Nobuo Uematsu (born March 21, 1959) is a Japanese composer of video game music, and one of the most well-known, prolific, and versatile in the field. He has composed music for many games produced by Square Enix (formerly Square), including much of the Final Fantasy series of role playing games, and some pieces for Chrono Trigger.
Ben Folds Five (1993-2000) was a trio formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina who were a mainstay of piano rock until their breakup in 2000. Much of their work was influenced by jazz, evident in frequent improv-styled passages through bridge and/or ending. Ben Folds was the lead singer, pianist, and main composer, Robert Sledge played bass, and Darren Jessee played drums and co-wrote some of the songs, most notably the chorus to "Brick". Sledge and Jessee also delivered backup vocals.
Alicia Keys is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, pianist, record producer, actress, philanthropist, and author who has sold over thirty million records worldwide as of 2007, and has won numerous awards, including nine Grammy Awards, eleven Billboard Music Awards, and three American Music Awards.
Muse is an English rock band formed in Teignmouth, Devon, in 1997, comprising Matthew Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard. The band blends alternative rock, progressive rock, classical music, electronica, and heavy metal, to help form the new sub-genre of new prog. Muse is known best for their energetic live performances and frontman Matthew Bellamy's eccentric interests in global conspiracy, theology and the apocalypse. Muse has released four studio albums. The most recent, Black Holes and Revelations, was also the most critically acclaimed, garnering the band a Mercury Prize nomination and coming third in the NME Albums of the Year list for 2006.