1.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
2.
Olivia Newton-John
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Olivia Newton-John, AO, OBE is a British-Australian singer, songwriter and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five number-one and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles, eleven of her singles and fourteen of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA. She has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the worlds best-selling artists of all time and she starred in Grease, which featured one of the most successful soundtracks in Hollywood history. Newton-John has been a long-time activist for environmental and animal rights issues, since surviving breast cancer in 1992, she has been an advocate for health awareness becoming involved with various charities, health products and fundraising efforts. Her business interests have included launching several product lines for Koala Blue and she is the mother of one daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi, with her first husband, actor Matt Lattanzi. Her second husband is John Easterling, Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, to Irene Helene, the eldest child of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born and Welsh father, Brinley Bryn Newton-John. Her mothers family had left Germany before World War II to avoid the Nazi regime and she is a third cousin of comedian Ben Elton. Her maternal great-grandfather was jurist Victor Ehrenberg and her matrilineal great-grandmothers father was jurist Rudolf von Jhering. Newton-John is the youngest of three children, following brother Hugh, a doctor, and sister Rona, an actress who was married to Grease co-star Jeff Conaway from 1980 until their divorce in 1985. Newton-Johns father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park who took Rudolf Hess into custody during the Second World War. In 1954, when she was six, Newton-Johns family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia and she attended Christ Church Grammar School, and then University High School, adjacent to Ormond College. At fourteen, Newton-John formed a short-lived all-girl group, Sol Four and she became a regular on local Australian radio and television shows including HSV-7s The Happy Show where she performed as Lovely Livvy. She also appeared on the Go Show where she met future partner, Pat Carroll. Newton-John was initially reluctant to use the prize she had won, a trip to Britain, Newton-John recorded her first single, Till You Say Youll Be Mine Forever, in Britain for Decca Records in 1966. While in Britain, Newton-John missed her then-boyfriend, Ian Turpie, with whom she had co-starred in the Australian telefilm, Newton-John repeatedly booked trips back to Australia that her mother subsequently cancelled. Newton-Johns outlook changed when Pat Carroll also moved to the UK, the two formed a duo called Pat and Olivia and toured nightclubs in Europe. After Carrolls visa expired forcing her to return to Australia, Newton-John remained in Britain to pursue solo work until 1975 and she became engaged to The Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch, but they never married. Newton-John was recruited for the group Toomorrow formed by American producer Don Kirshner, in 1970, the group starred in a science fiction musical film and recorded an accompanying soundtrack album both named after the group
3.
John Lennon
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John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE was an English singer and songwriter who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful and musically influential band in the history of popular music. He and fellow member Paul McCartney formed a songwriting partnership. Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the craze as a teenager, his first band, the Quarrymen, first became the Silver Beatles. After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he added Ono as one of his middle names, Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release, Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. By 2012, Lennons solo album sales in the United States exceeded 14 million and, as writer, co-writer, or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth and, in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and in 1994 as a solo artist. Lennon was born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman of Irish descent and his parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John Jack Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, after her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpools Social Services, Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946 Lennons father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her, according to author Mark Lewisohn, Lennons parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home as Alf left again. A witness who was there that day, Billy Hall, has said the scene often portrayed with a young John Lennon having to make a decision between his parents never happened. It would be 20 years before he had contact with his father again, Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence he lived at Mendips,251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton with his aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own. His aunt purchased volumes of stories for him, and his uncle. In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature, Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society, but I cannot be what I am not. I was the one who all the other boys parents—including Pauls father—would say, the parents instinctively recognised I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friends home, partly out of envy that I didnt have this so-called home
4.
