1.
Louisville, Kentucky
–
Louisville is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 30th-most populous city in the United States. It is one of two cities in Kentucky designated as first-class, the other being the states second-largest city of Lexington, Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County. Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and is named after King Louis XVI of France, making Louisville one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachian Mountains. Sited beside the Falls of the Ohio, the major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Its main airport is also the site of United Parcel Services worldwide air hub, since 2003, Louisvilles borders have been the same as those of Jefferson County because of a city-county merger. The official name of this consolidated city-county government is the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government, the citys total consolidated population as of the 2014 census estimate was 760,026. However, the total of 612,780 excludes other incorporated places and semiautonomous towns within the county and is the population listed in most sources. As of 2014, the MSA had a population of 1,269,702, the history of Louisville spans hundreds of years, and has been influenced by the areas geography and location. The rapids at the Falls of the Ohio created a barrier to river travel, the first European settlement in the vicinity of modern-day Louisville was on Corn Island in 1778 by Col. George Rogers Clark, credited as the founder of Louisville. Several landmarks in the community are named after him, two years later, in 1780, the Virginia General Assembly approved the town charter of Louisville. The city was named in honor of King Louis XVI of France, early residents lived in forts to protect themselves from Indian raids, but moved out by the late 1780s. In 1803, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark organized their expedition across America in the town of Clarksville, Indiana at the present-day Falls of the Ohio opposite Louisville, Kentucky. The citys early growth was influenced by the fact river boats had to be unloaded and moved downriver before reaching the falls. By 1828, the population had swelled to 7,000, the city grew rapidly in its formative years. Louisville was a shipping port and slaves worked in a variety of associated trades. The city was often a point of escape for slaves to the north, during the Civil War, Louisville was a major stronghold of Union forces, which kept Kentucky firmly in the Union. It was the center of planning, supplies, recruiting, and transportation for numerous campaigns, by the end of the war, Louisville had not been attacked, although skirmishes and battles, including the battles of Perryville and Corydon, took place nearby
Louisville, Kentucky
–
From top:
Louisville downtown skyline at night,
Cathedral of the Assumption,
Thunder Over Louisville fireworks during the
Kentucky Derby Festival,
Kentucky Derby,
Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory,
Fourth Street Live!,
The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts
Louisville, Kentucky
–
Louisville's founder,
George Rogers Clark
Louisville, Kentucky
–
View of Main Street Louisville in 1846
Louisville, Kentucky
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Memorial to the
1890 tornado, on Main Street in
downtown Louisville
2.
Kentucky
–
Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Kentucky is one of four U. S. states constituted as a commonwealth, originally a part of Virginia, in 1792 Kentucky became the 15th state to join the Union. Kentucky is the 37th most extensive and the 26th most populous of the 50 United States, Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State, a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky. In 1776, the counties of Virginia beyond the Appalachian Mountains became known as Kentucky County, the precise etymology of the name is uncertain, but likely based on an Iroquoian name meaning the meadow or the prairie. Kentucky is situated in the Upland South, a significant portion of eastern Kentucky is part of Appalachia. Kentucky borders seven states, from the Midwest and the Southeast, West Virginia lies to the east, Virginia to the southeast, Tennessee to the south, Missouri to the west, Illinois and Indiana to the northwest, and Ohio to the north and northeast. Only Missouri and Tennessee, both of which border eight states, touch more, Kentuckys northern border is formed by the Ohio River and its western border by the Mississippi River. The official state borders are based on the courses of the rivers as they existed when Kentucky became a state in 1792, for instance, northbound travelers on U. S.41 from Henderson, after crossing the Ohio River, will be in Kentucky for about two miles. Ellis Park, a racetrack, is located in this small piece of Kentucky. Waterworks Road is part of the land border between Indiana and Kentucky. Kentucky has a part known as Kentucky Bend, at the far west corner of the state. It exists as an exclave surrounded completely by Missouri and Tennessee, Road access to this small part of Kentucky on the Mississippi River requires a trip through Tennessee. The epicenter of the powerful 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes was near this area, much of the outer Bluegrass is in the Eden Shale Hills area, made up of short, steep, and very narrow hills. The Jackson Purchase and western Pennyrile are home to several bald cypress/tupelo swamps, located within the southeastern interior portion of North America, Kentucky has a climate that can best be described as a humid subtropical climate. Temperatures in Kentucky usually range from daytime summer highs of 87 °F to the low of 23 °F. The average precipitation is 46 inches a year, Kentucky experiences four distinct seasons, with substantial variations in the severity of summer and winter. The highest recorded temperature was 114 °F at Greensburg on July 28,1930 while the lowest recorded temperature was −37 °F at Shelbyville on January 19,1994, due to its location, Kentucky has a moderate humid subtropical climate, with abundant rainfall
Kentucky
–
Narrow country roads bounded by stone and wood plank fences are a fixture in the Kentucky
Bluegrass region.
Kentucky
Kentucky
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Kentucky's regions (click on image for color-coding information.)
Kentucky
–
The
Eastern Kentucky Coalfield is known for its rugged terrain.
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
–
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
4.
