The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#7551
Michael Rießler
#136326
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Michael Rießler, also transcribed Michael Riessler, is a German linguist and professor at the University of Eastern Finland since August 2020. Biography Rießler grew up in the village of Borne, today a district of Bad Belzig, in the former East Germany, where his parents worked at a collective farm. He went to school in Belzig, studied agriculture and in 1990 completed his high school education with passing the Abitur at the Betriebsberufsschule des Volkseigenes Gutes Kaltenhausen in Jüterbog. From 1990 to 1991 he did his civil service service in Potsdam and then studied Nordic languages, European ethnology and Bulgarian at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#7552
Michael Wollny
#142945
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Michael Wollny is a German jazz pianist and a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig. He has played with international musicians including Joachim Kühn, Tamar Halperin, Marius Neset, Andreas Schaerer, Émile Parisien and Vincent Peirani, and recorded award-winning albums. In his Michael Wollny Trio, he has played with percussionist and bassist Tim Lefebvre.
Go to Profile#7553
Nikki Sanderson
#89445
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Nikki Sanderson is an English actress and former glamour model who is known for playing Candice Stowe in the television soap opera Coronation Street, Dawn Bellamy in Heartbeat and Maxine Minniver in Hollyoaks. During her time at Coronation Street and since, she has also been a television presenter on programmes such as CD:UK, Junior Eurovision: The British Final and Ministry of Mayhem.
Go to Profile#7554
Mark van de Wiel
#169400
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mark van de Wiel is an English clarinettist, principal clarinettist of the Philharmonia Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta, and a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music.
Go to Profile#7555
András Szőllősy
#120714
Overall Influence
1921 - 2007 (86 years)
András Szőllősy was the creator of the Szőllősy index , a frequently used index of the works of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Szőllősy studied composition under Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where he was a professor of music history and theory from 1950 until his death. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Budapest.
Go to Profile#7556
Billy Childs
#112517
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
William Edward Childs is an American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor from Los Angeles, California, United States. Early life When he was 16, Childs attended the Community School of the Performing Arts sponsored by the University of Southern California. He studied music theory with Marienne Uszler and piano with John Weisenfluh. From 1975 to 1979 he attended the University of Southern California and received a degree in composition under the tutelage of Robert Linn.
Go to Profile#7557
Ashok Aklujkar
#95981
Overall Influence
Ashok Aklujkar is a Sanskritist and Indologist. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. There he taught courses in Sanskrit language and in the related mythological and philosophical literatures from 1969 to 2006. Advanced students have worked under his guidance in the areas of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, religion, and mythology. His published research is mostly in the areas of Sanskrit linguistic tradition and poetics. He has been a visiting professor at Hamburg, Harvard, Rome, Kyoto, Paris, Oxford and Marburg. He is most well kn...
Go to Profile#7558
Karl-Heinz Kämmerling
#138426
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
Karl-Heinz Kämmerling was a notable German academic teacher of classical pianists, who trained pianists at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover for careers as performers and academic teachers, particularly in the early training of highly gifted students.
Go to Profile#7559
Steve Brodie
#128026
Overall Influence
1919 - 1992 (73 years)
Steve Brodie was an American stage, film, and television actor from El Dorado in Butler County in south central Kansas. He reportedly adopted his screen name in memory of Steve Brodie, a daredevil who claimed to have jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 and survived.
Go to Profile#7560
John Drury
#126248
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
John Richard Drury was an American television news anchor from Chicago, Illinois. Drury is most known for serving as anchor on Chicago news broadcasts which included: WGN-TV from 1967 to 1970 and again from 1979 until 1984; WLS-TV from 1970 to 1979 and 1984 until his retirement in 2002. Upon his retirement came the news that he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Drury was a leading activist for ALS research and was a spokesperson for the Brain Research Foundation. Drury died from motor neurone disease in 2007 at age 80.
