Modern "Classical" Composers?

Two of my favourite accessible modern composers:

Michael Nyman. He has written music for the movie 'The Piano' as well as music for some Peter Greenaway films. He has his own ensemble called The Michael Nyman Band and for them he has written dozens of fantastic music like, Water Dances, In Re Don Giovanni and MGV which combines them with a full orchestra.

You may have heard of Philip Glass already who has also written some incredible film music. He also has his own ensemble which he wrote a group of pieces called Glassworks for. One of his most famous pieces was the first Violin Concerto written in 1987. Earlier on he wrote in a repetitive style known as minimalism, but recently his music has turned more post-minimalist and perhaps even neo-romantic as you hear in his 2007 opera 'Appomatox'

Been listening to a few of these "cross-over" composers. Neal Facciuto was an interesting find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg5CoB8qVsQ

Finding out about new composers is very difficult. I was hoping that this forum would help, but it seems people here think that composers like Barber or Copeland or even Schoenberg are still "modern"! Yikes.....

Most of the greats of the last century are recently dead or very old. Part, Feldman, Reich, Glass, Carter, Ligeti, Penderecki, Boulez, Grisey, Stockhausen, Berio etc. The 50's and 60's was really the last, and probably one of the greatest, eras of "Classical" music. These days composers are quick to jump into film composing instead of producing works of art, so I think the game is over.

Finding out about new composers is very difficult. I was hoping that this forum would help, but it seems people here think that composers like Barber or Copeland or even Schoenberg are still "modern"! Yikes.....

lol, agreed. But I think, the point of the OP was to look for more contemporary composers that they still could like. This is a careful but honest attempt to be openminded, which should be applauded. There are also a lot of closedmnded idealists.

To add my latest 'new' (and yeah, dead) composers:

Frank Martin (

Einar Englund, very nice symphonies, (the 2nd for example I like a lot), great concerti as well, the clarinat concerto is the best imho.

YouTube is an absolute godsend for finding new music, and by 'new' I also mean music from history that is new to me because it is obscure. Stuff copyright, I think it's nothing short of a public service that people are taking the time to upload their record collections so we can all hear pieces we wouldn't otherwise knew existed.

A couple of suggestions that haven't already been mentioned:

James MacMillan is a Scottish composer who works as a Catholic church musician. A lot of his output therefore is of choral music, both accompanied and unaccompanied, but he also writes symphonies, concerti and chamber music often as commissions from noted performers. Worth checking out are the percussion concerto 'Veni Emmanuel', the Symphony No.3 and the SInfonietta and Tryst as well as his motets. It's all quite approachable and often presents a modern twist on traditional British folk music.

Thomas Ades is a bit of a controversial figure: as well as a composer he's also a fiendishly capable conductor and pianist and so sometimes gets derided for being flashy and all about style over substance. He notoriously wrote an opera, Powder Her Face, which depicts fellatio during its telling of various political scandels in the 1980s. However he is also capable of writing wonderfully tender moments in things such as the Piano Quintet, Tevot and piano music inspired by John Dowland. Again lots of big-name commissions.

Kenneth Heskith (another contemporary Brit), Witold Lutoslawski (died 1990, Polish modernist), Kaia Saariaho (electro-accoustic music from a school known as Spectralism) and Sofia Gubadulina (pupil of Shostakovich) also worth checking out.

John Williams

The Classical Guitar player? I didn't know he wrote music.

there are tons of great composers for band I know, John Mackey comes to mind, there's also Frank Tichelli, Guy Woolfenden, Gillingham, Roy Magnuson (very few people know of him but he's great! we just performed his Harvest Moon, it's lovely) Brant Karrick, we're commissioning Price Walden next year, he's also not well known but will be.

as far as orchestra composers, I don't know many, I know the NSO premiered a new work last week by some Swedish dude, but I didn't go :(

I'm going to fire quite a few additions into this mix. All of these are current composers and I'd highly recommend seeking their music out, and watching live if you have the opportunity.

I've picked out some choice cuts from each as a taster:

Max Richter - http://soundcloud.co...hter/5-sarajevo

Dustin O'Halloran - http://soundcloud.co...loran/8-opus-55

Olafur Arnalds - http://soundcloud.co...r-arnalds/lj-si

Johan Johannsson - http://soundcloud.co...ohannsson-glima

Hauschka - http://soundcloud.co...eign-landscapes

...and I almost forgot, Chilly Gonzales! http://soundcloud.com/chillygonzales/othello-from-solo-piano-ii