Which composers did you first start listening to who inspired you to write and release neo-classical music?
For me, early on I discovered Ludovico Einaudi and a number of his pieces which got me back into the piano after not playing for a number of years. I also learnt River Flows in You by Yiruma, which exposed me to the modern classical genre. I further discovered Julien Marchal through his Insight series where I found out about felted piano recordings (well worth a listen). I then discovered the Peaceful Piano playlist on Spotify and listened to quite a few composers on there include Nils Frahm, Joep Beving, Chad Lawson and many others within our musical community. And eventually I decided to release some of my own compositions in a similar neo-classical style.
It's hard to say there are composers that got me into creating solo piano. I started very early with just improvising and composing. So I'd do that nevertheless.The biggest inspirations for sure were Yiruma, Ludovico Einaudi, Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarret and Jordan Rudess. I played and read a lot of those. While being among other epic composers it's stephan moccio for sure that inspires me the most. Just inspire each other around here is fantastic
When I tooked piano lessons my favorite composer was Debussy. I discovered later in life Yiruma. He really inspired me to compose my own music and to have a musical identity. I also like Olafur Arnalds and Kyle Landry (a popular pianist Youtuber)
It's interesting to see the path many of you have taken, I'm more in the same boat as @Velislava Franta since it started with classical music for me.
Some of the noteworthy composers I have been inspired by are Philip Glass, John Cage, Mozart, Erik Satie and Debussy.
My knowledge of neo-classical started with Max Richter's album 'The Blue Notebooks' and from there I learned about Keith Kenniff (Goldmund), Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm, who have been my biggest inspirations in that genre.
I came to neo-classical music via classical, so classical composers for piano like Chopin, Debussy, and Skryabin are still a major inspiration.
I like film music too because it creates different moods. Michael Giacchino is one of my favorite composers. His score for LOST is pure minimalist brilliance.
I discovered neo-classical composers through SoundCloud and Spotify. I like the unusual harmonic progressions of Joep Beving, the fluid textures of Olivia Belli, and the deliberate simplicity of Simeon Walker, to name just a few.
It all started with Ludovico Einaudi, who's still my biggest inspiration and the reason why i started playing the piano in the first place. Then Yann Tiersen (his older pieces, now he's into analog and synths and weird stuff lol), Alexis Ffrench... and Joep Beving who introduced me to felt piano!
For me, the first song i learned back in 2016 was Nuvole Bianche by Ludovico Einaudi. I had never played piano before that but somehow i managed to learn it by watching youtube videos. From that moment i fell in love with Ludovico's songs, then i discovered Yiruma, Giovanni Allevi, Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Fabrizio Paterlini. Like you, i discovered Peaceful Piano on spotify about a year ago and i really liked some composers such as Stephan Moccio, Joep Beving too and some that are part of this community like @a.blomqvist and @vontmer.
So, these ones are the mainly ones that inspired me in making music, but personally every composer i listen, even the smaller ones, can inspire me. I am always looking for new inspiration
The four composers that inspired me to start writing were: Joep Beving (his first album), Nils Frahm ("Screws" and "Felt"), Jacob David's first album, and Otto Totland's stuff.