Alan Hovhaness (Armenian: Ալան Յովհաննէս) (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an Armenian-American composer.

His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation. The Boston Globe music critic Richard Buell wrote: "Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer (rather as Ernest Bloch is seen as a Jewish composer), his output assimilates the music of many cultures. What may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic."

He was among the most prolific of 20th century composers, his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and 434 opus numbers. However, the true tally is well over 500 surviving works since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works.

Yolanda Kondonassis (b. Norman, Oklahoma, 1963) is an American classical harpist. She is one of the world's foremost classical harpists.

She first began playing the piano, then switched to harp at age nine. She studied at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She won the first prize in the 1987 Ima Hogg International Instrumentalists Competition.

Kondonassis has released more than ten CDs (most on the Telarc label) and has performed as a soloist with many of the world's most prominent orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, New York Chamber Symphony, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Houston Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico, Phoenix Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Florida Orchestra, and Hong Kong Philharmonic.

She has served as orchestral harpist for the Cleveland Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She has specialized in contemporary classical music, and the American composers Donald Erb (Sonata for Solo Harp, 1995) and George Rochberg have composed works for her.

Viola player Julia Rebekka Adler, née Mai, was born 1978 in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2004 she was rated best German violist in the ARD International Music Competition, receiving the Theodor Rogler Prize. She is co-soloist of the Munich Philharmonic, is member of the Viardot Klavierquartett and the Solistenoktett Berlin (with Mirijam Contzen and Jens Peter Maintz), and plays in duos with the pianist Jascha Nemtsov and the cellist Thomas Ruge, among others.

Julia Rebekka Adler started playing viola at 6-years-old. Having won first prize at Jugend musiziert (Federal German competition for young musicians), she was invited to participate at the Interlochen Arts Camp and the Aspen Music Festival.

Adler studied with Kim Kashkashian, Johannes Lüthy, and Wolfram Christ at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and took master-classes with Walter Levin and Yuri Bashmet. She finished her soloist-studies with Hartmut Rohde at the Universität der Künste Berlin with highest honors. From 1992 to 1997, she held a scholarship from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and she was selected artist in the Bundesauswahl junger Künstler in both 2005 and 2006. In 2002, Adler was awarded with the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Prize.