Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Paavo Allan Engelbert Berglund was a Finnish conductor and violinist.
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).
James Ehnes, is a Canadian concert violinist and violist.
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Ruth Laredo was an American classical pianist.
Esteban Benzecry is an Argentine classical composer.
František Alois Drdla was a prominent Czech concert violinist and composer of light music.
Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
Peter Roy Katin was a British classical pianist and teacher.
Piotr Anderszewski is a Polish pianist and composer.
David Eaton is an American composer and conductor who has been the music director of the New York City Symphony since 1985. He has also been an active composer and arranger, with 101 original compositions and over 900 arrangements and original songs to his credit. He has appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras in Asia, Canada, Israel, Europe, Central and South America, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. His compositions and arrangements have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the United Nations and by orchestras in the United States, Asia, Israel, South America and Europe. He also served at the conductor of the historic Goldman Band from 1998 to 2000 conducting the ensemble in concerts throughout the New York metropolitan area including performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. From 2018 to 2024 we was the principal conductor of the Hyo Jeong Youth Orchestra in South Korea. In 2022 he self-published his first book, What Music Tells Me: Beauty, Truth and Goodness and Our Cultural Inheritance.
Alan Shulman was an American composer and cellist. He wrote a considerable amount of symphonic music, chamber music, and jazz music. Trumpeter Eddie Bailey said, "Alan had the greatest ear of any musician I ever came across. He had better than perfect pitch. I've simply never met anyone like him." Some of his more well known works include his 1940 Neo-Classical Theme and Variations for Viola and Piano and his A Laurentian Overture, which was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1952 under the baton of Guido Cantelli. Also of note is his 1948 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra which was also premiered by the New York Philharmonic with cellist Leonard Rose and conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos. Many of Shulman's works have been recorded, and the violinist Jascha Heifetz and jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw have been particular exponents of his work both in performance and on recordings.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese pianist. Born in Beijing, she began learning piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Mark Bebbington is a British concert pianist. He is a notable advocate of British music.
Boris Pigovat is an Israeli composer. Many of his works have been performed throughout the world. He studied at Gnessin Music Institute in Moscow. Between 1978 and 1990 he lived in Tajikistan, and immigrated to Israel in 1990. In 2002 he received his Ph.D. degree from Bar-Ilan UniversityArchived 2007-05-09 at the Wayback Machine (Israel).
Isidor Yulyevich Achron was an American pianist, composer and music teacher.
Han Lash is an American composer of concert music who has taught at Yale School of Music, Mannes School of Music, and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Kinga Augustyn is a New York City-based virtuoso violinist. She has established an international career having performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, recitalist, and recording artist.
