Cellist Wendy Sutter received degrees from both the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. A native of Seattle, she made her solo debut with the Seattle Symphony at age sixteen. Awarded the first prize in the Juilliard cello competition, Ms Sutter made her New York solo concerto debut at Avery Fisher Hall in the New York premiere of Kaddish for cello and orchestra by composer David Diamond.
Peter Sculthorpe (born April 29, 1929) is a noted Australian composer from Launceston, Tasmania. He is known primarily for his orchestral and chamber music, such as Kakadu (1988) and Earth Cry (1992), which evoke the sounds and feeling of the Australian bushland and outback. He has also written several string quartets, using unusual timbre effects, and works for piano. Sculthorpe's catalogue consists of more than three hundred and fifty works and, apart from juvenilia, a good part of it is regularly performed and recorded throughout the world.
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, Silesia, Poland. Died 12 November 2010 in Katowice, Poland) was a Polish composer of classical music. Though his earlier work in the late 1950s and 1960s were characterised by a dissonant modernism influenced by Nono, Stockhausen and contemporaries Penderecki and Serocki, he moved in the mid 1970's towards a 'pure' sacred minimalist sound encapsulated by the 1976 Symphony No. 3.
See The Sand Pebbles
Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted musical organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon. It is a major force in the presentation of new concert music, and has presented hundreds of musical events worldwide. The San Francisco Chronicle has called Bang on a Can "the country's most important vehicle for contemporary music."
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.
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.
Sarah Hopkins is a unique Australian composer-performer, highly acclaimed for her visionary music and inspiring performances for cello, harmonic overtone singing, handbells, choir and the celestial Harmonic Whirlies of her own creation. With a strong background and training in classical music, over the years she has moved into the realm of holistic music and developed a very distinctive compositional voice.