Jane Kathleen Sinclair Wells (born 1952) [1] is a British composer [2] and saxophonist. [3] She began her studies at the junior department of the Royal College of Music, then spent five years studying music education at universities in Durham, Sussex, and Southampton. She studied composition with David Lumsdaine and Jonathan Harvey. Later, she took courses in adult education, working with the frail elderly, and making music with learning-disabled adults. Wells worked in London from 1978 to 1987, where in addition to composing, she taught adults and led music-making sessions for children for the Battersea Arts Centre and the Gemini music ensemble.
Wells moved to the north Norfolk coast in 1987 for a three-year residency as a composer/musician at a small local arts center. The residency developed into Norfolk Music Works, a community organization which Wells worked with until 1994. She then became a Lincolnshire county music worker until 1998 and established a music agency for the county called "Soundlincs." During this time, she was also a PRS Composer-in-Education. [4]
In 2003, Wells joined the Hoofbeat Streetband with Chris Balch, Dawn Loombe, Richard Hall, and Derek Paice, playing music for accordion, percussion, saxophones, and trombone. Four years later, in 2007, Wells and Noralf Mork began codirecting the Big Heart and Soul Choir (established in 1997) in Castleacre, Norfolk. All music is taught by ear, so choir participants do not need to read music. The choir emphasizes enjoyment while singing together in a group.
Wells also works as a tutor the Natural Voice Network [5] and for Sing Your Heart Out, a series of workshops designed to help people improve their mental health by singing for enjoyment. Initially developed for clients of Norfolk Mental Health Services, the workshops are free and open to everyone. They are supported by donations.
Her compositions include:
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
Marek Kopelent was a Czech composer, music editor and academic teacher, who is considered to have been at the forefront of the "New Music" movement, and was one of the most-published Czech composers of the second half of the 20th century.
Michael Blake is a South African contemporary classical music composer and performer. He studied in Johannesburg in the 1970s and was associated with conceptual art and the emergence of an indigenous experimental music aesthetic. In 1976 he embarked on 'African Journal', a series of pieces for Western instruments that drew on his studies of traditional African music and aesthetics, which continued to expand during two decades in London until he returned to South Africa in 1998. From around 2000 African music becomes less explicit on the surface of his compositions, but elements of rhythm and repetition remain as part of a more postcolonial engagement with material and form. He works in a range of styles including minimalism and collage, and now also forages for source material from the entire musical canon.
Octavian Nemescu was a Romanian composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, electroacoustic, multimedia, metamusic, imaginary and ritual works.
Peter Reynolds was a Welsh composer known for founding PM Music Ensemble. In addition, he was recognised by Guinness World Records as having written with writer Simon Rees the shortest opera on Earth, Sands of Time; a three-minute and thirty-four second long piece. He died on 11 October 2016 at his home in Cardiff.
Iraida Yusupova is a Turkmenistani composer of half Russian half Tatar ethnicity who lives in Moscow, Russia.
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
Isak Roux is a South African born German composer born in 1959. He is known for his arrangements of South African music, especially his work with the musical groups Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Kwela Tebza.
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.
Tomi Räisänen is a Finnish composer.
Lidia Zielińska is a Polish composer and music educator.
Ivana Stefanović is a Serbian composer.
Bettina Skrzypczak is a Polish/Swiss composer.
Gerda Geertens is a Dutch composer. She was born in Wildervank, and studied music and philosophy in Groningen. In 1981 she began the study of composition with Klaas de Vries at the Rotterdam Conservatory. Her compositions include chamber music, choir and solo singing and pieces for symphony orchestras.
Elaine "Ray" Barkin was an American composer, writer, and educator.
Alan Bullard is a British composer, known mainly for his choral and educational music. His compositions are regularly performed and broadcast worldwide, and they appear on a number of CDs.
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.”
Friedrich Schenker was a German avant-garde composer and trombone player.
Barbara Maria Zakrzewska-Nikiporczyk was a composer and musicologist. She studied composition with Florian Dąbrowski at the Poznań Academy of Music, graduating in 1969. She finished her postgraduate studies in library and information science in 1974; two years later she received a doctorate at the Institute of History, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She studied electronic music for three months in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1981, and in Oxford, England.
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