Philip Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically.
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has worked in jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, avant-garde, and experimental music.
Music for 18 Musicians is a work of minimalist music composed by Steve Reich during 1974–1976. Its world premiere was on April 24, 1976, at The Town Hall in the Midtown Manhattan Theater District. Following this, a recording of the piece was released on the ECM New Series in 1978.
Harold Montgomory Budd was an American music composer and poet. Born in Los Angeles and raised in the Mojave Desert, he became a respected composer in the minimal music and avant-garde scene of Southern California in the late 1960s, and later became better known for his work with figures such as Brian Eno and Robin Guthrie. Budd developed what he called a "soft pedal" technique for playing piano, with use of slow playing and prominent sustain.
Trevor Thomas Phillips was an English visual artist. He worked as a painter, printmaker and collagist.
Discreet Music is the fourth studio album by Brian Eno, and the first released under his full name. The album is a minimalist work, with the titular A-side consisting of one 30-minute piece featuring synthesizer and tape delay. The B-side features three variations on Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel, performed by the Cockpit Ensemble and conducted by Gavin Bryars.
Steve Reich and Musicians, sometimes credited as the Steve Reich Ensemble, is a musical ensemble founded and led by the American composer Steve Reich. The group has premiered and performed many of Reich's works both nationally and internationally. In 1999, Reich received a Grammy Award for "Best Small Ensemble Performance " for the ensemble's performance of Music for 18 Musicians.
Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a 1971 composition by Gavin Bryars based on a loop of an unknown homeless man singing a brief improvised stanza. The loop was the singer's recollection of the chorus of a gospel hymn, by James M Black, published in 1911. Rich harmonies, comprising string and brass, are gradually overlaid over the stanza. The piece was first recorded for use in a documentary which chronicles street life in and around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo, in London. When later listening to the recordings, Bryars noticed the clip was in tune with his piano and that it conveniently looped into 13 bars. For the first LP recording, he was limited to a duration of 25 minutes; later he completed a 60-minute version of the piece for cassette tape; and with the advent of the CD, a 74-minute version. It was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize.
Point Music was a record label that was started in 1992 as a joint venture between Philips Classics and Michael Riesman and Philip Glass’s Euphorbia Productions. In 1999, Decca Records became its distributor when it absorbed Philips in the aftermath of the merger that created Universal Music. It originally specialized in cutting-edge contemporary Western classical music, but it expanded to include film scores, some world music, and rock–classical crossover projects. It was shut down in 2002.
The Pavilion of Dreams is the second album from minimalist composer Harold Budd. It was produced by Brian Eno. Billed as "an extended cycle of works begun in 1972," it was recorded in 1976 but not released until 1978 on Eno's label Obscure Records. It was later re-released on Editions EG in 1981.
Chester Biscardi is an Italian American composer and educator.
Lucie Skeaping is a British singer, instrumentalist, broadcaster and writer. She was a founder of the early music group the City Waites and the pioneering klezmer band the Burning Bush. She presents BBC Radio 3's Early Music Show, a weekly programme dedicated to the early music repertoire.
Twice Through the Heart is a musical work by the English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, variously described as a dramatic scena, as a monodrama, as a song cycle, as a chamber opera or even as a "dramatic song-cycle-cum-scena". It is scored for mezzo-soprano and 16 instrumentalists and sets an English-language libretto by the Scottish poet Jackie Kay based on her script for a television programme about a woman jailed for killing her violent husband.
Croonin' is the twenty-seventh studio album by Canadian country vocalist Anne Murray. It was released by EMI Music Canada and SBK Records on November 2, 1993. The album peaked at number 1 on the RPM Country Albums chart. Heartland Records put out a Croonin' album with two bonus tracks, and Murray sings Perry Como's hit "Round and Round" and Dean Martin's hit "Memories Are Made of This." This album was also released on vinyl LP.
In the Key of Disney is the ninth studio album by Brian Wilson, released on October 25, 2011, by Walt Disney Records as part of the Disney Pearl Series. The album is the second release by Disney for Wilson, after Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin. Disney calls it "the album that marries the vision of two men who shaped the image of modern California – Brian Wilson & Walt Disney."
Doctor Ox's Experiment is an opera in two acts by Gavin Bryars. It has an English-language libretto by Blake Morrison after the novella of the same name by Jules Verne. It was first performed on 15 June 1998 at the London Coliseum by English National Opera (ENO) who co-commissioned the opera with BBC Television.
The Sinking of the Titanic is a work by British minimalist composer Gavin Bryars. Inspired by the story that the band on the RMS Titanic continued to perform as the ship sank in 1912, it imagines how the music performed by the band would reverberate through the water some time after they ceased performing. Composed between 1969 and 1972, the work is now considered one of the classics of British classical experimental music.
Ensemble Pieces is a 1975 album featuring contemporary classical music by Christopher Hobbs, John Adams and Gavin Bryars.
Machine Music is a 1978 album by John White and Gavin Bryars. The album was the eighth release on Brian Eno's Obscure Records.
