Robert Eugene Ward was an American composer who is best remembered for his opera The Crucible (1961) after the 1953 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for that opera in 1962.
David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007 for his work The Nine Muses, and in 2016 he won the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for his work American Death Ballads.
Adele Addison is an American lyric soprano who was a figure in the classical music world during the 1950s and 1960s. Although she did appear in several operas, Addison spent most of her career performing in recital and concert. Her performances spanned a wide array of literature from the Baroque period to contemporary compositions. She is best remembered today as the singing voice for Bess in the 1959 movie, Porgy and Bess. Known for her polished and fluent tone, Addison made a desirable Baroque vocal artist. She can be heard on numerous recordings, of which her Baroque performances are perhaps her best work. Many of her recordings were made with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.
John Nicholas Maw was a British composer. Among his works are the operas The Rising of the Moon (1970) and Sophie's Choice (2002).
Elodie Lauten was a French-born American composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist.
Jake Heggie is an American composer of opera, vocal, orchestral, and chamber music. He is best known for his operas and art songs as well as for his collaborations with internationally renowned performers and writers.
Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
Robert Spano is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, principal conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, and music director laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO).
Michael Chioldi is an American opera singer who has performed leading baritone roles in the opera houses and festivals of North and South America, Europe and Asia. He first appeared at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1995 when he was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition.
Robert Paterson is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 100 compositions. He has been called a "modern day master" and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writing in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.
Meagan Miller is an American soprano with an active international career in opera, recital and concert.
Chelsea Opera is an opera company located in New York City, founded in April 2004 by Leonarda Priore and Lynne Hayden-Findlay, both singers, who sought to create more performance opportunities with chamber orchestra within the tri-state areas of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Initially the company's musical direction was provided by conductor Carmine Aufiero.
Steven Roy Gerber was an American composer of classical music. He attended Haverford College, graduating in 1969 at the age of twenty. He then attended Princeton University with a fellowship to study musical composition.
John Musto is an American composer and pianist. As a composer, he is active in opera, orchestral and chamber music, song, vocal ensemble, and solo piano works. As a pianist, he performs frequently as a soloist, alone and with orchestra, as a chamber musician, and with singers.
Mark Gustavson is an American composer of contemporary classical music.
Kate Soper is a composer and vocalist. She was a recent Rome Prize winner American Academy in Rome and Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellow as well as a 2012–13 fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her chamber opera, Ipsa Dixit.
Allen Raymond Shearer is an American composer and baritone.
Gerald Cohen is an American composer and cantor. He is currently the cantor at Shaarei Tikvah in Scarsdale, New York and is based in Yonkers. Cohen serves on the faculties of Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College. Cohen's compositions are published by Oxford University Press, G. Schirmer/AMP, and Transcontinental Music Publications.
Christopher Cerrone is an American composer based in New York City. He was a 2014 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a 2014 Fromm Foundation commission recipient, a 2015 Rome Prize winner in Music Composition, and has received numerous awards from ASCAP.
Juliana Hall is an American composer of art songs, monodramas, and vocal chamber music. She has been described by the NATS Journal of Singing as "one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers for almost three decades" and, in discussing her 1989 song cycle Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush, the Journal went on to assert that "Even at this very early stage in her life and career, Hall knew something about crafting music whose beauty could enhance the text at hand without drawing attention away from that text. This is masterful writing in every respect."
