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Curated category

20th-century American male composers

  • Marvin GayeMarvin Pentz Gaye Jr. entered the world on the 2nd of April 1939 at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C. His first home sat within the Fairfax Apartments…
  • Kurt WeillKurt Julian Weill entered the world on the 2nd of March 1900 in Dessau. He grew up in a religious Jewish family within the Sandvorstadt district of Saxony.
  • Igor StravinskyIgor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia, on the 17th of June 1882. His father worked as a bass singer at the Mariinsky Theater in Saint…
  • Arnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was born on the 13th of September 1874 in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna. His father Samuel worked as a shoe-shopkeeper and moved from…
  • Duke EllingtonOn the 29th of April 1899, Edward Kennedy Ellington entered the world in Washington, D.C., born to James and Daisy Ellington.
  • James BrownJames Joseph Brown was born on the 3rd of May 1933, inside a small wooden shack in Barnwell, South Carolina. His mother Susie Behling was only sixteen years…
  • George GershwinJacob Gershwine entered the world on the 26th of September 1898, inside a second-floor apartment at 242 Snediker Avenue in Brooklyn.
  • John ColtraneJohn William Coltrane was born in his parents' apartment at 200 Hamlet Avenue in Hamlet, North Carolina, on the 23rd of September 1926.
  • Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was born on the 30th of October 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory.
  • John CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was born on the 5th of September 1912 at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. His father, John Milton Cage Sr., worked as an…
  • 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 was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 14th of November 1900. He grew up above his family's store at 628 Washington Avenue.
  • Jerry Lee LewisJerry Lee Lewis was born on the 29th of September 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana. He grew up in an impoverished farming family where his parents mortgaged…
  • J. J. AbramsOn a day in 1982, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams composed the music for a horror movie called Nightbeast. He was only sixteen years old when he wrote that score.
  • Frank ZappaFrank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the…
  • Sean LennonSean Taro Ono Lennon entered the world at Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan on the 9th of October 1975. This date marked his father John Lennon's…
  • Joe RomersaOn the 19th of April 1979, the Marc Tanner Band opened for Firefall at the Palace Theater in Cleveland Ohio. Joe Romersa played drums and percussion on that…