The phrase "a live composer" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a composer who is currently alive, often in contexts discussing music, performances, or events featuring their work.
Example: "The concert will feature a live composer who will conduct the orchestra during the performance of his latest symphony."
Alternatives: "an active composer" or "a contemporary composer".
SANTA FE, N.M. — When an opera company presents a world premiere by a living composer, the opera in question usually represents the composer's current style and approach.
His use of music by a living composer, Michael Torke, does much to show ballet as a contemporary art.
Welsh composer Sir Karl Jenkins, and his The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace is the highest placed work by a living composer at No 15.
There were two works by a living composer, Marius Constant, a Romanian-born Parisian who has been championed by George Rothman and Anthony Korf, the orchestra's directors.
It is the only work by a living composer in the Royal Opera's current season; there are none at all featuring in the next.
And in June and July 1942 the German authorities allowed French musicians to commemorate Honegger's 50th birthday with a weeklong festival, the only such celebration of a living composer in occupied France.
The program included one work by a living composer, Federico Ibarra's engaging and dramatically dark-hued Sinfonía No. 2, which opens with mysterious rumblings in the low strings and brasses and is punctuated by ominous beats.
Imagine if Mr. Perahia had played a piece by a living composer who also reveres Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, like Leon Kirchner, or something by a young composer that might have provided a fresh jolt.
The pianist who had played two of Salvatore Sciarrino's nocturnes the previous night, he said, had never studied the music of a living composer before and was thrilled by what she saw in front of her.
But it was nevertheless encouraging that the Lyric presented a work by a living composer as the third annual production in its Opera Annex series, which brings the company to locations other (and smaller and cheaper) than its usual home in the downtown theater district.
