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Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the Stalinist bureaucracy. In 1936, the government, most probably under orders from Stalin, harshly criticized his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, causing him to withdraw the Fourth Symphony during its rehearsal stages. Shostakovich's music was officially denounced twice, in 1936 and 1948, and was periodically banned. Nevertheless, he also received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. Despite the official controversy, his works were popular and well received.
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (German pronunciation: ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Inuyasha
InuYasha (犬夜叉?), full title InuYasha, a Feudal Fairy Tale (戦国御伽草子 犬夜叉 Sengoku Otogizōshi InuYasha?), is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It premiered in Weekly Shōnen Sunday on November 13, 1996 and concluded on June 18, 2008. The series follows a half-demon, a time-traveling high school girl, a lecherous monk, a fox demon, and a demon slayer during the Sengoku period as they seek to find all the fragments of the Jewel of Four Souls and to keep them out of the hands of evildoers, especially Naraku.The manga was adapted as two anime television series produced by Sunrise. The first, broadcast for 167 episodes on Yomiuri TV in Japan from October 16, 2000 until September 13, 2004, was directed by Masashi Ikeda for the first forty-four episodes and by Yasunao Aoki for the remainder. The second series, called InuYasha: The Final Act, began airing October 3, 2009 to cover the rest of the manga series and ended on March 29, 2010.
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, full name Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 â 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His over 600 compositions include works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetypal example of the Classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from one exemplified by the style galant to one that began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style had been a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the development of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a versatile composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. He also wrote a great deal of religious music, including masses; and he composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.
The central traits of the classical style can be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are hallmarks of his work.
Queen
Queen were an English rock band formed in 1970 in London by guitarist Brian May, lead vocalist Freddie Mercury, and drummer Roger Taylor, with bass guitarist John Deacon completing the lineup the following year. While it is uncertain how many albums the band has sold, estimations range from 130 million to over 300 million albums worldwide.The band is noted for their musical diversity, multi-layered arrangements, vocal harmonies, and incorporation of audience participation into their live performances. Their 1985 Live Aid performance was voted the best live rock performance of all time in an industry poll.
Queen had moderate success in the early 1970s, with the albums Queen and Queen II, but it was with the release of Sheer Heart Attack in 1974 and A Night at the Opera the following year that the band gained international success. They have released fifteen studio albums, five live albums, and numerous compilation albums. Eighteen of these have reached number one on charts around the world.
Following Mercury's death in 1991 and Deacon's retirement later in the decade, May and Taylor have performed infrequently under the Queen name. Since 2005 they have been collaborating with Paul Rodgers, under the moniker Queen + Paul Rodgers.
Walt disney
Walter Elias Disney (/ˈdɪzni/; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American entrepreneur, animator, voice actor and film producer. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Astor Piazolla
Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (Spanish pronunciation: , Italian pronunciation: ; March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with a variety of ensembles.In 1992, American music critic Stephen Holden described Piazzolla as "the world's foremost composer of tango music".
Stuart Stotts
Stuart Stotts is an author, storyteller, educator, and songwriter. He’s sung with and performed for kids and families in schools, libraries, and community settings around the world since 1984. Stuart is a Kennedy Center teaching artist and a frequent presenter at educational events, keynoting conferences and leading workshops for early childhood and elementary school teachers, librarians, and social service professionals around the country.
J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (21 March 1685, O.S.31 March 1685, N.S. – 28 July 1750, N.S.) was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he did not introduce new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France.
Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B minor, the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion, the Magnificat, A Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, as well as the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes and Organ Mass.
Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the main composers of the Baroque style, and as one of the greatest composers of all time.
Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B minor, the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion, the Magnificat, A Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, as well as the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes and Organ Mass.
Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the main composers of the Baroque style, and as one of the greatest composers of all time.
Chopin
Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period. He is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets.He was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father, and in his early life was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of 20, Chopin went abroad; following the suppression of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–31, he became one of many expatriates of the Polish "Great Emigration."
In Paris, he made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. A Polish patriot,
Chopin's extant compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. Though technically demanding, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than virtuosity. Chopin invented musical forms such as the ballade and was responsible for major innovations in forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music.
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline (September 8, 1932–March 5, 1963), born Virginia Patterson Hensley, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s. Since her death at age 30 in a 1963 private airplane crash at the height of her career, she has been considered one of the most influential, successful and acclaimed female vocalists of the 20th century.Cline was best known for her rich tone and emotionally expressive bold contralto voice, which, along with her role as a mover and shaker in the country music industry, has been cited as an inspiration by many vocalists of various music genres. Her life and career have been the subject of numerous books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays.
Her hits included "Walkin' After Midnight", "I Fall to Pieces", "She's Got You", "Crazy" and "Sweet Dreams". Posthumously, millions of her albums have been sold over the past 46 years and she has been given numerous awards, which have given her an iconic status with some fans similar to that of legends Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Ten years after her death, she became the first female solo artist inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In 2002, Cline was voted by artists and members of the country music industry as number one on CMT's television special, The 40 Greatest Women of Country Music, and in 1999 she was voted number 11 on VH1's special The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll by members and artists of the rock industry. According to her 1973 Country Music Hall of Fame plaque, "Her heritage of timeless recordings is testimony to her artistic capacity."
W.A. Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (German: , full baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at 17 he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and the Requiem. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.
Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate—the whole informed by a vision of humanity "redeemed through art, forgiven, and reconciled with nature and the absolute." His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."
