Celebration Day
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The Life You Give: Pinchas Zukerman *VII 16 1948
Pinchas Zukerman, born July 16, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Israel, is the violinist, violist, and conductor who earned widespread acclaim in a career that spanned more than five decades. Zukerman began playing at about the age of seven; when he was eight he entered the Tel Aviv Academy of Music. In 1962, sponsored by violinist…
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The Life You Give: Walter Benjamin * VII 15 1892
Walter Benjamin, born July 15, 1892, in Berlin, Germany, is the man of letters and aesthetician, now considered to have been the most important German literary critic in the first half of the 20th century. Born into a prosperous Jewish family, Benjamin studied philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich, and Bern. He settled in…
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The Life You Give: Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918
Ingmar Bergman, born Ernst Ingmar Bergman, July 14, 1918, in Uppsala, Sweden, is the film writer and director who achieved world fame with such films as Det sjunde inseglet (1957; The Seventh Seal); Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries); the trilogy Såsom i en spegel (1961; Through a Glass Darkly), Nattsvardsgästerna (1963; The Communicants, or Winter Light),…
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The Life You Give: Herman Prey *VII 11 1929
Growing up during the regime of the the National Socialist Party, Hermann Prey was scheduled to be drafted at the age of 15 when the end of World War II brought peace and a chance for him to study voice with Gunther Baum and Jaro Prohaska at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. He sang…
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The Life You Give: Carl Orff *VII 10 1895
Carl Orff, born July 10, 1895, in Munich, Germany, is the composer known particularly for his operas and dramatic works and for his innovations in music education. Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music and with the German composer Heinrich Kaminski and later conducted in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. His Schulwerk, a manual describing…
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La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give: Mercedes Sosa *VII 9 1935
See biography in English at the bottom Haydé Mercedes Sosa; San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, 1935 – Buenos Aires, 2009) Cantante argentina, una de las máximas figuras de la música folclórica y testimonial de América Latina en el siglo XX. De humilde origen obrero, su familia descendía de indígenas diaguitas. Empezó a cantar profesionalmente temas…
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The Life You Give: George Sand * VII 1 1804
George Sand, Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dudevant, née Dupin, born July 1, 1804, in Paris, France, is the Romantic writer known primarily for her so-called rustic novels. She was brought up at Nohant, near La Châtre in Berry, the country home of her grandmother. There she gained the profound love and understanding of the countryside that were to…
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The Life You Give: Twyla Tharp *VII 1 1941
Twyla Tharp, born July 1, 1941, in Portland, Indiana, U.S.A., is the dancer, director, and choreographer known for her innovative and often humourous work. Tharp grew up in her native Portland, Indiana, and in Los Angeles, and her childhood included comprehensive training in music and dance. While a student at Barnard College, she studied at…
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The Life You Give: George Walker *VI 27 1922
Although he started out as a highly promising concert pianist in a grand style (some of his most prominent concerts featured concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Brahms), George Walker was writing substantial music from his mid-twenties. By the time he was 40, he had solidly established himself as a flexible, fully contemporary composer and it…
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The Valkyrie (Wagner) premiered today in 1870
Valkyrie, also spelled Walkyrie, Old Norse Valkyrja (“Chooser of the Slain”), in Norse mythology, any of a group of maidens who served the god Odin and were sent by him to the battlefields to choose the slain who were worthy of a place in Valhalla. These foreboders of war rode to the battlefield on horses,…
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The Life You Give: Mick Fleetwood *VI 24 1947
Mick Fleetwood anchored his namesake band Fleetwood Mac through thick and thin, seeing the group evolve from one of the pioneering British blues combos to the biggest pop/rock band in the world. Fleetwood may have never left his seat behind the drums in Fleetwood Mac but he did occasionally step away from the group. Notably,…
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The Life You Give: George Orwell *VI 25 1903
George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, June 25, 1903, in Motihari, Bengal, India, is the novelist, essayist, and critic famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), the latter a profound anti-utopian novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule. Orwell never entirely abandoned his original name, but his first book, Down…
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The Life You Give: Eliades Ochoa *VI 22 1946
From the outset of his career, Eliades Ochoa built his repertoire from Cuban traditional music, in particular son, guarachas, guajiras, and boleros. As a child, he learned to play guitar and tres (an adapted guitar), and also began singing. In 1958 he moved to the city of Santiago and during the following decade, developed a…
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The Life You Give: Peter Pears *VI 22 1910
Sir Peter Pears, born Peter Neville Luard Pears, June 22, 1910, in Farnham, Surrey, England, is the tenor, a singer of outstanding skill and subtlety who was closely associated with the works of Sir Benjamin Britten. He received a knighthood in 1977. Pears studied at the University of Oxford, at the Royal College of Music,…
Sila Blume 