John Coolidge Adams is an American composer and conductor. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, many of which center around historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic, and piano music.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is an Argentine composer of classical music and music professor, known for his vocal and orchestral work.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
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.
James Ehnes, is a Canadian concert violinist and violist.
Andrew Welsh Imbrie was an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist.
Avner Dorman is an Israeli-born composer, educator and conductor.
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Eduardo Alonso-Crespo is an Argentine composer of classical music.
Jimmy López is a classical music composer from Lima, Peru. He has won several international awards and has been nominated to a Latin Grammy Awards. Pieces composed by him have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Peru, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. His works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Gewandhaus Leipzig, and during the 2010 Youth Olympic games in Singapore. His music has been featured in numerous festivals, including Tanglewood Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Grant Park Music Festival, Darmstadt International Course for New Music, and Donaueschingen Music Festival.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
Mason Wesley Bates is a Grammy award-winning American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music. He is the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he has also been in residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the California Symphony. In addition to his notable works Mothership, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, he composed the score to Gus Van Sant's film The Sea of Trees. In a 2018 survey of American orchestras, he was rated the second-most performed living composer.
Anna Clyne is an English composer resident in the USA. She has worked in both acoustic music and electroacoustic music.
Gabriel Prokofiev is a Russian-British composer, producer, DJ, and founder of the Nonclassical record label and nightclub. He has been nominated for two Ivor Novello Awards and his works have been performed internationally by orchestras such as BBC Philharmonic, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Detroit Symphony, MDR Leipzig, Buenos Aires Philharmonic and Royal Seville Symphony Orchestra.
Kenji Bunch is an American composer and violist. Bunch currently serves as the artistic director of Fear No Music and teaches at Portland State University, Reed College, and for the Portland Youth Philharmonic. He is also the director of MYSfits, the most advanced string ensemble of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony.
Vivian Fung is a JUNO Award-winning Canadian-born composer who writes music for orchestras, operas, quartets, and piano. Her compositions have been performed internationally.
Jessie Montgomery is an American composer, chamber musician, and music educator. Her compositions focus on the vernacular, improvisation, language, and social justice.
Sean Shepherd is an American composer based in New York City and Chicago. His work has been performed by major orchestras, ensembles, and performers across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Performances include those with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and New World Symphony Orchestra, at festivals including the Aldeburgh Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, La Jolla Music Festival, Lucerne Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Tanglewood, and with leading European ensembles including Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
Zhou Tian is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music. His Concerto for Orchestra received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2018, making him the first Chinese-born composer and the second Asian composer honored in that category. His composition have been performed by performers and orchestras such as Jaap Van Zweden, Yuja Wang, Manfred Honeck, Long Yu, the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, “The President's Own” United States Marine Band, and Shanghai Symphony, where he served as the Artist-in-Residence. In 2019, thirteen symphony orchestras commissioned his composition “Transcend” in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad's completion. In 2022, he received the Sousa-ABA-Ostwald Award from the American Bandmasters Association for Sinfonia, becoming the first Asian-American winner in the award's 66-year history.
