Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score", which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, sing or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.
The Four Seasons is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year. These were composed around 1718–1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua. They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione.
Salli C. Terri was a singer, arranger, recording artist, and composer. Record audiences still cite Terri's "haunting" vocals, with Hi-Fi Review originally describing her as "a mezzo soprano whose velvet voice and astonishing flexibility has hardly an equal at present."
Michael Arnold Kamen was an American composer, orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, songwriter, record producer and musician.
Sir Karl William Pamp Jenkins,, HonFLSW is a Welsh multi-instrumentalist and composer. His best known works include the song "Adiemus", Palladio (1995), The Armed Man (2000), his Requiem (2005) and his Stabat Mater (2008).
Nic Jones is an English singer, songwriter and musician. Regarded as a prominent figure of the British folk revival, he has recorded five solo albums and collaborated with various musicians.
Neshamah (Songs from the Jewish Diaspora) is the first solo recording by American guitarist Tim Sparks on the Tzadik Records label. "Neshamah" means "soul" in Hebrew. The arrangements adapt Ashkenazic klezmer, Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish music for the solo guitar.
Richard Allen Harvey is an English composer and musician. Originally of the mediaevalist progressive rock group Gryphon, he is best known now for his film and television soundtracks. He is also known for his guitar concerto Concerto Antico, which was composed for the guitarist John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Elmer Ellsworth McMeen, III, is an acoustic steel-string fingerstyle guitarist. His specialty is fingerstyle arrangements of sung or strongly melodic pieces, ranging from the Irish genre, to hymns, gospel tunes and pop music. He has also composed instrumentals for guitar, and has published a book of Irish and Scottish instrumental music that he arranged for classical string trio. That book is called Celtic Treasures for String Trio. He plays and arranges guitar music almost exclusively in the CGDGAD tuning. Acoustic Guitar magazine called McMeen "the king of CGDGAD tuning".
Carlos Antonio Bonell is an English classical guitarist of Spanish origin. He has been described by Classical Guitar magazine as "one of the great communicators of the guitar world".
Randal Bays is an American fiddler, guitarist and composer. This Irish-style fiddle and guitar player first gained international recognition through his recordings and performances with Co. Clare fiddler Martin Hayes in the early 1990s.
Warren Bennett is an English musician, composer and performer. He was educated at Mill Hill School and is the son of Brian Bennett, the Shadows' drummer. He played keyboards on tour with the Shadows on their farewell tours from 2004 till 2015, with and without one-time front man Cliff Richard. Warren's professional musical career began in 1977 when, aged 15, his first composition for television was used for ITV's Summer Promotional Campaign. Also that year he co-wrote "The Girls Back Home", which was released as a single from the Rock Dreams album by the Brian Bennett Band. This initial success, especially in television, led to him becoming not only an accomplished musician, writer and producer but also as an established composer for feature films.
Alicja Smietana is a Polish-British violinist, viola player, arranger and composer.
Antonio Carlos Ribeiro Barbosa Lima was a Brazilian classical and jazz guitarist. He spent most of his professional life as a resident in the United States, devoting much of his time as a recitalist on international concert tours. He appeared often as a soloist and with orchestras.
Jon Raven (1940–2015) was an English author and musician.
Michael Raven was an English author, musician, composer and poet.
Allan Zavod was an Australian pianist, composer, jazz musician and occasional conductor whose career was mainly in America.
Ji Liu was born 1990 and is a Chinese concert pianist, recording artist, and published composer currently based in London.
Heinrich Albert was a German guitarist, composer and teacher – the most prominent German classical guitarist of his time.
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.
