Major Works:
The Tender Land, Appalachian Spring, Symphony No. 3
Career Highlights:
• Composer, conductor, and educator who pioneered an iconic American music style drawing on folk song and popular music
• Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kennedy Center Award, Oscar Award
Major Works:
21 Piano Compositions (publication)
Career Highlights:
• Composer. pianist, and ensemble leader who expanded the jazz genre with a legacy of over 40 recordings
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Foundation of America, NEA Jazz Master 2008
Major Works:
This Midnight Hour, Within Her Arms, Night Ferry
Highlights:
• London-born, New York-based composer influenced by a range of creative artforms, including dance, painting, film, and poetry
• Named 8th most performed contemporary composer in the world
Major Works:
All in Good Time, Voyants
Career Highlights:
• First American woman to receive the Rome Prize
• Tanglewood Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship
• Championed by major US orchestras and conductors Pierre Boulez, Leonard Slatkin, and Seiji Ozawa
Major Works:
The Impostor Concerto, Juno Concerto
Career Highlights:
• Banjo virtuoso in bluegrass, jazz, classical, pop, and rock genres
• Known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Major Works:
Susannah, Of Mice and Men, Willie Stark
Career Highlights:
• Known as the “Father of American Opera”
• Created a distinctively American idiom for opera, drawing on folk and religious music traditions
Major Works:
Trombone Concerto, Flute Concerto, Der gerettete Alberich
Career Highlights:
• American symphonist with music performed by every major US orchestra
• Professor at Eastman School of Music and The Juilliard School
Major Works:
Baba Yetu, Calling All Dawns, The Drop that Contained the Sea
Career Highlights:
• Baba Yetu was the first piece of video game music ever to win a GRAMMY Award
• The Drop that Contained the Sea and To Shiver the Sky both debuted at #1 on Billboard’s classical charts
Major Works:
Syzygy, Yet Unheard, Requiem
Career Highlights:
• Residencies with Opera Philadelphia and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra
• MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, Rome Prize
Major Works:
In Memory of a Summer Day, Final Alice, Paul Revere’s Ride
Career Highlights:
• Known as the “Father of the Neo-Romantic Movement”
• Composed a series of works based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books
Major Works:
Dog Days, Soldier Songs, JFK
Career Highlights:
• Works often explore political, historical, and philosophical issues
• Operas performed by Houston Grand Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Theater Bielefeld, Holland Festival
Major Works:
Postcard from Morocco, A Water Bird Talk, Miss Havisham’s Fire
Career Highlights:
• America’s pre-eminent composer of lyric opera
• Professor at the University of Minnesota for four decades
Major Works:
Violin Concerto, Concerto No. 2 for Double Bass & Orchestra
Career Highlights:
• Renowned virtuoso bass performer across classical to bluegrass genres
• Composed works for Hilary Hahn, Emerson String Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra
Major Works:
What Next?, Flute Concerto, Three Occasions for Orchestra
Career Highlights:
• Music championed by conductors Boulez, Barenboim, Knussen, Dohnányi
• First composer to receive the US National Medal of Arts
• Inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame
Major Works:
Deep Field, The Sacred Veil, Songs of Immortality
Career Highlights:
• Known for his groundbreaking Virtual Choirs with singers from over 145 countries
• Appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale’s inaugural artist-in-residence
Major Works:
“Misa Pequeña Para Niños,” “What Grandpa Told the Children”
Career Highlights:
• Composer of choral, chamber and orchestral works and arrangements
• Founder and conductor of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
• MacArthur Fellowship
Major Works:
Blue Towers, Symphony (1962)
Career Highlights:
• Works influenced by Neo-Classicism, Romantic lyricism, and serialism
• Accomplished pianist, conductor, teacher at Harvard, Tanglewood, and Brandeis
Major Works:
Lizzie Borden, My Heart’s in the Highlands, Practice in the Art of Elocution
Career Highlights:
• Composer of 10 operas based on American stories
• Prix de Rome
Major Works:
Windows, Prism, Come Round
Career Highlights:
