1.
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
2.
Bono
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Paul David Hewson, known by his stage name Bono, is an Irish singer-songwriter, musician, venture capitalist, businessman, and philanthropist. He is best known as the lead vocalist of rock band U2, Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his future wife, Alison Stewart, and the future members of U2. Bono writes almost all U2 lyrics, frequently using religious, social, during U2s early years, his lyrics contributed to their rebellious and spiritual tone. As the band matured, his lyrics became inspired more by personal experiences shared with the other members, Bono is also widely known for his activism concerning Africa, for which he co-founded DATA, EDUN, the ONE Campaign and Product Red. He has organised and played in several concerts and has met with influential politicians. Bono has been praised for his activism and involvement with U2, together with Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono was named Time Person of the Year in 2005, among other awards and nominations. Bono was born in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, on 10 May 1960. He was raised in the Northside suburb of Finglas with his brother by their mother, Iris, a member of the Church of Ireland, and their father, Brendan Robert Bob Hewson and his parents initially agreed that the first child would be raised Anglican and the second Catholic. Although Bono was the child, he also attended Church of Ireland services with his mother and brother. He went to the local primary Glasnevin National School, Bonos mother died on 10 September 1974, after suffering a cerebral aneurysm at her fathers funeral. Many U2 songs, including I Will Follow, Mofo, Out of Control, Lemon, Bono attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School, a multi-denominational school in Clontarf. During his childhood and adolescence, Bono and his friends were part of a surrealist street gang called Lypton Village, Bono met one of his closest friends, Guggi, in Lypton Village. The gang had a ritual of nickname-giving, Bono had several names, first, he was Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbang, then just Huyseman, followed by Houseman, Bon Murray, Bono Vox of OConnell Street, and finally just Bono. Bono Vox is an alteration of Bonavox, a Latin phrase which translates to good voice and it is said he was nicknamed Bono Vox by his friend Gavin Friday. He initially disliked the name, however, when he learned it translated to good voice, Hewson has been known as Bono since the late 1970s. Although he uses Bono as his name, close family and friends also refer to him as Bono. After he left school, his father Bob Hewson, told him he could live at home for one year but if he was not able to pay his own way, Bono is married to Alison Hewson. The couple have four children, daughters Jordan and Memphis Eve and sons Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q, Bono is almost never seen in public without sunglasses, as he suffers from glaucoma
3.
Condoleezza Rice
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Condoleezza Condi Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, the person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush. Rice was the first female African-American Secretary of State, as well as the second African-American Secretary of State, Rice was President Bushs National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. Before joining the Bush administration, she was a professor of science at Stanford University. Rice also served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs Advisor to President George H. W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and she has logged more miles traveling than any other Secretary of State. While in the position, she chaired the Millennium Challenge Corporations board of directors, in March 2009, Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. In September 2010, she became a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and her name, Condoleezza, derives from the music-related term con dolcezza, which in Italian means, with sweetness. Rice has roots in the American South going back to the pre-Civil War era, Rice grew up in the Titusville neighborhood of Birmingham, and then Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at a time when the South was racially segregated. Rice began to learn French, music, figure skating and ballet at the age of three, at the age of fifteen, she began piano classes with the goal of becoming a concert pianist. While Rice ultimately did not become a professional pianist, she still practices often and she accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma playing Johannes Brahms Violin Sonata in D Minor at Constitution Hall in April 2002 for the National Medal of Arts Awards. In 1967, the moved to Denver, Colorado. She attended St. Marys Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, Rice enrolled at the University of Denver, where her father was then serving as an assistant dean. Rice initially majored in Music, and after her sophomore year, she went to the Aspen Music Festival, There, she later said, she met students of greater talent than herself, and she doubted her career prospects as a pianist. She began to consider an alternative major and she attended an International Politics course taught by Josef Korbel, which sparked her interest in the Soviet Union and international relations. Rice later described Korbel, as a figure in her life. In 1974, at age 19, Rice was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, while at the University of Denver she was a member of Alpha Chi Omega, Gamma Delta chapter. She obtained a degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1975. She first worked in the State Department in 1977, during the Carter administration and she would also study Russian at Moscow State University in the summer of 1979, and intern with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California
4.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn)
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At two separate times, Felix Mendelssohn composed music for William Shakespeares play, A Midsummer Nights Dream. First in 1826, near the start of his career, he wrote a concert overture, later, in 1842, only a few years before his death, he wrote incidental music for a production of the play, into which he incorporated the existing Overture. The incidental music includes the world-famous Wedding March, the German title reads Ein Sommernachtstraum. The Overture in E major, Op.21, was written by Mendelssohn at 17 years and 6 months old, contemporary music scholar George Grove called it the greatest marvel of early maturity that the world has ever seen in music. It was written as an overture, not associated with any performance of the play. The Overture was written after Mendelssohn had read a German translation of the play in 1826, the translation was by August Wilhelm Schlegel, with help from Ludwig Tieck. There was a connection as well, Schlegels brother Friedrich married Felix Mendelssohns Aunt Dorothea. While a romantic piece in atmosphere, the Overture incorporates many elements, being cast in sonata form and shaped by regular phrasings. The piece is noted for its striking instrumental effects, such as the emulation of scampering fairy feet at the beginning. Heinrich Eduard Jacob, in his biography of the composer, said that Mendelssohn had scribbled the chords after hearing an evening breeze rustle the leaves in the garden of the familys home, the overture begins with four chords in the winds. Following the first theme in the parallel minor representing the dancing fairies, a transition leads to a second theme and this is followed by the braying of Bottom with the hee-hawing being evoked by the strings. A final group of themes, reminiscent of craftsmen and hunting calls, the fairies dominate most of the development section, while the Lovers theme is played in a minor key. The recapitulation begins with the opening four chords in the winds, followed by the Fairies theme. The fairies return, and ultimately have the word in the coda. The overture ends once again with the opening four chords by the winds. The Overture was premiered in Stettin on 20 February 1827, at a concert conducted by Carl Loewe, Mendelssohn had turned 18 just over two weeks earlier. He had to travel 80 miles through a snowstorm to get to the concert. After the intermission, he joined the first violins for a performance of Beethovens Ninth Symphony, Mendelssohn wrote the incidental music, Op.61, for A Midsummer Nights Dream in 1842,16 years after he wrote the Overture
5.
