A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely of instrumentalists, such as the jazz quartet or the orchestra. Other music ensembles consist solely of singers, such as choirs and doo wop groups. In both popular music and classical music, there are ensembles in which both instrumentalists and singers perform, such as the rock band or the Baroque chamber group for basso continuo and one or more singers. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles. Some ensembles blend the sounds of a variety of instrument families, such as the orchestra, which uses a string section, brass instruments, woodwinds and percussion instruments, or the concert band, which uses brass, woodwinds and percussion.
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments:
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cognition, rhythmic theory, pitch space, and cognitive constraints on compositional systems. He has written many orchestral and chamber works, three of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Time after Time in 2001, String Quartet No. 3 in 2010, and Arches in 2011.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Alvin Derald Etler was an American composer and oboist.
Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
David C. Sampson is an American contemporary classical composer.
Juan José Colomer is a Spanish composer.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Gary Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002. He currently teaches on the music faculty at the University of Toronto.
Arthur Eckersley Butterworth, was an English composer, conductor, trumpeter and teacher.
David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer, teacher, and Dean of Music at The Juilliard School. His uncle was pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. His choral work, The New Colossus, was performed at the 2013 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
Israel Sharon is an Israeli composer, pianist, arranger and conductor.
Roger John Goeb was an American composer.
Joseph Primavera was an American violist and conductor. He was the youngest violist ever appointed to lead the viola section of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Until he retired in 2005, Primavera had served as the longest-tenured active conductor in the world as Maestro and Music Director of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra.
Hawaii Youth Symphony is a statewide youth orchestra in Hawaii. Students come from many different Hawaiian islands and the orchestra consists of hundreds of students. The Hawaii Youth Symphony has been training students since 1964 and is one of the largest and oldest youth symphonies in the country.
Giancarlo Castro D'Addona is a Venezuelan - Italian composer, conductor and trumpet player. Gold medal winner at the Global Music Awards in San Diego - California (US).
Andrea Clearfield is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Regularly commissioned and performed by ensembles in the United States and abroad, her works include music for orchestra, chorus, soloists, chamber ensembles, dance, opera, film, and multimedia collaborations.
Bernd Franke is a German composer.
