John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.
Henry Dixon Cowell was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher, teacher and the husband of Sidney Robertson Cowell. Earning a reputation as an extremely controversial performer and eccentric composer, Cowell became a leading figure of American avant-garde music for the first half of the 20th century — his writings and music serving as a great influence to similar artists at the time, including Lou Harrison, George Antheil, and John Cage, among others. He is considered one of America's most important and influential composers.
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his former teacher and contemporary, Henry Cowell, but later moved toward incorporating elements of non-Western cultures into his work. Notable examples include a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, inspired after studying with noted gamelan musician Kanjeng Notoprojo in Indonesia. Harrison would create his own musical ensembles and instruments with his partner, William Colvig, who are now both considered founders of the American gamelan movement and world music; along with composers Harry Partch and Claude Vivier, and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee.
Ionisation (1929–1931) is a musical composition by Edgard Varèse written for thirteen percussionists. It was among the first concert hall compositions for percussion ensemble alone, although Alexander Tcherepnin had composed an entire movement for percussion alone in his Symphony No. 1 from 1927. In the journal Tempo, percussionist Brian Holder writes, "The work presented the important notion that unpitched percussion could stand alone as a serious form of concert music – a relatively unexplored concept at the time."
Sextet is a composition by American composer Steve Reich. The piece was written and first performed in 1984, and slightly revised in 1985.
Steve Reich and Musicians, sometimes credited as the Steve Reich Ensemble, is a musical ensemble founded and led by the American composer Steve Reich. The group has premiered and performed many of Reich's works both nationally and internationally. In 1999, Reich received a Grammy Award for "Best Small Ensemble Performance " for the ensemble's performance of Music for 18 Musicians.
Credo in Us is a musical composition by the American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist John Cage. It was written in July 1942 and revised in October of that year. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, this piece avoided the populist tendencies of fellow American composers at the time, while the piece's title is thought to be a call to collective unity.
Costin Miereanu is a French composer and musicologist of Romanian birth.
A Pierrot ensemble is a musical ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This ensemble is named after 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal work Pierrot Lunaire, which includes the quintet of instruments above with a narrator.
Construction is the title of several pieces by American composer John Cage, all scored for unorthodox percussion instruments. The pieces were composed in 1939–42 while Cage was working at the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, and touring the West Coast with a percussion ensemble he and Lou Harrison had founded. The series comprises three Constructions. A piece titled Fourth Construction, mentioned in several sources, is apparently either an unfinished work from 1942 or, more likely, an early title of the work we now know as Imaginary Landscape No. 2 .
Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is a composition for records of constant and variable frequency, large chinese cymbal and string piano by American composer John Cage and the first in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It was composed in 1939.
Peter Jarvis is an American percussionist, drummer, conductor, composer, music copyist, print music editor and college professor.
Bob Becker is an American percussionist and composer known primarily as a founding member of the Nexus percussion ensemble, as well as a performer in the Steve Reich and Musicians ensemble. He primarily performs as a keyboard percussionist, but is also skilled in tabla and concert snare drumming. As a composer, Becker employs a multicultural approach by mixing the style of western military drumming with North Indian Hindustani idioms, such as raga scale patterns and tabla drumming. This fusion of compositional practices is the main focus of works like Lahara and Mudra. There are also traces of influence from the music of minimalists like Steve Reich, which can be attributed to Becker's experience with that composer's music.
Imaginary Landscape No. 3 is a composition for six percussionists by American composer John Cage and the third in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It is the last Imaginary Landscape to feature percussion instruments and, therefore, the last one to be considered a chamber piece. It was composed in 1942.
Imaginary Landscape No. 2 is a composition for five percussionists by American composer John Cage and the second in the series of Imaginary Landscapes. It was also the first march in the set, the second being Imaginary Landscape No. 4 . It was composed in 1942.
Mansoor Hosseini is an Iranian-Swedish percussionist and composer of classical music, born in Iran, who studied in Paris and Brussels. His works comprise chamber music and orchestral pieces. He founded the Ensemble Themus in Gothenburg, focussed on theatrical music.
Jan Williams is a percussionist, arts administrator, teacher, conductor, and composer who has championed avant-garde and progressive music in the United States. He is recognized as an important proponent of percussion performance and its literature.
Xochipilli, subtitled "An Imagined Aztec Music", is a short composition for four wind instruments and six percussionists by the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, written in 1940. Its original title was Xochipilli-Macuilxóchitl, which is the double name of an Aztec god in two of his aspects, meaning "Flower Prince" and "Five Flower".
Tambuco is a percussion-ensemble work for six players, written by the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez in 1964. The score is dedicated to Clare Boothe Luce, and a performance of it lasts approximately thirteen minutes.
