Music
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Antonio Salieri *VIII 18 1750 / The Life You Give
Antonio Salieri, born Aug. 18, 1750, in Legnago, Republic of Venice [Italy], is the composer whose operas were acclaimed throughout Europe in the late 18th century. At the age of 16, Salieri was taken to Vienna by F.L. Gassmann, the imperial court composer and music director (Hofkapellmeister), and was introduced to Emperor Joseph II. During…
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Cécile Chaminade *VIII 8 1857 — The Life You Give
Cécile Chaminade, born Aug. 8, 1857, in Paris, France, is the composer and pianist known chiefly for her piano music, which she performed on numerous concert tours, particularly in England. Chaminade’s earliest music studies were with her mother, a pianist and singer. Because her father forbade her enrollment in a conservatory, Chaminade studied composition privately…
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Manitas de Plata *VIII 7 1921 / The Life You Give
When the guitarist Manitas de Plata became an international star in the 1960s, his was the name most widely associated with flamenco. At the time, music was classified as either popular or classical: the term “world music” had not been coined and the wizardry of the Gypsy from the south of France was regarded as…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Harry Partch *VI 24 1901 — The Life You Give
Harry Partch, born June 24, 1901, in Oakland, Calif., U.S.A., is the visionary and eclectic composer and instrument builder, largely self-taught, whose compositions are remarkable for the complexity of their scores (each instrument has its own characteristic notation, often involving 43 tones to each octave) and their employment of unique instruments of his invention. Partch’s…
Sila Blume 