Go to Profile#7561
John Morris
#113926
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
John Leonard Morris was an American film, television, and Broadway composer, dance arranger, conductor, and trained concert pianist. He collaborated with filmmakers Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder. Early life John Morris was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Thomas Morris, an engineer who designed revolving doors for the Tiffany & Co. flagship store in Fifth Avenue, and Helen Sherratt, a homemaker. He became interested in music as early as three years old when he started learning to play the piano and visiting friends in The Bronx with his parents.
Go to Profile#7562
Adrienne Russell
#152776
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Adrienne Russell is an American academic whose work focuses on the digital-age evolution of journalism and activist communication. She is currently Mary Laird Wood Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and co-director with Matt Powers of the department's Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy.
Go to Profile#7563
Charlie Hunter
#88448
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Charlie Hunter is an American guitarist, composer, and bandleader. First coming to prominence in the early 1990s, Hunter plays custom-made seven- and eight-string guitars on which he simultaneously plays bass lines, chords, and melodies. Critic Sean Westergaard described Hunter's technique as "mind-boggling...he's an agile improviser with an ear for great tone, and always has excellent players alongside him in order to make great music, not to show off." Hunter's technique is rooted in the styles of jazz guitarists Joe Pass and Tuck Andress, two of his biggest influences, who blended bass not...
Go to Profile#7564
Debashree Roy
#95990
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Debashree Roy also known as Debasree Roy, is an Indian actress, dancer, choreographer, politician and animal rights activist. As an actress, she is known for her work in Hindi and Bengali cinema. She has been cited as the reigning queen of Bengali commercial cinema. She acted in more than a hundred films and won over forty awards, including a National Award, three BFJA Awards, five Kalakar Awards and an Anandalok Award. As a dancer, she is known for her stage adaptations of the various forms of Indian folk dances as well as her innovative dance forms imbued with elements from Indian classical, tribal and folk dance.
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Gerald Clayton
#130884
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Gerald William Clayton is a Dutch-born American jazz pianist, composer and bandleader. Biography Clayton attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts; USC's Thornton School of Music, where he studied piano with Billy Childs; and the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Kenny Barron.
Go to Profile#7566
Milorad Pupovac
#103204
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Milorad Pupovac is a Croatian politician and linguist. He is a member of the Sabor, the former president of the Serb National Council, and the president of the Independent Democratic Serb Party. He was also an observer at the European Parliament.
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Robert Novak
#102349
Overall Influence
1931 - 2009 (78 years)
Robert David Sanders Novak was an American syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator. After working for two newspapers before serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he became a reporter for the Associated Press and then for The Wall Street Journal. He teamed up with Rowland Evans in 1963 to start Inside Report, which became the longest running syndicated political column in U.S. history and ran in hundreds of papers. They also started the Evans-Novak Political Report, a notable biweekly newsletter, in 1967.
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Chris Robinson
#86239
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Christopher Mark Robinson is an American musician. He founded the rock band The Black Crowes, then known as Mr. Crowe's Garden, with his brother Rich Robinson in 1984. Chris is the lead singer of The Black Crowes, and he and his brother are the only continuous members of the Crowes. He is the vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, which was formed in 2011 while the Black Crowes were on hiatus. Robinson is noted for his high tenor vocal range and bluesy vocal runs.
Go to Profile#7569
Elżbieta Jabłońska
#100624
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Elżbieta Jabłońska is a Polish contemporary visual artist, and professor. She has served as the Chair of Drawing and has taught art at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń since 1996. Jablonska is known for photography, film, installation art, and performance art. Her artwork engages with Polish stereotypes and myths of women, mothers, and the Catholicism. She lives in Bydgoszcz in northern Poland, in a farming cooperative.
Go to Profile#7570
Stephen Barlow
#129601
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Stephen William Barlow is an English conductor, principally of opera. He was Artistic Director of the Buxton Festival from 2012 to 2018. Barlow was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral before studying at King's School, Canterbury, then moving to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was an Organ Scholar. In 1986 he married the actress Joanna Lumley, with whom he lives in London.
