American male composers

A. Laurence Lyon (1934–2006) was a composer of music, usually sacred music with a Latter-day Saint theme. He also served for 30 years as a professor at Western Oregon University.Lyon was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands where his father, T. Edgar Lyon was serving as president of the Netherlands Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).Lyon created his first composition at 12. He was first called as an organist for a congregation of the LDS Church when he was 16 years old. That same year, he wrote and premiered a sextet for brass and woodwinds at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. He served as a LDS Church missionary in the Netherlands Mission, and organized and directed the choir from that mission that sang at the dedication of the Swiss Temple. In 1958 he married Donna Reeder in the Salt Lake Temple.After his mission, Lyon received a bachelor's degree from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music.From 1967 until 1997, Lyon was a professor of music at Western Oregon University. He was also president of Modern Music Methods, a publisher of string music for children.Lyon has been involved with the music for many LDS Church temple dedications. He wrote an arrangement of "The Morning Breaks" specifically for the dedication of the Oakland California Temple and directed choirs that performed at the dedications of the Portland Oregon Temple and the Seattle Washington Temple.Lyon served on multiple occasions in LDS bishoprics and on stake high councils. He was a member of the General Sunday School board in 1967 and of the general church music committee from 1985-1993. From 1999 until 2000, he and his wife served as missionaries in the Chile Osorno Mission.Two of Lyon's works are included in the 1985 edition of the LDS Church hymnbook. They are "Each Life That Touches Ours For Good" and "Saints, Behold How Great Jehovah." He also wrote seven works in the Primary Children's Songbook.Over 200 arrangements and compositions by Lyon were published. Many of his choral and organ works were featured on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's weekly broadcasts. Among his works was the oratorio "Visions of Light and Truth," which was commissioned by BYU-Idaho.

Joseph Henry Hamilton Jr. (January 6, 1929 – June 9, 1991) was an American television producer and actor.

Kenneth Gail Wannberg (June 28, 1930 – January 27, 2022) was an American composer and sound editor. He worked extensively with the composer John Williams on some of the biggest box office films of all time. His music editing credits include Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981), JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991), Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004). In 1986 Wannberg won an Emmy for his sound editing on Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories series.His film score compositions include The Tender Warrior (1971), The Great American Beauty Contest (1973), Lepke (1975), The Four Deuces (1975), Bittersweet Love (1976), The Late Show (1977), Tribute (1980), The Amateur (1981), Mother Lode (1982), Losin' It (1983), Draw! (1984), Blame It on Rio (1984) and The Philadelphia Experiment (1984).
Wannberg died on January 27, 2022, in Florence, Oregon, at the age of 91.

George Heussenstamm (born July 24, 1926) is an American composer. His most well-known works include jazz-classical chamber styles, such as Etudes (7) for oboe, clarinet & bassoon, Op. 77 (1964), Alchemy for solo oboe and tape, Op. 60 (1976), and Ensembles, for brass quintet (1976). Recordings of his compositions include Woodwind Treasures by the West Wind Quintet and Alchemy: American Works for Oboe and English Horn CD by Mark Hill, and others.Formerly, a professor of music at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Los Angeles, and other colleges in Southern California. Heussenstamm is the author of several books pertaining to music theory, including The Norton Manual of Music Notation, Hal Leonard Harmony & Theory – Part 1: Diatonic, and Hal Leonard Harmony & Theory – Part 2: Chromatic. The Norton Manual of Music Notation has become a standard of music notation.
George Heussenstamm (b. 1926) received all of his musical training in the Southern California area. Winner of numerous national and international composition competitions, he is a member of ASCAP, is an honorary member of the international music fraternity, Sigma Alpha Iota, and is a former member of the American Society of University Composers (now called SCI) and the International Society for Contemporary Music. He was a member of NACUSA (National Association of Composers, USA), in which he served as Vice- President for many years. In 1976 and 1981 he was the recipient of Fellowship Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Eight of his compositions were recorded on LP and six of these have been committed to CD. From 1971 to 1984 he was Manager of the Coleman Chamber Music Association, the oldest continuing chamber music series in the country.
Since 1976 Heussenstamm taught at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Los Angeles, Ambassador College, and steadily for 17 years at California State University, Northridge, prior to his retirement in June, 2000. Composer of more than 85 published works, he is the author of the book, The Norton Manual of Music Notation, released by W.W. Norton and Co. in March, 1987, and still a mainstay in the literature about the notation of music, making Heussenstamm one of the leading authorities in this field. He has also written a two-volume textbook on tonal harmony, Handbook of Harmony, which was the required harmony textbook at CSUN for several years. It has now been published in two volumes by Hal Leonard Corp. under the title, Hal Leonard Theory and Harmony and is available at book stores everywhere. His Handbook of Tonal Counterpoint, as yet unfinished, is written in a style geared for maximum comprehension by college-level students.
Composing in a wide spectrum of media, George Heussenstamm's compositions have been performed with regularity both here and abroad. He is perhaps best known for his large-scale compositions for saxophone and brass ensembles. His final large work, Moire for strings, is a magnificent work of texture and contemporary string technique and was premiered by the University of Southern California Symphony string section in 1990. In 2016, George became the benefactor of a choral music contest thru the California Choral Directors Association (then ACDA California). George has funded the CCDA/Heussenstamm Choral Composition Competition for a total of ten years. From his generous donations, California composers are able to attend the CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO for free, have the chance to have their winning piece read by the entire conference, and earn a $500 bonus. It is a great way to inspire composers to create new and exciting choral music for the future.
Among his non-academic activities are fishing, pocket billiards, going to concerts, and Scrabble. He was for 17 years the director of a Scrabble club in Glendale, California, and was chosen as Director of the Year in 1991 by the National Scrabble Association. He is an avid follower of national and international affairs, his primary source being BBC World Service over XM satellite radio. Married in 1957, his wife, Mary Heussenstamm (1930-2005), was a locally well-known watercolor portraitist. Her book, Watercolor Portraits Painted on the Streets of Los Angeles, has been widely acclaimed.

