Music
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Shirley Verrett *V 31 1931 — The Life You Give
Shirley Verrett was one of America’s finest opera stars and recital singers, and was one of the remarkable generation of great African-American singers who came to international prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. She studied voice in Los Angeles with Anna Fitziu and Hall Johnson. In 1955, she won the nationally broadcast CBS program Arthur…
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Pauline Oliveros *V 30 1932 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
Pauline Oliveros, born May 30, 1932, in Houston, Texas, U.S.A., is the composer and performer known for conceiving a unique, meditative, improvisatory approach to music called “deep listening.” Oliveros was raised in a family that encouraged involvement with music. At age 10 she was introduced to the accordion by her mother, who was a pianist.…
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Nurit Tilles *V 29 1952 — The Life You Give
The accomplished pianist, Nurit Tilles, was born in New York on May 29, 1952. She studied at the preparatory division of the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y. (1961-68) and at the Oberlin (Ohio) Coll. Cons. of Music (B.Mus., 1973); after taking courses in tabla and gamelan at the Center for World Music (1974), she…
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György Ligeti *V 28 1923 — The Life You Give
György Ligeti, born György Sándor Ligeti, May 28, 1923, in Diciosânmartin [now Tîrnăveni], Transylvania, Romania, is a leading composer of the branch of avant-garde music concerned principally with shifting masses of sound and tone colours. Ligeti, the great-nephew of violinist Leopold Auer, studied and taught music in Hungary until the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when…
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Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau *V 28 1925 — The Life You Give
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, born May 28, 1925, in Berlin, Germany, is the operatic baritone and preeminent singer of lieder, distinguished for his lyrical voice, commanding presence, and superb artistry. Fischer-Dieskau studied with Georg Walter before serving in World War II and with Hermann Weissenborn afterward. In 1947 he made his concert debut in Johannes Brahms’s Ein…
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Rubén González *V 26 1919 — The Life You Give
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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Teresa Stratas *V 26 1938 — The Life You Give
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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Miles Davis *V 26 1926 — The Life You Give
Davis’s early playing was sometimes tentative and not always fully in tune, but his unique, intimate tone and his fertile musical imagination outweighed his technical shortcomings. By the early 1950s Davis had turned his limitations into considerable assets. Rather than emulate the busy, wailing style of such bebop pioneers as Gillespie, Davis explored the trumpet’s…
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Alicia de Larrocha *V 23 1923 — La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
See biography in English below Alicia de Larrocha de la Calle nació el 23 de mayo de 1923, en el 4º piso de la calle Córcega nº 263 bis, esquina Calle Enrique Granados, de Barcelona. Fue la tercera de 4 hermanos (Teresa, Berta, Alicia, y Ramón). Sus padres fueron Eduardo de Larrocha y Teresa de…
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Richard Wagner *V 22 1813 — The Life You Give
Richard Wagner, born Wilhelm Richard Wagner, on May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Germany, is the dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them. Among his major works are The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin…
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Rick Wakeman *V 18 1949 — The Life You Give
One of the premier rock keyboardists of the progressive era, Rick Wakeman cut his teeth as a London session musician at the tail-end of the 1960s before earning star status as a member of prog rock superstars Yes in 1971. He left the band in 1973 to concentrate on his burgeoning solo career and within…
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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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Brian Eno *V 15 1948 — The Life You Give
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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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…
Sila Blume 