Paul Simon
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Paul Frederic Simon is an American musician, singer-songwriter and actor. Simons fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote nearly all of the songs, including three that reached No.1 on the U. S. singles charts, The Sound of Silence, Mrs. Robinson. In 1986, he released Graceland, an inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman with the poet Derek Walcott. On June 3,2016, Simon released his 13th solo album, titled Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Album Chart and the UK charts. Simon has earned sixteen Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, in 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the 100 People Who Shaped the World by Time magazine. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine named Simon as one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists, in 2015, he was named as one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters by Rolling Stone. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congresss Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007, in 1986, Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music, where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees. Simon was born on October 13,1941, in Newark, New Jersey and his father, Louis, was a college professor, double bass player, and dance bandleader who performed under the name Lee Sims. His mother, Belle, was a school teacher. In 1945, his family moved to the Kew Gardens Hills section of Flushing, Queens, the musician Donald Fagen has described Simons childhood as that of a certain kind of New York Jew, almost a stereotype, really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents, Simon, upon hearing Fagens description, said it isnt far from the truth. Simon says about his childhood, I was a ballplayer, Id go on my bike, and Id hustle kids in stickball. He adds that his father was a New York Yankees fan and he didnt play with me as much as I played with my kids. He was at work until late at night, Simons musical career began after meeting Art Garfunkel when they were both 11. They performed in a production of Alice in Wonderland for their sixth-grade graduation and their idols were the Everly Brothers, whom they imitated in their use of close two-part harmony. Simon also developed an interest in jazz, folk, and blues, especially in the music of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly
5.
Art Garfunkel
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Arthur Ira Art Garfunkel is an American singer, poet and actor. He is best known for his partnership in his years with Paul Simon in the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. Through his solo and collaborative work, Garfunkel has earned six Grammys, in 1990, he and Simon were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Arthur Ira Garfunkel was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, the son of Rose and Jacob Jack Garfunkel, Art is a middle child with two brothers, the older named Jules and the younger named Jerome. Jacobs parents had immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century. Before his career in sales, Jacob worked as an actor in Dayton, Garfunkel is Jewish, his paternal grandparents emigrated from Iași in Romania. His maternal cousin was Lou Pearlman, founder of N Sync, according to the Across America DVD, Garfunkels love for singing originated in the first grade. Later, Garfunkels father bought him a wire recorder and from then on, Garfunkel spent his afternoons singing, recording, at his Bar Mitzvah in 1954, Garfunkel sang as a cantor and performed over four hours of his repertoire for his family. As a young teen, Garfunkel was struck with a lung infection and he explained in a 1998 Interview, In the summer of 55, I had a lung infection. I couldnt run around, but I loved basketball and there was a hoop nearby, Much of the summer I spent methodically hitting 96,98 foul shots out of 100. I never played on a team after Junior High School, just 3 against 3, half court pick up games in the schoolyard. He met his singing partner Paul Simon in the sixth grade at PS164. It has been said by Garfunkel that Simon first became interested in singing after hearing Garfunkel sing a rendition of Nat King Coles Too Young in a talent show. Between 1956 and 1962, the two performed together as Tom & Jerry, occasionally performing at school dances and their idols were The Everly Brothers, whom they imitated in their use of close two-part vocal harmony. In 1957, Simon & Garfunkel recorded the song Hey, Schoolgirl under the name Tom & Jerry, the single reached forty-ninth on the pop charts. Garfunkel chose his nickname because he liked to track, or graph hits and he also released some singles as a solo artist under the name Artie Garr, a shortened version of his name. In interviews, Garfunkel has noted how these early singles distinguished him as a crooner, with songs like Beat Love. Garfunkel was a member in tennis, skiing, fencing, and bowling at the College and also joined the all-male a cappella group on campus
6.
