Contemporary | Musicosity

Contemporary

Yellowjackets

In 1977, Robben Ford assembled a group of veteran session musicians to record his album The Inside Story. The trio of musicians, which included keyboardist Russell Ferrante, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Ricky Lawson, soon discovered a certain "chemistry" and musical affinity that led to their formation of Yellowjackets. The Inside Story being mainly instrumental, Robben Ford's record label wanted him to record another album that was more pop and vocal oriented. The group, known as the Robben Ford Group, preferred to pursue the instrumental route, and a "band within a band" was formed.

Artist Type: 

Maja Ratkje

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, composer and performer (born Dec. 29th 1973 in Trondheim, Norway), finished composition studies at the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo in 2000. Her compositions have been performed by Oslo Sinfonietta, The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Arve Tellefsen, Cikada and Vertavo string quartets, Quatuor Renoir, ticom, Crash Ensemble, Torben Snekkestad, Spunk, Frode Haltli and Poing among others.

Artist Type: 

Brooklyn Rider

The multi-faceted string quartet Brooklyn Rider is becoming increasingly known for its creative programming and exciting collaborations which serve to illuminate music in new ways and invite audiences into a shared experience. Uniquely able to address a wide and inclusive range of music, they are as willing to explore the world of Haydn as they are in the music of our time and have performed in venues as varied as Joe's Pub in NYC, Todai-ji Temple in Nara Japan and the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

Read more about Brooklyn Rider on Last.fm.

Artist Type: 

Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist, teacher, and ornithologist whose music is distinguished by his deep devotion to Catholicism, exoticism, and nature. At the age of 11 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying organ and improvisation with Marcel Dupré and composition with Paul Dukas. In 1930, he became the principal organist at La Trinité Cathedral in Paris, a post he held for more than 40 years.

Artist Type: 

David Behrman

David Behrman (born Salzburg, Austria, August 16, 1937) is a US composer and the producer of Columbia Records' Music of Our Time series. He was also a founding member of the Sonic Arts Union. He toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and has worked with Ben Neill. He was a part of Robert Ashley's Music with Roots in the Aether interview series. He is known as a minimalist composer. His music has often involved interactions between live performers and computers, usually with the computer generating sounds triggered by some aspect of the live performance...

Artist Type: 

Elina Garanca

Elīna Garanča (born September 16, 1976) is a Latvian mezzo-soprano. Born into a musical family in Riga, Garanča entered the Latvian Academy of Music in 1996 to study singing with Sergej Martinov. She continued her studies in Vienna with Irina Gavrilovici and in the United States with Virginia Zeani. Garanča began her professional career at the Südthüringisches Staatstheater in Meiningen and later worked at the Frankfurt Opera. In 1999 she won the Mirjam Helin Singing Competition in Helsinki, Finland

Artist Type: 

Agust

Bolivian composer, resident in the UK since 1984. Born in Cochabamba, he started musical life singing for guavas at Don Abundio's barber in Montero, eastern Bolivia. As a child folk musician, he sang and played the charango at peña Ollantay, a folk club famous in the 1960s in Cochabamba. Teen age and hormonal changes put and end to that. Studied at Instituto Laredo - a specialist music school in Cochabamba - then at Universidad Católica Boliviana in La Paz, then had lessons in Japan with Takashi Iida for one year and with Akira Ifukube for two years.

Artist Type: 

Eric Whitacre

An accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has quickly become one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. The Los Angeles Times has praised his compositions as "works of unearthly beauty and imagination, (with) electric, chilling harmonies"; while the BBC raves that "what hits you straight between the eyes is the honesty, optimism and sheer belief that passes any pretension. This is music that can actually make you smile.”

Artist Type: