Kirsten Agresta Copely is an American harpist based in New York City. She is a former associate professor of harp at Vanderbilt University, an affiliated artist on the music faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, [1] a board member of the World Harp Congress, and a member of NARAS and ASCAP. Agresta has collaborated with many artists across a wide range of genres, including Jay-Z, Beyoncé Knowles, Enya, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Lady Antebellum, Evanescence, The Who, Carrie Underwood, and Jennifer Nettles.
Aside from a performance for former U.S. President Barack Obama at his second official White House State Dinner, Agresta has also performed privately for several officials and dignitaries, including Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
Agresta received her bachelor's and master's of music degrees from Indiana University Bloomington in Harp Performance.
After placing third in the 1989 USA International Harp Competition, [2] Agresta began performing as a solo artist, traveling across the United States, Europe, South America, Israel, Japan, and the South Pacific. Her success culminated in three Carnegie Hall solo recitals from 1998 to 2002 and two recitals at the Lincoln Center.
Her debut album, Dream World was released in August 2001.
"The Covers Album" was released on all streaming platforms in May 2019. The all-original, new age album "Around The Sun" released January, 2020, marking Kirsten's first as composer and winning a silver medal at the Global Music Awards. Ms. Copely's most recent album, "Aquamarine", was nominated for Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant in the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. [3]
Sarah Ann McLachlan OC OBC is a Canadian singer-songwriter. As of 2015, she had sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards and four Juno Awards. In addition to her personal artistic efforts, she founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians.
Jessye Mae Norman was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages, Norman was associated with roles including Beethoven's Leonore, Wagner's Sieglinde and Kundry, Berlioz's Cassandre and Didon, and Bartók's Judith. The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound", and wrote that "it has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls."
Dame Mitsuko Uchida, is a Japanese-English classical pianist and conductor. Born in Japan and naturalised in England, she is particularly notable for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert.
Jessica Leigh Harp is an American songwriter and former country artist from Kansas City, Missouri. Between 2005 and 2007, Harp and Michelle Branch recorded and performed as The Wreckers, a duo that topped the country charts in 2006 with the Grammy-nominated "Leave the Pieces". After The Wreckers disbanded, Harp began a solo career on Warner Bros. Records, the same label to which The Wreckers were signed. Her solo second album single, "Boy Like Me", debuted in March 2009 and was a top 30 hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. It was followed by her second album, A Woman Needs, in March 2010.
Petronel Malan is a South African concert pianist based in the United States.
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, is a music conservatory established in 1921. Until 2005, it was known as the Indiana University School of Music. It has more than 1,500 students, approximately half of whom are undergraduates, with the second largest enrollment of all music schools accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.
Jenny Oaks Baker is an American violinist. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award, and is a former member of the National Symphony Orchestra. Baker has released eighteen studio albums, several of which have ranked high on the Billboard charts.
Jennifer Odessa Nettles is an American singer, songwriter, actress and record producer.
Stephan Moccio is a Canadian composer, producer, pianist, arranger, conductor and recording artist. He co-wrote and co-produced the two end credit songs for Fifty Shades of Grey and its soundtrack: "Earned It" and "I Know You", with the former being nominated for Best R&B Song and Best Song Written For Visual Media at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, and Best Original Song at the 88th Academy Awards. He also was a producer on the Weeknd's album Beauty Behind the Madness, which was nominated for Album Of The Year at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.
Daniel Pollack is an American pianist.
Joyce DiDonato is an American lyric-coloratura mezzo-soprano. She is notable for her interpretations of operas and concert works in the 19th-century romantic era in addition to works by Handel and Mozart.
Lucile Lawrence was a leader among American harpists. At the end of her life, she was actively teaching as a faculty member of Boston University and the Manhattan School of Music as well as teaching privately.
Yoonjung "Yoonie" Han is a South Korean-born American classical pianist.
Sarah Ellen Jarosz is an American singer-songwriter from Wimberley, Texas. Her debut studio album, Song Up in Her Head, was released in 2009 and the song "Mansinneedof" was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Country Instrumental Performance. Her second studio album, Follow Me Down, released in 2011, received a Song of the Year nomination from the Americana Music Association's 2012 Honors and Awards. Her third studio album, Build Me Up from Bones, was released on September 24, 2013 through Sugar Hill Records. Build Me Up from Bones was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, and its title track was nominated for Best American Roots Song. In 2016, Jarosz released her fourth studio album, Undercurrent. The album won two Grammy Awards.
Daniil Olegovich Trifonov is a Russian pianist and composer. Described by The Globe and Mail as "arguably today's leading classical virtuoso" and by The Times as "without question the most astounding pianist of our age", Trifonov's honors include a Grammy Award win in 2018 and the Gramophone Classical Music Awards' Artist of the Year Award in 2016. The New York Times has noted that "few artists have burst onto the classical music scene in recent years with the incandescence" of Trifonov. He has performed as soloist with such orchestras as the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony and the Munich Philharmonic, and has given solo recitals in such venues as Royal Festival Hall, Carnegie Hall, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Berliner Philharmonie, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Concertgebouw, and the Seoul Arts Center.
Charlotte Hu, formerly known as Ching-Yun Hu, is a Taiwanese born American classical pianist, winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition, Founder and Artistic Director Yun-Hsiang International Music Festival in Taipei and Winner of the 2012 Golden Melody Award for Best Classical Album.
Kariné Poghosyan is an Armenian pianist residing in New York City. She made her orchestral debut at the age of 14 playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, and her solo Carnegie Hall debut at 23, and has since gone on to win numerous awards as well as perform in some of the world's most prestigious concert halls.
Franziska Huhn is a German harpist. Currently, she lives in the United States.
Alisa Sadikova is a prodigy classical harpist from Russia.