Guillaume Yann Tiersen (born 23 June 1970) is a French musician and composer known internationally for composing the score to the Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie Amélie. His music is recognized by its use of a large variety of instruments in relatively minimalist compositions, often with a touch of either European classical music or French folk music, using primarily the piano, accordion or violin together with instruments like the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, ondes martenot, harpsichord and typewriter. His musical style is reminiscent of Frédéric Chopin, Erik Satie, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman.
Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist.
In his four-decade career, John has been one of the dominant forces in rock and popular music, especially during the 1970s. He has sold over 200 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits including seven consecutive No. 1 U.S. albums, 59 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won five Grammy awards and one Academy Award. His success has had a profound impact on popular music and has contributed to the continued popularity of the piano in rock and roll. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him #49 on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
Some of the characteristics of John’s musical talent include an ability to quickly craft melodies for the lyrics of songwriting partner Bernie Taupin, his former rich tenor (now baritone) voice, his classical and gospel-influenced piano, the aggressive orchestral arrangements of Paul Buckmaster among others and the flamboyant fashions, outlandishly excessive eyeglasses, and on-stage showmanship, especially evident during the 1970s.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He has been heavily involved in the fight against AIDS since the late 1980s, and was knighted in 1998. He entered into a civil partnership with David Furnish on 21 December 2005 and continues to be a champion for LGBT social movements. On April 9, 2008, John held a benefit concert for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, raising $2.5 million.
Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963) is a pianist and singer-songwriter of dual British and American citizenship. She is married to English sound engineer Mark Hawley, with whom she has one child, Natashya “Tash” Lórien Hawley, born on September 5, 2000.
Amos was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument. She is known for emotionally intense songs that cover a wide range of subjects including sexuality, religion and personal tragedy. Some of her charting singles include “Crucify”, “Silent All These Years”, “Cornflake Girl”, “Caught a Lite Sneeze”, “Professional Widow”, “Spark”, and “A Sorta Fairytale”.
Amos had sold 12 million records worldwide as of 2005 and has also enjoyed a large cult following. Having a history of making eccentric and at times ribald comments during concerts and interviews, she has earned a reputation for being highly idiosyncratic. As a social commentator and sometimes activist, some of the topics she has been most vocal about include feminism, religion, and sexuality.
Secondhand Serenade is an American acoustic rock solo project fronted by vocalist and guitarist John Vesely. The solo project began in California, USA, in 2004. Vesely has released two studio albums to date under the name Secondhand Serenade, Awake in 2007 and A Twist in My Story in 2008. The debut album used multitrack recording to create the sound of a band using technology, the second album took a different path, using a proper band and an orchestra to establish a more accomplished sound.
The pseudonym Secondhand Serenade is a reference to the way in which his songs are ‘serenades’ sung to his wife. People around the world are merely getting to hear the songs ‘second-hand’.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the Romantic period. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt (which includes Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King), and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces. “Edvard” is sometimes mispelt as “Edward”.
Grieg is renowned as a nationalist composer, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk music. Early works include a symphony (which he later suppressed) and a piano sonata. He also wrote three sonatas for violin and piano and a cello sonata. His many short pieces for piano — often based on Norwegian folk tunes and dances — led some to call him the “Chopin of the North”.
Concerto in A minor: 1. Allegro molto moderato
Performed by the University of Washington Symphony, conducted by Peter Erős (Neal O’Doan, piano)
Concerto in A minor: 1. Allegro molto moderato
Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra (courtesy of Musopen)
Concerto in A minor: 2. Adagio
Performed by the University of Washington Symphony, conducted by Peter Erős (Neal O’Doan, piano)
Concerto in A minor: 2. Adagio
Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra (courtesy of Musopen)
Concerto in A minor: 3. Allegro moderato molto e marcato
Performed by the University of Washington Symphony, conducted by Peter Erős (Neal O’Doan, piano)
Concerto in A minor: 3. Allegro moderato molto e marcato
Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra (courtesy of Musopen)
Notturno, Op. 54, No. 4
Performed live by Mark Gasser
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The Piano Concerto is his most popular work. Its champions have included the pianist and composer Percy Grainger, a personal friend of Grieg who played the concerto frequently during his long career. An arrangement of part of the work made an iconic television comedy appearance in the 1971 Morecambe and Wise Show, conducted by André Previn.
