Are there any modern piano composers? All I am aware of are film composers - and they're pretty bland. (besides the Sherman Brothers of course!)

Lowell Lieberman and Carl Vine, I think?

Charles Wuorinen, Magnus Lindberg.

Nikolai Kapustin!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQLUI5KKjpk

Well... How can I resist that?

Christos Anastassiou
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk-FjRbyhd8&feature=plcp

Myself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grGh-U26Db4&feature=plcp

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeTFz-6G-SY&feature=plcp

Nikos Drelas (Piano duet this one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg9DREp8-6s&feature=context-chv

And I hope more to come soon, from both myself and Christos Anastassiou, while we do hope to publish more piano works from other composers!

I've got a work for solo piano called the dancer leads the procession.

Some of my works have just been put on youtube, maybe it's worth mentioning a movement from my Viola Concerto as I put the viola/piano version there and there's a short piano interlude in the middle.

There are thousands

We occasionally have threads on this subject - it saves a lot of time to just reference them. Here are couple...

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1182158/

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1866873/Contemporary_piano_works_for_r.html

Pierre Boulez is still alive, as is Frederic Rzewski.

There are lots. And I'm surprised no one has mentioned Stephen Hough!

Rzewski is a wonderful composer for the piano.

Tomasino

There are, as some have mentioned, hundreds if not thousands of composers writing for piano these days. The problem is that it's very difficult to find them. Many publishers rely on revenue from sales of major composers' works to help finance new releases, and since so many people are photocopying or downloading music for free these days, the market for new piano music has dried up. (With a few exceptions that have already been noted - Vine, Liebermann, Ligeti, Hough, etc...)

Kreisler, there's nothing to disagree with in your first couple of sentences, and I'm sure major composers' works subsidize new work, but I have another view of what's going on. Publisher's income is in two parts, score sales then performing rights on the works. It's in a publisher's interest to have a known contemporary composer's works in their stable especially if they're getting performed in prestigious venues. The performance aspect is probably going to subsidize the score production. I would imagine that they don't even care if the score sales operate at a loss - it's made up for many times over on the performing rights.

On performance today, their current artist in residence Alexander Malikov played a prelude by Howard Bashaw on the May 16th broadcast.

Go here:
http://performancetoday.publicradio.org/features/2012/malikov/index.shtml

Look under Featured Music
May 16, 2012
Howard Bashaw: Prelude No. V

good stuff!!

Forrest

I miss Janus.

-Daniel

There are so many composers that you have to listen to a lot and become selective. Some composers write within a discernible "genre" and you can decide which genres you like and concentrate on those (or choose with discretion from many). You can feel overwhelmed until you find what you like. But then, there is also some overlap among them.

Some (very few) examples:

Minimalist
12-tone
Free atonality
Jazz-inflected
Conservative, neo-romantic
Chance-derived
Spectralist
New Age
Etc.

I think you are right. And if you go to the major publishing houses' websites (those that actually do publish new music - the ones specializing in urtext editions generally don't), you will usually find some sort of "composer" listing that will produce the names of many living or recently living composers, some of whom will have piano music available.

Of course, many composers are self-publishing these days. Finding them requires different methods. There are various websites that are devoted to new music that can helpful, such as NewMusicBox . Another way is to pay attention to the repertoire of the many pianists who play new music. They all have websites, so it's easy enough to explore, and, like most stuff on the web, one thing leads to another.

So do I.

Who dat?

Does anybody know Steven Cravis? He composes New Age (pretty peaceful) music for piano. He's got lots.