John Zorn is an American composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and improvised music. He incorporates diverse styles in his compositions, which he identifies as avant-garde or experimental. Zorn was described by Down Beat as "one of our most important composers".
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist. His major compositions, which often incorporate social and political themes, include the minimalist Coming Together and the piano variations The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Susie Ibarra is a contemporary composer and percussionist who has worked and recorded with jazz, classical, world, and indigenous musicians. One of SPIN's "100 Greatest Drummers of Alternative Music," she is known for her work as a performer in avant-garde, jazz, world, and new music. As a composer, Ibarra incorporates diverse styles and the influences of Philippine Kulintang, jazz, classical, poetry, musical theater, opera, and electronic music. Ibarra remains active as a composer, performer, educator, and documentary filmmaker in the U.S., Philippines, and internationally. She is interested and involved in works that blend folkloric and indigenous tradition with avant-garde. In 2004, Ibarra began field recording indigenous Philippine music, and in 2009 she co-founded Song of the Bird King, an organization focusing on the preservation of Indigenous music and ecology.
The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975) is a piano composition by American composer Frederic Rzewski. The People United is a set of 36 variations on the Chilean song "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún, and received its world premiere on February 7, 1976, played by Ursula Oppens as part of the Bi-Centennial Piano Series at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall. Rzewski dedicated the composition to Oppens, who had commissioned it, and who recorded it in 1979; her recording was named "Record of the Year" in that year by Record World, and received a Grammy nomination.
Eighth Blackbird is an American contemporary music sextet that is based in Chicago, Illinois, United States and 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 Del Sol Quartet is a string quartet based in San Francisco, California that was founded in 1992. Del Sol is known for actively working with living composers from a wide range of cultural perspectives, and recording and performing exclusively 20th and 21st century music.
Allison Cameron is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music. She composes works for conventional classical instruments, early music instruments, and modern electric instruments such as the electric guitar. She is also a performer of free improvisation and experimental music.
Thomas Piercy is an American clarinetist and hichiriki player based in New York City, USA and Tokyo, Japan. Although he studied in the United States, his playing style is heavily influenced by the English school of clarinet playing by his extensive studies with English clarinet virtuoso Gervase de Peyer.
Sarah Cahill is an American pianist based in the Bay Area. She has also worked as a writer on music and as a radio show host.
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert by Benny Goodman, Columbia Records catalogue item SL-160, is a two-disc LP of swing and jazz music recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938. First issued in 1950, the landmark recording captured the premiere performance given by a big band in the famed concert venue. The event has been described as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music." Both critical and public reception of the performances was outstanding.
Back to Life is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It comprises five classical chamber music pieces composed by Frith between 1993 and 2005, and was performed between 1998 and 2007 by Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle, United States percussionist William Winant, and the Callithumpian Consort ensemble of the New England Conservatory of Music, conducted by Stephen Drury. The album was released on Tzadik Records' Composer Series in 2008.
Angelus Novus is an album of contemporary classical music by American composer and alto saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn including compositions written in 1972 ("Christabel"), and 1983.
Winter Was Hard is a studio album by the Kronos Quartet. It contains compositions by Aulis Sallinen, Terry Riley, Arvo Pärt, Anton Webern, John Zorn, John Lurie, Ástor Piazzolla, Alfred Schnittke, and Samuel Barber.
Thomas Rosenkranz is a contemporary American pianist, noted for performances of modern and international music.
Victoria Jordanova, née Viktorija (Vita) Pop Jordanova, was born in the former Yugoslavia in 1952. She is a composer, performer, and media artist. She is the creative director, curator, producer and the sound editor for ArpaViva, a music and performance label she founded in 2003.
Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza was an avant-garde free improvisation group considered the first experimental composers collective.
Ralph van Raat is a Dutch classical pianist.
Music for a Time of War is a 2011 concert program and subsequent album by the Oregon Symphony under the artistic direction of Carlos Kalmar. The program consists of four compositions inspired by war: Charles Ives'The Unanswered Question (1906), John Adams'The Wound-Dresser (1989), Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (1940) and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 4 (1935). The program was performed on May 7, 2011, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon, and again the following day. Both concerts were recorded for album release. On May 12, the Oregon Symphony repeated the program at the inaugural Spring for Music Festival, at Carnegie Hall. The performance was broadcast live by KQAC and WQXR-FM, the classical radio stations serving Portland and the New York City metropolitan area, respectively. The concerts marked the Oregon Symphony's first performances of The Wound-Dresser as well as guest baritone Sanford Sylvan's debut with the company.
Sofia Eugenia Koutsovitis, known professionally as Sofia Rei, is an Argentinian vocalist, songwriter, producer, and educator. A classically trained mezzo-soprano, Rei's influences include South American folk styles, jazz, pop, new classical and electronic music. Singing in Spanish, English and Portuguese, her voice was described by The Boston Globe as "possessing a voluptuously full voice, comprehensive command of Latin American rhythms, and encyclopedic knowledge of folkloric forms from Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Uruguay." She was born and raised in Buenos Aires and has been based in New York since 2005.
Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano is a triple album performed by the pianist Anthony de Mare; ECM Records released the album in 2015. It consists of pieces inspired by the American musical theatre composer Stephen Sondheim's oeuvre and has works written by various classical, jazz, and other composers. The album consists of 37 tracks and is over three hours long. Composers who wrote pieces on the album include Jason Robert Brown, Michael Daugherty, Jake Heggie, Fred Hersch, Gabriel Kahane, Phil Kline, Wynton Marsalis, Nico Muhly, Thomas Newman, Steve Reich, and Duncan Sheik. The album received mostly positive reviews.
