In music, a quartet or quartette is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices or instruments.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Hilary Tann is a Welsh composer based in the United States.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer, professor, and supporter of the arts.
Ivan Božičević is a Croatian composer, pianist, organist and jazz musician.
John Metcalf MBE is a Welsh-Canadian composer. He has worked in many forms, including large-scale operas, choral and orchestral works, and chamber music, both instrumental and vocal. His music is tonal, and is often rhythmically complex, with much use of polyrhythms.
Michael Blake is a South African contemporary classical music composer and performer. He studied in Johannesburg in the 1970s and was associated with conceptual art and the emergence of an indigenous experimental music aesthetic. In 1976 he embarked on 'African Journal', a series of pieces for Western instruments that drew on his studies of traditional African music and aesthetics, which continued to expand during two decades in London until he returned to South Africa in 1998. From around 2000 African music becomes less explicit on the surface of his compositions, but elements of rhythm and repetition remain as part of a more postcolonial engagement with material and form. He works in a range of styles including minimalism and collage, and now also forages for source material from the entire musical canon.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
Yitzhak Yedid is an Israeli-Australian composer and pianist.
Peter Reynolds was a Welsh composer known for founding PM Music Ensemble. In addition, he was recognised by Guinness World Records as having written with writer Simon Rees the shortest opera on Earth, Sands of Time; a three-minute and thirty-four second long piece. He died on 11 October 2016 at his home in Cardiff.
Georg Friedrich Haas is an Austrian composer. In a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, pieces by Haas received the most votes (49), and his composition in vain (2000) topped the list.
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
George Flynn is a distinguished American composer and pianist. Born in Montana on January 21, 1937, he grew up in Montana and Washington. He studied and taught at Columbia University, New York City, and from 1977 to 2001 headed the Department of Composition at DePaul University in Chicago. His works cover a wide range of genres, from symphonies to electronic compositions. His 114-minute piano cycle Trinity was described in Tempo in 2005 as a ‘masterpiece’. It consists of three very large piano pieces, Kanal, Wound and Salvage, each performable on its own. The work has been recorded by the pianist Fredrik Ullén.
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 Academy of Music.
Gary Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002. He currently teaches on the music faculty at the University of Toronto.
Alan Shulman was an American composer and cellist. He wrote a considerable amount of symphonic music, chamber music, and jazz music. Trumpeter Eddie Bailey said, "Alan had the greatest ear of any musician I ever came across. He had better than perfect pitch. I've simply never met anyone like him." Some of his more well known works include his 1940 Neo-Classical Theme and Variations for Viola and Piano and his A Laurentian Overture, which was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1952 under the baton of Guido Cantelli. Also of note is his 1948 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra which was also premiered by the New York Philharmonic with cellist Leonard Rose and conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos. Many of Shulman's works have been recorded, and the violinist Jascha Heifetz and jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw have been particular exponents of his work both in performance and on recordings.
Fabian Müller is a Swiss composer.
Svante Henryson is a composer, cellist, bass guitarist and double bassist, active within jazz, classical music, and hard rock.
Patrick Zimmerli is an American saxophonist, composer, arranger, and record producer.
