jeffrey Alan Kahane is an American classical concert pianist and conductor. He was music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for 20 years, the longest of any music director in the orchestra's history. He is the music director of the Sarasota Music Festival, a program of the Sarasota Orchestra, music director-designate of the San Antonio Philharmonic, and a professor of keyboard studies (Piano) at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, California.
Kodomo is the moniker of Chris Child, an Emmy award-winning American musician. As Kodomo, he is best known for his work on the Harmonix video games Amplitude and Frequency as well as the iPod game Phase, which features his song "Spira Mirabilis".
Mahan Esfahani is an Iranian-American harpsichordist.
Sarah Kirkland Snider is an American composer. She has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral, song cycle, choral, and ballet works.
Derrick Skye is a composer, conductor, musician, and educator based in the Los Angeles area who often integrates musical practices from cultures around the world in his works. The Los Angeles Times has described Skye's music as "something to savor" and "enormous fun to listen to." The Times (London) described Skye’s music as “deliciously head-spinning.”
Jacob Collier is an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and educator. His music incorporates a combination of jazz and elements from other musical genres, and often features extensive use of reharmonisations and close harmony. He is known for his energetic live performances, in which he often conducts the audience to sing harmony or play percussion parts. Collier demonstrates his harmonic expertise in lectures and master classes, particularly with his detailed analyses of songs like Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" and his own music.
Bridge to Everywhere is a classical chamber music ensemble and arts organization based in the Los Angeles area that promotes cross-cultural collaborations through musical performances and educational programs. Bridge to Everywhere is currently the ensemble-in-residence at Mount St. Mary's University.
Thomas Kotcheff is an American composer and pianist who currently resides in Los Angeles. He is a winner of a 2016 Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2015 Presser Foundation Music Award. He composed and orchestrated music for the soundtrack of the 2023 film Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan which won the Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards and the Best Original Score at the 96th Academy Awards.
Women Talking is a 2022 American drama film written and directed by Sarah Polley. Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, itself inspired by the gas-facilitated rapes that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia, the film follows a group of American Mennonite women who discuss their future, following their discovery of the men's history of raping the colony's women. It features an ensemble cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand, who also served as a producer on the film. It is the last film to be released by United Artists Releasing, before it was folded into MGM on March 4, 2023.
Sarah Elizabeth Gibson was an American pianist and composer. She and pianist and composer Thomas Kotcheff formed a piano duo, Hocket. Her compositions have been performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and in Europe.
