Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film scores, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Letters, Riddles and Writs; Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs; Facing Goya; Man and Boy: Dada; Love Counts; and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera over other forms of music.
Mannheim Steamroller is an American neoclassical new-age music ensemble founded and directed by percussionist/composer Chip Davis in 1974. The group is known primarily for its Fresh Aire series of albums, which blend classical music with elements of new age and rock, and for its modern recordings of Christmas music. The group has sold 28 million albums in the U.S. alone.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Richard Danielpour is an American composer.
Gerald Barry is an Irish composer.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor.
William Overton Smith was an American clarinetist and composer. He worked extensively in modern classical music, third stream and jazz, and was perhaps best known for having played with pianist Dave Brubeck intermittently from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Smith frequently recorded jazz under the name Bill Smith, but his classical compositions are credited under the name William O. Smith.
Cláudio Franco de Sá Santoro was an internationally renowned Brazilian composer, conductor and violinist.
Fresh Aire 8 is an album by Mannheim Steamroller, released in 2000. It is the final album in the Fresh Aire series and is based on the topic of infinity, with each track or suite representing a different "aspect of infinity." The tracks' topics include ancient Greek philosophy, Leonardo da Vinci, M. C. Escher's Waterfall, Mannheim Steamroller's mascot, and the Judgment of Anubis. A visual album was also released on DVD.
Brett Dean is an Australian composer, violist and conductor.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
Escala is an electronic string quartet, from London, England who rose to fame when they performed on and reached the final of the second series of Britain's Got Talent on ITV1 in May 2008.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
Marios Joannou Elia, is a Cypriot composer and artistic director. He was the youngest director in the history of the European Capital of Culture (2013–15). He is ambassador in tourism of the Republic of Cyprus. Since 2016 he has been the director of the large-scale project "Sound of Vladivostok", on behalf of Zarya Foundation, in Russia; from January 2018, director of "Sound of Kyoto", on behalf of Kyoto City and Kyoto Arts and Culture Foundation after an invitation of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Jackson Berkey is an American composer, pianist and singer, best known for his work with Mannheim Steamroller, which he co-founded with Chip Davis in 1974.
Quartet San Francisco is a non-traditional and eclectic string quartet led by violinist Jeremy Cohen. The group played their first concert in 2001 and has recorded five albums. Playing a wide range of music genres including jazz, blues, tango, swing, funk, and pop, the group challenges the traditional classical music foundation of the string quartet.
Charlotte Bray is a British composer. She was championed by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been performed by many notable conductors such as: Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Daniel Harding, and Jac van Steen.
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.
The 55th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 10, 2013, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles honoring the best in music for the recording year beginning October 1, 2011 through September 30, 2012. The show was broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. ET/PT and was hosted for the second time by LL Cool J. The "Pre-Telecast Ceremony" was streamed live from LA's Nokia Theater at the official Grammy website. Nominations were announced on December 5, 2012, on prime-time television as part of "The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live! – Countdown to Music's Biggest Night", a one-hour special co-hosted by LL Cool J & Taylor Swift and broadcast live on CBS from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Fun, Frank Ocean, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Dan Auerbach received the most nominations with six each.
