IFTA-nominee Anna Rice is fast emerging as a versatile and highly sought-after composer and orchestrator in the UK and Irish music industries. Equally at home in orchestral and electronic fields, she enjoys a varied career scoring both animation and live action, and a busy schedule as orchestrator and arranger for a number of renowned live and recording artists in Ireland and beyond.
Kaija Saariaho is a prominent member of a group of Finnish composers and performers who are now, in mid-career, making a worldwide impact.
Karen Tanaka is an exceptionally versatile composer and pianist. She has composed extensively for both instrumental and electronic media.
As Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir supports school music teachers, amateur orchestras and choirs, and rural festivals. She has written music for national and royal occasions, including the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations and the UK’s official commemoration of the 1918 Armistice.
“The High Priestess of Soul,” Nina Simone was a singer, pianist, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Mostly known as a jazz singer, her music blended gospel, blues, folk, pop, and classical styles. No popular singer was more closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement than Simone.
One of the greatest jazz pianists, composers, and arrangers of all time, Mary Lou Williams was a swing and bebop icon. “The Lady Who Swings the Band” also devoted herself to aiding musicians in need and teaching younger generations about jazz’s rich African American heritage.
Toshiko Akiyoshi changed the face of jazz music over her sixty-year career. As one of few women and Asian musicians in the jazz world, Akiyoshi infused Japanese culture, sounds, and instruments into her music. As a pianist, bandleader, and composer-arranger, Akiyoshi cemented her place as one of the most important jazz musicians of the twentieth century.
Rich and powerful musical language and a strong sense of drama have made Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave one of the most respected and exciting contemporary composers in the Western world.
Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than sixty years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor, and educator.
Gubaidulina’s compositional interests have been stimulated by the tactile exploration and improvisation with rare Russian, Caucasian, and Asian folk and ritual instruments collected by the “Astreia” ensemble, of which she was a co-founder, by the rapid absorption and personalization of contemporary Western musical techniques (a characteristic, too, of other Soviet composers of the post-Stalin generation including Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke), and by a deep-rooted belief in the mystical properties of music.