singer
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Ozzy Osborne *XII 3 1948 — The Life You Give
Ozzy Osbourne, born John Michael Osbourne, December 3, 1948, in Birmingham, England, is the musician who gained a loyal following as the vocalist for the heavy metal group Black Sabbath before embarking on a successful solo career. Raised in a working-class family, Osbourne dropped out of school at age 15 and held several low-paying jobs.…
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Alfredo Kraus *XI 24 1927 — The Life You Give
One of the most stylistic, professional and refined tenors of the century, Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus, had a long and outstanding career in the world of opera. The Kraus personality gravitated between two poles. On one side the tenor of Mozart and on the other side the lyrical tenor of Donizetti, Verdi but above all…
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Greg Lake *XI 10 1947 — The Life You Give
As a singer and instrumentalist, Greg Lake had his greatest success and influence in the progressive rock outfit Emerson, Lake & Palmer and, before that, as a founding member of the original King Crimson. He was also reasonably popular as a solo artist working in more of a hard rock idiom. As a boy, growing…
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Thomas Quasthoff *XI 9 1959 — The Life You Give
Thomas Quasthoff, born November 9, 1959, in Hildesheim, Germany, is the singer whose powerful bass-baritone voice placed him among the preeminent classical vocalists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Quasthoff was born with severe disabilities, the result of his mother’s having taken the drug thalidomide during her early pregnancy as a treatment for…
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Omara Portuondo! *X 29 1930 — The Life You Give
Omara Portuondo, born October 29 1930 in Havana, Cuba, is a singer whose career has spanned over half a century. Portuondo was born one of three sisters; her mother came from a wealthy Spanish family, and had created a scandal by running off with and marrying a black professional baseball player. Omara started her career…
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Mahalia Jackson *X 26 1911 — The Life You Give
Mahalia Jackson, born October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A., is the gospel music singer, known as the “Queen of Gospel Song.” Jackson was brought up in a strict religious atmosphere. Her father’s family included several entertainers, but she was forced to confine her own musical activities to singing in the church choir and…
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Celia Cruz *X 21 1925 — La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
See the biography in English below A lo largo de más de medio siglo de trayectoria artística, la indiscutible Reina de la Salsa grabó alrededor de setenta álbumes y ochocientas canciones, cosechó veintitrés discos de oro y recibió cinco premios Grammy. Mucho más relevantes, sin embargo, fueron las innumerables giras y conciertos que prodigó por…
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Paul Simon *X 13 1941 — The Life You Give
Paul Simon, born Paul Frederic Simon, October 13, 1941, in Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A., is the singer-songwriter who brought a highbrow sensibility to rock music. One of the most paradoxical figures in rock-and-roll history, Simon exemplified many of the principles against which the music initially reacted. From his first big hit, “The Sounds of Silence,”…
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Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan *X 13 1948 — The Life You Give
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, born Pervez Fateh Ali Khan, October 13, 1948, in Lyallpur [now Faisalabad], Pakistan, is the singer considered to have been one of the greatest performers of qawwali, a Sufi Muslim devotional music characterized by simple melodies, forceful rhythms, and energetic improvisations that encourage a state of euphoria in the listener. Nusrat’s…
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Leonard Cohen *IX 21 1934 — The Life You Give
Leonard Cohen, born Leonard Norman Cohen, September 21, 1934, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, is the singer-songwriter whose spare songs carried an existential bite and established him as one of the most distinctive voices of 1970s pop music. Already established as a poet and novelist (his first book of poems, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was published…
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Jessye Norman *IX 15 1945 — The Life You Give
Jessye Norman, born Jessye Mae Norman on September 15, 1945, in Augusta, Georgia, U.S.A., is the operatic soprano, one of the finest of her day, who also enjoyed a successful concert career. Norman was reared in a musical family. Both her mother and grandmother were pianists and her father sang in church, as did the…
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Angela Gheorghiu *IX 7 1965 / The Life You Give
Angela Gheorghiu, born Angela Burlacu on September 7, 1965, in Adjud, Romania, is an operatic lyric soprano noted for her powerful voice and commanding stage presence. Gheorghiu early realized her love of singing, and she was supported by her family in working toward a career in opera. She left home at age 14 to study…
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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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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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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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