Glen Hansard
Glen Hansard (born 21 April 1970 in Dublin, Ireland) is the principal songwriter and vocalist/guitarist for Irish rock group The Frames. He is also known for starring in the film Once and co-writing its Academy-Award-winning song, "Falling Slowly."
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (French: ; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French-Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard.
Carrie Underwood
Carrie Marie Underwood (born March 10, 1983 in Muskogee, Oklahoma) is an American country singer-songwriter. She rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol, and has become a multi-platinum selling recording artist and a multiple Grammy Award winner. Her debut album, Some Hearts, was certified seven times platinum and is the fastest selling debut country album in Nielsen SoundScan history.Her second album, Carnival Ride, was released on October 23, 2007. It has so far sold about 2 million copies To date, Underwood has sold over 11 million records in the United States. Underwood was inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry on May 10, 2008.
Steve Swallow
Steve Swallow (born October 4, 1940) is a jazz fusion bassist and composer noted for his collaborations with Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, and Carla Bley. He was one of the first jazz double bassists to switch entirely to electric bass guitar.
William Byrd
William Byrd (/bɜːrd/; birth date variously given as c.1539/40 or 1543 – 4 July 1623), was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and consort music. Although he produced sacred music for Anglican services, sometime during the 1570s he became a Roman Catholic and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life.
Leon Russell
Leon Russell (born Claude Russell Bridges; April 2, 1942 – November 13, 2016) was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling pop music records during his 60-year career. His genres included pop, country, rock, folk, gospel, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, folk rock, blues rock, surf, standards, and Tulsa Sound.His collaborations rank as some of the most successful in music history, and as a touring musician he performed with hundreds of notable artists.
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Ferencz Liszt, in modern usage Ferenc Liszt, from 1859 to 1865 officially Franz Ritter von Liszt) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher. He was also the father-in-law of Richard Wagner. In 1865 he became abbot in the Roman Catholic Church.Liszt became renowned throughout Europe during the 19th century for his great skill as a performer. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.
Henry Creamer
Henry Sterling Creamer (June 21, 1879 – October 14, 1930) was an American popular song lyricist. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and died in New York. He co-wrote many popular songs in the years from 1900 to 1929, often collaborating with Turner Layton, with whom he also appeared in vaudeville.
Athur Laurent
Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.
His early film scripts include Rope (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The Way We Were (1973), and The Turning Point (1977).
Contents
1 Early life
2 Theatrical career
3 Film career
4 Blacklist
5 Memoirs
6 Death
7 Work
7.1 Writing
7.2 Directing
7.3 Additional credits
8 Awards, nominations and honors
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
Early life
Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of middle-class Jewish parents, a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child.
His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish holidays. His Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions, although he continued to identify himself as Jewish. However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."
After graduating from Cornell University, Laurents took an evening class in radio writing at New York University. William N. Robson, his instructor, a CBS Radio director/producer, submitted his script Now Playing Tomorrow, a comedic fantasy about clairvoyance, to the network, and it was produced in the Columbia Workshop series on January 30, 1939, with Shirley Booth in the lead role. It was Laurents' first professional credit. The show's success led to him being hired to write scripts for various radio shows, among them Lux Radio Theater. Laurents' career was interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in the middle of World War II. Through a series of clerical errors, he never saw battle, but instead was assigned to the U.S. Army Pictorial Service located in a film studio in Astoria, Queens, where he wrote training films and met, among others, George Cukor and William Holden. He later was reassigned to write plays for Armed Service Force Presents, a radio show that dramatized the contributions of all branches of the armed forces.
Theatrical career
According to John Clum, "Laurents was always a mirror of his times. Through his best work, one sees a staged history of leftist, gender, and gay politics in the decades after World War II." After graduating from Cornell University in 1937, Laurents went to work as a writer for radio drama at CBS in New York. His military duties during World War II, which consisted of writing training films and radio scripts for Armed Service Force Presents, brought him into contact with some of the best film directors—distinguished director George Cukor directed his first script. Laurents's work in radio and film during World War II was an excellent apprenticeship for a budding playwright and screenwriter. He also had the good fortune to be based in New York City. His first stage play, Home of the Brave, was produced in 1945. The sale of the play to a film studio gave Laurents the entrée he needed to become a Hollywood screenwriter though he continued, with mixed success, to write plays. The most important of his early screenplays is his adaptation of Rope for Alfred Hitchcock.
Soon after being discharged from the Army, Laurents met ballerina Nora Kaye, and the two became involved in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. While Kaye was on tour with Fancy Free, Laurents continued to write for the radio but was becoming discontented with the medium. At the urging of Martin Gabel, he spent nine consecutive nights writing a play In 1962, Laurents directed I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which helped to turn then-unknown Barbra Streisand into a star. His next project was the stage musical Anyone Can Whistle, which he directed and for which he wrote the book, but it proved to be an infamous flop. He later had success with the musicals Hallelujah, Baby! (written for Lena Horne but ultimately starring Leslie Uggams) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), which he directed, however Nick & Nora was not successful.
In 2008, Laurents directed a Broadway revival of Gypsy starring Patti LuPone, and in 2009, he tackled a bilingual revival of West Side Story, with Spanish translations of some dialogue and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While preparing West Side Story, he noted, "The musical theatre and cultural conventions of 1957 made it next to impossible for the characters to have authenticity." Following the production's March 19 opening at the Palace Theatre, Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the translations "an only partly successful experiment" and added, "Mr. Laurents has exchanged insolence for innocence and, as with most such bargains, there are dividends and losses." The national tour (2011-2012) was directed by David Saint, who was Laurents' assistant director on the Broadway production. The Spanish lyrics and dialog were reduced from about 18% of the total to about 10%.
