celebration
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Björk *XI 21 1965 — The Life You Give
Björk, born Björk Gudmundsdottir, November 21, 1965, in Reykjavík, Iceland, is the singer-songwriter and actress best known for her solo work covering a wide variety of music styles. Integrating electronic and organic sounds, her music frequently explored the relationship between nature and technology. Björk recorded her first solo album, a collection of cover versions of…
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Meredith Monk *XI 20 1942 — The Life You Give
Meredith Monk, born Meredith Jane Monk, November 20, 1942, New York City, New York, U.S.A., is the performance artist, a pioneer in the avant-garde, whose work skillfully integrated diverse performance disciplines and media. Monk studied piano and eurythmics from an early age. She earned a B.A. in 1964 from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York.…
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Astrid Lindgren *XI 14 1907 — The Life You Give
Astrid Lindgren, born November 14, 1907, in Vimmerby, Sweden, is the influential writer of children’s books who created such memorable characters as Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren’s great popularity began in 1945 with the publication of Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking), the first of several books with Pippi as a main character. This strangely dressed girl living alone…
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Claude Monet *XI 14 1840 — The Life You Give
Oscar-Claude Monet, born November 14, 1840, in Paris, France, is the painter who became the initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate of the Impressionist style. In his mature works, Monet developed his method of producing repeated studies of the same motif in series, changing canvases with the light or as his interest shifted. These series were…
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky *XI 11 1821 — The Life You Give
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, born Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, Dostoyevsky also spelled Dostoevsky, on November 11 [October 30, Old Style], 1821, Moscow, Russia, is the novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. Dostoyevsky is usually regarded…
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Friedrich von Schiller *XI 10 1759 — The Life You Give
Friedrich Schiller, born Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, Nov. 10, 1759, in Marbach, Württemberg [Germany], is a leading dramatist, poet, and literary theorist, best remembered for such dramas as Die Räuber (1781; The Robbers), the Wallenstein trilogy (1800–01), Maria Stuart (1801), and Wilhelm Tell (1804). Friedrich Schiller was the second child of Lieut. Johann Kaspar Schiller…
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Omara Portuondo! *X 29 1930 — The Life You Give
Omara Portuondo, born October 29 1930 in Havana, Cuba, is a singer whose career has spanned over half a century. Portuondo was born one of three sisters; her mother came from a wealthy Spanish family, and had created a scandal by running off with and marrying a black professional baseball player. Omara started her career…
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Roberto Benigni *X 27 1952 — The Life You Give
Roberto Benigni, born October 27, 1952, in Misericordia, Arezzo, Italy, is an actor and director known for his comedic work, most notably La vita è bella (1997; Life Is Beautiful), for which he won an Academy Award for best actor. Benigni was the son of a poor tenant farmer who had worked in a German…
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Niccolò Paganini *X 27 1782 — The Life You Give
Niccolò Paganini, born October 27, 1782, in Genoa, republic of Genoa [Italy], is the composer and principal violin virtuoso of the 19th century. A popular idol, he inspired the Romantic mystique of the virtuoso and revolutionized violin technique. After initial study with his father, Paganini studied with a local violinist, G. Servetto, and then with…
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Conlon Nancarrow *X 27 1912 — The Life You Give
Conlon Nancarrow was an iconoclastic American composer who wrote in an utterly new way using new instrumental resources. While isolated from the main currents of music, he was virtually ignored by the public and his colleagues until the 1970s. In the 1980s composer György Ligeti said Nancarrow was writing “the best music by any living…
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Sylvia Plath *X 27 1932 — The Life You Give
Sylvia Plath, born October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., is the poet whose best-known works, such as the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the situation of women in mid-20th-century America. Plath…
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Mahalia Jackson *X 26 1911 — The Life You Give
Mahalia Jackson, born October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A., is the gospel music singer, known as the “Queen of Gospel Song.” Jackson was brought up in a strict religious atmosphere. Her father’s family included several entertainers, but she was forced to confine her own musical activities to singing in the church choir and…
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Domenico Scarlatti *X 26 1685 — The Life You Give
Domenico Scarlatti, born Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, October 26, 1685, in Naples [Italy], is the composer noted particularly for his 555 keyboard sonatas, which substantially expanded the technical and musical possibilities of the harpsichord. Early life and vocal works: Italy Domenico, the son of the famous composer of vocal music Alessandro Scarlatti, was born in the…
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Sir Georg Solti *X 21 1912 — The Life You Give
Georg Solti, born October 21, 1912, in Budapest, Hungary, conductor and pianist, is one of the most highly regarded conductors of the second half of the 20th century. He was especially noted for his interpretations of Romantic orchestral and operatic works. Solti studied at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest with Béla Bartók and…
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Charles Ives *X 20 1874 — The Life You Give
Charles Ives, born Charles Edward Ives, October 20, 1874, in Danbury, Connecticut, U.S.A., is the significant composer known for a number of innovations that anticipated most of the later musical developments of the 20th century. Ives received his earliest musical instruction from his father, who was a bandleader, music teacher, and acoustician who experimented with…
Sila Blume 