Morton Feldman was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown. Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating, pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused, a generally quiet and slowly evolving music, and recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also explore extremes of duration.
Joan Linda La Barbara is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited with advancing a new vocabulary of vocal sounds including trills, whispers, cries, sighs, inhaled tones, and multiphonics.
The Dandy Warhols are an American psychedelic/alternative rock band, formed in Portland, Oregon, in 1994 by singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor and guitarist Peter Holmström. They were later joined by keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Eric Hedford. Hedford left in 1998 and was replaced by Taylor-Taylor's cousin Brent DeBoer. The band's name is a play on the name of American pop artist Andy Warhol.
John Tilbury is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.
Songs from Liquid Days is a collection of songs composed by composer Philip Glass with lyrics by Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. Glass began the project scoring lyrics by Byrne and then thought to collaborate with additional songwriters.
Roger Robert Woodward is an Australian classical pianist, composer, conductor, teacher and human rights activist. He is widely regarded as a leading advocate of contemporary music.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
Eighth Blackbird is an American contemporary music sextet based in Chicago, composed of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello. Their name derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
The Beethoven Project Trio is an American piano trio that was formed in Chicago in 2008. Its founding members are pianist George Lepauw, violinist Sang Mee Lee and cellist Wendy Warner. The first public concert given by the trio was on March 1, 2009 at Chicago’s Murphy Auditorium for the world premiere of a recently rediscovered piano trio by Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as the American premiere of another Beethoven trio and the Chicago premiere of yet another Trio ; the performance also included the well-known “Archduke” Trio by Beethoven. John von Rhein, music critic of the Chicago Tribune, wrote about the trio's first concert that "for musicians who had never worked together as a trio before, pianist George Lepauw, violinist Sang Mee Lee and cellist Wendy Warner made a splendid ensemble, playing with finely judged balance, evenness of sound and unanimity of style [...] Lepauw, Lee and Warner ended their program with Beethoven’s familiar “Archduke” Trio, a masterpiece that drew fully on their individual and collective abilities. The slow movement emerged with particular eloquence here."
Kirsten Soriano was born April 19, 1979. She is an American composer from White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Her music has been performed by the Kronos Quartet string quartet, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra MusicNOW Ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Crossing choral ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente and the Jack Quartet string quartet. In 2013, she was appointed assistant professor at the University of North Texas and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2020. She has served as director of undergraduate studies in the college of music at the University of North Texas since 2018.
Jan Williams is a percussionist, arts administrator, teacher, conductor, and composer who has championed avant-garde and progressive music in the United States. He is recognized as an important proponent of percussion performance and its literature.
Ensemble Dal Niente is a contemporary classical music ensemble based in Chicago, Illinois, USA that performs acoustic and electroacoustic chamber music.
Cliché is the reissue of Romanian recording artist Alexandra Stan's debut studio album, Saxobeats (2011). It was released for digital download on 2 October 2013 through Maan Studio; its deluxe edition was made available for digital and physical consumption on 23 October 2013 by Victor Entertainment. The record premiered following an alleged physical altercation with her former manager Marcel Prodan, which resulted in Stan taking a break from her career. Along with Andrei Nemirschi and Marcian Alin Soare, Prodan has written and produced nearly all the songs on Cliché .
Balter/Saunier is a 2016 album of a collaboration between orchestral Ensemble Dal Niente, composer Marcos Balter, and experimental rock band Deerhoof. The Boston Globe described the album as "arrestingly gorgeous".
Martha Callison Horst is an American composer. Her music has been performed by Earplay, Alea III, the Empyrean Ensemble, the Fromm Players, Left Coast Ensemble, Dal Niente, Composers, Inc., members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Composers Consortium, and Music Beyond Performance: SoundImageSound V. Horst studied composition at Stanford University and the University of California, Davis. She is currently Professor of Composition and Music Theory in the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University. Furthermore, she serves as an Academic Senator representing the College of Fine Arts. In the fall of 2020, she was elected Secretary of the Academic Senate placing her on the Executive Committee with the University administration.
Lawrence Irving Wilde, is a composer, educator, violinist, and nyckelharpa player. Wilde has been commissioned by and collaborated with ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, JACK Quartet, ÆON Music Ensemble, Sō Percussion, Tesla Quartet, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Moscow String Quartet, Ensemble Mise-En, Juilliard Orchestra, and others.
Juliet Fraser is a British soprano, based in London and specialising in contemporary classical music. She has commissioned more than 20 solo vocal works and premiered several hundred new works, many written for her. Fraser is the artistic director of eavesdropping, an experimental music festival in East London, and co-director of all that dust, the record label she founded in 2018 with Mark Knoop and Newton Armstrong. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Southampton in 2023.
Raphaël Cendo is a French composer of contemporary classical music.
Joseph Klein is an American composer, conductor, and educator. He has taught at the University of North Texas College of Music since 1992, where he is currently Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of Composition Studies.
