Happy Birthday
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Witold Lutosławski *I 25 1913 — The Life You Give
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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Virginia Woolf *I 25 1882 — The Life You Give
Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Stephen, on January 25, 1882, in London, England, is the writer whose novels, through their nonlinear approaches to narrative, exerted a major influence on the genre. While she is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic…
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Warren Zevon *I 24 1947 — The Life You Give
Few of rock & roll’s great misanthropes were as talented, as charming, or as committed to their cynicism as Warren Zevon. A singer and songwriter whose music often dealt with outlaws, mercenaries, sociopaths, and villains of all stripes, Zevon’s lyrics displayed a keen and ready wit despite their often uncomfortable narrative circumstances, and while he…
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Édouard Manet *I 23 1832 — The Life you Give
Édouard Manet, born January 23 1832, in Paris, France, is the painter who broke new ground by defying traditional techniques of representation and by choosing subjects from the events and circumstances of his own time. His Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), exhibited in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, aroused the hostility…
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Jim Jarmush *I 22 1953 — The life you Give
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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Plácido Domingo *I 21 1941 — La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
Plácido Domingo, nacido José Plácido Domingo Embil el 21 de enero de 1941, en Madrid, España, es cantante de ópera español, y uno de los más destacados tenores del panorama operístico del siglo XX. A los pocos años de nacer se trasladó con su familia a Latinoamérica, donde sus padres, cantantes de zarzuela, tenían que…
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David Lynch *I 20 1946 — The Life You Give
David Lynch, born David Keith Lynch, January 20, 1946, 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 family moved…
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Rubén Darío *I 18 1867 — The Life You Give
Rubén Darío, born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, in Metapa, Nicaragua, on January 18 1867, is the influential poet, journalist, diplomat, and leader of the Spanish American literary movement known as Modernismo, which flourished at the end of the 19th century. He revivified and modernized poetry in Spanish on both sides of the Atlantic through his…
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Takeshi Kitano *I 18 1947 — The Life You Give
Kitano Takeshi, born January 18, 1947, in Tokyo, Japan, is the actor, director, writer, and television personality known for his dexterity with both comedic and dramatic material. Kitano was born into a working-class family in Tokyo. He planned to become an engineer but dropped out of college to enter show business in 1972. With his…
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Susan Sontag *I 16 1933 — The Life You Give
Susan Sontag (born January 16, 1933, New York, New York, U.S.—died December 28, 2004, New York) was an American intellectual and writer best known for her essays on modern culture. Sontag (who adopted her stepfather’s name) was reared in Tucson, Arizona, and in Los Angeles. She attended the University of California at Berkeley for one…
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Yukio Mishima *I 14 1925 — The Live You Give
Mishima Yukio, born Hiraoka Kimitake, January 14 1925 in Tokyo, Japan, was a prolific writer who is regarded by many critics as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century. Mishima was the son of a high civil servant and attended the aristocratic Peers School in Tokyo. During World War II, having failed to…
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Morton Feldman *I 12 1926 — The Life You Give
Morton Feldman, born on January 12 1926, in New York, N.Y., U.S.A., was an avant-garde composer. He studied composition with Wallingford Riegger and Stefan Wolpe. In the 1950s, much more influenced by Abstract Expressionist painters than by other composers, he began using a method of graphic notation that included such devices as indicating the length…
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Blixa Bargeld *I 12 1959 — The Life You Give
A powerfully influential figure in experimental and avant-garde rock, Blixa Bargeld is best known as one of the founders of the pioneering industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, as well as for his work with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Blixa Bargeld was born Christian Emmerich in the Friedenau quarter of Berlin, Germany on January 12,…
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Eva Hesse *I 11 1936 — The Life You Give
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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Sherrill Milnes *I 10 1935 — The Life You Give
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…
Sila Blume 