Duane Tatro (May 18, 1927 – August 9, 2020) was an American composer. Born in Los Angeles, he served in the United States Navy during World War II and he graduated from the University of Southern California. He became a composer for many television series, including Dynasty, The Love Boat, Barnaby Jones, M*A*S*H, Mannix, and The F.B.I..

Thomas Avinger (Weslaco, Texas, September 28, 1928 – Houston, Texas, November 18, 2000) was an American composer, conductor and systems analyst for the oil industry.

Paul Nelson (né Paul Eugene Nelson; 26 January 1929 Phoenix, Arizona – 11 April 2008 Providence, Rhode Island) was an American musician and composer. His compositions—in all genres except opera—have been performed on four continents.

Randy Kerber (born September 25, 1958) is an American composer, orchestrator and keyboard player, who has had a prolific career in the world of cinema.Kerber was born in Encino, California. He began his first national tour with Bette Midler in 1977 at the age of 19. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1986, along with Quincy Jones and others, for Best Original Score for the motion picture The Color Purple. He was also nominated for a Grammy for his arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" for Barbra Streisand.
As a studio keyboardist, Kerber has worked on over 800 motion pictures including Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, and the first three films of the Harry Potter franchise. The piano in the opening and closing scenes of Forrest Gump, which features a feather floating in the wind, was played by Kerber and keyboardist Randy Waldman.
Kerber has been an orchestrator on over 50 films, including work with Academy Award winner James Horner. He worked with Eric Clapton as keyboardist, orchestrator, and conductor on the 1991 film Rush, and playing on the Grammy Award-winning song "Tears in Heaven".
During his career, Kerber has worked with a wide range of artists including Michael Jackson, Paul Anka, Leonard Cohen, Rickie Lee Jones, A. R. Rahman, Whitney Houston, Michael Bolton, Rod Stewart, B.B. King, Bill Medley, Annie Lennox, Art Garfunkel, José Feliciano, Anastacia, Celine Dion, Natalie Cole, Al Jarreau, Ray Charles, Neil Diamond, Elisa, Julio Iglesias, Barry Manilow, Don Ellis, Ricky Martin, Bette Midler, Corey Hart, Eric Burdon, Kenny Rogers, Donna Summer, George Benson, Diana Ross, Marta Sanchez, Frank Sinatra, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Dionne Warwick; and groups including Air Supply, America, Def Leppard, The Temptations, Manhattan Transfer, Lisa Stansfield, and The Three Degrees.
Kerber also performed piano solos on Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, Robert Zemeckis' Flight, and Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra for which he also trained Michael Douglas on the piano. Kerber also worked closely with actors Jason Schwartzman (for his role in the Disney film Saving Mr. Banks), Zoe Saldana for her turn as Nina Simone in the biopic Nina, and Ryan Gosling for his role of Sebastian in La La Land.
The 2016 Japanese PlayStation 4 role-playing game I Am Setsuna features a score performed almost entirely on solo piano by Kerber. In the spring of 2020 Kerber was a featured cast member and co-composer in the Netflix series The Eddy.