Sir Simon Denis Rattle, (born January 19, 1955) is an English conductor. He rose to prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and is currently principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic (BPO). Rattle was born in Liverpool, the son of Pauline Lila Violet (Greening) and Denis Guttridge Rattle, a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves. He studied at Liverpool College.
George Benjamin (born January 31, 1960, London, England) is a British composer of classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher. Benjamin attended Westminster School and then studied with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire during the second half of the 1970s. Messiaen himself was reported to have described Benjamin as his favourite pupil. He then read music at King's College, Cambridge, studying under Alexander Goehr, and emerged in his early twenties as a mature and confident voice.
Max Steiner was an Austrian composer who achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. As a child he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville.
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett, O.M. (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was one of the foremost English composers of the 20th century. Tippett was regarded by many as an outsider in British music, a view that may have been related to his early conscientious objection and his homosexuality. His pacifist beliefs led to a prison sentence in World War II, and for many years his music was considered ungratefully written for voices and instruments, and therefore difficult to perform.
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.
Trevor David Pinnock CBE (born December 16, 1946) is an English conductor and harpsichordist. He is best known for directing period-performance orchestra The English Concert from the harpsichord for over 30 years in baroque and early classical music. Trevor Pinnock was born in Canterbury. He became a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral when he was 7, attending the Cathedral Choir School and later Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys.
Read more about Trevor Pinnock on Last.fm.
Masaaki Suzuki is an organist, harpsichordist and conductor, and the founder and musical director of the Bach Collegium Japan. He was born in Kobe to parents who were both Christian and amateur musicians. He studied composition and organ at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and was later taught harpsichord and organ by Ton Koopman and Piet Kee at the Sweelink Conservatory in Holland. In 1993 he began teaching at Kobe University, and founded the Bach Collegium in 1990. The group began giving concerts regularly in 1992, and made its first recordings three years later.
Mariss Jansons (born January 14, 1943) is a Latvian conductor, the son of conductor Arvīd Jansons. His mother, the singer Iraida Jansons, who was Jewish, gave birth to him in hiding in Riga, Latvia, after her father and brother were killed in the Riga ghetto. As a child, he first studied violin with his father. In 1946, his father won second prize in a national competition and was chosen by Yevgeny Mravinsky to be his assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic.