Celebration Day
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Happy Birthday, Tom Jones *1940
Tom Jones, born Thomas John Woodward, June 7, 1940, in Pontypridd, Wales, is the singer with broad musical appeal who first came to fame as a sex symbol with a fantastic voice and raucous stage presence. He was known best for his songs “It’s Not Unusual,” “What’s New, Pussycat?,” “Green, Green Grass of Home,” and…
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The Life You Give: Laurie Anderson *1947
Laurie Anderson, born June 5, 1947, in Wayne, Illinois, U.S.A., is the performance artist, composer, and writer whose work explores a remarkable range of media and subject matter. Anderson began studying classical violin at five years of age and later performed with the Chicago Youth Symphony. In 1966 she moved to New York City, where…
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The Life You Give: Allen Ginsberg *1926
Allen Ginsberg, born June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A., is the poet whose epic poem Howl (1956) is considered to be one of the most significant products of the Beat movement. Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, where his father, Louis Ginsberg, himself a poet, taught English. Allen Ginsberg’s mother, whom he…
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The Life You Give: Iannis Xenakis *1922
Iannis Xenakis, born May 29, 1922, in Brăila, Romania, is the Romanian-born French composer, architect, and mathematician who originated musique stochastique, music composed with the aid of electronic computers and based upon mathematical probability systems. Xenakis was born to a wealthy family of Greek ancestry, and he moved to Greece in 1932. He fought in…
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The Life You Give: Teresa Stratas *1938
Stratas was one of the controversial stars of the latter half of the twentieth century, and one whose personality and life, like that of Callas, another great soprano of Greek descent, are inextricably linked with her performances in the minds of many members of the public. Also like Callas, she had a special magnetism as…
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The Life You Give: Rubén González *1919
Rubén González was one of the last of Cuba’s great Afro-Cuban piano players. Although he had played and recorded with the band led by Enrique Jorrín, the creator of the cha-cha, for a quarter of a century, he had retired from music by the mid-’80s. Things began to change when González recorded with the Afro-Cuban…
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The Life You Give: Carl Linnaeus *1707
Carolus Linnaeus, born on May 23, 1707, in Råshult, Småland, Sweden, is the naturalist and explorer who was the first to frame principles for defining natural genera and species of organisms and to create a uniform system for naming them (binomial nomenclature). Linnaeus was the son of a curate and grew up in Småland, a…
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The Life You Give: Albrecht Dürer *1471
Albrecht Dürer, born May 21, 1471, in the Imperial Free City of Nürnberg, Germany, is the painter and printmaker generally regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. His woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), retain a more…
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The Life You Give: Joe Cocker *1944
After starting out as an unsuccessful pop singer (working under the name Vance Arnold), Joe Cocker found his niche singing rock and soul in the pubs of England with his superb backing group, the Grease Band. He hit number one in the U.K. in November 1968 with his version of the Beatles’ “A Little Help…
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Erik Satie *V 17 1866 / The Life You Give
Erik Satie, born Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, on May 17, 1866, in Honfleur, Calvados, France, is the composer whose spare, unconventional, often witty style exerted a major influence on 20th-century music, particularly in France. Satie studied at the Paris Conservatory, dropped out, and later worked as a café pianist. About 1890 he became associated with…
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Robert Fripp *V 16 1946 / The Life You Give
A truly singular figure in rock music, Robert Fripp is a guitarist, composer, and bandleader who has brought a unique, strikingly intelligent perspective to his work. One of the most technically gifted guitarists in rock, Fripp is the thinking-person’s guitar hero, showing no interest in shredding but eager to challenge himself and blaze new trails…
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Claudio Monteverdi *V 15 1567 / The Life You Give
Claudio Monteverdi, baptized May 15, 1567, Cremona, Duchy of Milan [Italy], is the composer in the late Renaissance, seen as most important developer of the then new genre, the opera. He also did much to bring a “modern” secular spirit into church music. Monteverdi, the son of a barber-surgeon and chemist, studied with the director…
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The Life You Give: Brian Eno *1948
Brian Eno, born Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, May 15, 1948, in Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, is producer, composer, keyboardist, and singer who helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and ’90s and who created the genre of ambient music. While…
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Stevie Wonder *V 13 1950 / The Life You Give
Stevie Wonder, born Steveland Judkins or Steveland Morris, May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan, U.S.A., is the singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind from birth and raised in inner-city Detroit, he was a skilled musician by age eight.…
Sila Blume 