Rigoletto
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Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi samuse by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time and it is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdis middle-to-late career. Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his court jester Rigoletto. The operas original title, La maledizione, refers to the placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigolettos encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke, Verdi was commissioned to write a new opera by the La Fenice opera house in Venice in 1850. By this time he was already a composer and had a degree of freedom in choosing the works he would prefer to set to music. He then asked Francesco Maria Piave to examine the play Kean by Alexandre Dumas, père, Verdi soon stumbled upon Victor Hugos five-act play Le roi samuse. He later explained that The subject is grand, immense, and there is a character that is one of the greatest creations that the theatre can boast of, in any country and in all history. It was a controversial subject, and Hugo himself had already had trouble with censorship in France. As Austria at that time controlled much of Northern Italy. Hugos play depicted a king as an immoral and cynical womanizer, from the beginning, Verdi was aware of the risks, as was Piave. In a letter which Verdi wrote to Piave, Use four legs, run through the town, correspondence between a prudent Piave and an already committed Verdi followed, but the two underestimated the power and the intentions of Austrians and remained at risk. Even the friendly Guglielmo Brenna, secretary of La Fenice, who had promised them that they would not have problems with the censors, was wrong, at the beginning of the summer of 1850, rumours started to spread that Austrian censorship was going to forbid the production. The censors considered the Hugo work to verge on lèse majesté, in August, Verdi and Piave prudently retired to Busseto, Verdis hometown, to continue the composition and prepare a defensive scheme. They wrote to the theatre, assuring them that the doubts about the morality of the work were not justified but since very little time was left. Verdi was completely against this solution and preferred instead to have direct negotiations with censors, arguing over each. At this point, Brenna, La Fenices secretary, showed the Austrians some letters and articles depicting the bad character but the value of the artist
6.
La traviata
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La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La Dame aux Camélias, an adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. The opera was originally titled Violetta, after the main character and it was first performed on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice. Piave and Verdi wanted to follow Dumas in giving the opera a contemporary setting and it was not until the 1880s that the composer and librettists original wishes were carried out and realistic productions were staged. For Verdi, the years 1851 to 1853 were filled with operatic activity, in addition, personal affairs in his home town limited his activities that spring, but after Rigolettos success in Venice, an additional commission was offered by Brenna, the secretary of La Fenice. After Verdis return from Paris a contract was signed in May 1852, with performances scheduled for March 1853, Verdi sees The Lady of the Camellias play Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi had visited Paris from late 1851 and into March 1852. In February the couple attended a performance of Alexander Dumas filss The Lady of the Camellias, as a result of this, Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz reports, the composer immediately began to compose music for what would later become La traviata. Writing to Piave, he added that I dont want any of those subjects that one can find by the hundreds. But at the time, the composer expressed concern about censorship in Venice. As the months dragged on into October, it was agreed that Piave would come to SantAgata, one subject was chosen, Piave set to work, and then Verdi threw in another idea, which may have been La traviata. However, within a time, a synopsis was dispatched to Venice under the title of Amore e morte. However, as Budden reveals, Verdi writes to his friend De Sanctis telling him that for Venice Im doing La Dame aux camélias which will probably be called La traviata, a subject for our own age. Although still bogged down at SantAgata, Piave was sanguine, Everything will turn out fine, Verdi was filled with premonitions of disaster upon his arrival in Venice on 21 February for rehearsals and he made his unhappiness clear to the singers. 19th century The audience jeered at times during the premiere, directing some of their scorn at the casting of soprano Fanny Salvini-Donatelli in the role of Violetta. Though she was a singer, they considered her to be too old. The next day, Verdi wrote to his friend Emanuele Muzio in what has now become perhaps his most famous letter, was the fault mine or the singers. Coincidentally, as Philips-Matz points out, an Italian translation of the play La Dame aux camélias was being presented just a short distance from La Fenice. As Budden notes, it came to be Venice that made an honest woman of Violetta when Verdi allowed a performance at the Teatro San Benedetto, then it was a fiasco, now it has created a furore