Seating capacity
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Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats hundreds of thousands of people. The International Fire Code, portions of which have adopted by many jurisdictions, is directed more towards the use of a facility than the construction. It specifies, For areas having fixed seating without dividing arms and it also requires that every public venue submit a detailed site plan to the local fire code official, including details of the means of egress, seating capacity, arrangement of the seating. Once safety considerations have been satisfied, determinations of seating capacity turn on the size of the venue. For sports venues, the decision on maximum seating capacity is determined by several factors, chief among these are the primary sports program and the size of the market area. Seating capacity of venues also plays a role in what media they are able to provide, in contracting to permit performers to use a theatre or other performing space, the seating capacity of the performance facility must be disclosed. Seating capacity may influence the kind of contract to be used, the seating capacity must also be disclosed to the copyright owner in seeking a license for the copyrighted work to be performed in that venue. Venues that may be leased for private functions such as ballrooms and auditoriums generally advertise their seating capacity, seating capacity is also an important consideration in the construction and use of sports venues such as stadiums and arenas. The seating capacity for restaurants is reported as covers, a restaurant that can seat 99 is said to have 99 covers, seating capacity differs from total capacity, which describes the total number of people who can fit in a venue or in a vehicle either sitting or standing. Use of the term public capacity indicates that a venue is allowed to more people than it can actually seat. Again, the total number of people can refer to either the physical space available or limitations set by law
Seating capacity
–
The
Indianapolis Motor Speedway has the largest seating capacity of any venue in the world.
Seating capacity
–
An aerial view of the
Melbourne Cricket Ground during the 1992
Cricket World Cup final packed with 90,000 people.
5.
Performing arts
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Performing arts are a form of art in which artists use their voices and/or their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression. It is different from visual arts, which is when artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects, performing arts include several disciplines, each performed in front of a live audience. Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers, examples of these include actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, circus artists, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting, choreography. A performer who excels in acting, singing, and dancing is commonly referred to as a triple threat, well-known examples of historical triple threat artists include Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Judy Garland. Performers often adapt their appearance, such as costumes and stage makeup, stage lighting. Performing arts may include dance, music, opera, theatre and musical theatre, magic, illusion, mime, spoken word, puppetry, circus arts, performance art, recitation and public speaking. There is also a form of fine art, in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. Most performance art also involves some form of art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as an art during the Modern dance era. Theatre is the branch of performing arts, concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound, any one or more of these elements is performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative style of plays. In the context of performing arts, dance generally refers to movement, typically rhythmic and to music. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement to codified, in dance, the connection between the two concepts is stronger than in some other arts, and neither can exist without the other. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who practices this art is called a choreographer, music is an art form which combines pitch, rhythm, and dynamic in order to create sound. It can be performed using a variety of instruments and styles and is divided into genres, as an art form, music can occur in live or recorded formats, and can be planned or improvised. Starting in the 6th century BC, the Classical period of performing art began in Greece and these poets wrote plays which, in some cases, incorporated dance. The Hellenistic period began the use of comedy
Performing arts
–
Dance is a type of performance art practiced all over the world.
Performing arts
–
A
ballerina en pointe.
Performing arts
–
Painting of a showing of
Commedia dell'arte - dated 1657.
Performing arts
–
Isadora Duncan, one of the developers of
free dance.
6.
Alexander Calder
–
Calder’s monumental stationary sculptures are called stabiles. He also produced wire figures, which are like drawings made in space, Alexander Sandy Calder was born in 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. His actual birthday, however, remains a source of much confusion, according to Calders mother, Nanette, Calder was born on August 22, yet his birth certificate at Philadelphia City Hall, based on a hand-written ledger, stated July 22. When Calders family learned about the certificate, they reasserted with certainty that city officials had made a mistake. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor who created many public installations. Calders mother was a portrait artist, who had studied at the Académie Julian. She moved to Philadelphia, where she met Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Calders parents married on February 22,1895, his sister, Mrs. Margaret Calder Hayes, was instrumental in the development of the UC Berkeley Art Museum. In 1902, Calder posed nude for his father’s sculpture The Man Cub and that same year he also completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant. Three years later, Stirling Calder contracted tuberculosis, and Calders parents moved to a ranch in Oracle, Arizona, the children were reunited with their parents in late March 1906 and stayed at the ranch in Arizona until fall of the same year. After Arizona, the Calder family moved to Pasadena, California, the windowed cellar of the family home became Calders first studio and he received his first set of tools. He used scraps of copper wire that he found in the street to make jewelry for his sisters dolls, on January 1,1907, Nanette Calder took her son to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, where he observed a four-horse-chariot race. This style of event later became the finale of Calders miniature circus performances, in the fall of 1909, the Calder family moved back to Philadelphia, where Calder briefly attended Germantown Academy, then moved to Croton-on-Hudson, New York. That Christmas, he sculpted a dog and an out of sheet brass as gifts for his parents. The sculptures are three-dimensional and the duck is kinetic because it rocks when gently tapped, in Croton, during his early high school years, Calder was befriended by his fathers painter friend Everett Shinn with whom he built a gravity powered system of mechanical trains. Calder described it, We ran the train on wooden rails held by spikes and we even lit up some cars with candle lights. After Croton, the Calders moved to Spuyten Duyvil to be closer to New York City, while living in Spuyten Duyvil, Calder attended high school in nearby Yonkers. During Calders high school years, the family moved back and forth between New York and California, in each new location, Calders parents reserved cellar space as a studio for their son. Toward the end of period, Calder stayed with friends in California while his parents moved back to New York
Alexander Calder
–
Alexander Calder, by
Carl Van Vechten, 1947
Alexander Calder
–
Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, a
signature work by Calder -
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Alexander Calder
–
Calder's
theatrical set for a 1936 production of the symphonic drama Socrate.
