Celebration Day
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Glenn Gould *IX 25 1932 — The Life You Give
Glenn Gould, born Glenn Herbert Gold, September 25, 1932, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the pianist known for his contrapuntal clarity and brilliant, if often unorthodox, performances. Gould studied piano from the age of 3, began composing at 5, and entered the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto at 10, earning its associate degree in…
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Pedro Almodóvar *IX 25 1949 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
Pedro Almodóvar, born Pedro Mercedes Almodóvar Caballero, September 25, 1949, in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, is the filmmaker known for colourful melodramatic films that often feature sexual themes. As a young man, Almodóvar moved to Madrid with the hopes of attending the Spanish national film school, but it had recently been closed under dictator Francisco…
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John Coltrane *IX 23 1926 — The Life You Give
John Coltrane, born September 23, 1926, Hamlet, North Carolina, U.S.A., is the jazz saxophonist, bandleader, composer, and iconic figure of 20th-century jazz. Coltrane’s first musical influence was his father, a tailor and part-time musician. John studied clarinet and alto saxophone [in his] youth and then moved to Philadelphia in 1943 and continued his studies at…
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Ray Charles *IX 23 1930 — The Life You Give
Ray Charles, born Ray Charles Robinson, September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, U.S.A., is the pianist, singer, composer, bandleader, and leading entertainer billed as “the Genius” who was credited with the early development of soul music, a style based on a melding of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz music. When Charles was an infant…
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Leonard Cohen *IX 21 1934 — The Life You Give
Leonard Cohen, born Leonard Norman Cohen, September 21, 1934, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, is the singer-songwriter whose spare songs carried an existential bite and established him as one of the most distinctive voices of 1970s pop music. Already established as a poet and novelist (his first book of poems, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was published…
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Javier Marías *IX 20 1951 – La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
Escritor, ensayista, traductor y editor español, Javier Marías (1951-2022) era el cuarto de cinco hijos de una familia acomodada. Pasó su niñez e infancia en los Estados Unidos, donde su padre, el filósofo y miembro de la R.A.E. Julián Marías, encarcelado y represaliado por el régimen de Franco, era profesor de universidad. Allí vivió rodeado…
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Francesca Caccini *IX 18 1587 — The Life You Give
Francesca Caccini, also called Francesca Signorini, Francesca Signorini-Malaspina, or Francesca Raffaelli, byname La Cecchina, born September 18, 1587, in Florence, Italy, is the composer and singer who was one of only a handful of women in 17th-century Europe whose compositions were published. The most significant of her compositions—published and unpublished—were produced during her employment at…
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Jessye Norman *IX 15 1945 — The Life You Give
Jessye Norman, born Jessye Mae Norman on September 15, 1945, in Augusta, Georgia, U.S.A., is the operatic soprano, one of the finest of her day, who also enjoyed a successful concert career. Norman was reared in a musical family. Both her mother and grandmother were pianists and her father sang in church, as did the…
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Arnold Schönberg *IX 13 1874 — The Life You Give
Arnold Schoenberg, born Arnold Franz Walter Schönberg, September 13, 1874 in Vienna, Austria, is the composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also one of the most-influential teachers of the 20th century; among his most-significant pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Schoenberg’s father,…
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Neil Peart *IX 12 1952 — The Life You Give
Ask just about any rock drummer who their influences are and chances are Rush’s Neil Peart will be high on the list. With his technically demanding, precise, and deeply complex rhythmic style, few rock drummers scaled the heights that Peart did both on record and on-stage as part of the renowned Canadian prog rock trio…
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The Life You Give: Arvo Pärt *IX 11 1935
Arvo Pärt, born September 11, 1935, in Paide, Estonia, is the composer who developed a style based on the slow modulation of sounds such as those produced by bells and pure voice tones, a technique reminiscent of the medieval Notre-Dame school and the sacred music of Eastern Orthodoxy; Pärt was a devout Orthodox Christian. His…
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The Life You Give: Theodor Adorno *IX 11 1903
Theodor Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund, on Sept. 11, 1903, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is the philosopher who also wrote on sociology, psychology, and musicology. Adorno obtained a degree in philosophy from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1924. His early writings, which emphasize aesthetic development as important to historical evolution, reflect the influence…
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Henry Purcell *IX 10 1659 / The Life You Give
Henry Purcell, born September 10 1659, London, England, is the composer of the middle Baroque period, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas; and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream called The Fairy Queen. Purcell, the most important English composer of his…
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Antonin Dvořák *IX 8 1841 / The Life You Give
Antonín Dvořák, born Antonín Leopold Dvořák, September 8, 1841, in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [now in Czech Republic], is the first Bohemian composer to have achieved worldwide recognition, noted for turning folk material into 19th-century Romantic music. Dvořák was born, the first of nine children, in Nelahozeves, a Bohemian village on the Vltava River north…
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Angela Gheorghiu *IX 7 1965 / The Life You Give
Angela Gheorghiu, born Angela Burlacu on September 7, 1965, in Adjud, Romania, is an operatic lyric soprano noted for her powerful voice and commanding stage presence. Gheorghiu early realized her love of singing, and she was supported by her family in working toward a career in opera. She left home at age 14 to study…
Sila Blume 