Film career
Laurents' first Hollywood experience proved to be a frustrating disappointment. Director Anatole Litvak, unhappy with the script submitted by Frank Partos and Millen Brand for The Snake Pit (1948), hired Laurents to rewrite it. Partos and Brand later insisted the bulk of the shooting script was theirs, and produced carbon copies of many of the pages Laurents actually had written to bolster their claim. Having destroyed the original script and all his notes and rewritten pages after completing the project, Laurents had no way to prove most of the work was his, and the Writers Guild of America denied him screen credit. Brand later confessed he and Partos had copied scenes written by Laurents and apologized for his role in the deception. Four decades later, Laurents learned he was ineligible for WGA health benefits because he had failed to accumulate enough credits to qualify. He was short by one, the one he failed to get for The Snake Pit.
Upon hearing 20th Century Fox executives were pleased with Laurents' work on The Snake Pit, Alfred Hitchcock hired him for his next project, the film Rope starring James Stewart. Hitchcock wanted Laurents to Americanize the British play Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton for the screen. With his then-lover Farley Granger set to star, Laurents was happy to accept the assignment. His dilemma was how to make the audience aware of the fact the three main characters were homosexual without blatantly saying so. The Hays Office kept close tabs on his work, and the final script was so discreet that Laurents was unsure whether co-star James Stewart ever realized that his character was gay. In later years, Hitchcock asked him to script both Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), However, Laurents, in both cases unenthused by the material, declined the offers.
Laurents also scripted Anastasia (1956) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958). The Way We Were (1973), in which he incorporated many of his own experiences, particularly those with the HUAC, reunited him with Barbra Streisand, and The Turning Point (1977), inspired in part by his love for Nora Kaye, was directed by her husband Herbert Ross. The Fox animated feature film Anastasia (1997) was based in part from his screenplay of the live-action 1956 film of the same title.
Blacklist
Because of a casual remark made by Russel Crouse, Laurents was called to Washington, D.C., to account for his political views. He explained himself to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his appearance had no obvious impact on his career, which at the time was primarily in the theatre. When the McCarran Internal Security Act, which prohibited individuals suspected of engaging in subversive activities from obtaining a passport, was passed in 1950, Laurents and Granger immediately applied for and received passports and departed for Paris with Harold Clurman and his wife Stella Adler. Laurents and Granger remained abroad, traveling throughout Europe and northern Africa, for about 18 months.
Years earlier, Laurents and Jerome Robbins had developed Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948), a stage musical about the world of ballet that ran for 188 performances on Broadway, and starred Nancy Walker and Harold Lang. (Although the musical was ultimately produced with a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, as Laurents left the project.) Robbins approached Paramount Pictures about directing a screen version, and the studio agreed as long as Laurents was not part of the package.
It was not until then that Laurents learned he officially had been blacklisted, primarily because a review of Home of the Brave had been published in the Daily Worker. He decided to return to Paris, but the State Department refused to renew his passport. Laurents spent three months trying to clear his name, and after submitting a lengthy letter explaining his political beliefs in detail, it was determined they were so idiosyncratic he could not have been a member of any subversive groups. Within a week his passport was renewed, and the following day he sailed for Europe on the Ile de France. While on board, he received a cable from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offering him a screenwriting assignment. The blacklist had ended.
Memoirs
Laurents wrote Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, published in 2000. In it, he discusses his lengthy career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships, including those with Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher (August 24, 1929 - October 26, 2006). Hatcher was an aspiring actor whom Gore Vidal suggested Laurents seek out at the Beverly Hills men's clothing store Hatcher was managing at the time. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death on October 26, 2006.
Laurents wrote Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and Other Musicals, published in 2009, in which he discussed musicals he directed and the work of other directors he admired.
His last memoir titled The Rest of the Story was published posthumously in September 2012.
Death
Laurents died at the age of 93 at his home in Manhattan on May 5, 2011 of pneumonia complications, as reported by The New York Times. Following a long tradition, Broadway theatre lights were dimmed at 8 p.m. on May 6, 2011, for one minute in his memory. His ashes were buried alongside those of Tom Hatcher in a memorial bench in Quogue, Long Island, New York.
Work
Writing
Musicals
West Side Story – 1957 – Tony Nomination for Best Musical
Gypsy – 1959 – Tony Nomination for Best Musical
Anyone Can Whistle – 1964
Do I Hear a Waltz? – 1965
Hallelujah, Baby! – 1967 – Tony Award for Best Musical
The Madwoman of Central Park West – 1979
Nick & Nora – 1991
Novel
The Turning Point – 1977; New American Library (New York City); OCLC 11014907
Plays
Home of the Brave – 1945
The Bird Cage – 1950
The Time of the Cuckoo – 1952
A Clearing in the Woods – 1957
Invitation to a March – 1960
Directing
Invitation to a March – 1960
I Can Get It for You Wholesale – 1962
Anyone Can Whistle – 1964
Gypsy – 1974 – Tony Nomination for Best Direction of a Musical
The Madwoman of Central Park West – 1979
La Cage aux Folles – 1983 – Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
Nick & Nora – 1991
Gypsy – 2008 – Tony Award nomination as Best Director of a Musical
West Side Story – 2009 Broadway Revival
Additional credits
Anna Lucasta (screenwriter)
A Clearing in the Woods (playwright)
Invitation to a March (playwright, director)
The Madwoman of Central Park West (playwright, director)
My Good Name (playwright)
Jolson Sings Again (playwright)
The Enclave (playwright, director)
Radical Mystique (playwright, director)
Big Potato (playwright)
Two Lives (playwright)
My Good Name (playwright)
Claudia Lazlo (playwright)
Attacks on the Heart (playwright)
2 Lives (playwright)
New Year's Eve (playwright)
Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are (playwright, director)
Caught (screenwriter)
Rope (screenwriter)
Awards, nominations and honors
A new award was established in 2010, The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award. This is awarded annually "for an un-produced, full-length play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright." The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation will give $50,000 to the writer with a grant of $100,000 towards production costs at a nonprofit theatre. The first award will be given in 2011.