Go to Profile#7571
Richard Cassilly
#120885
Overall Influence
1927 - 1998 (71 years)
Richard Cassilly was an American operatic tenor who had a major international opera career between 1954–90. Cassilly "was a mainstay in the heldentenor repertory in opera houses around the world for 30 years", and particularly excelled in Wagnerian roles like Tristan, Siegmund and Tannhäuser, and in dramatic parts that required both stamina and vocal weight, such as Giuseppe Verdi's Otello and Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson.
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Rigmor Andersen
#116323
Overall Influence
1903 - 1995 (92 years)
Rigmor Andersen was a versatile Danish designer, educator and author. Above all she is remembered for maintaining the traditions of Kaare Klint's furniture school at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
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Cynthia Ling Lee
#61970
Overall Influence
Cynthia Ling Lee is an American dancer, choreographer, and scholar. She performs in contemporary, postmodern, and classical Indian dance techniques. Her research focuses on queer and postcolonial experiences in Asian diasporic performance.
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Ruth Gipps
#133441
Overall Influence
1921 - 1999 (78 years)
Ruth Dorothy Louisa Gipps was an English composer, oboist, pianist, conductor, and educator. She composed music in a wide range of genres, including five symphonies, seven concertos, and numerous chamber and choral works. She founded both the London Repertoire Orchestra and the Chanticleer Orchestra and served as conductor and music director for the City of Birmingham Choir. Later in her life she served as chairwoman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain.
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Mike Saunders
#93218
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael Earl Saunders , also known as Metal Mike, is an American rock critic and the singer of the Californian punk band Angry Samoans. He is credited with coining the music genre label "heavy metal" in a record review for Humble Pie's As Safe as Yesterday Is in the November 12, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone. Six months later in 1971, he used the phrase again while reviewing Sir Lord Baltimore's first album, Kingdom Come, in the pages of Creem magazine.
Go to Profile#7576
Kurt Ballou
#58817
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Kurt Ballou is an American musician and producer based in Massachusetts, best known as the guitarist for hardcore punk band Converge and for his prolific recording and production work at his own GodCity Studio.
Go to Profile#7577
Martin Green
#168292
Overall Influence
Martin Green is an English musician and composer. He is the accordionist in the folk trio Lau, who won a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists. Career His career as a composer began in 2003 with the goliath environmental theatre production of 'Albatross' based on Shackleton's journey, which was the centrepiece of the Glastonbury Festival's Theatre Field in 2004.
Go to Profile#7578
Paul Grabowsky
#99285
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Paul Atherstone Grabowsky is an Australian pianist and composer, founder of the Australian Art Orchestra. Biography Born in Lae, Papua New Guinea, Grabowsky is a pianist and composer of music for film, theatre and opera. His father Alistair had lived in Papua New Guinea with his wife Charlotte since the 1930s working on oil rigs, building roads, flying planes. Grabowsky described his ancestry as "failed Polish aristocracy". His grandfather was a legitimate Polish Count of the Grabowksi noble family, a descendant of Jan Jerzy Grabowski from where he gets his title; his grandfather was exiled from Poland and lived in Scotland.
Go to Profile#7579
Fabien Lévy
#108167
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Fabien Lévy is a French composer. Biography Lévy was born in Paris, France. After having been a jazz pianist, he studied composition with Gérard Grisey, orchestration with Marc–André Dalbavie and ethnomusicology with Gilles Leothaud at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1996 to 2000. Trained in mathematics and mathematical economics , he definitively quit science for music in 1994. In 2001, he went to Berlin on the DAAD Artist program, and in 2002 to the Villa Medici / Academy of France in Rome. In 2004, he shared the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in composition with Johannes Maria Staud and Enno Poppe.
Go to Profile#7580
David Martin
#138689
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
David C. Martin is an American television news correspondent, journalist and author who works for CBS News. He is currently the network's National Security Correspondent reporting from The Pentagon, a position he has held since 1993. Martin has contributed reports to the CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes, and 48 Hours.
