Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) was a famous and prolific American film score composer from Los Angeles, California. Goldsmith was nominated for eighteen Academy Awards (winning one, for The Omen), and also won five Emmy Awards. Goldsmith learned to play the piano at age six. At fourteen, he studied composition, theory and counterpoint with teachers Jacob Gimpel and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, originally Giovanni Battista Lulli (November 28, 1632 – March 22, 1687), was an Italian-born French composer, who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He took French citizenship in 1661.
Born in Florence, either the son of a miller or a nobleman as Lully himself claimed, Lully had little education, musical or otherwise, but he had a natural talent to play the guitar and violin and to dance.
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924) is regarded as one of the great operatic composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Although he wrote only twelve operas, Puccini's works dominate the operatic stage, particularly in the United States, where, according to Opera America, Madama Butterfly and La Bohème are the two most frequently performed operas respectively, with Tosca being eighth and Turandot being twelfth on the same list.
Five Star - a 5 piece British Pop Group, famous for their own made costumes and energetic dance routines, had huge success in the 1980s. Five Star are siblings Deniece (later to be called 'Denise') Pearson (lead vocals/song writer), Stedman Pearson (costume designer), Lorraine Pearson (spokesperson & song writer), Doris Pearson (choregrapher) and Delroy Pearson (song writer & producer). Born in Romford Essex to record owner Buster Pearson.
Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is an Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy Award-winning Canadian composer, orchestrator, conductor and music producer best known for composing the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the score for The Silence of the Lambs, and for the films of David Cronenberg. He played in Canadian rock group Lighthouse from 1968 to 1972.
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (February 29, 1792 – November 13, 1868) was an Italian musical composer who wrote more than 30 operas as well as sacred music and chamber music. His best known works include Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), and Guillaume Tell (William Tell) (the end of the overture is popularly known for being the signature tune for The Lone Ranger).
Carl August Nielsen (9th June 1865
Rolf Wallin (born 1957) is a Norwegian composer who uses mathematics and algorithms and opposes them to intuition in his compositions. His website is www.rolfwallin.org.
Mauricio Kagel (born in Buenos Aires, December 24, 1931, died in Cologne, September 18, 2008) was an Argentine composer who has lived in Germany for most of his career. He was most famous for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance. Many of his pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers, such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, to physically interact with other performers and so on.