Theatre
1958 Tony Award for Best Musical (West Side Story, nominee)
1960 Tony Award for Best Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
1968 Tony Award for Best Musical (Hallelujah, Baby!, winner)
1975 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical (Gypsy, winner)
1975 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
1984 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (La Cage aux Folles, winner)
2008 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
Film
Academy Award for Best Picture (The Turning Point, nominee)
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (The Turning Point, nominee)
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (Rope, nominee)
Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay (The Turning Point, nominee)
Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay (The Way We Were, nominee; The Turning Point, winner)
National Board of Review Award for Career Achievement (winner)
See also
Biography portal
Film portal
Musical Theatre portal
icon Theatre portal
icon Writing portal
List of Jewish American playwrights
List of novelists from the United States
List of pneumonia victims
List of people from Brooklyn, New York
List of playwrights from the United States
List of theatre directors
References
"Legendary Writer & Director Arthur Laurents Dies at 93". Broadway World. Retrieved May 6, 2011.
John M. Clum. The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014.
"Obituaries: Arthur Laurents". The Daily Telegraph. May 6, 2011.
"When You’re a Shark You’re a Shark All the Way". New York.
Hawtree, Christopher (May 6, 2011). "Arthur Laurents obituary: Playwright and screenwriter who wrote the book for West Side Story". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
Hutchinson, Bill (May 6, 2011). "Playwright Behind 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy,' Arthur Laurents, Dies at Age 93". Daily News.
Arnold, Laurence (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Writer of 'West Side Story,' 'Gypsy' Scripts, Dies at 93". Bloomberg News.
Laurents, Arthur. "Beginnings" Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2001, ISBN 1-55783-467-9, pp. 10–11, 34–35.
Laurents, Arthur. Original Story By. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2000). ISBN 0-375-40055-9, pp. 6–7.
Laurents, p. 133.
Laurents, pp. 12–13.
Laurents, pp. 22–28.
Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal", November 2014, Cambria Press, ISBN 1604978848
Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal"
Laurents, p. 93.
Jones, Kenneth (July 16, 2008). "'West Side Story', This Time With Bilingual Approach, Will Return to Broadway in February 2009". Playbill.
Brantley, Ben (March 20, 2009). "Our Gangs". The New York Times.
Berson, M. (January 8, 2012). "'West Side Story': A classic revived" Archived January 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Seattle Times.
Laurents, pp. 106–120.
Laurents, pp. 115–116, 124–131.
Laurents, p. 136.
""West Side Story Author Arthur Laurents Dies, 93" Archived July 9, 2012, at Archive.today forum.bcdb.com. May 4, 2011.
Laurents, p. 29.
Laurents, pp. 165–190.
Vaill, Amanda (2006). Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins, Random House, Inc. p. 135. ISBN 0-7679-0420-6.
"'Look Ma, I'm Dancin' listing". Internet Broadway Database.
Laurents, pp. 286–289.
"Backstage.com obituary, November 1, 2006". Backstage.
Berkvist, Robert (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Playwright and Director on Broadway, Dies at 93". The New York Times.
Jones, Kenneth (May 6, 2011). "Broadway Lights Will Dim May 6 in Memory of Arthur Laurents" Archived October 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
Gans, Andrew (June 3, 2010). "New Award Named for Arthur Laurents and His Partner, the Late Tom Hatcher" Archived June 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
Further reading
Laurents, Arthur (2000). Original Story by Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40055-9.
Laurents, Arthur (2009). Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-307-27088-2.
Clum, John (2014). The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. ISBN 978-1-60497-884-1.
External links
Arthur Laurents at the Internet Broadway Database Edit this at Wikidata
Arthur Laurents at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Arthur Laurents on IMDb
American Theatre Wing biography
Works by or about Arthur Laurents in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Works by Arthur Laurents at Open Library Edit this at Wikidata
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Works by Arthur Laurents
Writer
Musicals
West Side Story (1957) Gypsy (1959) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) Nick & Nora (1991)
Plays
Home of the Brave (1945) The Time of the Cuckoo (1952)
Films
Rope (1948) Caught (1949) Anastasia (1956) Bonjour Tristesse (1958) The Way We Were (1973) The Turning Point (1977)
Director
I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) Gypsy (1974) The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) La Cage aux Folles (1983) Birds of Paradise (1987) Gypsy (1989) Nick & Nora (1991) Gypsy (2008) West Side Story (2009)
Awards for Arthur Laurents
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Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story (1957)
Characters
Maria
Inspiration
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Adaptations
West Side Story (1961 film) West Side Story Suite (1995 ballet) West Side Story (2020 film)
Variations
Deaf Side Story (c. 2002 musical) Swango (2002 musical) West Bank Story (2005 parody film)
Songs
Act 1
"Something's Coming" "Maria" "Tonight" "America" "Cool" "One Hand, One Heart" "Tonight (Quintet & Chorus)"
Act 2
"I Feel Pretty" "Somewhere" "Gee, Officer Krupke" "A Boy Like That"
Albums
West Side Story (1957 original cast) West Side Story (1959 Previn) West Side Story (1961 soundtrack) West Side Story (1961 Tjader) Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein (1961 Brubeck Quartet) West Side Story (1962 Peterson Trio) Kenton's West Side Story (1962 Kenton) Toshiko–Mariano Quartet (in West Side) (1963 Akiyoshi) West Side Story (1974 Earl Hines)
Related
"The First Time" "Upper West Side Story" Wild Side Story China Girl "Roses" Play It Again Josh Superjail!