Go to Profile#7581
Fern Shaffer
#127284
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Fern Shaffer is an American painter, performance artist, lecturer and environmental advocate. Her work arose in conjunction with an emerging Ecofeminism movement that brought together environmentalism, feminist values and spirituality to address shared concern for the Earth and all forms of life. She first gained widespread recognition for a four-part, shamanistic performance cycle, created in collaboration with photographer Othello Anderson in 1985. Writer and critic Suzi Gablik praised their work for its rejection of the technocratic, rationalizing mindset of modernity, in favor of communion with magic, the mysterious and primordial, and the soul.
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Joey DeFrancesco
#96752
Overall Influence
1971 - 2022 (51 years)
Joey DeFrancesco was an American jazz organist, trumpeter, saxophonist, and occasional singer. He released more than 30 albums under his own name, and recorded extensively as a sideman with such leading jazz performers as trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Houston Person, and guitarist John McLaughlin.
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Kenny Werner
#106515
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kenny Werner is an American jazz pianist, composer, and author. Early life Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 19, 1951, and then growing up in Oceanside, Long Island, Werner began playing and performing at a young age, first appearing on television at the age of 11. Although he studied classical piano as a child, he enjoyed playing anything he heard on the radio and improvisation was his true calling. In high school and his first years of college he attended the Manhattan School of Music as a classical piano major.
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Michael Peters
#65091
Overall Influence
1948 - 1994 (46 years)
Michael Douglas Peters was an African American choreographer and director who is best known for his innovative choreography in music videos. Early life Michael Douglas Peters was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on August 6, 1948, to an African American father and a Jewish mother. His mother enrolled him in his first dance class at the age of 4 because all he ever did was dance around the house. Peters was inspired by Broadway musicals such as “My Fair Lady” and “West Side Story” to pursue a career in the performing arts. He grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn where he experienced gang wars in the neighborhood which would later inspire his choreography.
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Wayne Peterson
#127305
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Wayne Peterson was an American composer, pianist, and educator. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark in 1992, when its board overturned the jury's unanimous selection of Concerto Fantastique by Ralph Shapey.
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Bill Holman
#100755
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Willis Leonard Holman , known professionally as Bill Holman, is an American composer, arranger, conductor, saxophonist, and songwriter working in jazz and traditional pop. His career is over seven decades long, having started with the Charlie Barnet orchestra in 1950.
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Alexander Ivashkin
#116207
Overall Influence
1948 - 2014 (66 years)
Alexander Ivashkin , was a Russian cellist, writer, academic and conductor. He was a professor of music and the Chair of Performance Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London since 1999, the director of the Centre for Russian Music, and the curator of the Alfred Schnittke Archive. In 1996, he published the first English-language biography of the composer Alfred Schnittke.
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John P. Anton
#54604
Overall Influence
1920 - 2014 (94 years)
John P. Anton was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Greek Philosophy and Culture at the University of South Florida. He was Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens, Honorary Member of the Parnassos Literary Society, Honorary Member Phi Beta Kappa and a member of the Florida Philosophical Association. He featured in the Who is Who in the World, the Dictionary of International Biography, the Directory of American Scholars. He received four Honorary Doctorates from: the University of Athens, the University of Patras, the University of Ioannina and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Go to Profile#7589
John Holloway
#144078
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Holloway is a British baroque violinist and conductor, currently based in Dresden, Germany. He is a pioneer of the early music movement. Holloway was born in Neath, Wales, and studied in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. After initial engagements, including at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and at the English Chamber Orchestra, he became manager and concertmaster of the Kent Opera Orchestra in the 1970s. After an encounter with Sigiswald Kuijken in 1972, he started playing the Baroque violin and gained a reputation as violinist, teacher and conductor i...
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Clint Wilder
#44446
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Clint Wilder is a business journalist who has covered the high-tech and clean-tech industries since 1985. Biography Clint Wilder is senior editor at Clean Edge, a clean-tech research and strategy firm in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Oregon, where he coauthors reports and writes columns on industry trends and has been a facilitator at the Clinton Global Initiative. He is a frequent speaker at clean-energy and green business events in the U.S. and overseas, and a regular blogger for the Huffington Post. In 2002, Mr. Wilder won the American Society of Business Publications Editors award for best feature series.
