John Coolidge Adams is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in minimalism. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, which are often centered around recent historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic and piano music.
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener.
Kyle Eugene Gann is an American composer, professor of music, critic, analyst, and musicologist who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for The Village Voice and other publications, he has supported progressive music, including such "downtown" movements as postminimalism and totalism.
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a nine-part Pink Floyd composition written by David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright, which appeared on Pink Floyd's 1975 concept album Wish You Were Here. The song is written about and dedicated to founder member Syd Barrett, who departed from the band in 1968 after becoming mentally ill.
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed Atlas, an opera, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival. Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers and Jean-Luc Godard. Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk's "Dolmen Music" on the song "Midnight in a Perfect World". In 2015, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama.
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.
The Desert Music is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by the minimalist composer Steve Reich. It is based on texts by William Carlos Williams and takes its title from the poetry anthology The Desert Music and Other Poems. The composition consists of five movements, with a duration of about 46 minutes. In both its arrangement of thematic material and use of tempi, the piece is in a characteristic arch form (ABCBA). The piece was composed in 1983 and had its world premiere on 17 March 1984 in Cologne, Germany.
The Philip Glass Ensemble is an American musical group founded by composer Philip Glass in 1968 to serve as a performance outlet for his experimental minimalist music. The ensemble continues to perform and record to this day, under the musical direction of keyboardist Michael Riesman.
Elodie Lauten was a French-born American composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist.
Discreet Music is the fourth studio album by the British musician Brian Eno, and the first released under his full name. The album is a minimalist work, with the titular A-side consisting of one 30-minute piece featuring synthesizer and tape delay. The B-side features three variations on Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel, performed by the Cockpit Ensemble and conducted by Gavin Bryars.
Six Pianos is a minimalist piece for six pianos by the American composer Steve Reich. It was completed in March 1973. He also composed a variation for six marimbas, called Six Marimbas, in 1986. The world première performance of Six Pianos was in May 1973 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. The European première took place in January the next year in Stuttgart, Germany.
Joseph Clyde Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize.
Keith Graham Tippetts, known professionally as Keith Tippett, was a British jazz pianist and composer. According to AllMusic, Tippett's career "..spanned jazz-rock, progressive rock, improvised and contemporary music, as well as modern jazz for more than half-a-century". He held " an unparallelled place in British contemporary music," and was known for "his unique approach to improvisation". Tippett appeared and recorded in many settings, including a duet with Stan Tracey, duets with his wife Julie Tippetts, solo performances, and as a bandleader.
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, formed in 1969 by David Borden, was an early synthesizer ensemble, predating groups like Tonto's Expanding Head Band and Tangerine Dream. David Borden was in contact with Robert Moog and was one of the first musicians to use his Minimoog. After recruiting Steve Drews and Linda Fisher to operate additional synthesizers, the group began playing concerts of minimalist music by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. They began recording their first self-titled album in 1970, but it would not be released until 1973 by Earthquack Records. Their second album, Like a Duck to Water, was released in 1976. Borden and Mother Mallard continue performing Borden's recent and older music.
Tabula Rasa is a musical composition written in 1977 by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The piece contains two movements, "Ludus" and "Silentium," and is a double concerto for two solo violins, prepared piano, and chamber orchestra.
Erich Urbanner is an Austrian composer and teacher.
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. is the debut album of synthesizer ensemble Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, independently released in 1973 through Earthquack Recordings.
David Froom was an American composer and college professor. Froom taught at the University of Utah, the Peabody Institute, and the University of Maryland, College Park, and he was on the faculty at St. Mary's College of Maryland from 1989 until his death in 2022. He has received awards and honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters,, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, the Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Barlow Foundation, and was a five-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the State of Maryland.
