Born Today! 28.05.2025

Geminiano Giacomelli (sometimes Jacomelli) (28 May 1692 – 25 January 1740) was an Italian composer.

Josef Dessauer (28 May 1798 in Prague – 8 July 1876 in Mödling, near Vienna), was a composer from the Austrian Empire who wrote many popular songs, and also some less successful operas.

Friedrich August Wilhelm Baumfelder (28 May 1836 – 8 September 1916 in Dresden) was a German composer of classical music, conductor, and pianist. He started in the Leipzig Conservatory, and went on to become a well-known composer of his time. His many works were mostly solo salon music, but also included symphonies, piano concertos, operas, and choral works. Though many publishers published his work, they have since fallen into obscurity.

Félix Augustin Joseph Vasseur, known as Léon Vasseur (28 May 1844 – 25 May 1917), was a French composer, organist and conductor. While working as a cathedral organist, he turned to composing operettas and soon had a hit with La timbale d'argent (1872). He wrote another thirty operettas but never repeated that early success. He also composed church music including two settings of the mass.

Axel Gade (28 May 1860 – 9 November 1921) was a Danish violinist, composer, and conductor. He was the son of Niels Wilhelm Gade.

Sir George Dyson (28 May 1883 – 28 September 1964) was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War. As a composer Dyson wrote in a traditional idiom, reflecting the influence of his teachers at the RCM, Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford. His works were well known during his lifetime but underwent a period of neglect before being revived in the late 20th century.

Riccardo Zandonai (28 May 1883 – 5 June 1944) was an Italian composer and conductor.

Riccardo Zandonai (28 May 1883 – 5 June 1944) was an Italian composer and conductor.

Nikolai Grigoryevich Sokoloff (28 May 1886 – 25 September 1965) was a Ukrainian-American conductor and violinist.

Mihály Erdélyi (28 May 1895 – 27 January 1979) was a Hungarian composer, lyricist, actor, and producer, particularly prolific in the interwar period. Erdélyi was born in Szeged in 1895 and began a career as an actor then a stage producer, but became most famous for his operettas, including Csókos regiment (1932), Fehérvári huszárok (1933), A csavargólány (1936), Sárgapitykés közlegény (1937), A zimberi-zombori szépasszony (1939), Sárgarigófészek (1940), Vedd le a kalapod a honvéd előtt (1942), and A két kapitány (1943). Many of his songs have entered the Hungarian musical canon as folk music, often without an awareness of the original composer. A dorozsmai szélmalom brought Erdélyi the most lasting fame, and the title piece of the operetta was the subject of many covers and arrangements by popular musicians of the time, including Georges Boulanger, Barnabás von Géczy, Zarah Leander, Will Glahé, Ilja Livschakoff and Karsten Troyke. The piece was usually arranged as a slow foxtrot under the titles of Puszta fox or Le Moulin de Dorozsmà. It gained popularity in South America under the title of Amor en Budapest and in Yiddish as just Budapesht. Many of Erdélyi's works were patriotic or focused on members of the military. As the communist government took power after the war, Erdélyi was blacklisted. He briefly returned to the stage as an actor from 1955 to 1958, but this represented his only theatre-related work after the war. He died in Budapest in 1979 at the age of 83.

Walter Goehr (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈɡøːɐ̯]; 28 May 1903 – 4 December 1960) was a German composer and conductor who from 1937, lived and worked in the UK. He was the father of composer Alexander Goehr.

György Sándor Ligeti (; Hungarian: [ˈliɡɛti ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time". Born in Romania, he lived in the Hungarian People's Republic before emigrating to Austria in 1956. He became an Austrian citizen in 1968. In 1973 he became professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he worked until retiring in 1989. His students included Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin and Michael Daugherty. He died in Vienna in 2006. Restricted in his musical style by the authorities of Communist Hungary, only when he reached the West in 1956 could Ligeti fully realise his passion for avant-garde music and develop new compositional techniques. After experimenting with electronic music in Cologne, Germany, his breakthrough came with orchestral works such as Atmosphères, for which he used a technique he later dubbed micropolyphony. After writing his "anti-anti-opera" Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti shifted away from chromaticism and towards polyrhythm for his later works. He is best known by the public through the use of his music in film soundtracks. Although he did not directly compose any film scores, excerpts of pieces composed by him were taken and adapted for film use. The sound design of Stanley Kubrick's films, particularly the music of 2001: A Space Odyssey, drew from Ligeti's work.