Go to Profile#7591
William Parker
#89456
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
William Parker is an American free jazz double bassist. Beginning in the 1980s, Parker played with Cecil Taylor for over a decade, and he has led the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra since 1981. The Village Voice named him "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time" and DownBeat has called him "one of the most adventurous and prolific bandleaders in jazz".
Go to Profile#7592
Ram Ramirez
#136626
Overall Influence
1913 - 1994 (81 years)
Roger "Ram" Ramirez was a Puerto Rican jazz pianist and composer. He was a co-composer of the song "Lover Man " Early life Ramirez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 15, 1913. He grew up in New York and started playing the piano at a young age.
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Brian Smith
#72644
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Brian William Smith is a British–Canadian guitarist, known for being a founding member of the rock band Trooper. Life and career Early life Smith was born in London and emigrated to Canada in 1951.
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D. Imman
#78202
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Immanuel Vasanth Dinakaran , better known as D. Imman, is an Indian film composer and singer, predominantly working in Tamil cinema. His first film as music director was Thamizhan in 2002. Since then he has composed music for more than 100 films. He is the fifth Tamil music composer to win the National Film Award for Best Music Direction. He has also won the Filmfare Awards South and he has received 4 Filmfare Awards South nominations. He has also won 1 Tamil Nadu State Film Award, 2 Vijay Awards, 1 Edison Award, 1 Ananda Vikadan Cinema Award and 1 Zee Tamil Award. D. Imman is appointed as the...
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Vera Bradford
#154950
Overall Influence
1904 - 2004 (100 years)
Vera Florence Bradford was an Australian classical pianist and teacher, with a very long career. Her playing was admired for its depth and beauty of tone, classical unity and tremendous power. Vera Bradford was born in Melbourne to a musical family. Her mother Edith was a pianist, and her father Frederick and brother Cec were violinists. She started learning the piano at the age of seven, and she graduated from the University of Melbourne Conservatorium in 1927, with the highest honours. In 1928 she took up a scholarship with Percy Grainger in Chicago. She also studied at the Chicago Musical College with Rudolph Ganz and Alexander Raab.
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Rashied Ali
#90974
Overall Influence
1933 - 2009 (76 years)
Rashied Ali, born Robert Patterson was an American free jazz and avant-garde drummer who was best known for performing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane's life. Biography Early life Patterson was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His family was musical; his mother sang with Jimmie Lunceford. His brother, Muhammad Ali, is also a drummer, who played with Albert Ayler. Ali, his brother, and his father converted to Islam.
Go to Profile#7597
Butch Miles
#133297
Overall Influence
1944 - 2023 (79 years)
Charles J. Thornton, Jr. , known professionally as Butch Miles, was an American jazz drummer. He played with the Count Basie Orchestra, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, and Tony Bennett.
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Marcus Roberts
#103786
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Marthaniel "Marcus" Roberts is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and teacher. Early life Roberts was born in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. His mother was a gospel singer who had gone blind as a teenager, and his father was a longshoreman. Blind since age five due to glaucoma and cataracts, Roberts started learning the piano at age five by picking out notes on the instrument at his church until his parents bought a piano when he was eight. He attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida, the alma mater of Ray Charles. Roberts ...
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Ozan Marsh
#145352
Overall Influence
1920 - 1992 (72 years)
Ozan Marsh was a celebrated concert pianist active throughout the world as well as across the United States, and a highly esteemed piano teacher. Drawing on his decades of teaching experience, he put forward a consistent approach to teaching and learning to play the piano with a special focus on the technical side. Marsh had a particular affinity for Chopin and Liszt, having devoted a period of study to the complete works of Liszt.
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Barney Childs
#125122
Overall Influence
1926 - 2000 (74 years)
Barney Sanford Childs was an American composer and teacher. Born in Spokane, Washington, he taught and composed avant-garde music and literature at universities in the United States and United Kingdom.
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