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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.

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.

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.

Read more about Conlon Nancarrow on Last.fm.

Aldo Clementi (25 May, 1925 - 3 March, 2011) was the last survivor of the great generation of Italian postwar musical avant-gardists. He was also its quietest and most self-effacing member, both personally and musically. After a hesitant start, he developed a technique that allowed him to produce works as calmly consistent in sound and technique as a Renaissance motet, and some would say just as beautiful.