contemporary classical | Musicosity

contemporary classical

Thomas Adès

Thomas Adès (born in London, 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School,London. He graduated in 1992 from King's College, Cambridge after studying with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. His degree was classified as "double starred first", indicating outstanding academic distinction. He was made Britten Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2004 was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex.

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Richard Tognetti

Richard Tognetti (born 4 August 1965) is an Australian violinist, composer and conductor. He was born in Canberra and raised in Wollongong. He is currently Artistic Director and Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Tognetti studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Alice Waten and undertook post-graduate study at the Berne Conservatory with Igor Ozim, where he was awarded the Tschumi prize in 1989.

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David Baker

David Nathaniel Baker, Jr. (born 1931) is a native of Indianapolis, Indiana and currently holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music and Chairman of the Jazz Department at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. A virtuosic performer on multiple instruments and top in his field in several disciplines, Baker has taught and performed throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, New Zealand and Japan.

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Nico Muhly

Born in Vermont in 1981 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, New York–based composer Nico Muhly graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature. In 2004, he received a Masters in Music from the Juilliard School, where he studied under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. A former boy chorister, Muhly has composed extensively for choir, including commissions from the Clare College Choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

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Henri Tomasi

Henri Tomasi (August 17, 1901 – January 13, 1971) was a French classical composer and conductor. Henri Tomasi was born in Marseille, France, in the working class neighborhood on August 17, 1901. His father Xavier Tomasi and mother Josephine Vincensi were originally from La Casinca, Corsica. At the age of five, Henri and his family moved to Mazarques, France where his father had a job as a postal worker. At this time his father enrolled Henri in music theory lessons. At the age of seven, Henri entered the Conservatoire de Musique de Marseille.

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Sophie Hutchings

Sophie Hutchings is Australian pianist and composer. Having begun playing piano young growing up in a musical family, Sophie started writing properly in her teens. Sophie’s compositions move from disarmingly spare and elegant beginnings to curl out with a tingling edge, propelling its austerity into urgent and epic realms. Violin, cello, drums, percussion and organ heighten the flight these pieces can take as well as dip and swell within the more dimly lit moods of gentler nuance, casting a particular spell across the range of feeling captured in Sophie’s playing.

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Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers (1978–1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. Jennifer Culp replaced Jeanrenaud on cello in 1999. Jeffrey Zeigler replaced Culp on cello in 2005.

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Philip Glass

Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is a composer from the United States. His music is frequently described as minimalist, though he prefers to describe himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures". Although his early, mature music is minimalist, he has evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a "Classicist", pointing out that he is trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with Nadia Boulanger.

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Music From The Penguin Cafe

Arthur Jeffes has brought together a group of musicians to create Music from the Penguin Café, playing the music of his father, Simon Jeffes and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and combining it with his own compositions. The ensemble that Arthur has drawn together are about the same age as the original members of the PCO when they first started playing together in the late 1970s. Music from the Penguin Café began touring from June 2009 into the early autumn, playing at festivals, concert venues, clubs and parties.