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Gunther Schuller

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.

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Alexander Goehr

Alexander Goehr (born 10 August 1932 in Berlin) is an English composer and academic. He was born in Berlin, the son of Walter Goehr. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (1952–55) where he met Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group dedicated to performances of contemporary music. In 1956 he went to Paris to study with Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire, and the same year he went to Darmstadt where his Fantasia for orchestra received its first performance.

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William Alwyn

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.

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Friedrich Cerha

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.

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Pauline Oliveros

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.

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Simon Bainbridge

Simon Bainbridge was born in London in 1952. He studied composition with John Lambert and Gunther Schuller and is now Head of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. His breakthrough came in 1971 with Spirogyra performed at the Aldeburgh Festival and has since composed many works including Viola Concerto (1978), Fantasia for Double Orchestra (1983), Double Concerto (1990), Landscape and Memory (1995), Three Pieces for Orchestra (1998) and Ad Ora Incerta (1993) for which he won the 1997 Grawemeyer Award.

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