Dawn Upshaw (born July 17, 1960) is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times.^{[citation needed]} The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary. Many composers, including Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho, have written for her, and her artistic achievements are extensive. In 2007 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Upshaw was born in Nashville, Tennessee. She began her vocal career as a talented Rich East High School singer in Park Forest, Illinois and later attended Interlochen Arts Academy. Upshaw received a B.A. in 1982 from Illinois Wesleyan University, where she studied voice with the late Dr. David Nott. She went on to study voice with Ellen Faull at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, earning her M.M. in 1984. She also attended courses given by Jan DeGaetani at the Aspen (Colorado) Music School. She was a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions (1984) and the Walter M. Naumburg Competition (1985), and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program. Since her start in 1984, Upshaw has made more than 300 appearances at the Metropolitan Opera.

Osvaldo Noé Golijov (born December 5, 1960) is an Argentine Grammy award–winning composer of classical music.

Osvaldo Golijov (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈɡolixof]) was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.

Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of a lifetime of experience with various types of music. His Romanian Jewish parents exposed him to the traditional Klezmer music and liturgical music of their faith. Growing up and going to public school in Argentina showed him the many musical styles of his family's adopted country, including the tango. Once Golijov traveled abroad to continue his studies, the influences of other people and other styles became part of him. What is considered so remarkable about his musical language is that, rather than a pastiche of styles, it is wholly cohesive. It is thought of as vibrant and alive, growing and changing as he does.

Golijov's mother was a piano teacher, his father, a physician. He was raised "surrounded by chamber classical music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Ástor Piazzolla," according to his official website. He studied piano at the local conservatory in La Plata and studied composition with Gerardo Gandini.

The London Sinfonietta is an English chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble specialises in contemporary music and works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and jazz musicians. Through regular collaborations with choreographers, video artists and film-makers, the ensemble places new music at the heart of contemporary culture, reaching out to new audiences and embracing the technical challenges of pushing musical boundaries.

Nicholas Snowman and David Atherton founded the orchestra in 1968. Atherton was its first Music Director, from 1968-1973. Michael Vyner served as the Artistic Director from 1972-1989. Paul Crossley took over and served from 1988-1994. Markus Stenz served as Music Director from 1994-1998. The composer Oliver Knussen was Music Director from 1998–2002 and is now the Sinfonietta's Conductor Laureate. The Artistic Director of the ensemble from 1998-2006 was Gillian Moore following 10 years as the ensemble's Education Officer.

David Zinman (born New York City, U.S., 9 July 1936) is an American conductor and violinist.

After early violin studies at the Oberlin Conservatory, Zinman studied theory and composition at the University of Minnesota, earning his M.A. in 1963, and took up conducting at Tanglewood. He then worked in Maine with Pierre Monteux from 1958 to 1962, serving as his assistant from 1961 to 1964.

Zinman held the post of tweede dirigent (second conductor) of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra from 1965 to 1977. He was the principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 1979 to 1982.

In the USA, Zinman was music director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 1974 to 1985. With the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, he served two years as principal guest conductor, and became the orchestra's music director in 1985. During his Baltimore tenure, Zinman began to incorporate the ideas of the historically informed performance movement into performances of the Beethoven symphonies. Upon the conclusion of his tenure as music director in 1998, he was named the orchestra's conductor laureate. However, in protest at what he saw the Baltimore orchestra's overly conservative programming in the years since his departure, Zinman resigned the title of conductor laureate in 2001. In 1998, Zinman was appointed music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he founded and directed its American Academy of Conducting until his sudden resignation in April 2010.

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈxɛnrɨk mʲiˈkɔwaj ɡuˈrɛtski]) (December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Webernian-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen,Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the 1981 choral hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka and his requiem Good Night.