Marvin Hamlisch
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Marvin Frederick Hamlisch was an American composer and conductor. Hamlisch was one of twelve people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar. This collection of all four is referred to as an EGOT and he is one of only two people to have won those four prizes and a Pulitzer Prize. Hamlisch was born in Manhattan, to Viennese-born Jewish parents Lilly and his father was an accordionist and bandleader. Hamlisch was a prodigy, and, by age five. A few months before he turned seven, in 1951, he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division and his first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Shortly afterward, he was hired by producer Sam Spiegel to play piano at Spiegels parties and this connection led to his first film score, The Swimmer. His favorite musicals growing up were My Fair Lady, Gypsy, West Side Story, Hamlisch attended Queens College, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967. Although Liza Minnellis debut album included The Travelin Life, a song he wrote in his teens and this song, Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows, co-written with Howard Liebling, was recorded by Lesley Gore and reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1965. His first film score was for The Swimmer, after the films producer Sam Spiegel hired Hamlisch based on a piano performance Hamlisch did at a party, later he wrote music for several early Woody Allen films such as Take the Money and Run and Bananas. In addition, Hamlisch co-wrote the song California Nights, which was recorded by Lesley Gore for her 1967 hit album of the same name. Among his better-known works during the 1970s were adaptations of Scott Joplins ragtime music for the motion picture The Sting, including its theme song, The Entertainer. It hit #1 on Billboard′s Adult Contemporary chart and #3 on the Hot 100, selling nearly 2 million copies in the U. S. alone. He had great success in 1973, winning two Academy Awards for the song and the score for the motion picture The Way We Were. He won four Grammy Awards in 1974, two for The Way We Were, in 1975, he wrote what, for its first 12 years, would be the original theme music for Good Morning America---it was built around four notes. He co-wrote Nobody Does It Better for The Spy Who Loved Me with his then-girlfriend Carole Bayer Sager, in the 1980s, he had success with the scores for Ordinary People and Sophies Choice. He also received an Academy-Award nomination in 1986 for the version of A Chorus Line. His last projects included The Informant, starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh
7.
Barbra Streisand
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Barbara Joan Barbra Streisand is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and filmmaker. She is among a group of entertainers who have been honored with an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. Streisand is one of the music artists of all time, with more than 68.5 million albums in the United States. She starred in the critically acclaimed Funny Girl, for which she won the Academy Award, with the release of Yentl in 1983, Streisand became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won an Oscar for Best Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical, Streisand received the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the first woman to win that award. The RIAA and Billboard recognize Streisand as holding the record for the most top 10 albums of any recording artist. According to Billboard, Streisand holds the record for the female with the most number one albums, Billboard also recognizes Streisand as the greatest female of all time on its Billboard 200 chart and one of the greatest artists of all time on its Hot 100 chart. Barbara Joan Streisand was born on April 24,1942, in Brooklyn, New York and her mother had been a soprano singer in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary. Her father was a school teacher at the same school. Streisands family was Jewish, her grandparents emigrated from Galicia and her maternal grandparents from the Russian Empire. Her father earned a degree from City College of New York in 1928 and was considered athletic. As a student, he spent his summers outdoors, once working as a lifeguard, hed try anything, his sister Molly said. He married Ida in 1930, two years after graduating, and became a respected educator with a focus on helping underprivileged. In August 1943, a few months after Streisands first birthday, her father died suddenly at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, the family fell into near-poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an outcast, explaining and her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved, When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food, Streisand says. Streisand recalls that her mother had a voice and sang semi-professionally on occasion. During a visit to the Catskills when Streisand was thirteen, she told Rosie ODonnell, she and that session was the first time Streisand ever asserted herself as an artist, which also became her first moment of inspiration as an artist. She has a brother, Sheldon, and a half-sister
8.