Authority control Edit this at Wikidata
BNE: XX1122852 BNF: cb140368976 (data) GND: 123286352 ISNI: 0000 0001 1025 0247 LCCN: n85173003 MusicBrainz: e062e9c9-5fd4-4384-ba1d-71495ce3bb7d NKC: xx0026607 NTA: 071341080 SNAC: w6gf56zk SUDOC: 058478094 VIAF: 37116781 WorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 37116781
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Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein (pronounced /ˈbɜrn.staɪn/, us dict: bûrn′·stīn; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. He was probably best known to the public as the longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic, for conducting concerts by many of the world's leading orchestras, and for writing the music for West Side Story, Candide, Wonderful Town, and On the Town. Bernstein was the first classical music conductor to make numerous television appearances, perhaps more than any other classical conductor, all between 1954 and 1989. He had a formidable piano technique and as a composer wrote many types of music from Broadway shows to symphonies. According to the New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigally talented and successful musicians in American history."
Muse
Muse are a British rock band formed in Teignmouth, Devon, United Kingdom in 1994 under the alias of Rocket Baby Dolls. The band comprises Matthew Bellamy (vocals, guitar and piano), Christopher Wolstenholme (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Dominic Howard (drums and percussion). Muse's style can be considered as a mixture of many musical genres, most notably alternative rock, classical music and electronica. Muse are known best for their energetic and visually dazzling live performances and on June 16th & 17th, 2007 became the first band to sell out the newly built Wembley Stadium in London. Muse have released four studio albums with their first, Showbiz, released in 1999, followed by Origin of Symmetry in 2001 and Absolution in 2003. The most recent, Black Holes & Revelations (2006), was also the most critically acclaimed, garnering the band a Mercury Prize nomination and a third place finish in the NME Albums of the Year list for 2006. Muse have won various awards throughout their career including 5 MTV Europe Music Awards, 5 Q Awards, 4 NME Awards and 2 Brit awards.
Sonata Arctica
Sonata Arctica is a Finnish power metal band from the town of Kemi, originally assembled in 1996. Their later works (most notably Unia) contain some elements typical of progressive metal.Members:
Tony Kakko − Vocals (all studio vocals) & keyboards on Ecliptica and Winterheart's Guild
Elias Viljanen − Guitar, live backing vocals
Marko Paasikoski − Bass guitar, live backing vocals (formerly guitar)
Tommy Portimo − Drums
Henrik Klingenberg − Keyboards, live backing vocals
Lara Fabian
Lara Fabian (born Lara Crokaert, January 9, 1970) is a Belgian-Italian international singer who holds Canadian citizenship. Multilingual, she sings in French, Italian and English. She has also sung in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian once in Hebrew on Israel's 60th Independence Day celebrations, and in German in 1988 for a version of "Croire" (ger.: "glauben" eng.: "believe"). She has sold over 18 million records worldwide.
Bobby Darin
Bobby Darin, born by Walden Robert Cassotto, is an American singer, songwriter and actor. Darin began his musical career by writing lyrics for American pop singer Connie Francis.
Charly Garcia
Charly García (born Carlos Alberto García, 23 October 1951) is an Argentine singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. With a vast and renowned career, he formed and headlined two of the most popular bands in Argentina's rock history: Sui Generis in the 1970s and Serú Girán in the 1980s, plus cult status groups like progressive-rock act La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros and folk rock supergroup PorSuiGieco, both also in the 1970s. Since the 1980s García has worked mostly as a solo musician. His main instrument is the piano, followed by guitar and keyboards.
yuhki kuramoto
uhki Kuramoto is a Japanese pianist and composer. His given name is Minoru Kitano (北野 實, Kitano Minoru). He writes primarily for the piano, though ...
John Murphy
John Murphy (born 4 March 1965) is a British film composer. He is a self-taught multi-instrumental musician who began his career in the 1980s, working notably with The Lotus Eaters, Thomas Lang, and Claudia Brücken. Since the beginning of his career, he has collaborated numerous times with several directors, mainly Danny Boyle, Guy Ritchie, Michael Mann, Matthew Vaughn, and Stephen Frears. He has received praise through the years and some of his awards include the Silver Award (1st Prize) at the Cannes Film Festival, a British D&AD Award, and a BMI Award.
Selim Palmgren
Selim Gustaf Adolf Palmgren (16 February 1878 – 13 December 1951) was a Finnish composer, pianist, and conductor. Palmgren was born in Pori, Finland, February 16, 1878. He studied at the Conservatory in Helsinki from 1895 to 1899, then continued his piano studies in Berlin with Ansorge, Berger and Busoni. He conducted choral and orchestral societies in his own country and made several very successful concert tours as a pianist in the principal cities of Finland and Scandinavia, appearing also as a visiting conductor. In 1921, he went to the United States, where he taught composition at the Eastman School of Music, later returning to Finland, where he died in Helsinki, aged 73. Palmgren was married to the opera singer Maikki Järnefelt.
