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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, he announced his resignation from the San Francisco Symphony upon the expiration of his contract in 2025.
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.
James Ehnes, is a Canadian concert violinist and violist.
Avner Dorman is an Israeli-born composer, educator and conductor.
Nico Asher Muhly is an American contemporary classical music composer and arranger who has worked and recorded with both classical and pop musicians. A prolific composer, he has composed for many notable symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles and has had two operas commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Since 2006, he has released nine studio albums, many of which are collaborative, including 2017's Planetarium with Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner & James McAlister. He is a member of the Icelandic music collective and record label Bedroom Community.
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.
Laura Elise Schwendinger was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin's Berlin Prize.
21st-century classical music is art music in the contemporary classical tradition that has been produced since the year 2000. A loose and ongoing period, 21st-century classical music is defined entirely by the calendar and does not refer to a musical style in the sense of Baroque or Romantic music.
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.
Sebastian Fagerlund is a Finnish composer. He is described as “a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind”. Echoes of Western culture, Asian musical traditions, and heavy metal have all been detected in his music.
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.
