Michael Finnissy is an English composer and pianist born in Tulse Hill, London in 1946.
Finnissy's own ablilities as a pianist underlie much of his compositions. A significant number of these are piano transcriptions in his very complex style which typically involves irrational musical rhythmic values, virtuosic technique (in the piano pieces) and intricate linear, rather than harmonic, textures.
William Alwyn, CBE, born William Alwyn Smith [1] (November 7, 1905 – September 11, 1985) was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher. William Alwyn was born in Northampton where he showed an early interest in music and began to learn to play the piccolo. At age 15 he entered the Royal Academy of Music in London where he studied flute and composition. He was a virtuoso flautist and for a time was the principal flautist of the London Symphony Orchestra. Alwyn served as professor of composition at the Royal Academy from 1926 to 1955.
Conlon Nancarrow (b. October 27, 1912, Texarkana - d. August 10, 1997, Mexico City) was an American-born composer who lived most of his life in Mexico. Nancarrow is remembered almost exclusively for the pieces he wrote for the player piano. He was one of the first composers to use musical instruments as mechanical machines, utilising their capacity to play complex polyrhythms at tempos far beyond human performance ability.
Александр Константинович Глазунов (Alexander Glazunov; 10th August 1865–21st March 1936) was a Russian composer and influential music teacher. Glazunov was born in St Petersburg. He studied music under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The first of his nine symphonies was premiered in 1882, when Glazunov was sixteen years old. His popular "Stenka Razin" was also a youthful work. Glazunov also wrote three ballets.
Gunther Schuller (born November 22, 1925) is an American composer and horn player. He is regarded as one of the key figures in contemporary classical music. He studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an accomplished horn player; at the age of seventeen he was principal hornist with the Cincinnati Symphony, and two years later took up a similar position with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 1959 he gave up performance to devote himself to composition. He has conducted internationally and studied and recorded jazz with such greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and John Lewis.
Augusta Read Thomas (born April 24, 1964) is an American composer. Augusta Read Thomas was born in Glen Cove, New York. She attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then studied composition with Jacob Druckman at Yale University and at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson, as well as with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins at Northwestern University. She taught at the Eastman School of Music and received tenure there at the age of only 33, but left to teach at the Northwestern University School of Music.
Friedrich Cerha (born February 17, 1926 in Vienna) is an Austrian composer and conductor. Cerha received his education at the Viennese Music Academy (violin, composition, musician drawing) and at the University of Vienna (music sciences, German culture and language, philosophy). In 1958 he, together with Kurt Schwertsik, created the ensemble "die reihe", which was an important instrument for the spreading of contemporary music in Austria.
Composer Pauline Oliveros is a maverick in the field of electronic music. Oliveros' first instrument was the accordion; as a teenager in Texas she played in a 100-piece accordion group that appeared at the rodeo. In 1949 she entered the University of Houston, but in 1952 transferred to San Francisco State College. Oliveros studied music privately with Robert Erickson and began to associate with a loose confederation of like-minded composers; Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Morton Subotnick among them.
Born in Hanau in 1895, Paul Hindemith was taught the violin as a child. He entered the Hoch'sche Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main where he studied conducting, composition and violin under Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles, supporting himself by playing in dance bands and musical-comedy outfits. He led the Frankfurt Opera orchestra from 1915 to 1923 and played in the Rebner string quartet in 1921 in which he played second violin, and later the viola. In 1929 he founded the Amar Quartet, playing viola, and extensively toured Europe.