Philip Glass (1937), an American composer, is one of the most influential figures of 20th-century minimalist music. He has written dozens of operas and plays, 12 symphonies and numerous film music. For Stephen Daldry's The Hours, he was awarded the Golden Globe. Among the numerous collaborations of his long musical career, those with Ravi Shankar, Brian Eno and David Bowie stand out.
Alessandra Celletti (1966) is an Italian pianist. He achieved notoriety as an interpreter of the music of Gurdjieff / De Hartmann, Erik Satie, Scott Joplin and Philip Glass. Later she dedicated herself to composing her own works by publishing numerous albums including The Golden Fly (2007) and Working on Satie (2017).
Max Richter (1966) German pianist and composer, before embarking on a solo career he founded the Piano Circus ensemble and collaborated with Future of Sound of London, Philip Glass and Brian Eno. His activity as author of film music is also intense. It is one of the most representative figures of the new musical scene of minimalism.
David Lang (1957) is an American composer.
His music, defined as post-minimalist, is inspired by modernism and rock. He has collaborated with Kronos Quartet and with choreographers Shen Wei, Benjamin Millepied and Édouard Lock. The song Light Moving is dedicated to the American violinist Hilary Hahn.
Peter Maxwell Davies (1934 - 2016), British composer, was the author of numerous plays and as many as ten symphonies. He was artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School and later associate director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Yann Tiersen (1970) is a French minimalist composer and multi-instrumentalist. He achieved success in France with the album Le Phare (1998), while international popularity came with the composition of the music for the French film Amélie Fabulous World (2001).
Wim Mertens (1953) is a composer, pianist and musicologist.
Linked to the less experimental currents of minimalist music, it achieved notoriety in the second half of the eighties when one of his compositions, Struggle for Pleasure, was used in 1987 in the soundtrack of the film directed by Peter Greenaway, The Belly of an Architect. Mertens, who has recorded many compositions under the pseudonym of Soft Verdict, is also the author of the excellent book American Minimal Music.
Ólafur Arnalds (1986) is an Icelandic musician and composer.
It reached popularity thanks to two films: Taken 3 with Liam Neson (2014) which includes as a soundtrack the song A Stutter, and Mia Madre (2015) by the Italian director Nanni Moretti which includes 3 tracks by the Icelandic musician in the soundtrack . He often collaborates with his friend Nils Frahm, with whom he released the album Trance Frendz (2016).
John Cage (1912 - 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. He is considered one of the most important personalities of the 20th century. His work is a milestone in the development of contemporary music, built through a revolutionary language that desecrated traditional musical rules. On the philosophical level he had a blatant sympathy for Erik Satie, the Zen discipline and the oracular text of the Chings. Among the many "musical provocations" of the master the compositions for "prepared piano" and the famous piece 4'33'', a silent composition in three movements.
György Sándor Ligeti (1923 - 2006) Hungarian-naturalized Austrian composer, is one of the most significant composers of twentieth-century music.
Although his musical work is included in the field of contemporary music, he has reached the general public thanks to Stanley Kubrick, who has made significant use of his music in the films 2001: A Space Odyssey, Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.
Nils Frahm (1982) is a German musician and composer. He began studying piano with Nahum Brodski, a student of Tschaikowski's last student. A peculiarity of his music is that he uses, in addition to neoclassical influences and electronic music, the piano in an unconventional way by placing the felt between hammers and strings to dampen the sound.
Richard David James (1971), famous under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish musician. Considered as one of the most creative figures in contemporary music, Aphex Twin is an eclectic artist who has experimented in numerous musical genres from Intelligent Dance Music to Drum and Bass and Acid House, with forays into classical music, ambient and so-called noise music.
Valerija L'vovna Auėrbach (1973), known as Lera Auerbach is a Russian composer and pianist. He is part of the group of composers of the musical publishing house Hans Sikorski, which includes in its catalog musicians of the caliber of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. His musical work is characterized by a remarkable stylistic freedom that explores both tonal and atonal writing.
Lera Auerbach is also a discreet writer who has published several works of poetry and prose in the Russian language.
Georgs Pelēcis (1947) is a Latvian composer and musicologist. He studied with Aram Khachaturian at the Moscow Conservatory and attended Cambridge University. His style has been described as the "new consonant music", with a surprisingly clear positive spirit.
In the field of musicology his interests are focused on the musical forms of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque era. He teaches history of theory and counterpoint at the Latvian Academy of Music.
Matteo Sommacal (1977). He has always divided his creativity between music and mathematics. The study of early music and straight flute began at a very young age. The meeting with Carmelo Piccolo, professor at the Gioacchino Rossini State Conservatory of Music, marks the turning point of his musical career, starting his composition and piano studies with a marked predilection for the minimalist and post-minimalist musical repertoire.
Since 2000 he has been the artistic director of the Piccola Accademia degli Specchi chamber ensemble. He holds a degree in Physics and is currently Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at Northumbria University in Newcastle (UK).
Arvo Pärt (1935) is one of the most famous contemporary Estonian composers. After a long period of artistic silence, in 1968 Pärt returned to composing by proposing a piece by piano in a new style: Für Alina. The new compositional principle, called tintinnabuli (from the Latin campanelli), has since defined the style of his work to date. The tintinnabuli principle aims at an extreme reduction of sound materials up to limiting them to the essentials.
Minimal Works by Alessandro Viale