Grammy Award for Best New Artist
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The Grammy Award for Best New Artist has been awarded since 1959. Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were handed out, the award was not presented in 1967. The official guidelines are as follows, For a new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, note that this is not necessarily the first album released by an artist. It is sometimes asserted, with varying degrees of sincerity, that winning the award is a curse, as several award winners were never able to duplicate the success they experienced in their debut year. This viewpoint was expressed by former Starland Vocal Band member Taffy Danoff in a 2002 interview for VH1s 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, so that was basically the kiss of death and I feel sorry for everyone whos gotten it since. The category is also notable for being the one of its kind in which a Grammy Award was vacated. This occurred in 1990 after it was revealed winners Milli Vanilli did not contribute their own vocals on their debut album, the award was revoked, but was not handed out to another artist. Of the 54 awards presented in the category since its inception, the honor has been presented to 25 solo female artists,18 duos or groups, between 1997 and 2003, all the winners were solo female artists. Also, from 1993 to 2005, no winner was a male artist. In 2006, John Legend broke this trend, which started with Marc Cohn in 1992. Only four artists have won both Best New Artist and Album of the Year in the year, Bob Newhart in 1961, Christopher Cross in 1981, Lauryn Hill in 1999. Of all the winners, only three have been country artists, in 1997, LeAnn Rimes became the first country artist to win the award. She was followed by Carrie Underwood in 2007 and Zac Brown Band in 2010, additionally,2017 marked the first time that two country artists were nominated in this category in the same year. 1984 marked the first time all of the nominees were from outside of the United States. Over the years, the eligibility rules for this category have changed several times, in 2010, Lady Gagas exclusion from the Best New Artist category caused the Recording Academy to change eligibility requirements for the next ceremony. She was ineligible for the nomination because her hit Just Dance had been nominated in 2008, the new rule stated that an artist can be nominated as long as that artist has not previously released an entire album and has subsequently not won a Grammy. To be eligible in the category of Best New Artist, the artist, duo, or group, Must have released a minimum of five singles/tracks or one album, but no more than 30 singles/tracks or three albums. May not have entered into this more than three times, including as a performing member of an established group
9.
Georg Solti
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Born in Budapest, he studied there with Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and his career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis, and being of Jewish background he fled the increasingly restrictive anti-semitic laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House he found refuge in Switzerland, prohibited from conducting there, he earned a living as a pianist. After the war, Solti was appointed director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. In 1952 he moved to the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained in charge for nine years and he took West German citizenship in 1953. In 1961 he became director of the Covent Garden Opera Company. During his ten-year tenure, he introduced changes that raised standards to the highest international levels, under his musical directorship the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title the Royal Opera. He became a British citizen in 1972, in 1969 Solti became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for 22 years. He relinquished the position in 1991 and became the music director laureate. Known in his early years for the intensity of his music making and he recorded many works two or three times at various stages of his career, and was a prolific recording artist, making more than 250 recordings, including 45 complete opera sets. The most famous of his recordings is probably Deccas complete set of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen, Soltis Ring has twice been voted the greatest recording ever made, in polls for Gramophone magazine in 1999 and the BBCs Music Magazine in 2012. Solti was repeatedly honoured by the industry with awards throughout his career. Solti also received the Academy’s 1995 Lifetime Achievement Award, Solti was born György Stern on Maros utca, in the Hegyvidék district of the Buda side of Budapest. He was the younger of the two children of Móricz Stern and his wife Teréz, née Rosenbaum, both of whom were Jewish, in the aftermath of the First World War it became the accepted practice in Hungary for citizens with Germanic surnames to adopt Hungarian ones. The right wing regime of Admiral Horthy enacted a series of Hungarianisation laws, Mor Stern, a self-employed merchant, felt no need to change his surname, but thought it prudent to change that of his children. He renamed them after Solt, a town in central Hungary. His sons given name, György, was acceptably Hungarian and was not changed, Solti described his father as a kind, sweet man who trusted everyone. He shouldnt have, but he did, jews in Hungary were tremendously patriotic
10.
Hector Berlioz
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Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts. Berlioz made significant contributions to the orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works, and he also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss. Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, Louis was an agnostic, with a liberal outlook, his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was a devout Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood, the other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life. Berlioz was not a prodigy, unlike some other famous composers of the time, he began studying music at age 12, writing small compositions. As a result of his fathers discouragement, he never learned to play the piano and he became proficient at guitar, flageolet and flute. He learned harmony from textbooks alone—he was not formally trained, the majority of his early compositions were romances and chamber pieces. While yet at age twelve, as recalled in his Mémoires, he experienced his first passion for a woman and he also began to visit the Paris Conservatoire library, seeking out scores of Glucks operas and making personal copies of parts of them. He recalled in his Mémoires his first encounter with Luigi Cherubini, Cherubini attempted to throw the impetuous Berlioz out of the library since he was not a formal music student at that time. Berlioz also heard two operas by Gaspare Spontini, a composer who influenced him through their friendship, and whom he later championed when working as a critic, from then on, he devoted himself to composition. He was encouraged in his endeavors by Jean-François Le Sueur, director of the Royal Chapel, in 1823, he wrote his first article—a letter to the journal Le corsaire defending Spontinis La vestale. Despite his parents disapproval, in 1824 he formally abandoned his studies to pursue a career in music. This work was rehearsed and revised after the rehearsal but not performed until the following year, Berlioz later claimed to have burnt the score, but it was re-discovered in 1991. Later that year or in 1825, he began to compose the opera Les francs-juges, the work survives only in fragments, the overture has been much recorded and is sometimes played in concert. In 1826 he began attending the Conservatoire to study composition under Jean-François Le Sueur and he also submitted a fugue to the Prix de Rome, but was eliminated in the primary round. Winning the prize would become an obsession until he won it in 1830
11.
