George Henry Crumb Jr. was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical language which "range[s] in mood from peaceful to nightmarish". Crumb's compositions are known for pushing the limits of technical prowess by way of frequent use of extended techniques. The unusual timbres he employs evoke a surrealist atmosphere which portray emotions of considerable intensity with vast and sometimes haunting soundscapes. His few large-scale works include Echoes of Time and the River (1967), which won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and Star-Child (1977), which won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition; however, his output consists of mostly music for chamber ensembles or solo instrumentalists. Among his best known compositions are Black Angels (1970), a striking commentary on the Vietnam War for electric string quartet; Ancient Voices of Children (1970) for a mixed chamber ensemble; and Vox Balaenae (1971), a musical evocation of the humpback whale, for electric flute, electric cello, and amplified piano.
Michiko is a member of the Imperial House of Japan. She was Empress of Japan as the wife of Akihito, the 125th Emperor of Japan reigning from 7 January 1989 to 30 April 2019.
Frances-Marie Uitti is an American cellist and composer known for her use of extended techniques and performance of contemporary classical music. Tom Service, music critic for the Guardian newspaper, has called her "arguably the world's most influentially experimental cellist."
Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French.
Peter Zinovieff was a British composer, musician and inventor. In the late 1960s, his company, Electronic Music Studios (EMS), made the VCS3, a synthesizer used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and White Noise, and Krautrock groups as well as more pop-orientated artists, including Todd Rundgren and David Bowie. In later life, he worked primarily as a composer of electronic music.
Helena Tulve is an Estonian composer.
Vocalists are capable of producing a variety of extended technique sounds. These alternative singing techniques have been used extensively in the 20th century, especially in art song and opera. Particularly famous examples of extended vocal technique can be found in the music of Luciano Berio, John Cage, George Crumb, Peter Maxwell Davies, Hans Werner Henze, György Ligeti, Demetrio Stratos, Meredith Monk, Giacinto Scelsi, Arnold Schoenberg, Salvatore Sciarrino, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tim Foust, Avi Kaplan, and Trevor Wishart.
Huck Hodge is an American composer of contemporary classical music.
Rebecca Saunders is a London-born composer who lives and works freelance in Berlin. In a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, Saunders' compositions received the third highest total number of votes (30), surpassed only by the works of Georg Friedrich Haas (49) and Simon Steen-Andersen (35). In 2019, writers of The Guardian ranked Skin (2016) the 16th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Tom Service writing that "Saunders burrows into the interior world of the instruments, and inside the grain of Fraser's voice [...] and finds a revelatory world of heightened feeling."
Suzanne Giraud is a French music educator and composer of contemporary music. Her works are marked by a predilection for percussion, voices and strings; they resonate with her artistic, poetic and architectural inspirations. She has been a member of the Académie Charles Cros since January 2024.
Adrian Corker is originally from Sheffield and he began releasing music working with Paul Conboy after meeting in Manchester in 1990. He is a British musician based in London. He also co-runs two labels and is a film score composer. He is currently published by Faber Music.
Jagoda Marta Szmytka is a Polish composer. She has attracted attention for her style of music, which uses elements not only of sound, but also of the sense of space and visual arts, and also for her opera, Dla głosów i rąk. She is a well-known composer in Europe and has been recognized abroad, winning numerous juried scholarships, including the Staubach Honoraria for Composition.
Aisha Orazbayeva is a violinist from Kazakhstan. She also writes and has had plays broadcast on the radio. She gained notice for her performance of Salvatore Sciarrino's Sei Capricci.
Michiko Hirayama was a Japanese singer, noted for her interpretation of Giacinto Scelsi's "Canti del Capricorno".
Georgia Rodgers is a composer and acoustician from the United Kingdom, currently based in London.
Vincent Royer is a French violist and composer.
Marianne Schuppe is a vocalist, author, and composer of vocal music.
Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist and composer, known for her work in the field of free improvisation, her use of prepared violin, her extensive discography and collaborative work with other musicians.
Kali Malone is an American composer and organist based in Stockholm. Her works implement unique tuning systems in minimalist form for analog and digital synthesis often combined with acoustic instrumentation.
Does Spring Hide Its Joy is a 2023 album by American composer Kali Malone featuring guitarist Stephen O'Malley and cellist Lucy Railton, released on January 20, 2023, through Ideologic Organ, a label owned by O'Malley. It is composed of three hour-long variations on the same piece. The album received acclaim from critics.
