celebration
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Evelyn Glennie *VII 19 1965 / The Life You Give
Evelyn Glennie is the world’s foremost, and first full-time, solo percussionist. She has been pivotal to the expansion of percussion as solo instruments, personally having commissioned over 200 new works. The recipient of enormous media attention due to her deafness, Glennie is likewise noteworthy for the variety of her repertoire and recording projects. Glennie was…
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Nelson Mandela *VII 18 1918 — The Life You Give
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Hendry Mphakanyiswa of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand where he studied law. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against…
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Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918 — The Life You Give
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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Herman Prey *VII 11 1929 — The Life You Give
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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Carl Orff *VII 10 1895 — The Life You Give
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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Gustav Mahler *VII 7 1860 — The Life You Give
Gustav Mahler, born July 7, 1860, in Kaliště, Bohemia, Austrian Empire, is the composer and conductor, noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely ignored for 50 years after his death, Mahler was later regarded as an important forerunner of…
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George Sand * VII 1 1804 — The Life You Give
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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Jean-Paul Sartre *VI 21 1905 — The Life You Give
Jean-Paul Sartre, born June 21, 1905, in Paris, France, is the philosopher, novelist, and playwright, best known as the leading exponent of existentialism in the 20th century. In 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize for Literature, which had been awarded to him “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of…
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Thank you, Alfred Brendel!
January 5 1931 – June 17 2025 (Excerpts from the BBC Obituary) Alfred Brendel, who was considered one of the world’s most accomplished pianists, has died at the age of 94. His representatives confirmed the composer and poet died peacefully in London surrounded by his loved ones on Tuesday. Most critics have acknowledged him as…
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Paul McCartney *VI 18 1942 — The Life You Give
Paul McCartney, born James Paul McCartney, June 18, 1942, in Liverpool, England, is the vocalist, songwriter, composer, bass player, poet, and painter whose work with the Beatles in the 1960s helped lift popular music from its origins in the entertainment business and transform it into a creative, highly commercial art form. He is also one…
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Éva Marton *VI 18 1943 — The Life You Give
Hungarian soprano Eva Marton has enjoyed a highly successful career on the world’s leading operatic stages since the late ’60s. With her powerful, attractive voice she has managed to score numerous successes in the Italian spinto roles of Verdi and Puccini, the heftier roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss, and the more delicate but equally…
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Charles Gounod *VI 17 1818 / The Life You Give
Charles Gounod, born Charles-françois Gounod, June 17, 1818, in Paris, France, is a composer noted particularly for his operas, of which the most famous is Faust. Gounod’s father was a painter, and his mother was a capable pianist who gave Gounod his early training in music. He was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis, where he…
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Igor Stravinsky *VI 17 1882 — The Life You Give
Igor Stravinsky, born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russia, is the composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working…
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Edvard Grieg *VI 15 1843 — The Life You Give
Edvard Grieg, born Edvard Hagerup Grieg, June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway, is the composer who was a founder of the Norwegian nationalist school of music. His father, Alexander Grieg, was British consul at Bergen. The Grieg (formerly Greig) family was of Scottish origin, the composer’s grandfather having emigrated after the Battle of Culloden. His…
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Richard Strauss *VI 11 1864 — The Life You Give
Richard Strauss, born Richard Georg Strauss, June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany, is an outstanding Romantic composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His symphonic poems of the 1890s and his operas of the following decade have remained an indispensable feature of the standard repertoire. Strauss’s father, Franz, was the principal horn player of…
Sila Blume 