Alexander Calder
–
Man, a sculpture by Alexander Calder for
Expo 67, on
Saint Helen's Island Parc Jean-Drapeau,
Montréal, Quebec
7.
John Chamberlain (sculptor)
–
John Angus Chamberlain was an American sculptor. At the time of his death he resided and worked on Shelter Island, born in Rochester, Indiana as the son of a saloonkeeper, Chamberlain was raised mostly by his grandmother after his parents divorced. He spent much of his youth in Chicago, after serving in the U. S Navy from 1943 to 1946, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College. At Black Mountain, he studied with the poets Charles Olsen, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, the following year, he moved to New York, where for the first time he created sculpture that included scrap-metal auto parts. Over the course of his career, he had studios in New York, New Mexico, Florida, Connecticut. Chamberlain is best known for creating sculptures from old automobiles that bring the Abstract Expressionist style of painting into three dimensions and he began by carving and modelling, but turned to working in metal in 1952 and welding 1953. In 1962 Donald Judd wrote, The only reason Chamberlain is not the best American sculptor under forty is the incommensurability of the best which makes it arbitrary to say so. By the end of the 1960s, Chamberlain had replaced his signature materials initially with galvanized steel, then with mineral-coated Plexiglas, in 1966, he began a series of sculptures made of rolled, folded, and tied urethane foam. Since returning in the mid-1970s to metal as his primary material, in 1973, two 300-pound metal pieces by Chamberlain were mistaken for junk and carted away as they sat outside a gallery warehouse in Chicago. In the early 1980s, Chamberlain moved to Sarasota, Florida, many of the subsequent works Chamberlain made in Florida revert to more volumetric, compact configurations, often aligned on a vertical axis. In 1984, Chamberlain created the monumental American Tableau created for display on the Seagram Buildings plaza, in the last decade of his life, the artist expanded his work to large-format photographs. Chamberlains first major show was held at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York. Chamberlain represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1964 and he had his first retrospective in 1971, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. A second retrospective was organized in 1986 by the Museum of Contemporary Art, from February 24 to May 13,2012, shortly after the artists death, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum showcased John Chamberlain, Choices, a comprehensive exhibition of the artists work. A special exhibition of Chamberlains foam sculptures and photographs was on view at the Chinati Foundation in 2005-06, Chamberlain supposedly has a work of art on the moon in the Moon Museum. Chamberlains work is represented in major public collections including Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas. Speaking about the meaning of his work he has said Even if I knew, if I feel so glad that a sculpture is here, and I don’t care who did it, then I figure its a good piece. In 2011, Chamberlains Nutcracker from the Allan Stone Estate sold at auction for $4.7 million, more than twice its high $1.8 million estimate, Chamberlain has been represented by Gagosian Gallery since 2011
John Chamberlain (sculptor)
–
S, metal, 1959, in the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
8.
Jean Dubuffet
–
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement Art Brut, Dubuffet enjoyed a prolific art career, both in France and in America, and was featured in many exhibitions throughout his lifetime. Dubuffet was born in Le Havre to a family of wine merchants who were part of the wealthy bourgeoisie. He moved to Paris in 1918 to study painting at the Académie Julian, becoming friends with the artists Juan Gris, André Masson. Six months later, upon finding academic training to be distasteful, during this time, Dubuffet developed many other interests, including music, poetry, and the study of ancient and modern languages. Dubuffet also traveled to Italy and Brazil, and upon returning to Le Havre in 1925, he married for the first time and he took up painting again in 1934 when he made a large series of portraits in which he emphasized the vogues in art history. But again he stopped, developing his business at Bercy during the German Occupation of France. Years later, in a text, he boasted about having made substantial profits by supplying wine to the Wehrmacht. In 1942, Dubuffet decided to devote himself again to art and he often chose subjects for his works from everyday life, such as people sitting in the Paris Métro or walking in the country. Dubuffet painted with strong, unbroken colors, recalling the palette of Fauvism, as well as the Brucke painters, with their juxtaposing, many of his works featured an individual or individuals placed in a very cramped space, which had a distinct psychological impact on viewers. His first solo show came in October 1944, at the Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris and this marked Dubuffets third attempt to become an established artist. In 1945, Dubuffet attended and was impressed by a show in Paris of Jean Fautriers paintings in which he recognized meaningful art which expressed directly and purely the depth of a person. Emulating Fautrier, Dubuffet started to use oil paint mixed with materials such as mud, sand, coal dust, pebbles, pieces of glass, string, straw, plaster, gravel, cement. His use of materials and the irony that he infused into many of his works incited a significant amount of backlash from critics. Greenberg went on to say that Dubuffet is perhaps the one new painter of importance to have appeared on the scene in Paris in the last decade. Indeed, Dubuffet was very prolific in the United States in the following his first exhibition in New York. After 1946, Dubuffet started a series of portraits, with his own friends Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, Jean Paulhan and he painted these portraits in the same thick materials, and in a manner deliberately anti-psychological and anti-personal, as Dubuffet expressed himself. A few years later he approached the surrealist group in 1948, in 1944 he started an important relationship with the resistance-fighter and French writer, publisher, Jean Paulhan who was also strongly fighting against intellectual terrorism, as he called it
Jean Dubuffet
–
Jean Dubuffet, Court les rues, 1962,
Milwaukee Art Museum,
Milwaukee, WI. An example of a non-
painterly Dubuffet painting
9.
