Agnes de Mille achieved fame both as a dancer and choreographer. Among her masterpieces are Rodeo, in which she danced; Fall River Legend; and Three Virgins and a Devil. De Mille changed the face of American musical theatre with her choreography for Oklahoma!, One Touch of Venus, Bloomer Girl, Carousel, Brigadoon, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Paint Your Wagon, and other memorable shows.

Her many honors include three New York Drama Critic’s Circle Awards and two Tony awards. She enjoyed considerable success in television and was the subject of the Emmy Award-winning documentary Agnes: The Indomitable De Mille, produced by Dance in America/PBS.  De Mille was also the author of books including Dance to the Piper, And Promenade Home, To a Younger Dancer, Lizzie Borden: Dance of Death, Speak to Me, Dance With Me, and Where the Wings Grow. She was a founding member of The American Ballet Theatre and her last ballets, The Informer and The Other were great successes for that company. She died in October, 1993 at the age of 88 in New York City.

Morton Gould studied piano and composition at the Institute of Musical Art (later renamed Juilliard) in his native New York City and enjoyed a busy career as a composer and conductor for radio, film, television, and theater. Gould composed musical comedies, orchestral works, and works for piano. His ballets include Fall River Legend for Agnes de Mille and Interplay and I’m Old Fashioned for Jerome Robbins. In 1995 Gould was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Stringmusic, a work commissioned by the Mstistlav Rostropovich and the National Symphony.

Juliano Nunes is Resident Choreographer with Philadelphia Ballet. He was trained at the Brazilian Dance Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro, furthering his studies at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany with a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. He spent his dancing career with Royal Ballet of Flanders, Leipzig Opera Ballet, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart Gauthier Dance, working with such choreographers as William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon, Hans van Manen, Jirí Kylián, Ohad Naharin, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Yuri Grigorovich, Akram Kahn, among others.

Nunes has gone on to receive critical acclaim for his own choreography and has created pieces for the Royal Ballet in London, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theatre 2, Rome Opera House, Acosta Danza, Philadelphia Ballet, Mariinsky Theatre, Ballet Zürich Opera House, Ballet Jazz de Montreal, Staatstheater Hannover, Atlanta Ballet, Ballet West, Origen Festival Cultural, Teatro San Carlo, and Netflix’s “Tiny Pretty Things.” Nunes has created visual works with artists such as Penelope Cruz, Residente, and FKA twigs.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, a great nephew of Charles Darwin, was born in Gloucestershire, England to a wealthy and progressive family. While still a music student he developed a lasting interest in English folk songs, which he collected through extensive travel around the countryside. This annoyed teachers greatly, since they still composed in the Teutonic traditions of Beethoven and Brahms. In 1907 Vaughan Willams travelled to Paris to study with Maurice Ravel, who declared him to be “my only pupil who does not write my music”. Like Ravel, Vaughan Williams served in World War I; he lost many friends and suffered permanent hearing damage. After the war he taught at the Royal College of Music and went on to compose a large body of work, including nine symphonies, several operas and ballets, chamber music, and vocal works. The two pieces for which he is best known are The Lark Ascending for violin and orchestra (1914) and Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) for string orchestra.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born to an aristocratic and musical Russian family. In 1888, the Rachmaninoffs moved to Moscow where Sergei entered the conservatory to study piano with Tchaikovsky’s friend, Alexander Siloti, and composition with Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky. Rachmaninoff had a personal connection to Tchaikovsky, who enthusiastically attended young Sergei’s performances. Even before graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff became famous for his famous Prelude in C sharp minor (1891). Nine years later, he composed his iconic Second Piano Concerto. From then on, Rachmaninoff was torn between the economic necessity of performing frequently and the desire to spend more time composing (Sergei Prokofiev and Leonard Bernstein are among the many other notable composers who faced the same dilemma). After the October Revolution in 1917, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia permanently and eventually settled on the Upper West Side of New York City.

Rachmaninoff’s works include three symphonies and several symphonic works, four piano concertos (plus the famous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini), many songs and an enormous number of piano works and transcriptions. About Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff wrote, ” Of all the people and artists whom I have had occasion to meet, Tchaikovsky was the most enchanting. His delicacy of spirit was unique. He was modest like all truly great men and simple as only very few are.”