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).
A London Symphony is the second symphony that Ralph Vaughan Williams composed. The work is sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 2, though the composer did not designate that name for the work. First performed in 1914, the original score of this four-movement symphony was lost and subsequently reconstructed. Vaughan Williams continued revisions of the work into its final definitive form, which was published in 1936.
Dame Judith Weir is a British composer serving as Master of the King's Music. Appointed in 2014 by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir is the first woman to hold this office.
Sir Andrew Frank Davis was an English conductor. He was the longtime chief conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He was music director at the Glyndebourne Festival from 1988 to 2000, and especially known for conducting the traditional Last Night of The Proms, including Last Night speeches. He was music director and principal conductor of the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 2000 to the 2020/21 season.
Christopher Theofanidis is an American composer whose works have been performed by leading orchestras from around the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the National, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, and many others. He participated in the Young American Composer-in-Residence Program with Barry Jekowsky and the California Symphony from 1994 to 1996 and, more recently, served as Composer of the Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony during their 2006–2007 Season, for which he wrote a violin concerto for Sarah Chang.
Nelson José Pinto Freire was a Brazilian classical pianist. Regarded as one of the greatest pianists of his generation, he was noted for his "decorous piano playing" and "interpretive depth". His extensive discography for labels such as Sony Classical, Teldec, Philips, and Decca has garnered awards including the Gramophone Award and Diapason d'Or. Freire appeared as soloist with the world's most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. He played and recorded piano duo music with Martha Argerich, a long-time musical and personal friend.
Alban Gerhardt is a German cellist. Since his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1991, he has appeared with many of the world's leading orchestras.
Tansy Davies is an English composer of contemporary classical music. She won the BBC Young Composers' Competition in 1996 and has written works for ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. In 2023 she was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collections at The Ivors Classical Award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in composition.
Anthony Joseph Iannaccone is an American composer and conductor. His music has been performed by major orchestras and chamber ensembles, and he has conducted numerous regional and metropolitan orchestras in the United States and in Europe. He was a conductor and professor at Eastern Michigan University, from which he retired at the end of the winter semester of 2013.
The Leeds International Piano Competition, informally known as The Leeds and formerly the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, takes place every three years in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1961 by Marion, Countess of Harewood, Dame Fanny Waterman, and Roslyn Lyons, with the first competition being held in 1963. Waterman was the chair and artistic director up to the 2015 competition when Paul Lewis and Adam Gatehouse became Co-Artistic Directors. The first round of the competition takes place internationally and in 2021 went 'virtual' when 63 pianists were recorded in 17 international locations and the Jury deliberated online, in order to circumvent the various impacts of Covid. The 2nd round, semi-finals and finals take place in the Great Hall of the University of Leeds and in Leeds Town Hall and in 2018 & 2021 were streamed to a large global audience through medici.tv, achieving over 4.7 million views and listens through multiple channels and platforms, including the BBC, Amadeus.tv (China), Classic FM and Mezzo.tv.
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Raymond Yiu, born 1973; is a composer, conductor, jazz pianist and music writer.
The Donatella Flick Conducting Competition is an international music competition for young conductors, held biennially in London.
Geoffrey Alvarez is a British/Nicaraguan composer and conductor. He chairs the annual international composition competition run by the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra. He is also a writer on music and inventor of Gravesian Analysis.
The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London, England, and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory. The Barbican Centre is a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network.
Arturs Maskats is a Latvian composer and since 1996 artistic director of the Latvian National Opera. His orchestral composition, Tango, received international exposure as one of the finalist works of the third Masterprize International Composing Competition in 2003. It was also played at the 2022 Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn by the Vienna Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons in Vienna, Austria.
Joseph Phibbs is an English composer of orchestral, choral and chamber music. He has also composed for theatre, both in the UK and Japan. Since 1998 he has written regularly to commissions for Festivals, for private sponsors, and for the BBC, which has broadcast premieres of his orchestral and chamber works from the Proms and elsewhere. His works have been given premieres in Europe, the United States and the Far East, and he has received prestigious awards, including most recently a British Composer Award, and a Library of Congress Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award. Many of his works have been premiered by leading international musicians, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, and the Belcea Quartet.
Andrew March is an English composer. He was the winner of the first-ever Masterprize Composition Competition with his piece Marine — à travers les arbres. Andrew studied composition at the Royal College of Music with Jeremy Dale Roberts, graduating in 1996.
Marine – à travers les arbres is an orchestral composition by the English composer Andrew March. It was the winning piece in the inaugural Masterprize International Composing Competition held in 1998 after having been selected from 1,318 entries from over 60 countries. The impressionistic work has been performed 13 times throughout the world.
Victoria Borisova-Ollas is a Russian-Swedish composer who first received international recognition for her symphonic poem Wings of the Wind which won second prize in the 1998 Masterprize International Composition Competition in the UK.
