Contemporary Classical Composers - new discoveries

The OP has confined his query to currently living composers, which eliminates a lot of composers recommended here.  I guess Jennifer Higdon or Lowell Lieberman come to mind, though neither get my pulse racing

Can you recommend any Zimmer that isn’t a movie score?

@czarivey 

while you are at it, can you recommend a Nuevo Tango composer other than Piazzola?  I am definitely interested 

My tastes are more along the lines of @mahgister , but I concur with @simonmoon ,, that ultimately taste is subjective and we shouldn’t impose ours on others.

I think one of turn offs for me of the Second Viennese School (SVS) was the dogmatic approach of its adherents.  They loudly argued that tonality dead, that music must inevitably evolve towards serialism, in the same manner that Communism argued that Capitalism was dead and that world economies would inevitably be Red.  It isn’t the music that I necessarily dislike.  Unmoored from these ideological underpinnings, I find a lot of it worth exploring 

I love Simpson, but I was just noting that the OP had made an arbitrary cut off that he wanted currently living composers.  I would be more than happy to have a separate thread devoted to composers active after 1920

Yes, I over simplified, as many composers can’t be pigeon holed into one of the two camps.  Perhaps there are 3 main divisions.  The first two that I previously elucidated would probably describe Classical Music for a good chunk of the 20th Century, but in the last 50 years or so we have rise of composers who find these distinctions irrelevant, just want to create, and let people like me do the pigeon holing.

  I dislike minimalism.  If I want to listen to mind numbing repetition I can tune into pop music.

  Ives is truly unique.  For me, he is a composer that I tend to respect more than I love.  I do like his Concord Sonata, and Central Park in the Dark.  I enjoy the 4 symphonies but tend not to seek them out.

  Not that familiar with Nyman

Define contemporary . For me that could mean mid twentieth century.

I think the big division occurs between Modernists who were deliberately trying to break with previous generations, and those that viewed their music as part of the long tradition.

  The Second Viennese School still sounds pretty radical to my ears.  It is interesting that the likes of Webern and Berg were contemporaneous with Rachmaninov , Sibelius and Vaughn Williams 

  I really enjoy Walter Piston and American composers who followed in his wake,such as Copland, Bernstein, Diamond, Perischetti, Schuman, Harris.  Over the pond Simpson and Rawsthorne.  In Russia after Shostakovich and Vainberg Schnittke and Gulbaidulina.  From Poland Bacewicz.