Charlton Heston
–
Charlton Heston was an American actor and political activist. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years and he played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments, for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil with Orson Welles, Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid and he also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth, Secret of the Incas, and The Big Country. A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a political action committee. Hestons most famous role in politics came as the president of the National Rifle Association. After being diagnosed with Alzheimers disease in 2003, he retired from acting and the NRA presidency. Heston died on April 5,2008, aged 84, from pneumonia, Charlton Heston was born on October 4,1923, to Russell Whitford Carter, a sawmill operator and Lilla. Many sources indicate he was born in Evanston, Illinois, Hestons autobiography, however, and some other sources, place his birth in No Mans Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy Chicago suburb. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood, Heston was partially of Scottish descent, including from the Clan Fraser, but the majority of his ancestry was English. His earliest immigrant ancestors arrived in America from England in the 1600s and his maternal great-grandparents, William Charlton and Mary Drysdale Charlton, were English. They emigrated to Canada, where his grandmother, Marian Emily Charlton, was born in 1872, in his autobiography, Heston refers to his father participating in his familys construction business. When Heston was an infant, his fathers work moved the family to St. Helen and it was a rural, heavily forested part of the state, and Heston lived an isolated yet idyllic existence, spending much time hunting and fishing in the backwoods of the area. When Heston was 10 years old, his parents divorced, shortly thereafter, his mother remarried and the new family moved back to Wilmette. Heston attended New Trier High School and he recalled living there, All kids play pretend games, but I did it more than most. Even when we moved to Chicago, I was more or less a loner and we lived in a North Shore suburb, where I was a skinny hick from the woods, and all the other kids seemed to be rich and know about girls. Contradictions on paper and in an interview surround when Charlton became Hestons first name, the 1930 United States Census record for Richfield, Michigan, in Roscommon County, shows his name as being Charlton J. Carter at age six. Later accounts by sources and movie studio biographies say he was born John Charles Carter, interestingly, Charlton was his maternal grandmother Marians maiden name, not his mother Lillas. This is contrary to how 20th century references read and what Heston said, when Hestons maternal grandmother and his true maternal grandfather Charles Baines separated or divorced in the early 1900s, Marian Baines married William Henry Lawton in 1907
Charlton Heston
–
Heston as President
Andrew Jackson in
The President's Lady - 1953
Charlton Heston
–
Charlton Heston as
Moses in
Cecil B. DeMille 's
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Charlton Heston
–
In
Touch of Evil (1958)
Charlton Heston
–
In
Ben-Hur (1959)
10.
Diane Sawyer
–
Lila Diane Sawyer is an American television journalist. Previously, Sawyer has been the anchor of ABC Newss nightly flagship program ABC World News, Early in her career, she was a member of U. S. President Richard Nixons White House staff and closely associated with the president himself. Sawyer was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, to Jean W. an elementary teacher, and Erbon Powers Tom Sawyer. Her ancestry includes English, Irish, Scots-Irish, and German, soon after her birth, her family moved to Louisville, where her father rose to local prominence as a Republican politician and community leader. He was Kentuckys Jefferson County Judge/Executive when he was killed in a car accident on Louisvilles Interstate 64 in 1969, E. P. Tom Sawyer State Park, in the Freys Hill area of Louisville, is named in his honor. Sawyer attended Seneca High School in the Buechel area of Louisville and she served as an editor-in-chief for her school newspaper, The Arrow, and participated in many artistic activities. She always felt, however, that she was in the shadow of her older sister, in her senior year of high school, in 1963, she won first place in the annual national Americas Junior Miss scholarship pageant as a representative from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. She won by her strength of poise in the interview and her essay comparing the music of the North. From 1962 to 1965, Sawyer was Americas Junior Miss, touring the country to promote the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York Worlds Fair. At first, she thought that travelling around the country as Americas Junior Miss would be a terrifying experience, in 1967, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in English from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She was a member of the Wellesley College Blue Notes, an a cappella-singing group and she attended one semester of law school at the University of Louisville before turning to journalism. Immediately after her graduation, Sawyer returned to Kentucky and was employed as weather forecaster for WLKY-TV in Louisville, in Sawyers opinion, the weather was boring, so she would occasionally add quotes to keep it interesting. Finally, Sawyer was promoted to a general-assignment post, but this did not sustain her interest for long, in 1970, Sawyer moved to Washington, D. C. and, unable to find work as a broadcast journalist, she interviewed for positions in government offices. She eventually became an assistant to Jerry Warren, the White House deputy press secretary, initially, Sawyer wrote press releases and quickly graduated to other tasks like drafting some of President Richard Nixons public statements. Within a few months, she became an assistant to White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. Speakes later claimed that he had come to the conclusion that Dean had not lied, and that he informed Sawyer and she also helped prepare Nixon for his famous set of television interviews with journalist David Frost in 1977. Years later, Sawyer would be suspected of being Deep Throat, Sawyer laughed it off and became one of six people to request and receive a public denial from Woodward. When Sawyer came back to Washington, D. C. in 1978 and she was promoted to political correspondent in February 1980 and featured on the weekday broadcasts of Morning with Charles Kuralt
Diane Sawyer
–
Sawyer at the 2011
Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Jesus Henry Christ
11.