Anthony Hedges
Anthony J. Hedges (5 March 1931 – 19 June 2019) was an English composer, the son of children's writer Sidney HedgesHedges was born in Bicester, Oxfordshire, and studied music at Keble College Oxford, where his tutors included Thomas Armstrong. While on National Service for two years at Catterick (from 1955) he was a member of the Band of the Royal Signals Regiment. From 1957 he was a music lecturer at The Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow, and from 1962 a lecturer at The University of Hull (1962–94) where he was awarded an Hon.DMus. During his time in Glasgow he also contributed regular reviews and articles on music to The Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. While at Hull he met the poet Philip Larkin.
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was born into a notable Jewish family, although he himself was brought up initially without religion, and later as a Lutheran. He was recognized early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his abilities. Indeed his father was disinclined to allow Felix to follow a musical career until it became clear that he intended to seriously dedicate himself to it.
Early success in Germany was followed by travel throughout Europe; Mendelssohn was particularly well received in England as a composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there, during which many of his major works were premiered, form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes however set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz. The Conservatory he founded at Leipzig became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook.
Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. He also had an important role in the revival of interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.
Billy Thorpe
William Richard "Billy" Thorpe, AM (29 March 1946 – 28 February 2007) was a renowned English-born Australian pop / rock singer-songwriter and musician. As lead singer of his band, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs, he had success in the 1960s with "Blue Day", "Poison Ivy", "Over the Rainbow", "Sick and Tired", and "Mashed Potato"; and in the 1970s with "Most People I Know Think That I'm Crazy". Featuring in concerts at Sunbury Pop Festivals and Myer Music Bowl in the early 1970s, the Aztecs also developed the pub rock scene and were one of the loudest groups in Australia.Thorpe also performed as a solo artist, he relocated to the United States from 1976 to 1996 where he released the space opera, Children of the Sun, which peaked in the top 40 of the Billboard Pop Album chart in 1979. He worked with ex-Aztec, Tony Barber to form a soft toy company in 1987 and co-wrote stories for The Puggle Tales and Tales from the Lost Forests. Thorpe also worked as a producer and composed music scores for TV series including, War of the Worlds, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Columbo, Eight Is Enough and Hard Time on Planet Earth.
Thorpe returned to Australia in 1996 and continued as a performer and producer, additionally he authored two autobiographies, Sex and Thugs and Rock 'n' Roll (1996) and Most People I Know (Think That I'm Crazy) (1998). According to Australian rock music historian, Ian McFarlane, "Thorpie evolved from child star, beat pop sensation and cuddly pop crooner to finally emerge as the country's wildest and heaviest blues rocker Thorpie was the unassailable monarch of Australian rock music". Thorpe was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 1991. He died of a myocardial infarction in February 2007 and was posthumously appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in June for his contribution to music as a musician, songwriter and producer.
Pink
Alecia Beth Moore (born on September 8, 1979), known professionally as Pink (often stylized as P!nk), is a two-time Grammy-winning American singer-songwriter who gained prominence in 2000.Pink released her first record, the R&B-oriented Can't Take Me Home, in 2000 via LaFace Records. Her pop rock-based second studio album, M!ssundaztood, was released in 2001 and is her biggest seller to date. Her third album, 2003's Try This, failed to match the success of M!ssundaztood. After taking a break, Pink released her fourth studio album, I'm Not Dead (2006), which was successful worldwide. Pink has so far sold over 25 million albums worldwide. Her upcoming album, Funhouse, will be released in October 2008.
Roberta Flack
Roberta Cleopatra Flack is an American singer. She is known for her No. 1 singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song", "Feel Like Makin' Love"; and "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You", two of her many duets with Donny Hathaway.
Toto
Toto was a Grammy Award winning American rock band founded in 1977 by some of the most popular and experienced session musicians of the era. The band enjoyed great commercial success in the 1980s, beginning with the band's self-titled debut, released in 1978, which immediately brought the band into the mainstream rock spectrum of the time. Continuing with 1982's critically acclaimed and commercially successful Toto IV, Toto became one of the biggest selling music groups of their era. They also composed the theme music for the film Dune. Although their popularity in the United States diminished in the 1990s and 2000s, they continued to tour to sold out arenas, clubs, and theaters internationally. Toto was known for their technical prowess in the studio, as well as a musical style that combines elements of pop, rock, soul, funk, progressive rock, hard rock, R&B, and jazz, making them appeal to a variety of musicians and non-musician listeners. The band has released 17 albums and has sold over 30 million records to date. Their 18th release Falling In Between Live, was released in August 2007. It had been recorded in March 2007 in Paris. As a result of guitarist Steve Lukather's departure from the band, Toto broke up after the last leg of their 2008 tour.
Maroon 5
Maroon 5 is a Grammy Award-winning American pop rock band. Formed with only two members at the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts and expanded in Los Angeles, the group comprises five members: Adam Levine (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), James Valentine (lead guitar, backing vocals), Jesse Carmichael (keyboards, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Mickey Madden (bass guitar), and Matt Flynn (drums, percussion).
The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a musical based on the 1909 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The musical's book and lyrics are by Marsha Norman, with music by Lucy Simon. It premiered on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on 25 April 1991 and closed on 3 January 1993 after 709 performances.The musical, set in 1906, tells of a young English girl, Mary, who is forced to move to England from colonial India when her parents die in a cholera outbreak. There she lives with her emotionally stunted Uncle Archibald and her invalid cousin. Discovering a hidden and neglected garden, and bravely overcoming dark forces, she and a young gardener bring it back to life at the same time as she brings new life to her cousin and uncle.
