Born Today! 09.08.2023

Albert William Ketèlbey (; born Ketelbey; 9 August 1875 – 26 November 1959) was an English composer, conductor and pianist, best known for his short pieces of light orchestral music. He was born in Birmingham and moved to London in 1889 to study at Trinity College of Music. After a brilliant studentship he did not pursue the classical career predicted for him, becoming musical director of the Vaudeville Theatre before gaining fame as a composer of light music and as a conductor of his own works. For many years Ketèlbey worked for a series of music publishers, including Chappell & Co and the Columbia Graphophone Company, making arrangements for smaller orchestras, a period in which he learned to write fluent and popular music. He also found great success writing music for silent films until the advent of talking films in the late 1920s. The composer's early works in conventional classical style were well received, but it was for his light orchestral pieces that he became best known. One of his earliest works in the genre, In a Monastery Garden (1915), sold over a million copies and brought him to widespread notice; his later musical depictions of exotic scenes caught the public imagination and established his fortune. Such works as In a Persian Market (1920), In a Chinese Temple Garden (1923), and In the Mystic Land of Egypt (1931) became best-sellers in print and on records; by the late 1920s he was Britain's first millionaire composer. His celebrations of British scenes were equally popular: examples include Cockney Suite (1924) with its scenes of London life, and his ceremonial music for royal events. His works were frequently recorded during his heyday, and a substantial part of his output has been put on CD in more recent years. Ketèlbey's popularity began to wane during the Second World War and his originality also declined; many of his post-war works were re-workings of older pieces and he increasingly found his music ignored by the BBC. In 1949 he moved to the Isle of Wight, where he spent his retirement, and he died at home in obscurity. His work has been reappraised since his death; in a 2003 poll by the BBC radio programme Your Hundred Best Tunes, Bells Across the Meadows was voted the 36th most popular tune of all time. On the last night of the 2009 Proms season the orchestra performed his In a Monastery Garden, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Ketèlbey's death—the first time his music had been included in the festival's finale.

Henri Verdun (1895–1977) was a French composer of film scores.

Igor Borisovich Markevitch (Russian: Игорь Борисович Маркевич, Igor Borisovich Markevich, Ukrainian: Ігор Борисович Маркевич, Ihor Borysovych Markevych; 27 July 1912 – 7 March 1983) was a Russian-born composer and conductor who studied and worked in Paris and became a naturalized Italian and French citizen in 1947 and 1982 respectively. He was commissioned in 1929 for a piano concerto by impresario Serge Diaghilev of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Markevitch settled in Italy during World War II. After the war, he moved to Switzerland. He had an international conducting career from there. He was married twice and had three sons and two daughters.

Daniel Doura (pronounced [daˈnjel ˈdowɾa]; born 9 August 1957) is an Argentine composer of classical music. Considered one of the Argentine composers who currently have international exposure, Doura is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Columbia, and among his teachers were John Cage, Mario Davidovsky, Chou Wen-chung, Alberto Ginastera, Luciano Berio, Tōru Takemitsu, Milton Babbitt and John Adams, among others. He received the Best Composition award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1985 and was a finalist for the Best Composition award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S).In 2007, he premiered the symphonic poem Visiones patagónicas, awarded by the Argentine Music Critics Association (Spanish: Asociación de Críticos Musicales de la Argentina) as the best Argentine premiere of the year. The following year, he composed Sinfonía argentina together with the writer Alejandro Roemmers, a symphonic-choral work conceived on the occasion of the Argentine Bicentennial celebrations, which began with that of the May Revolution in 2010 and ended with that of the Independence in 2016. Sinfonía argentina had its Argentine premiere in 2011 at the Teatro Colón and its world premiere in 2018 in a series of performances in the Czech Republic and Germany. To present the work, Doura and Roemmers held discussion events in 14 provinces of Argentina, and in 2017 they received the "Bicentennial Edition" Gold Disc award at the Embassy of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.In addition, Doura has composed music for ballets, art exhibitions and films, receiving the Best Score award at the 1985 New York University (NYU) Film Festival for his work on Commercial for Murder by director Amy Goldstein. In 2019, he again received the distinction of Best Argentine Premiere from the Argentine Music Critics Association for his composition Sueños de verano. Doura is a member of ASCAP and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the organization that holds the Grammy Awards. He is also a co-founder of PAMAR of New York, a non-profit organization for cultural exchange in the Americas; and, since 2020, he works as director of the audiovisual production company Franciscus Productions, which is based in Madrid.