Toshio Hosokawa (細川俊夫) was born on October 23, 1955 in Hiroshima. He went to West Berlin to study composition with Isang Yun at the Hochschule der Künste in 1976. From 1983 to 1986, he studied with Klaus Huber at the Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. In 1980, he participated for the first time in the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, where his work was performed.
Frank Martin (15 September 1890 – 21 November 1974) was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands. He was born in Geneva, the tenth and last child of Charles Martin, a pastor. Before he started school, he was already playing the piano and improvising. At nine, he was composing complete, fully formed songs, without having had any instruction in song forms or harmony. A performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion which he heard at the age of twelve left upon him an ineradicable impression, and Bach became his true master.
Pierre Boulez (born March 26, 1925) is a composer and conductor of contemporary and classical music. Boulez is also an articulate, perceptive and sweeping writer on music. Some articles
Colin Matthews (b. 1946) is an English composer. Matthews was born in London on 13th February 1946; his older brother is the composer David Matthews. He read classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall and Nicholas Maw. In the 1970s he taught at the University of Sussex, where he obtained a doctorate for his work on Mahler, an offshoot of his long collaboration with Deryck Cooke on the performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. During this period he also worked at Aldeburgh with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst.
Don Ross (born November 19, 1960 in Montreal, Quebec to Scottish and Mi'kmaq parents) is a Canadian fingerstyle guitarist noted for the emotion and intensity of his playing as well as his use of extended technique. Ross' music borrows from rock, jazz, folk and classical music creating a style that he describes as "heavy wood". Ross is the first and only person to twice win the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship (1988 and 1996).
For over forty years, John Scott has established himself as one of the finest composers working in films today, having collaborated with foremost producers and directors worldwide, including, Richard Donner, Mark Damon, Hugh Hudson, Norman Jewison, Irvin Kershner, Daniel Petrie, Roger Spottiswoode and Charleton Heston, among others. He has been an essential voice in international scoring that thoroughly belies his occasional over-looked stature in the midst of ‘brand name’ composers.
William Lawes (1602–1645) was an English composer and musician. Lawes was born at Salisbury in Wiltshire and was baptised on 1st May 1602. He was the son of Thomas Lawes, a vicar choral at Salisbury Cathedral, and brother to Henry Lawes, a very successful composer in his own right. His patron, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, apprenticed him to the composer John Coprario, which probably brought Lawes into contact with Charles, Prince of Wales at an early age. Both William and his elder brother Henry received court appointments after Charles succeeded to the British throne as Charles I.
Luigi Nono (29 January 1924 - 8 May 1990) was an Italian composer. He studied at the Venice Conservatoire where he became acquainted with serialism. (He married Arnold Schönberg's daughter Nuria in 1955). He became a leading composer of instrumental and electronic music. In 1950, he attended the "Ferienkurse für neue Musik" in Darmstadt, where he met composers such as Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Works from this first period include: Polifonica-Monodica-Ritmica (1951), Epitaffio per Federico García Lorca (1952-1953), La victoire de Guernica (1954) and Liebeslied (1954).
John Blow (1649 – October 1, 1708) was an English composer and organist. His pupils included William Croft and Henry Purcell. Blow was probably born at North Collingham in Nottinghamshire. He became a chorister of the Chapel Royal, and distinguished himself by his proficiency in music. He composed several anthems at an unusually early age, including Lord, Thou host been our refuge, Lord, rebuke me not and the so-called "club anthem", I will always give thanks...
Georg Friedrich Haas (August 16, 1953 in Graz) is an Austrian composer of spectral music. Haas' style recalls that of György Ligeti in its use of micropolyphony, microintervals and exploitation of the overtone series. He is a founding member of the Graz composers' collective Die andere Seite. He lives in Vienna and composes in a cottage in Fischbach, Styria.