Happy Birthday
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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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Ignaz Bösendorfer *VII 28 1796 — The Life You Give
Ignaz Bösendorfer, born July 28, 1796, in Vienna, Austria, is the builder of pianos and founder of the firm that bears his name. Bösendorfer served an apprenticeship with the Viennese piano maker Joseph Brodmann. After Franz Liszt began using Bösendorfer’s instruments, his company gained international fame, and Bösendorfer was formally recognized by the Austrian emperor…
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Marcel Duchamp *VII 28 1887 / The Life You Give
Marcel Duchamp, born July 28, 1887, in Blainville, France, is the artist who broke down the boundaries between works of art and everyday objects. After the sensation caused by Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912), he painted few other pictures. His irreverence for conventional aesthetic standards led him to devise his famous ready-mades and…
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Enrique Granados *VII 27 1867 / La Vida Que Das
See the biography in English below Enrique o Enric Granados y Campiña nacido en Lérida, 1867, en el canal de la Mancha, fue pianista y compositor español, hijo de padre cubano y de madre gallega. Su disposición para la música se reveló ya en su niñez; estudió los primeros elementos de solfeo y teoría, en…
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Pina Bausch *VII 27 1940 — The Life You Give
Born Phillippine Baush, on July 27th, 1940 into a publican family in Solingen, she discovered her love of dance at an early age and joined children’s ballet classes where her talent was recognised. In 1955 she began a professional dance education at the Folkwang School in Essen, led by Kurt Jooss, a pioneer of the…
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Alexis Weissenberg *VII 26 1929 — The Life You Give
If one wanted to make a biographical feature film about a classical musician, the life of the Bulgarian-American-French pianist Alexis Weissenberg would furnish ideal subject material. Born in Sofia in 1929, Weissenberg was taught to play the piano by his mother. Several members of her family were Vienna Conservatory-trained musicians, and Weissenberg grew up in…
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Stanley Kubrick *VII 26 1938 — The Life You Give
Stanley Kubrick, born July 26, 1928, in Bronx, New York, U.S.A., is the motion-picture director and writer whose films are characterized by his dramatic visual style, meticulous attention to detail, and a detached, often ironic or pessimistic perspective. An expatriate, Kubrick was nearly as well known for his reclusive lifestyle in the English countryside as…
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Lovis Corinth *VII 21 1858 — The Life You Give
Lovis Corinth, born Franz Heinrich Louis on July 21, 1858, in Tapiau, East Prussia [now Gvardeysk, Russia], is the German painter known for his dramatic figurative and landscape paintings. Corinth underwent a lengthy period of academic artistic training that began in 1876, when he enrolled at the Academy of Königsberg. He studied in Munich from…
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Carlos Santana *VII 20 1947 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
– Lea la biografía en español abajo – Carlos Santana, born Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán, July 20, 1947, in Autlán de Navarro, Mexico), is the musician whose popular music combined rock, jazz, blues, and Afro-Cuban rhythms with a Latin sound. Santana began playing the violin at age five; by age eight, however, he had switched…
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Brian May *VII 19 1947 — The Life You Give
Few rock guitarists possess a playing style as instantly recognizable as Queen’s Brian May. With his orchestrated guitar armies (multi-tracked guitar lines overdubbed on top of each other) and instantly memorable, well-constructed melodic leads, May is in a class all by himself. Born in Hampton, Middlesex, in July 1947, May showed an interest in music…
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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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Pinchas Zukerman *VII 16 1948 — The Life You Give
Pinchas Zukerman, born July 16, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Israel, is the violinist, violist, and conductor who earned widespread acclaim in a career that spanned more than five decades. Zukerman began playing at about the age of seven; when he was eight he entered the Tel Aviv Academy of Music. In 1962, sponsored by violinist…
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Linda Ronstadt *VII 15 1946 — The Life You Give
Linda Ronstadt, born Linda Marie Ronstadt, on July 15, 1946, in Tucson, Arizona, is the singer with a pure, expressive soprano voice and eclectic artistic tastes, whose performances called attention to a number of new songwriters and helped establish country rock music. After winning attention with a folk-oriented trio, the Stone Poneys, in California in…
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