Lily Tomlin
–
Mary Jean Lily Tomlin is an American actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer. Tomlin began her career as a comedian, and performing Off-Broadway during the 1960s. Her breakout role was performing as a cast member on the variety show Rowan & Martins Laugh-In from 1969 until 1973 and she currently stars on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie as Frankie Bergstein. Her performance as Frankie garnered her nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015 and 2016. Her other notable films include 9 to 5, All of Me, Flirting with Disaster, Tea with Mussolini, I Heart Huckabees and she is also known as the voice of Ms. Frizzle on the childrens series The Magic School Bus. She won her first Emmy Awards in 1974 for writing and producing her own television special, Tomlin won a Grammy Award for her 1972 comedy album This Is a Recording. In 2014, she was given Kennedy Center Honors and in 2017 she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, Tomlin was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Lillie Mae, a housewife and nurses aide, and Guy Tomlin, a factory worker. She has a brother, Richard Tomlin, Tomlins parents were Southern Baptists who moved to Detroit from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. She is a 1957 graduate of Cass Technical High School, Tomlin attended Wayne State University and originally studied Biology. She auditioned for a play, and it sparked her interest in a career in the theatre, after college, Tomlin began doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs in Detroit and later in New York City. She continued studying acting at the HB Studio and her first television appearance was on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965. In 1969, after a stint as a hostess on the ABC series Music Scene, Tomlin joined NBCs sketch comedy show Rowan and Martins Laugh-In. Ernestine often snorted when she let loose a barbed response or heard something salacious, she wore her hair in a 1940s hairstyle with a hairnet. Her opening lines were often the comical one ringy dingy, two ringy dingy, and, is this the party to whom I am speaking. In the sketches, Ernestine was usually at her switchboard taking calls and she occasionally called her boyfriend, Vito, a telephone repair man, or her pal Phoenicia, another operator. Tomlin reprised the role in 2016 for a TV ad as part of PETAs campaign against SeaWorld and she often ends her monologues with And thats the truth, punctuating it with a noisy raspberry. Edith Ann sits in a rocking chair with her rag doll, Doris. Edith Ann has an oversized, playfully aggressive dog named Buster and a boyfriend named Junior Phillips, Tomlin voiced her in 2 prime-time cartoon adaptations of the character that aired on ABC in 1994
Lily Tomlin
–
Tomlin at the 2014
Kennedy Center Honors
Lily Tomlin
–
Tomlin as Edith Ann, 1975
Lily Tomlin
–
Tomlin in a 1970 publicity photo for
Laugh-In
Lily Tomlin
–
Tomlin in April 2013
12.
U.S. presidential election debates
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During presidential elections in the United States, it has become customary for the main candidates to engage in a debate. The topics discussed in the debate are often the most controversial issues of the time, candidate debates are not constitutionally mandated, but it is now considered a de facto election process. The debates are targeted mainly at undecided voters, those who tend not to be partial to any ideology or party. Presidential debates are held late in the cycle, after the political parties have nominated their candidates. The candidates meet in a hall, often at a university. The formats of the debates have varied, with questions posed from one or more journalist moderators. Debates have been broadcast live on television, radio, and in recent years, the first debate for the 1960 election drew over 66 million viewers out of a population of 179 million, making it one of the most-watched broadcasts in U. S. television history. The 1980 debates drew 80 million viewers out of a population of 226 million, recent debates have drawn decidedly smaller audiences, ranging from 46 million for the first 2000 debate to a high of over 67 million for the first debate in 2012. A record-breaking audience of over 84 million people watched the first 2016 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, a number that does not reflect online streaming. While the first general presidential debate was not held until 1960, the series of seven debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Senator Stephen A. Douglas for U. S. Douglas was later re-elected to the Senate by the Illinois legislature. Lincoln and Douglas were both nominated for president in 1860, and their earlier debates helped define their positions in that election. Republican candidate Wendell Willkie challenged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a debate in 1940, in 1948, a radio debate was held in Oregon between Thomas E. Dewey and Harold Stassen, Republican primary candidates for president. The Democrats followed suit in 1956, with a primary debate between Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver. The Student Government Association Council of the University of Maryland invited both candidates to debate at the University of Maryland. In August 1956 the Baltimore Sun wrote an article with the headline Immigrant Urges Presidential Debates, both chairperson of both parties were contacted and considered the suggestion. Fred A. Kahn, a student of the University of Maryland, Kahn also sent letters to the chairmen of the Democratic and Republican parties, Maryland Governor Theodore McKeldin, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Mrs. Roosevelt also sent a letter regarding Kahns proposal to James Finnegan, Adlai Stevensons campaign manager, the precise impact of Kahns proposal on the Kennedy-Nixon debates during the 1960 presidential campaign is unclear, but his ideas did receive national press exposure. Four years later the first televised debates were held, the first general election presidential debate was held on September 26,1960, between U. S
U.S. presidential election debates
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John F. Kennedy and
Richard Nixon participate in the second 1960 presidential debate, held in the NBC studios in Washington D.C. and narrated by
Frank McGee.
