Alicia Keys (born Alicia J. Augello-Cook on January 25 1980) is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, pianist, record producer, actress, philanthropist, and author who has won numerous awards, including nine Grammy Awards, eleven Billboard Music Awards, and three American Music Awards.

Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28 1902 - December 30 1979) was one of the great composers of musical theater, best known for his song writing partnerships with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He wrote more than 900 published songs, and forty Broadway musicals. Many of his compositions continue to have a broad appeal and have had a significant impact on the development of popular music.

James Gunn (born August 5, 1970, St. Louis, Missouri) is an American writer, film maker, actor, musician and cartoonist.

Lorenz "Larry" Hart (May 2, 1895 - November 22, 1943) was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. His most memorable lyrics include, "Blue Moon", "Isn't It Romantic?", "The Lady is a Tramp", "Manhattan", "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered", and "My Funny Valentine". Hart was born in Harlem to Jewish immigrant parents. He attended Columbia University, where a friend introduced him to Rodgers, …

Maggie Ruth Gyllenhaal (born November 16, 1977) is an American actress. She is the older sister of Jake Gyllenhaal and the daughter of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner. Gyllenhaal began her acting career in a film directed by her father, and later achieved recognition in her own right playing her real-life brother's on-screen sister in the cult hit "Donnie Darko". Gyllenhaal made her breakthrough in the sadomasochistic romance, …

also known by her fan-nickname of, is a third culture Japanese pop singer-songwriter, arranger and record producer. She has been hailed as one of the most successful, influential and acclaimed musicians in Japanese music history. With the release of her seven studio albums, including one compilation and two all-English, 24 solo singles (18 Japanese and 6 English) and several VHS/DVD releases, she has sold a combined estimated total in Japan of some 36,000,000 records in Japan as of 2007, …

John Kander , the composer half of the legendary songwriting team, Kander and Ebb that has produced Cabaret , Woman of the Year , The Act and the incomparable Chicago , was born in Kansas City, Missouri on March 18, 1927. Kander began studying music as a child and in his early career worked as a conductor and accompanying pianist for many productions. From 1955 through 1958, Kander was choral director and conductor for the Warwick Musical Theatre in Rhode Island.

Emanuel Ax (born June 8, 1949) is a Jewish-American pianist. Born in Lviv, Ukraine (then a constituent republic of the Soviet Union) to parents Joachim and Hellen Ax, both Nazi concentration camp survivors. Emanuel began to study piano at the age of six and Joachim was his first piano teacher. When he has eight the family moved to Warsaw and then two years later, to Winnipeg, Canada where he continued to study music, …

Lauryn Noel Hill-Marley (born May 25, 1975) is an eight-time Grammy award winning musician, record producer, and film actress. She initially established her reputation as the most visible and vocal member of The Fugees. On August 25, 1998 she launched her solo career by releasing the critically lauded album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill", bringing the then-emerging neo-soul genre to a wider commercial platform.

Fred Ebb (born April 8 1933 in Manhattan - died September 11 2004 in New York City) was a musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.

Charles Wuorinen is an American composer. Co-founder of The Group for Contemporary Music, Wuorinen writes serial instrumental music. Some of his pieces are influenced by fractal geometry and Benoît Mandelbrot, while his later works feature some tonal relationships. In 1970, Wuorinen was the youngest composer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for the electronic piece "Time's Encomium". He is also the author of "Simple Composition", ISBN 0-938856-06-5, …

John Corigliano (b. February 16, 1938) is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music.

Orli Shaham (born 5 November 1975) is an American pianist, born in Jerusalem, Israel, the daughter of two scientists, Jacob Shaham and Meira Diskin. Her brother is the violinist Gil Shaham. She is a graduate of the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York, and of Columbia University. She also studied at the Juilliard School, beginning in its Pre-College Division and continuing while a student at Columbia.

Michael Azerrad is an American author, journalist and musician. He grew up in the New York City area and received his BA degree from Columbia College in 1983. During his college years, he was both a roommate and a bandmate of keyboard virtuoso Marc Capelle (who later went on to become a member of American Music Club.) After college, Azerrad played drums in various small bands while pursuing a career in music journalism.

Gil Shaham (born February 19, 1971) is an award-winning violinist of Israeli descent. Born in Urbana, Illinois, he moved to Israel at the age of 2 with his parents, both scientists, Jacob Shaham and Meira Diskin. At age 10, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and Israel Philharmonic orchestras, and was admitted to Juilliard, where he studied with the famed Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang. Both he and his sister, the pianist Orli Shaham, attended Columbia University.

Zhou Long is a Chinese composer of contemporary classical music. Zhou lived for many years in New York City. He studied composition with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University, earning his DMA in 1993. He is the Music Director of the New York-based Music from China Ensemble. His wife is the composer Chen Yi. As of 2006, both Zhou and Chen are professors of composition at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory of Music.

Sarah Atereth is a Dance songtress/songwriter/dancer from Denver, Colorado, but calls New York City home.

Patricia Elizabeth Gras is best known as a television anchor and producer working for the Public Broadcasting Service in Houston, TX, Channel 8. Currently she is the senior producer and anchor of Houston’s local talk show “Living Smart with Patricia Gras.” She is also a musician and songwriter.

Joel Krosnick (born 1941) is an American soloist, cellist, recitalist, and chamber musician who has performed all over the world for over thirty-five years. As a member of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1974, he has performed the great quartet literature throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Dick Hyman (born March 8, 1927, New York City) is an American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer best known for his versatility with jazz piano styles. Over a 50 year career he has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists.

William Howerd Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.

Arthur Ira Garfunkel (born November 5 1941) is an American singer-songwriter and actor, best known as half of the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel.

Phillip Ramey (b. Elmhurst, Illinois, United States, September 12, 1939) is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music. He studied composition with the Russian-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin from 1959 to 1962, first at the International Academy of Music in Nice, France, then at DePaul University in Chicago. He later studied composition with Jack Beeson at Columbia University (1962-65) For many years, he was a friend of the composer Paul Bowles, …

David Hykes (1953 -) is a composer, singer, musician, author, and meditation teacher. He is founder of Harmonic Chant, a musical system for exploring harmonics of sound, listening, consciousness and harmony. An original pioneer in the modern harmonic, healing sounds and contemplative chant movements, he founded Harmonic Chant as a universal sacred music in New York in 1975, the year he also founded The Harmonic Choir, the first of his pioneering groups, …

Orlando DiGirolamo (April 20 1924 - January 26 1998) was an American jazz accordionist, pianist, composer, and teacher. He is sometimes credited as "Lanny DiJay" on jazz recordings. DiGirolamo collaborated frequently with legendary jazz producer Teo Macero, and played on Macero's first commercial release, "Explorations", also featuring a young Charles Mingus. He was described by "Metronome" magazine as an "extraordinary accordionist of the modern persuasion."

Jocko, now starting his fourth decade with Sha Na Na, was the first to walk onstage “greased and ready to rock 'n' roll” in 1969. That same year, the drummer was the youngest performer at the Woodstock Festival. He holds the distinction of performing in both the most successful music documentary ever ("Woodstock") and the most successful film musical ever ("Grease").

Don Leroy Smithers (b. February 17, 1933), music historian and performer on natural trumpet and cornetto. He is a pioneer for the revival of the authentic, uncompromised natural trumpet.

James Andrew Easton, OBE (b. September 1 1931) is a former British diplomat and Foreign Service officer. He is also music composer and performer. He has also been a Feature Writer of the Accordion Times since 1992.