Curated category
20th-century American classical composers
- Kurt WeillKurt Julian Weill was born on the 2nd of March 1900 in Dessau, the son of a synagogue cantor, and he died in New York City on the 3rd of April 1950, just…
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky once received a score back from his mentor in the mail, returned with a note reading: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee." That…
- George GershwinGeorge Gershwin's last words were "Fred Astaire." He spoke them on the night of the 9th of July 1937, as he collapsed in a borrowed house in Beverly Hills…
- Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was born on the 30th of October 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey in the Idaho Territory.
- John CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. spent his entire life asking a single question: what is music? He was born on the 5th of September, 1912, in Los Angeles, and for nearly…
- Roger SessionsRoger Huntington Sessions entered the world on the 28th of December 1896 in Brooklyn, New York. His family lineage traced back to Samuel Huntington, a…
- Aaron CoplandAaron Copland grew up above a Brooklyn shop at 628 Washington Avenue, in a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who had traveled through Scotland just to…
- John WilliamsJohn Williams played two notes for Steven Spielberg, alternating, low and ominous, and Spielberg laughed because he thought it was a joke. The film was Jaws.
- Frank ZappaFrank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, into a household where Italian was spoken by his grandparents and gas…
- Jennifer HigdonJennifer Higdon picked up a flute her mother had bought and began teaching herself to play from an old flute method book.