U.S. presidential election debates
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Carter and Ford debate domestic policy at the
Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia (September 23, 1976).
U.S. presidential election debates
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The stage at
Saint Anselm College during the
ABC /
Facebook debates in 2008
13.
Ronald Reagan
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Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who was the 40th President of the United States, from 1981 to 1989. Before his presidency, he was the 33rd Governor of California, from 1967 to 1975, after a career as a Hollywood actor and union leader. Raised in a family in small towns of northern Illinois, Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932. After moving to Hollywood in 1937, he became an actor, Reagan was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild, the labor union for actors, where he worked to root out Communist influence. In the 1950s, he moved into television and was a speaker at General Electric factories. Having been a lifelong Democrat, his views changed and he became a conservative and in 1962 switched to the Republican Party. In 1964, Reagans speech, A Time for Choosing, in support of Barry Goldwaters foundering presidential campaign, Building a network of supporters, he was elected Governor of California in 1966. Entering the presidency in 1981, Reagan implemented sweeping new political, in his first term he survived an assassination attempt, spurred the War on Drugs, and fought public sector labor. During his re-election bid, Reagan campaigned on the notion that it was Morning in America, foreign affairs dominated his second term, including ending of the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, and the Iran–Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an empire, and during his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate. Jack, a salesman and storyteller, was the grandson of Irish Catholic immigrants from County Tipperary, Reagan had one older brother, John Neil Reagan, who became an advertising executive. As a boy, Reagans father nicknamed his son Dutch, due to his fat little Dutchman-like appearance and Dutchboy haircut, Reagans family briefly lived in several towns and cities in Illinois, including Monmouth, Galesburg, and Chicago. In 1919, they returned to Tampico and lived above the H. C, Pitney Variety Store until finally settling in Dixon. After his election as president, residing in the upstairs White House private quarters, for the time, Reagan was unusual in his opposition to racial discrimination, and recalled a time in Dixon when the local inn would not allow black people to stay there. Reagan brought them back to his house, where his mother invited them to stay the night and have breakfast the next morning, after the closure of the Pitney Store in late 1920 and the familys move to Dixon, the midwestern small universe had a lasting impression on Reagan. Reagan attended Dixon High School, where he developed interests in acting, sports and his first job was as a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park in 1927. Over a six-year period, Reagan reportedly performed 77 rescues as a lifeguard and he attended Eureka College, a Disciples-oriented liberal arts school, where he became a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, a cheerleader, and studied economics and sociology. While involved, the Miller Center of Public Affairs described him as an indifferent student and he majored in economics and sociology, and graduated with a C grade
Ronald Reagan
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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
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Ronald Reagan (with "Dutch" haircut), his elder brother Neil, and their parents Jack and Nelle Reagan. Photograph circa 1916–17.
Ronald Reagan
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Ronald Reagan as a teenager in
Dixon, Illinois.
Ronald Reagan
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With wife
Jane Wyman in 1942
14.
Walter Mondale
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He was the Democratic Partys presidential nominee in the United States presidential election of 1984, but lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide. Reagan won 49 states while Mondale carried his home state of Minnesota and Washington, D. C. Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota and he then served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War before earning a law degree in 1956. He married Joan Adams in 1955 and he was appointed to the U. S. Senate by Governor Karl Rolvaag upon the resignation of Senator Hubert Humphrey following Humphreys election as vice president under President Lyndon Johnson. Mondale was subsequently elected to a full Senate term in 1966 and again in 1972, while in the Senate, he supported consumer protection, fair housing, tax reform, and the desegregation of schools. Importantly, he served as a member of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, in 1976, Carter, the Democratic presidential nominee, chose Mondale as his vice presidential running mate in the forthcoming election. The Carter/Mondale ticket defeated incumbent president Gerald Ford and his presidential running mate. In 1984, Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination and campaigned for a freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, an increase in taxes. After his defeat by Reagan, Mondale joined the Minnesota-based law firm of Dorsey & Whitney, President Bill Clinton appointed Mondale United States Ambassador to Japan in 1993, he retired in 1996. However, Mondale narrowly lost that race and he then returned to working at Dorsey & Whitney and remained active in the Democratic Party. Mondale later took up a teaching position at the University of Minnesotas Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Walter Frederick Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota, the son of Claribel Hope, a music teacher, and Theodore Sigvaard Mondale. Walters half-brother Lester Mondale became a Unitarian minister and his paternal grandparents were Norwegian immigrants, and his mother, the daughter of an immigrant from Ontario, was of Scottish and English descent. The surname Mondale comes from Mundal, a valley and town in the Fjærland region of Norway, Mondale attended public schools and Macalester College in St. Paul before transferring to the University of Minnesota, where he earned a B. A. in political science in 1951. As Mondale did not have money to attend law school, he enlisted in the U. S. Army. He married Joan Adams in 1955, through the support of the G. I. Bill, he graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1956, while at law school, he served on the Minnesota Law Review and as a law clerk in the Minnesota Supreme Court under Justice Thomas F. Gallagher. He then practiced law in Minneapolis, and continued to do so for four years before entering the political arena, Mondale became involved in national politics in the 1940s. At the age of 20, he was visible in Minnesota politics by helping organize Hubert Humphreys successful Senate campaign in 1948, Humphreys campaign assigned Mondale to cover the staunchly Republican 2nd district
Walter Mondale
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Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale
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Senator Walter F. Mondale
Walter Mondale
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Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter, in front of Presidential helicopter
Marine One in January 1979.
