We cover the range of composers from A to Z on COMPOSERS DATEBOOK, and so are delighted to introduce a name from the far end of that spectrum that is brand-new to us -- and perhaps to you, as well. Andrea Teodoro Zani (spelled Z-A-N-I) was born in 1696 in Casalmaggiore, a small town on the river Po, in the province of Cremona, where they made very fine violins. Zani's family was musical, and young Master Zani became a very fine violin player. Antonio Caldara, a noted Venetian composer, heard him play and took him off to Vienna, where Zani was employed for a time as a violinist for the Hapsburg nobility. Zani also composed and published sinfonias and concertos, similar to those of his contemporary Antonio Vivaldi, another Italian violinist and composer who had come to Vienna looking for noble patronage. One of Zani's Viennese patrons must have liked the cello, since, just recently, previously-unknown manuscript scores for 12 Cello Concertos by Zani, each with its own set of parts all ready for performance, were discovered in a 21st-century Austrian music library once owned by an 18th-century Viennese count. For cellists looking for fresh, new repertory, these long-forgotten works from the High Baroque period are a real find. As for Zani, while some of his scores had stayed in Austria, the composer himself eventually returned to Italy and his hometown of Casalmaggiore, where he met his unfortunate end on today's date in 1757 in a carriage accident.