The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (also known as the ASO) was founded as a 17 player radio ensemble in 1936, in Adelaide, South Australia. The orchestra reformed in 1949 as the 55 member South Australian Symphony Orchestra. It reverted to its original and present title, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in 1975, and currently comprises 74 permanent members. Its music director since 2004 has been Arvo Volmer.
The Australian String Quartet is Australia's leading string quartet, and presents an annual program of chamber music throughout Australia and internationally. Founded in 1985 the ASQ has received critical acclaim both at home and abroad for performances of a diverse range of repertoire, including world premieres of contemporary Australian works. Overseas tours take the quartet to North America, Europe and Asia.
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers (1978–1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. Jennifer Culp replaced Jeanrenaud on cello in 1999. Jeffrey Zeigler replaced Culp on cello in 2005.
Steven Osborne is one of Britain's most highly regarded pianists. He was born in Scotland in 1971 and studied with Richard Beauchamp at St Mary's Music School in Edinburgh and with Renna Kellaway at the Royal Northern College of Music In Manchester. In 1988 he was a finalist in the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, and went on to win first prize in the prestigious Clara Haskil Competition in 1991 and the Naumburg International Competition in New York in May 1997.
Zoë Keating is a Canadian musician and composer. Classically trained from the age of eight, Keating studied music at Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester County, New York and the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy. After graduation she moved to San Francisco and began working in computer software while moonlighting as a cellist with dance troupes, theatre companies, and rock bands. She combined the two, and developed her now signature style while improvising for late night crowds in her San Francisco warehouse space.
Richard Tognetti (born 4 August 1965) is an Australian violinist, composer and conductor. He was born in Canberra and raised in Wollongong. He is currently Artistic Director and Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Tognetti studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Alice Waten and undertook post-graduate study at the Berne Conservatory with Igor Ozim, where he was awarded the Tschumi prize in 1989.
The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet devoted to the authentic performance of early music. Founded in 1974, the group is named after the Elizabethan miniaturist painter Nicholas Hilliard. Although most of its work focuses on music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the Hilliard Ensemble also performs contemporary music, working frequently with the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and including in its concerts works by John Cage, Gavin Bryars, Giya Kancheli, and Heinz Holliger.
Ennio Morricone (born 10 November 1928 in Rome) is an Italian composer especially noted for his film scores. He has composed the scores of more than 500 films and TV series. Although only 30 of these are for Western films, it is for this work which he is best known. Morricone's sparse style of composition for the genre is particularly exemplified by the soundtracks of the classic spaghetti westerns The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966) and Once Upon A Time In The West (Sergio Leone, 1968).
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.
Nobuo Uematsu (Born March 21, 1959) is best known for his composition for the Squaresoft (now Square Enix) games company throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most notably on the Final Fantasy series of games. Composing all his work on the keyboards, he has been hailed as one of the most popular and beloved composers of video game soundtracks. Uematsu enjoyed commercial success with the track “Eyes on Me” from Final Fantasy VIII, performed by Hong Kong singer Faye Wong (Wang Fei - 王菲).