Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In this regard, she was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
George Theophilus Walker was an American composer, pianist, and organist, and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his work Lilacs in 1996. Walker was married to pianist and scholar Helen Walker-Hill between 1960 and 1975. Walker was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker.
Simon Bainbridge was a British composer. He was also a professor and head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and visiting professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States.
Derek Bermel is an American composer, clarinetist and conductor whose music blends various facets of world music, funk and jazz with largely classical performing forces and musical vocabulary. He is the recipient of various awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Academy in Rome's Rome Prize awarded to artists for a year-long residency in Rome.
The Tolkien Ensemble is a Danish ensemble which created "the world's first complete musical interpretation of the poems and songs from The Lord of the Rings". They published four CDs from 1997 to 2005, in which all the poems and songs of The Lord of the Rings are set to music. The project was approved by the Tolkien Estate. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark gave permission to use her illustrations on the CD covers.
Michael Mantler is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music.
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.
Robert Harry Kyr is an American composer, writer, filmmaker, and Philip H. Knight Professor of Music Composition and Theory.
Peter Vermeersch is a Belgian composer, clarinet player and producer.
Jeffrey Milarsky is a conductor of contemporary music in New York City.
Leaving Rivendell is the fourth album by the Danish group The Tolkien Ensemble, with Christopher Lee as additional vocalist. It features songs composed to the lyrics found in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and forms the end part of a complete musical interpretation of all lyrics in the book.
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Robert Paterson is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 100 compositions. He has been called a "modern day master" and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writing in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and cellist who specializes in chamber music. He has composed a cello concerto, Three Pieces for Solo Cello and Variations for Cello Solo for his own instrument, and string quartets and compositions that juxtapose a quartet with a solo instrument, including Piccolo Quintet, Bassoon Quintet and the piano quintet Rhapsodie Macabre. He has set poetry for speaking voice and cello, such as Der Handschuh, and has written song cycles. His compositions reflect the individual capacity and character of players and instruments, from the piccolo to the contrabassoon.
William Joseph Susman is an American composer of concert and film music and a pianist. He has written orchestral and chamber music as well as documentary film scores.
Australian classical music has developed from early years in the Australian colonies, until today. Today, each state has an orchestra and there are many major venues where classical music is performed.