• Commissioned by major orchestras of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis
• Professor at The Juilliard School, Bard College, Yale University, and Tanglewood
Major Works:
Nixon in China, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Violin Concerto
Career Highlights:
• One of the most frequently performed living American composers
• Iconic operas inspired by real-world events
Major Works:
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, MASS, Symphony No. 2
Career Highlights:
• One of the most renowned composers, conductors, and educators of the 20th century
• Tony Award, 11 Emmy Awards, Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY Award, Kennedy Center Honors
Major Works:
The Little Mermaid, Icarus, Symphony No.6 ‘Vessels of Light’
Career Highlights:
• Conductor and composer of acclaimed operas, ballets, and orchestral works
• Collaborators include Leonidas Kavakos, Hilary Hahn, Marin Alsop, and Vladimir Jurowski
Major Works:
The Harpies, I’ve Got the Tune, Piano Concerto
Career Highlights:
• Composer, lyricist, and librettist who collaborated with Orson Welles and created the English translation of the Weill-Brecht Threepenny Opera
• Vital figure in American opera and musical theater
Major Works:
ATLAS, On Behalf of Nature, Stringsongs
Career Highlights:
• Pioneered a genre of musical expression through the human voice
• Commissioned by Carnegie Hall, LA Phil, San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet
• National Medal of Arts, three Obie Awards, MacArthur Fellowship
Major Works:
Deus Ex Machina, Metropolis Symphony
Career Highlights:
• One of the most performed living American composers of orchestral music
• Works inspired by American places, popular music, pop culture, and history
Major Works:
Our Town, Air Music, Lions (A Dream)
Career Highlights:
• Known as “the world’s best composer of art songs” and incisive author of 16 books
• Fulbright Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, National Institute of Arts and Letters Award
Major Works:
O Death, Livre des Sauvages, The Light of Lesser Days
Career Highlights:
• Composer of virtuosic large-scale chamber and large ensemble works
• Professor at Peabody Institute
• Guggenheim Fellowship
Major Works:
Ainadamar, La Pasión según San Marcos, Azul
Career Highlights:
• Blends traditions of classical chamber, Jewish liturgical, Klezmer, and Argentine folk and dance music
• MacArthur Fellowship
• Close collaborations with the Silk Road Ensemble, and St. Lawrence and Kronos string quartets
Major Works:
Cape Cod Files, Gran Danzón, Aires Tropicales
Career Highlights:
• Founding member/conductor of Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra
• Guggenheim Fellowship, National Medal of the Arts, The Kennedy Center’s Living Jazz Legend Award
Major Works:
Express Abstractionism, Tuolumne, Magiya
Career Highlights:
• Inaugural Kravis Emerging Composer of the New York Philharmonic
• Commissions from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra
Major Works:
Time Machines, FLEX, Divisions
Career Highlights:
• Performed by major orchestras of New York, Boston, and Cincinnati
• Grawemeyer Award, Rome Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship
Major Works:
Music for 18 Musicians, Double Sextet, Different Trains
Career Highlights:
• Shifted aesthetic center of music composition away from complexity towards pulsation and tonal attraction
• Combines rigorous structures with propulsive rhythms and instrumental color
Major Works:
Beautiful Passing, Four Iconoclastic Episodes, Mnemosyne’s Pool
Career Highlights:
• Works for ensemble and orchestra integrate love for blues and rock guitar
• American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Fellowship, Kennedy Center Friedheim Award
Major Works:
Death and the Powers, Schoenberg in Hollywood
Career Highlights:
• Works often incorporate emerging musical technologies
• Academic Head of the MIT Media Lab, Professor of Music and Media, and Director of the Opera of the Future Group
Major Works:
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Sonata da Chiesa
Career Highlights:
• Pioneered musical portraits genre, composing more than 140 works
• Chief music critic of New York Herald Tribune (1940–1954)
Major Works:
Symphony No. 3, Violin Concerto No. 1, Toccata
Career Highlights:
• Taught Carter, Bernstein, and Fine while professor at Harvard University from 1926-1960
• Helped develop 20th-century Neo-Classical music in the US