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.
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.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) - more commonly known as C.P.E. Bach - was a German musician and composer of the early Classical period. The second of eleven sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, C.P.E. Bach was born in Weimar on 8th March 1714. He was one of the founders of the Classical style, composing in the rococo and classical periods. Through the latter half of the eighteenth century, his reputation was very high. This was mainly because of his clavier sonatas, which marked an important development in the history of musical form.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
John Casken (b.1949) is an English composer, and Professor of Music at the University of Manchester since 1992. Casken was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England. After attending the University of Birmingham, Casken travelled to Poland in 1971, where he studied at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, and with Witold Lutosławski—who was to have a deep influence on his compositions. He came to the attention of the musical community in 1980, when he was the featured composer at the Bath Festival.