Composers and performers
Oscar Levant
Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906 – August 14, 1972) was an American concert pianist, composer, music conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian and actor. Though awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recordings featuring his piano performances, he was as famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and later in movies and television, as for his music.
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Scott Joplin
Lucia Aliberti
Lucia Aliberti (born 12 June 1957 in Messina) is a Sicilian operatic soprano singer. She performed the bel canto roles of Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Vivaldi, Mercadante, etc.
A dramatic soprano, Aliberti was awarded a diploma with full marks from the Conservatory while still very young. She then completed her studies in Rome with Maestro Luigi Ricci and continued the study with Alfredo Kraus. Musician and composer, while studying singing, she was also studying the piano and other musical instruments (guitar, accordion, violin, mandolin). She has composed many pieces for piano, clarinet, flute and singing.
Alondra de la Parra
Dennis Rowland
Susie Arioli
Salomé Leclerc
Wilhelmenia Fernandez
Kenny Washington
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (/skriˈɑːbɪn/; Russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин [ɐlʲɪˈksandr nʲɪkəˈɫaɪvʲɪtɕ ˈskrʲæbʲɪn]; 6 January 1872 [O.S. 25 December 1871] – 27 April [O.S. 14 April] 1915) was a Russian composer and pianist. Scriabin, who was influenced early in his life by the works of Frédéric Chopin, composed works that are characterised by a highly tonal idiom (these works are associated with his “first stage” of compositional output). Later in his career, independently of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a substantially atonal and much more dissonant musical system, which accorded with his personal brand of mysticism. Scriabin was influenced by synesthesia, and associated colours with the various harmonic tones of his atonal scale, while his colour-coded circle of fifths was also influenced by theosophy. He is considered by some to be the main Russian Symbolist composer.
Scriabin was one of the most innovative and most controversial of early modern composers. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia said of Scriabin that “no composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed.” Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin’s music as “a sincere expression of genius.” Scriabin had a major impact on the music world over time, and influenced composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Karol Szymanowski. However, Scriabin’s importance in the Russian and then Soviet musical scene, and internationally, drastically declined after his death. According to his biographer Bowers, “No one was more famous during their lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after death.” Nevertheless, his musical aesthetics have been reevaluated since the 1970s, and his ten published sonatas for piano have been increasingly championed in recent years.