Ken Schaphorst (born May 24, 1960 in Abington, Pennsylvania) is a composer, performer, and educator.
Before moving to Boston in 2001, Schaphorst served as Director of Jazz Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin for ten years. Schaphorst is also a founding member of the Jazz Composers Alliance, a Boston-based non-profit corporation promoting new music in the jazz idiom since 1985.
Schaphorst studied at Swarthmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, and Boston University, where he received the Doctor of Musical Arts in 1990. His composition teachers have included Thomas Oboe Lee, Gerald Levinson, William Thomas McKinley and Bernard Rands.
Schaphorst was awarded composition fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 and 1991, the Wisconsin Arts Board in 1997, Meet the Composer Grants in 1987 and 1997, and was a Music Composition finalist in the Massachusetts Fellowship Program in 1986.
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.
Roscoe Mitchell is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz stated in 2004 that he had been "at the forefront of modern music" for more than 35 years. Critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times has mentioned that Mitchell "qualifies as an iconoclast". In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Mitchell is known for cofounding the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Ken Vandermark is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cognition, rhythmic theory, pitch space, and cognitive constraints on compositional systems. He has written many orchestral and chamber works, three of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Time after Time in 2001, String Quartet No. 3 in 2010, and Arches in 2011.
Leroy Jenkins was an American composer and violinist/violist.
Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988–93), Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993), Jackie O (1997), Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band (1997), UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) and for Symphonic Band (2000), Bells for Stokowski from Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra (2001) and for Symphonic Band (2002), Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2003) inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003), Ghost Ranch for Orchestra (2005), Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra (2007), Labyrinth of Love for Soprano and Chamber Winds (2012), American Gothic for Orchestra (2013), and Tales of Hemingway for Cello and Orchestra (2015). Daugherty has been described by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear."
Vinny Golia is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwind instruments. He performs in the genres of contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation.
Makanda Ken McIntyre was an American jazz musician, composer and educator. In addition to his primary instrument, the alto saxophone, he played flute, bass clarinet, oboe, bassoon, double bass, drums, and piano.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor.
The Mozart Fellowship is a composer residency attached to the Music Department of the University of Otago, one of the five Arts Fellowships at the university. It is the oldest full-time composition residency in New Zealand and is currently the only position of its kind; the list of past fellows includes many of New Zealand's most notable composers. The current Mozart Fellow is Kenneth Young.
Tom Varner is an American jazz horn player and composer.
Yehudi Wyner is an American composer, pianist, conductor and music educator.
William Overton Smith was an American clarinetist and composer. He worked extensively in modern classical music, third stream and jazz, and was perhaps best known for having played with pianist Dave Brubeck intermittently from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Smith frequently recorded jazz under the name Bill Smith, but his classical compositions are credited under the name William O. Smith.
Vijay Iyer is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer and writer 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 received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he was jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.
Ken Field is a saxophonist, flautist, percussionist, and composer. Since 1988 he has been a member of the electrified modern music ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, with whom he has recorded eight CDs.
William Thomas McKinley was an American composer and jazz pianist born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania). He wrote more than 300 musical compositions in what he called a neo-tonal style, of which Margalit Fox writes, for The New York Times, "were known for their lyricism, rhythmic propulsion and accessibility" and adds that his music "could recall not only jazz and blues but also Bach, Debussy, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.". Many of these works have been recorded by such ensembles as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Seattle Symphony.
Ken Ueno is an American composer.
Brian Landrus is a jazz saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and educator.
Mark Thomas Taylor is an American jazz French horn player.
Mathew Rosenblum is an American composer whose works have been commissioned, recorded and performed by musical groups such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, FLUX Quartet, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Newband among other ensembles, in venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia including the Andy Warhol Museum, Leipzig's Gewandhaus, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Thailand's Prince Mahidol Hall, as well as Merkin Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, the Miller Theatre, The Kitchen, Carnegie Recital Hall, and Symphony Space in New York City. Rosenblum's music has been recorded on such labels as Mode Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Capstone Records, Opus One Records, New Focus Recordings, and the Composers Recordings Inc. label, and has been published by Edition Peters, of Leipzig, London, and New York.