Personalities
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The Life You Give: Witold Lutosławski *1913
Lutoslawski was the leading progressive figure in Polish music of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Warsaw, he showed an exceptional musical talent at an early age, with his first compositions dating from 1922. He studied piano, violin, and composition (with Witold Maliszewski, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov), graduating from the Warsaw Conservatory…
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The Life You Give: Marcello Giordani *1963
Marcello Giordani was widely regarded as a standout among his generation’s operatic tenors, both for his numerous acclaimed performances at the world’s major operatic venues, including more than 240 at the Met, and for his many highly praised recordings. He was well known for several roles in the operas of Verdi and Puccini, but he…
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The Life You Give: Neil Diamond *1941
Neil Diamond, born Neil Leslie Diamond on January 24, 1941, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. is singer-songwriter who began his career writing pop songs for other musicians and then launched a solo recording career that spanned more than five decades. Diamond’s interest in music began at age 16, when he obtained his first guitar. After graduating…
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The Life You Give: Sam Cooke *1931
Sam Cooke, born Samuel Cook, on January 22 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S.A., was singer, songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur who was a major figure in the history of popular music and, along with Ray Charles, one of the most influential Black vocalists of the post-World War II period. If Charles represented raw soul, Cooke symbolized…
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The Life You Give: Jim Jarmush *1953
Jim Jarmusch, born January 22, 1953, in Akron, Ohio, is the director and screenwriter whose darkly humorous tone and transcendence of genre conventions established him as a major independent filmmaker. Jarmusch studied at Columbia University and at New York University Film School, where he directed his first feature-length film, Permanent Vacation (1980; released 1986). His…
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The Life You Give: George Balanchine *1904
George Balanchine, born Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze on January 22 [January 9, Old Style], 1904, in St. Petersburg, Russia, was the most influential choreographer of classical ballet in the United States in the 20th century. His works, characterized by a cool neoclassicism, include The Nutcracker (1954) and Don Quixote (1965), both pieces choreographed for the New…
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The Life You Give: David Lynch *1946
David Lynch, born David Keith Lynch on January 20 1946 in Missoula, Montana, U.S.A., is the filmmaker and screenwriter known for his uniquely disturbing and mind-bending visual work. His films juxtapose the cheerfully mundane with the shockingly macabre and often defy explanation. Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and the…
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Martha Argerich — Early Recordings
A prodigy, Argerich was performing professionally by age eight. In 1955 she went to Europe, where her teachers included Friedrich Gulda and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. She won two prestigious competitions in 1957 at age 16: the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition. In 1965 she won the Chopin Piano Competition…
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The Life You Give: Marilyn Horne *1934
Marilyn Horne, born January 16, 1934 in Bradford, Pennsylvania, was one of the most admired singers of her generation, and was a major factor in the bel canto revival of the 1960s. While she was especially associated with the works of Rossini and Handel (she persuaded the Metropolitan Opera to mount Rinaldo for her in…
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The Life You Give: Eva Hesse *1936
Eva Hesse created innovative sculptural forms using unconventional materials such as latex and fiberglass and gave minimal art organic, emotional, and kinetic features. She scorned good taste and the decorative, creating sculptures out of repeated units which embodied opposite extremes. These extremes were born from the extremes of her own life. Hesse is recognized as…
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The Live You Give: Sherrill Milnes *1935
Sherrill Milnes was born on January 10, 1935, and grew up on a dairy farm in Downers Grove, Illinois. Despite a childhood devoted to daily chores, he took voice lessons and studied piano, violin, viola, double bass, clarinet, and tuba. But when it came time for college, he pursued pre-medical studies. After a year and…
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The Life You Give: Maurizio Pollini *1942
Pollini made his debut at age nine. He graduated from the Milan Conservatory in 1959 and won the Ettore Pozzoli Competition that same year, followed by the Warsaw Chopin Competition in 1960. He appeared on the stage more frequently during the second half of the 1960s, playing in the United States for the first time…
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The Life You Give: Alvin Ailey *1931
Alvin Ailey, Jr., born Jan. 5, 1931, in Rogers, Texas, U.S.A., was dancer, choreographer, and director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Having moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1942, Ailey became involved with the Lester Horton Dance Theater there in 1949. Following Horton’s death in 1953, Ailey was director of the…
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The Life You Give: Nikolai Medtner *1880
Russian composer Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (or Metner) was born January 4 1880 in Moscow, to parents of German descent who had lived in Russia for several generations. The family background was musical; his mother’s brother was Fedor Gedike (Theodore Goedicke), a minor Romantic composer and professional pianist. He received early piano lessons from his mother…
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The Life You Give: Isaac Newton *1642
Isaac Newton, born January 4, 1643, [New Style], in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, is the physicist and mathematician, who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colours into the science of light and laid the foundation for…
Sila Blume 