Some of the Lyric Pieces (for piano) are also well-known, as is the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, a play that Grieg found to be an arduous work to score properly. In a 1874 letter to his friend Frants Beyer, Grieg expressed his unhappiness with what is now considered one of his most popular compositions from Peer Gynt, In the Hall of the Mountain King: “I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the mountain King – something that I literally can’t bear listening to because it absolutely reeks of cow-pies, exaggerated Norwegian nationalism, and trollish self-satisfaction! But I have a hunch that the irony will be discernible.”
Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949 in New Rochelle, New York) is an American Broadway and an eight-time Academy Award winning composer and pianist. Menken has collaborated with several renowned lyricists including Howard Ashman (1950-1991), Tim Rice and Stephen Schwartz.
The Fray is a Grammy Award-nominated four-piece piano rock American band from Denver, Colorado. Formed in 2002 by schoolmates Isaac Slade and Joe King, the band released their debut album How to Save a Life in 2005. The band is best known for the song “How to Save a Life”, which charted in the top three of the Billboard Hot 100 and was also a top 5 single in Canada, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The Fray also found national success with the song “Over My Head (Cable Car)”, which became a top ten hit in the United States and Canada. How to Save a Life was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and was also certified platinum in Australia and New Zealand.
The Fray was formed in 2002, and currently consists of Isaac Slade (vocals and piano), Joe King (guitar and vocals), Dave Welsh (guitar) and Ben Wysocki (drums and percussion). While the band has no official bass guitarist, Dan Lavery of Tonic has been the touring bassist since March 2007. Prior to Dan joining the touring fold, Jimmy Stofer, also a member of the band Hello Kavita, was employed as the band’s touring bassist from 2005 through February 2007.
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter and pianist self-named and commonly referred to as “The Queen of Soul”. Although renowned for her soul recordings, Franklin is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, R&B and gospel. In 2008, the American music magazine Rolling Stone ranked Franklin #1 on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.
Franklin is one of the most honored artists by the Grammy Awards, with 20 Grammys to date, which include the Living Legend Grammy and the Lifetime Achievement Grammy. She has scored a total of 20 #1 singles on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart, two of which also became #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: “Respect” (1967) and “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” (1987), a duet with George Michael. Since 1961, Franklin has scored a total of 45 “Top 40″ hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Franklin was the featured singer at the 2009 Presidential inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama.
Jay Chou (traditional Chinese: 周杰倫; simplified Chinese: 周杰伦; pinyin: Zhōu Jiélún; Wade-Giles: Chou Chieh-lun; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Chiu Kia̍t-lûn) (born January 18, 1979) is a Taiwanese musician, singer, producer, actor and director who has won the World Music Award four times. He is well-known for composing all his own songs and songs for other singers. In 1998 he was discovered in a talent contest where he displayed his piano and song-writing skills. Over the next two years, he was hired to compose for popular Chinese singers. Although he was trained in classical music, Chou combines Chinese and Western music styles to produce songs that fuse R&B, rock and pop genres, covering issues such as domestic violence, war, and urbanization.
In 2000 Chou released his first album, titled Jay, under the record company Alfa Music. Since then he has released one album per year, selling several million copies each. His music has gained recognition throughout Asia, most notably in regions such as Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and in overseas Asian communities, winning more than 20 awards each year. He has sold over 25 million albums worldwide. He debuted his acting career in Initial D (2005), for which he won Best Newcomer Actor in Golden Horse Awards, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by Hong Kong Film Awards for his role in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). His career now extends into directing and running his own record company JVR Music. He has also endorsed various models of Media Players released by Onda in which he appears on the box, and his signature and likeness is printed on the back of certain models of these players.
Tears for Fears are an English pop rock duo formed in the early 1980s by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.
Founded after the dissolution of their first band, the mod-influenced Graduate, they were initially associated with the New Wave synthesizer bands of the early 1980s but later branched out into mainstream rock and pop, which led to international chart success.
The band has sold more than 22 million albums worldwide (including over 8 million in the United States alone).