Walter Mondale
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Vice President Mondale bust from the Senate collection
15.
Ray Charles
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Ray Charles Robinson, known professionally as Ray Charles, was an American singer-songwriter, musician, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians he preferred being called Brother Ray and he was often referred to as The Genius. Charles was blind from the age of seven and he pioneered the genre of soul music during the 1950s by combining blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic Records. He also contributed to the integration of music, rhythm and blues and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a record company. Charles cited Nat King Cole as an influence, but his music was also influenced by country, jazz, blues. In the late forties, he became friends with Quincy Jones and their friendship would last till the end of Charless life. Frank Sinatra called him the true genius in show business. In 2002, Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, Billy Joel observed, This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. Robinson was the son of Bailey Robinson, a laborer, at the time, she was a teenage orphan making a living as a sharecropper. They lived in Greenville, Florida, with Robinsons mother and his wife, the Robinson family had informally adopted Aretha, and she became known as Aretha Robinson. When she, scandalously, became pregnant by Bailey, she briefly left Greenville late in the summer of 1930 to be family members in Albany, Georgia. After that, mother and child returned to Greenville, and Aretha and he was deeply devoted to his mother and later recalled her perseverance, self-sufficiency, and pride as guiding lights in his life. His father abandoned the family, left Greenville, and took another wife elsewhere, in his early years, Charles showed a fondness about mechanical objects and would often watch his neighbors working on their cars and farm machinery. Charles and his mother were always welcome at the Red Wing Cafe, pitman would also care for Rays brother George, to take the burden off Aretha. George drowned in Arethas laundry tub when he was four years old, Charles started to lose his sight at the age of four or five, and was completely blind by the age of seven, apparently as a result of glaucoma. Destitute, uneducated and still mourning the loss of George, Aretha used her connections in the community to find a school that would accept a blind African-American student. Despite his initial protest, Charles attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf, Charles further developed his musical talent at school, and was taught to play the classical piano music of J. S
Ray Charles
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Ray Charles in 1990
Ray Charles
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Ray Charles statue in Greenville, Florida
Ray Charles
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Charles in 1971. Photo: Heinrich Klaffs.
Ray Charles
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1972 meeting of President Nixon and Ray Charles taken by
Oliver F. Atkins
16.
Jessye Norman
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Jessye Mae Norman is an American opera singer and recitalist. A dramatic soprano, Norman is associated in particular with the Wagnerian repertoire, and with the roles of Sieglinde, Ariadne, Alceste, Norman has been inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and is a Spingarn Medalist. Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, to Silas Norman, a salesman, and Janie King-Norman. She was one of five children in a family of amateur musicians, Normans mother insisted that she start piano lessons at an early age. Norman attended Charles T. Walker Elementary School, A. R, johnson Junior High School, and Lucy C. Laney Senior High School, all in downtown Augusta, Norman proved to be a talented singer as a young child, singing gospel songs at Mount Calvary Baptist Church at the age of four. Norman started listening to recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price whom Norman credits as being inspiring figures in her career. At the age of 16, Norman entered the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia which, although she did not win, led to an offer of a scholarship at Howard University, in Washington. While at Howard, Norman sang in the university chorus and as a professional soloist at the Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ, in 1964, she became a member of Gamma Sigma Sigma. In 1965, along with 33 other female students and four female faculty, in 1966 she won the National Society of Arts and Letters singing competition. During this time Norman studied voice with Elizabeth Mannion and Pierre Bernac, after graduating, Norman, like many young musicians at the time, moved to Europe to establish herself. In 1969 she won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and she made her operatic début that same year as Elisabeth in Richard Wagners Tannhäuser at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Critics at the time described Norman as having the greatest voice since the German soprano Lotte Lehmann, Norman performed with German and Italian opera companies often appearing as a princess or other noble figures. Norman was exceptional at portraying a commanding and noble bearing and this ability was partly due to her uncommon height and size, but more so as a result of her unique, rich, and powerful voice. Normans range was wide, encompassing all female voice registers from contralto to high dramatic soprano. In 1970 she made her Italian début in Florence, Italy, in 1971, Norman made her début at the Maggio Musicale in Florence appearing as Sélika in Meyerbeers LAfricaine. That year she sang the role of Countess Almaviva in Mozarts The Marriage of Figaro at the Berlin Festival. The recording was a finalist for the Montreux International Record Award competition and brought Norman much exposure to music listeners in Europe and the United States
Jessye Norman
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Jessye Norman, 2014, during a master class in
Cooperstown, New York
17.
