Marjorie Merryman (born 1951 [1] ) is an American composer, author, and music educator. She is a member of the composition faculty at the Manhattan School of Music since 2007, where she also served as Interim President, Provost and Senior Vice President at Manhattan School of Music. She previously taught at Boston University and Macalester College. [2]
While at BU, she was commissioned by many professional musical ensembles to write pieces ranging from small chamber works to a full opera. She has written and published pieces such as "Chinese Moon Poems", a women's choral piece based on Chinese poems about the moon. Merryman categorizes herself with other twentieth-century composers heavily influenced by Johannes Brahms —in particular, serialist composers such as those of the Second Viennese School.
She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including two prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Walter Hinrichsen Award, presented annually by American Academy of Arts and Letters [3] and in 2014, the "Arts and Letters Award in Music: "This award is given in recognition of "…. outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice."
She has also received the League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music, the WBZ Fund for the Arts, and ComposersInc (Lee Ettelson Award). Among her other awards are fellowships or grants from Tanglewood, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Arts - Meet the Composer program. She has been Composer-in- Residence of the New England Philharmonic and the Billings (MT) Symphony Orchestra, and has served on the boards of the New England Composers’ Orchestra, the Lily Boulanger Foundation, Alea III and many others. Her works are published by C.F. Peters, E.C. Schirmer, APNM, and G. Schirmer; and recorded on the Koch and New World labels.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
John Paul Corigliano Jr. is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Academy Award.
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.
Aaron Jay Kernis is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as director of the Minnesota Orchestra's Composers' Institute, and is currently the workshop director of the Nashville Symphony Composer Lab. He has received numerous awards and honors throughout his thirty-five-year career. He lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Evelyne Luest, and their two children.
Florence Beatrice Price was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.
Tania León is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
Melinda Jane Wagner is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduates degrees from University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania. She also served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas (Austin) and at the 'Bravo!' Vail Valley Music Festival. Some of her teachers included Richard Wernick, George Crumb, Shulamit Ran, and Jay Reise.
Frank Ticheli is an American composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and concert band works. He lives in Los Angeles, California, where he is a Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California. He was the Pacific Symphony's composer-in-residence from 1991 to 1998, composing numerous works for that orchestra. A number of his works have become standards in concert band repertoire.
Yehudi Wyner is an American composer, pianist, conductor and music educator.
Dalit Hadass Warshaw is a New York-based composer, pianist, and thereminist. Previously on the composition and music theory faculty of Boston Conservatory, she currently serves on the composition faculty at Juilliard and CUNY-Brooklyn College. Her works have been performed by dozens of orchestral ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Y Chamber Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. In April 2006, her piece After the Victory for orchestra and chorus, was premiered by the Grand Rapids Symphony and the North American Choral Company. Her first recording, entitled "Invocations" was released by Albany Records in 2011. Her first piano concerto, Conjuring Tristan, was commissioned by the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2014. The work was inspired by Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, as well as by Thomas Mann's novella Tristan. The piece received its world premiere in January 2015, with Warshaw as the soloist.
Tison C. Street aka Curry Tison Street is a graduate of Harvard College ‘65 and an American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist.
Lucile Lawrence was an American harpist. At the end of her life, she was a faculty member of Boston University and the Manhattan School of Music, as well as teaching privately.
Robert Kapilow is an American composer, conductor, and music commentator. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, and a student of Nadia Boulanger. He initially gained recognition for his classical music radio program, What Makes It Great?, which was under the umbrella of National Public Radio's Performance Today; "PT" is now a stablemate of classical programs produced by American Public Media. "What Makes It Great?" is part of NPR's NPR Music website. On the program he presented live full-length concert evenings and series throughout North America. Kapilow's program became a recurring event at New York's Lincoln Center, in Boston, Los Angeles and Kansas City among other venues. In 2014 "What Makes It Great?" relocated to Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, where Kapilow was a 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence.
Faye-Ellen Silverman is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She is also an author and an educator.
Kati Ilona Agócs is a Canadian-American composer and a member of the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Wang Jie is a Chinese-born American composer.
Donald Harris was an American composer who taught music at Ohio State University for 22 years. He was Dean of the College of the Arts from 1988 to 1997.
The New England Philharmonic is a volunteer orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1976. The current music director is Tianhui Ng.
Justin Dello Joio,(born October 18, 1955, in New York City) is an American composer and the fifth-generation composer in the Dello Joio family.