Music
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The Virtuous Black XIII: Prince
Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, on June 7 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A., is the singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, dancer, and performer on keyboards, drums, and bass who was among the most talented American musicians of his generation. Like Stevie Wonder, he was a rare composer who could perform at a professional level on virtually…
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“Whenever Leontyne Price sang, it was an event.”
“Whenever Leontyne Price sang, it was an event.” Peter Clark, Met’s Director of Archives
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The Life You Give: Alban Berg *1885
Alban Berg, born Alban Maria Johannes Berg, on February 9 1885, in Vienna, Austria, is the composer who wrote atonal and 12-tone compositions that remained true to late 19th-century Romanticism. He composed orchestral music (including Five Orchestral Songs, 1912), chamber music, songs, and two groundbreaking operas, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). Apart from a few…
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The Virtuous Black VIII: Miles Davis
Miles Davis, born Miles Dewey Davis III on May 26 1926, in Alton, Illinois, U.S.A., is the jazz musician, and great trumpeter who as a bandleader and composer was one of the major influences on the art from the late 1940s. Davis grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, where his father was a prosperous…
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The Life You Give: Claudio Arrau *1903
Claudio Arrau, born February 6 1903, in Chillán, Chile, was one of the most-renowned pianists of the 20th century. Arrau’s father, an eye doctor, died when Arrau—the youngest of three children—was one year old. His mother supported the family by giving piano lessons and must have been gratified when her own son proved to be…
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Weekly Woman & Virtuous Black VI: Florence Price, composer
Florence Beatrice Price, born on April 9 of 1887 in Little a rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, USA, is the first black woman in the United States to have been recognized as a symphonic composer. Even though her training was steeped in European tradition, Price’s music consists of mostly the American idiom and reveals her Southern…
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The Life You Give — Aretha Franklin *March 25 1942
Aretha Franklin, born Aretha Louise Franklin, on March 25 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A., is the singer who defined the golden age of soul music of the 1960s. Franklin’s mother, Barbara, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her father, C.L. Franklin, presided over the New Bethel Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan, and was a minister…
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The Virtuous Black II — Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder is a beloved American icon and an indisputable genius not only with R&B but popular music in general. Blind virtually since birth, Wonder’s heightened awareness of sound helped him create vibrant, colorful music teeming with life and ambition. Nearly everything he recorded bore the stamp of his sunny, joyous positivity; even when he…
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The Life You Give: Eddie van Halen *1955
Eddie Van Halen belongs in a rarefied group of musicians who changed the very notion of the possibilities of their chosen instrument. In Van Halen’s case, he was a guitarist of superlative imagination and skill, innovating and introducing a number of techniques that would soon become part of the arsenal of many guitarists, including finger-tapping,…
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The Life You Give: Witold Lutosławski *1913
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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The Life You Give: Neil Diamond *1941
Neil Diamond, born Neil Leslie Diamond on January 24, 1941, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. is singer-songwriter who began his career writing pop songs for other musicians and then launched a solo recording career that spanned more than five decades. Diamond’s interest in music began at age 16, when he obtained his first guitar. After graduating…
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patience, handwritten (in German)
“Geduld” which translates from the German language into English as patience, is the word I used for my second writing performance in the early 1990s. In an effort to give more meaning to a single action, I did several sound-performances which consisted of such acoustic writings, using a number of materials, words, phrases and sentences.…
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love, handwritten
The Aristipposian Poet presents National Handwriting Day celebrating by handwriting January 23 at 9:30pm EST on Clubhouse
Sila Blume 