Mikhail Iosifovich Nosyrev (Russian: Михаил Иосифович Но́сырев; May 28, 1924 – May 28, 1981) was a Soviet composer. He was born in Leningrad and died in Voronezh.

Peter Talbot Westergaard (28 May 1931 – 26 June 2019) was an American composer and music theorist. He was Professor Emeritus of music at Princeton University.

Maki Ishii (Japanese: 石井 眞木, Hepburn: Ishii Maki, May 28, 1936 – April 8, 2003) was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music.

Elena Souliotis (spelled Suliotis in the early part of her career; Greek: Έλενα Σουλιώτη; 28 May 1943 – 4 December 2004) was a Greek operatic soprano.

Franghiz Ali Aga Kïzï Ali-Zadeh (born 28 May 1947) is an Azerbaijani composer and pianist of contemporary classical music, chairperson of the Composers Union of Azerbaijan. Her music synthesizes Western classical modernist techniques with the Azerbaijani mugham art music. Among her better known works are the chamber piece Gabil Sajahy (1979) for cello and piano, as well as the ballet Empty Cradle (1993); she has also written instrumental, vocal and film music.

Pamelia Stickney (formerly known as Pamelia Kurstin) is an American theremin player. She has performed and recorded with many artists including David Byrne, Yoko Ono, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, David Garland, Seb Rochford, Otto Lechner and Simone Dinnerstein, and was instrumental to the final design of Robert Moog's Etherwave Pro Theremin, for which she was the primary test musician. Kurstin has made various film, television and radio appearances, most notably on Saturday Night Live. and in the 2004 documentary Moog. Stickney has also presented talks at events such as TED. Her background as a jazz musician on the upright bass has led to develop a "walking bass" theremin technique. She was based in New York until 2005; she now lives in Vienna, Austria. Stickney was first introduced to the theremin during production of the album Into the Oh in 1999 by Luaka Bop duo Geggy Tah – singer/writer Tommy Jordan and keyboardist Greg Kurstin. She recorded Gymnopedie in 2000 as a member of the theremin/keyboard duo called "The Kurstins" with her then-husband, Greg. Her first solo album Thinking Out Loud was released in 2007 on John Zorn's Tzadik label. In 2011 the London-based label Slowfoot released Ouch Evil Slow Hop, a collaboration between Pamelia and Seb Rochford. In 2013, Stickney formed Blueblut with Mark Holub and Chris Janka. The Vienna-based trio released their first album hurts so gut on Bandcamp in 2014.

Sarah Nemtsov (née Reuter, born 28 May 1980) is a German composer. Nemtsov was born in Oldenburg and now lives in Berlin. She started her music lessons and composing aged eight. She started playing the oboe aged 14. Her compositions are recognizable through their confrontation with literature and other art forms. Her catalogue includes more than 150 compositions in almost all genres, from solo to orchestra, including large stage works and multimedia. She became a full-time composer in 2007. Several of her works are published by Peermusic Classical GmbH. Since 2016, her works are published by Ricordi. She is married to the pianist and musicologist Jascha Nemtsov. Her mother was the painter Elisabeth Naomi Reuter. Since 2022, she is professor for composition at the University Mozarteum Salzburg, Austria.

Seong-Jin Cho (Korean: 조성진; born May 28, 1994) is a South Korean concert pianist. He was the winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, the first from the country. Since then, he has regularly performed recital programs in major venues and with the world's foremost orchestras as a soloist. Cho signed with Deutsche Grammophon in 2016, under which he has released seven studio albums and one live recording. He is the Artist in Residence of the Berlin Philharmonic for the 2024–25 season.