celebration
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Louis Armstrong *VIII 4 1901 — The Life You Give
Louis Armstrong, born August 4 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A., was leading trumpeter and one of the most influential artists in jazz history. He grew up in dire poverty in New Orleans, Louisiana, when jazz was very young. As a child he worked at odd jobs and sang in a boys’ quartet. In 1913…
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James Baldwin *VIII 2 1924 — The Life You Give
James Baldwin, born James Arthur Baldwin on August 2 1924 in New York, New York, is the essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in the United States of America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later,…
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Kate Bush *VII 30 1958 — The Life You Give
Throughout the entirety of a one-of-a-kind creative journey, Kate Bush has achieved the rare feat of making innovative, fearlessly experimental work that’s also wildly successful. From the start, Bush’s music was ambitious and strange, and her mélange of art rock, pop hooks, theatrical twists, fantastical vocal performances, and complex musicianship resulted in hits. She became…
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Geddy Lee *VII 29 1953 — The Life You Give
Few hard rock bassists have been as influential as Rush’s Geddy Lee. Born Gary Weinrib on July 29, 1953, in Toronto, his parents migrated from Europe to Canada and got his nickname “Geddy” from when his mother would try to pronounce “Gary” in her accent. Taking up bass as a teenager and influenced by the…
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Robin Williams *VII 21 1951 — The Life You Give
Robin Williams, born Robin McLaurin Williams, July 21, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., is the comedian and actor known for his manic stand-up routines and his diverse film performances. He won an Academy Award for his role in Good Will Hunting (1997). Williams’s father, Robert, was an executive for the Ford Motor Company, and his…
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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…
Sila Blume 