Isaac Stern, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and John Philip Sousa head the first class of inductees to the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

Those selected were announced Monday at the Juilliard School in New York. Ceremonies will be at Cincinnati's Music Hall on May 24.Among the other 25 inductees plus the Marine Band are composer Elliott Carter, soprano Leontyne Price, composer-conductor Gunther Schuller and conductor Robert Shaw.

Others are Scott Joplin, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, composer-conductor, Charles Ives, John Knowles Paine, Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions and Igor Stravinsky.

Conductors to be honored are Serge Koussevitzky, Fritz Reiner, Leopold Stokowski, Arturo Toscanini and Theodore Thomas. Contralto Marian Anderson and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky also are being inducted.

The hall "wants to celebrate people who have contributed to American music and music in America," said Samuel Adler, co-chairman of the Hall of Fame's artistic directorate.

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