The Secret Garden garnered the 1991 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical, Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Daisy Eagan), and Best Scenic Design (Heidi Landesman). The set resembled an enormous Victorian toy theatre with pop-out figures, large paper dolls, and Joseph Cornell-like collage elements.
Astor Piazzola
Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (Spanish pronunciation: , Italian pronunciation: ; March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with a variety of ensembles.In 1992, American music critic Stephen Holden described Piazzolla as "the world's foremost composer of tango music"
Amina Figarova
Amina Figarova (born 1964) is an Azerbaijani jazz pianist. Trained as a classical pianist in Baku, she became interested in the local folk music, later specializing in jazz. Since the late 1980s, together with her husband, the flutist Bart Platteau, she has performed in jazz festivals around the world.Born in Baku on 2 December 1964, Amina Figarova learnt to play the piano as a small child and began composing when only six. She attended the Baku Academy of Music where she studied to become a classical concert pianist. In 1988, while at the Moscow Jazz Festival, she was invited to study at the Rotterdam Conservatoire where she soon developed an interest in jazz. She completed her education at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
James Moody
James Moody (March 26, 1925 – December 9, 2010) was an American jazz saxophone and flute player and very occasional vocalist, playing predominantly in the bebop and hard bop styles.Moody had an unexpected hit with "Moody's Mood for Love," a 1952 song written by Eddie Jefferson that used as its melody an improvised solo that Moody had played on a 1949 recording of "I'm in the Mood for Love." Moody adopted the song as his own, recording it with Jefferson on his 1956 album Moody's Mood for Love and performing the song regularly in concert, often singing the vocals himself.
Evanescence
Evanescence is an American rock band founded in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995 by singer/pianist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody.After recording two private EPs and a demo CD named Origin, with the help of Bigwig Enterprises in 2000, the band released their first full-length album, Fallen, on Wind-up Records in 2003. Fallen sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and helped the band win two Grammy Awards. A year later, Evanescence released their first live album, Anywhere but Home, which sold more than one million copies worldwide. In 2006, the band released their second studio album, The Open Door, which has sold more than four million copies.
The band has suffered several line-up changes, including co-founder Moody leaving in 2003, followed by guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray in 2007. Lee is now the only original member of Evanescence remaining in the band.
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, dancer and entertainer. Referred to as the King of Pop, he is the most commercially successful entertainer of all time, and one of the most influential. His contributions to music, dance and fashion, along with a much publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades.Alongside his brothers, he made his debut as lead singer and youngest member of The Jackson 5 in 1964. He began his solo career in 1971. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album ever, with Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995) also among the world's best-selling albums. He is widely credited with having transformed the music video from a promotional tool into an art form with videos for his songs such as "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" making him the first African American artist to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound, vocal style, and choreography, is credited with stretching across and breaking down cultural, racial, economic, generational, and global barriers that has inspired countless pop, rock, R&B and hip hop artists.
One of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, his other achievements feature multiple Guinness World Records—including the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time"—15 Grammy Awards (including the "Living Legend Award" and the "Lifetime Achievement Award"), 26 American Music Awards (24 only as a solo artist, including one for "Artist of the Century")—more than any artist—, 17 number one singles in the US (including the four as a member of the Jackson 5), and estimated sales of up to 750 million records worldwide making him the world's best selling artist in history.
Jackson's personal relationships and life generated controversy for years. His changing appearance was noticed from the late 1970s onwards, with changes to his nose and to the color of his skin drawing media publicity. He was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993 though no charges were brought, and in 2005 he was tried and acquitted when the jury ruled him not guilty on all charges. He married twice, first in 1994 and again in 1996, and brought up three children, one born to a surrogate mother. While preparing for the This Is It concert tour in 2009, Jackson died at the age of 50 after suffering from cardiac arrest. He reportedly had been administered drugs such as propofol and lorazepam, and his death was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles County coroner. His death triggered an outpouring of grief from around the world with his globally live broadcast memorial service attracting an audience of up to one billion people; as well as a huge surge in his album sales, resulting in him becoming the best selling artist of 2009 with sales in excess of 8.2 million in the United States where he became the first artist ever to have 4 of the top 20 best-selling albums in a single year, and 29 million albums globally, where he had an unprecedented 8 of the top 25 best-selling albums worldwide.
Steven Flaherty
Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once On This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival Of A Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for a Grammy and is now one of the most performed shows in America. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards (with Lynn Ahrens) for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian: Никола́й Андре́евич Ри́мский-Ко́рсаков, Nikolaj Andreevič Rimskij-Korsakov, Russian pronunciation: ) (18 March 1844, – 21 June 1908) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are considered staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects.
Rimsky-Korsakov believed, as did fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, in developing a nationalistic style of classical music. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. His techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.
Rimsky-Korsakov believed, as did fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, in developing a nationalistic style of classical music. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. His techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.
Brian Bromberg
Brian Bromberg (born December 5, 1960) is an American jazz bassist and record producer who performs on both electric and acoustic instruments. Though he tends to gravitate towards the genre of smooth jazz, Bromberg has released some straight-ahead jazz records in which he performs with a trio, and has even ventured into more rock-oriented jazz fusion territory as of late. His innovative and technically demanding style of playing extends to both electric and upright bass. On his acoustic bass albums, Bromberg performs jazzy interpretations of various pop and rock staples from the 1960s and '70s completely solo.
Eric Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (Honfleur, 17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer and pianist. Starting with his first composition in 1884, he signed his name as Erik Satie.Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning "someone who measures sounds") preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.