Leontyne Price
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Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi, she rose to acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s. Time magazine called her voice Rich, supple and shining, it was in its capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C. A lirico spinto soprano, she was considered well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. After her retirement from the stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals. In October 2008, she was one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts, Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi. Her father James worked in a mill and her mother Katie was a midwife who sang in the church choir. They had waited 13 years for a child, and Leontyne became the focus of intense pride, given a toy piano at the age of three, she began piano lessons with a local teacher. When she was in kindergarten, her parents traded in the family phonograph as the payment on an upright piano. At 14, she was taken on a trip to hear Marian Anderson sing in Jackson. Meanwhile, she visited the home of Alexander and Elizabeth Chisholm. Mrs. Chisholm encouraged the early piano playing. During World War II, Price worked as a maid in the Chisholms household where she was allowed to play the piano. Mrs. Chisholm noticed her singing voice and accompanied her in several early recitals. Aiming for a career, Price enrolled in the music education program at the all-black Wilberforce College in Wilberforce. Her success in the club led to solo assignments. She sang in the choir with another singer, Betty Allen. With the help of the Chisholms and the famous bass Paul Robeson and she won a scholarship and was admitted to the studio of Florence Page Kimball, who would remain her principal teacher and advisor throughout the 1960s
12.
Richard Strauss
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Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire. Strauss was born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, the son of Josephine and Franz Strauss, in his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six and continued to write music almost until his death, during his boyhood Strauss attended orchestra rehearsals of the Munich Court Orchestra, where he received private instruction in music theory and orchestration from an assistant conductor. In 1872 he started receiving violin instruction at the Royal School of Music from Benno Walter, in 1874 Strauss heard his first Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. The influence of Wagners music on Strausss style was to be profound, but at first his musically conservative father forbade him to study it. Indeed, in the Strauss household, the music of Richard Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion, in later life, Strauss said that he deeply regretted the conservative hostility to Wagners progressive works. Nevertheless, Strausss father undoubtedly had a influence on his sons developing taste. In early 1882 in Vienna he gave the first performance of his Violin Concerto in D minor, playing a piano reduction of the part himself. The same year he entered Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied philosophy and art history, Strauss learned the art of conducting by observing Bülow in rehearsal. Bülow was very fond of the man and decided that Strauss should be his successor as conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra when Bülow resigned in 1885. Strausss compositions at time were indebted to the style of Robert Schumann or Felix Mendelssohn. 1, Op.11, is representative of this period and is a staple of modern horn repertoire, Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna on 10 September 1894. She was famous for being irascible, garrulous, eccentric and outspoken, throughout his life, from his earliest songs to the final Four Last Songs of 1948, he preferred the soprano voice to all others, and all his operas contain important soprano roles. The Strausses had one son, Franz, in 1897, Franz married Alice von Grab-Hermannswörth, daughter of a Jewish industrialist, in a Roman Catholic ceremony in 1924. Franz and Alice had two sons, Richard and Christian, some of Strausss first compositions were solo instrumental and chamber works. After 1890 Strauss composed very infrequently for chamber groups, his energies being almost completely absorbed with large-scale orchestral works and operas. Four of his pieces are actually arrangements of portions of his operas, including the Daphne-Etude for solo violin and the String Sextet
