37 Postmodern composers

Louis Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of the The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky.

Django Bates is a British composer, multi-instrumentalist, band leader and educator. He plays the piano, keyboards and the tenor horn and writes large-scale compositions on commission. He has been described as "One of the most talented musicians Britain has produced, and his work covers the entire spectrum of jazz, from early jazz through to bebop and free jazz to jazz-rock fusion."

Anomie Belle is an American multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, producer, and artivist from Seattle. Originally a classically-trained violinist and songwriter, Belle began writing and recording music as a child. Belle has since developed an eclectic and avant-garde musical style that incorporates aspects of electronic, classical, art pop, experimental, trip hop, glitch, and soul.

Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer, film director, multimedia author, sound designer, founder of record label GRRR. Specialist of the relations between sound and pictures, he has been one of the early synthesizer players and home studio creators in France in 1973, and with Un d.m.i. the initiator of the return of silent movies with live orchestra in 1976. His records show the use of samplers since 1980 and computers since 1985.

Hans-Jürgen von Bose is a German composer.

Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions. He has lived in France since 1987.

Sylvie Courvoisier is a composer, pianist and improviser.

Alexandre Danilevski is a Russian-born French composer, lutenist, vielle player, active in Metz, France. He is the artistic director of Syntagma, an early music ensemble noted in particular for interpretations of music by the trouvères, Italian composers from Trecento, and Russian and Ukrainian baroque composers.

Kyle Bobby Dunn is a Canadian composer, arranger, and live performer of modern compositional and guitar based drone music. He has performed in live and exclusive outdoor settings, including Banff National Park, since 2000 and has released music on various international recording labels.

Lorenzo Ferrero is an Italian composer, librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and has written over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. His musical idiom is characterized by eclecticism, stylistic versatility, and a neo-tonal language.

Henry Flynt is an American philosopher, musician, writer, activist, and artist connected to the 1960s New York avant-garde. He coined the term "concept art" in the early 1960s, during which time he was associated with figures in the Fluxus scene. He later received attention for his anti-art demonstrations against New York cultural institutions in 1963 and 1964.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Genin is a Russian-German composer, pianist and piano teacher. Since 1997 he lives in Munich.

Egberto Amin Gismonti is a Brazilian composer, guitarist and pianist.

Philip Morris Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped evolve stylistically.

Kasia Glowicka, also known as Katarina Glowicka, is a Polish composer and lecturer of computer music at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

Catherine Christer Hennix is a Swedish musician, poet, philosopher, mathematician and visual artist. As a musician, she has worked with figures such as Pandit Pran Nath, La Monte Young, and Henry Flynt. Several of her archival recordings have been released in the 21st century, most prominently The Electric Harpsichord (2010). Hennix was affiliated with MIT's AI Lab in the late 1970s and was later employed as research professor of mathematics at SUNY New Paltz; she also worked with mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin.

Joe Jones was an American avant-garde musician associated with Fluxus especially known for his creation of rhythmic music machines.

Bradley Joseph is an American composer, arranger, and producer of contemporary instrumental music. His compositions include works for orchestra, quartet, and solo piano, while his musical style ranges from "quietly pensive mood music to a rich orchestration of classical depth and breadth".

Nicholas Lens Noorenbergh is a Belgian composer of contemporary music, particularly known for his operas. His work is published by Schott Music and Mute Song and distributed by Universal Music Group and Sony BMG. In 2020 Nicholas Lens signed with Deutsche Grammophon.

Claudio Maldonado, also known as Xunorus is an Argentine composer, guitarist and arranger, referent musician from the new generation of classical music contemporary composers from Patagonia.

Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer.

Jocelyn Morlock is a Canadian composer and music educator based in Vancouver. Her piece My Name is Amanda Todd won the 2018 Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year.

Șerban Nichifor is a Romanian composer, cellist and music educator.

Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for numerous film scores, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Letters, Riddles and Writs; Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs; Facing Goya; Man and Boy: Dada; Love Counts; and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera over other forms of music.

Christine Ott is a French pianist, vocalist, ondist, and composer.

Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine, known professionally as Charlemagne Palestine, is an American visual artist and musician. He has been described as being one of the founders of New York school of minimalist music, first initiated by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Phil Niblock, although he prefers to call himself a maximalist.

Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019. The Arvo Pärt Centre, in Laulasmaa, was opened to the public in 2018.

Marcus Nicolay Paus is a Norwegian composer and one of the most performed contemporary Scandinavian composers. As a classical contemporary composer he is noted as a representative of a reorientation toward tradition, tonality and melody, and his works have been lauded by critics in Norway and abroad. His work includes chamber music, choral works, solo works, concerts, orchestral works, operas, symphonies and church music, as well as works for theatre, film and television. Paus is regarded as "one of the most celebrated classical composers of Norway" and "the leading Norwegian composer of his generation."

Osmo Tapio Everton Räihälä is a Finnish composer of contemporary music. He has mainly written instrumental music for various chamber music line-ups, five concertos as well as for symphony orchestra.

Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s.

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems. He produced his best known works in the 1960s: the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 LP A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental, rock, and contemporary electronic music.

Mathew Rosenblum is an American composer whose works have been commissioned, recorded and performed by musical groups such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, FLUX Quartet, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Newband among other ensembles, in venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia including the Andy Warhol Museum, Leipzig's Gewandhaus, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Thailand's Prince Mahidol Hall, as well as Merkin Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, the Miller Theatre, The Kitchen, Carnegie Recital Hall, and Symphony Space in New York City. Rosenblum's music has been recorded on such labels as Mode Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Capstone Records, Opus One Records, New Focus Recordings, and the Composers Recordings Inc. label, and has been published by Edition Peters, of Leipzig, London, and New York.

Gunther Alexander Schuller was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian educator, publisher, and jazz musician.

William Joseph Susman is an American composer of concert and film music and a pianist. He has written orchestral and chamber music as well as documentary film scores.

Alejandro Toledo, is a composer, saxophonist, and ethnomusicologist. Born in Argentina, he is now based in the United Kingdom. He has received various awards including the Evo Music Rooms award for one of the best upcoming artists in the UK. He has also been featured on various TV shows including The Rob Brydon Show.

Michael Vincent Waller is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He has studied with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and Bunita Marcus.

John Zorn is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music. In 2013, Down Beat described Zorn as "one of our most important composers" and in 2020 Rolling Stone noted "Though Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he's gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time".