In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American Vanity Fair. Although in later life he prided himself on always publishing his work under his own name, in the late nineteenth century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.
Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. He was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg (French pronunciation: ; born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor and director. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French popular music, he was renowned for his often provocative and scandalous releases, as well as his diverse artistic output, which embodied genres ranging from jazz, mambo, world, chanson, pop and yé-yé, to rock and roll, progressive rock, reggae, electronic, disco, new wave and funk. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.
Frank Mills
Frank Mills (born June 27, 1942), is a Canadian pianist and recording artist, best known for his solo instrumental hit "Music Box Dancer".Born in Quebec, Mills began his career as a member of The Bells, a group in which he was a member from 1970 to 1972. He performed piano for the band, whose best-known hit was "Stay Awhile" (1971). After leaving The Bells in 1972, Mills began a solo career.
His first solo efforts hardly made a dent in the music charts, although his 1972 single "Love Me, Love Me, Love" reached as high as #46 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #8 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart and a cover of Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" was also successful in Canada (both songs featured Mills singing as well as playing piano).
Frank released an album in 1974 that featured "Music Box Dancer", but it was not a hit initially. When Frank re-signed with Polydor Records Canada in 1978, the label released a new song as a single, with "Music Box Dancer" on the B-side. The single was sent to easy listening stations in Canada, but a copy was sent in error to CFRA-AM, a pop station in Ottawa. The program director played the A-side and couldn't figure out why it had been sent to his station, so he played the B-side to see if the record was mistakenly marked. He liked "Music Box Dancer" and added it to his station's playlist, turning the record into a Canadian hit. Iconic Ottawa Valley radio personality Dave "50,000" Watts gave the record extensive airplay on the station. The album went gold in Canada, which prompted Polydor in the US to release the album and single. Both the single and album were hits. The single reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart, while the album reached #21 on the Billboard Top Album chart and also went gold.
It was Mills' only U.S. Top 40 hit; the follow-up, another similarly catchy piano instrumental titled "Peter Piper", peaked at #48 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #6 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. Frank managed one final Adult Contemporary chart entry, "Happy Song", which peaked at #41 at the beginning of 1981.
Mills won two Juno Awards in 1980 for "Peter Piper", one for Composer of the Year and one for Instrumental Artist of the Year. He again won in the latter category in 1981.
He continued to release albums until the early 1990s, but has now retired from the music business.
Faye Wong
Faye Wong (王菲) (born August 8, 1969) is a Chinese singer, songwriter, actress and model. She is an icon popular in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and to some extent in the West. She came to fame in the early 1990s while she was based in Hong Kong, returning to Beijing around 1996.Her fan base has grown so large and devoted that media in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China often place the title tiānhòu (天后, meaning Queen of Heaven) before her name, while Japanese fans call her "Diva of Asia". An intensely private artist, she is one of the very few singers widely popular on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, despite her apparent nonchalance toward the media.
According to Guinness World Records, Faye Wong had sold 9.7 million copies of her albums as of March 2000, giving her the title of Best Selling Canto-Pop Female.
She has acted in several TV shows and films, most memorably in Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express, a role that won her "Best Actress" award at the 1994 Stockholm International Film Festival, and in 2046. She is known to many Final Fantasy fans for her Final Fantasy VIII theme "Eyes On Me", and has also been the spokeswoman of brands such as Head & Shoulders shampoo and Pepsi-Cola. Faye Wong has also graced the covers of Vogue Taiwan, Elle and Marie Claire Hong Kong, and has had spreads in Japanese Elle and other major Asian Fashion magazines. In 2008, Wong was named "Asia's sexiest vegetarian woman" by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Lee Carlton (born August 16, 1980) is an American soft rock/Piano pop singer, songwriter, and pianist best known for the Billboard top five, Grammy-nominated single "A Thousand Miles" from her debut album, Be Not Nobody which was released April 30, 2002, and certified platinum in the U.S.Her music, along with that of her contemporary Michelle Branch to whom she is sometimes compared, has had an influence on female solo pop singer-songwriters in the 21st century, including Kate Voegele, Lights, Sara Bareilles (another piano pop artist), Colbie Caillat and Tristan Prettyman.
Carlton's second album, Harmonium (released November 9, 2004), debuted at number 33 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and had sold 179,000 copies as of February 2006, with the single "White Houses," peaking at 86 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. She subsequently parted company from her record label A&M, though she still holds a dedicated fanbase.
Her third album, Heroes and Thieves, was released on October 9, 2007 by the The Inc./Universal Motown record labels.
Regina Spektor
Regina Spektor (born February 18, 1980) is a Soviet-born Jewish-American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City's East Village.Spektor has said that she has created 700 songs, but that she rarely writes any of them down. She has also stated that she never aspired to write songs herself, but songs seem to just flow to her. Spektor possesses a broad vocal range and uses the full extent of it. She also explores a variety of different and somewhat unorthodox vocal techniques, such as verses composed entirely of buzzing noises made with the lips and beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, and also makes use of such unusual musical techniques as using a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair.
Her lyrics are equally eclectic, often taking the form of abstract narratives or first-person character studies, similar to short stories or vignettes put to song. Spektor usually sings in English, though she sometimes includes a few words or verses of Latin, Russian, French, and other languages in her songs.
Vanessa Williams
Vanessa Lynn Williams (born March 18, 1963) is an American model, singer, songwriter and actress. In 1984, she became the first woman of African American descent to be crowned Miss America, but a scandal caused her to relinquish her title. Williams rebounded by launching a career as an entertainer, earning Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award nominations.
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