Tony Bennett
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Anthony Dominick Benedetto, known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, having created works under the name Anthony Benedetto that are on permanent public display in several institutions and he is the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York. Born and raised in Astoria to an Italian-American family, Bennett began singing at an early age and he fought in the final stages of World War II as a U. S. Army infantryman in the European Theater. Afterward, he developed his technique, signed with Columbia Records and had his first number-one popular song with Because of You in 1951. Several top hits such as Rags to Riches followed in the early 1950s and he then refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached a peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. His career and his personal life experienced a downturn during the height of the rock music era. Bennett staged a comeback in the late 1980s and 1990s, putting out gold record albums again and he has won 19 Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards, and was named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree. He has sold over 50 million records worldwide, Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born on August 3,1926, in Astoria, Queens, New York, to grocer John Benedetto and seamstress Anna Suraci. In 1906, John had emigrated from Podàrgoni, an eastern district of the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria. Anna had been born in the U. S. shortly after her parents emigrated from the Calabria region in 1899. Other relatives came over as well as part of the migration of Italians to America. Tony grew up with a sister, Mary, and an older brother. With a father who was ailing and unable to work, the children grew up in poverty, John Sr. instilled in his son a love of art and literature and a compassion for human suffering, but died when Tony was 10 years old. The experience of growing up in the Great Depression and a distaste for the effects of the Hoover Administration would make the child a lifelong Democrat. Young Tony grew up listening to Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Judy Garland, and Bing Crosby as well as artists such as Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden. His Uncle Dick was a tap dancer in vaudeville, giving him a window into show business
Tony Bennett
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Tony Bennett performing in 2003
Tony Bennett
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Bennett (right) with Chicago columnist and talk show host
Irv Kupcinet, during the 1950s
Tony Bennett
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Bennett (right) with composer
Harold Arlen, rehearsing for the television program
The Twentieth Century in 1964
Tony Bennett
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President
George W. Bush and
First Lady Laura Bush pose with the
Kennedy Center honorees: actress
Julie Harris, actor
Robert Redford, singer
Tina Turner, ballet dancer
Suzanne Farrell and Tony Bennett. December 4, 2005, at a reception in the
Blue Room at the
White House.
18.
Joffrey Ballet
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The Joffrey Ballet is a professional dance company resident in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The company regularly performs classical ballets, including Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, and modern dance pieces. Many choreographers have worked with the Joffrey including Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, George Balanchine, founded as a touring company in 1956, it was based in New York City until 1995 when it moved to Chicago. The companys headquarters and dance academy are in Joffrey Tower, while Joffrey stayed in New York City to teach ballet classes and earn money to pay the dancers salaries, Arpino led the troupe. The ensemble first performed in a city in Chicago in 1957. The Joffrey Ballet originally settled down in New York City, under the name the Robert Joffrey Theatre Ballet, in 1962 modern choreographer Alvin Ailey was invited to make a work for the company. Rebekah Harkness was an important early benefactor and she made international touring possible, but in 1964 she and Joffrey parted ways. Joffrey started again, building up a new company made its debut in 1965 as the Joffrey Ballet. Following a successful season at the New York City Center in 1966, it was invited to become City Centers resident ballet company with Joffrey as artistic director, in 1973 Joffrey asked Twyla Tharp to create her first commissioned ballet, Deuce Coupe. The company continued as City Center Joffrey Ballet until 1977, from 1977, it performed as the Joffrey Ballet, with a second home established in Los Angeles from. In 1995, the company left New York City for Chicago to establish a permanent residence there, the first few years in Chicago were financially arduous for the company, nearly causing it to close several times, but audiences later became larger and younger. The Joffrey Ballet appeared in the motion picture Save the Last Dance and it was also the subject of Robert Altmans penultimate film, The Company. Malcolm McDowell played the companys artistic director, a character based on Gerald Arpino. The film is composed of stories gathered from the dancers, choreographers. Most of the roles are played by company members. In the Glee, character Mike Chang is given a scholarship to attend the Joffrey Academy of Dance in Chicago, in fall 1987 the Joffrey Ballet premiered a reconstructed version of Igor Stravinskys seminal ballet The Rite of Spring in the city of Los Angeles. The original ballet debuted in 1913 in Paris, France and was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, Dance experts Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer spent eighteen years gathering research on the original ballet in order to properly reconstruct it. Its repertoire consists of classical and contemporary pieces, as well as annual December performances of The Nutcracker, presented in conjunction with the Chicago Philharmonic
Joffrey Ballet
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Joffrey Ballet
Joffrey Ballet
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Joffrey rehearsal studios along
State Street have views of
Block 37 (top) and the
Chicago Theater marquee (bottom).
Joffrey Ballet
19.
Kathleen Battle
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Kathleen Deanna Battle is an American operatic light lyric soprano known for her distinctive vocal range and tone. Born in Portsmouth, Ohio, Battle initially became known for her work within the repertoire through performances with major orchestras during the early. She made her debut in 1975. Battle expanded her repertoire into lyric soprano and coloratura soprano roles during the 1980s, after a 22-year absence from the Met, Battle performed a concert of spirituals at the Metropolitan Opera House in November 2016. Battle was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, USA, the youngest of seven children and her father was a steelworker, and her mother was an active participant in the gospel music of the familys African Methodist Episcopal church. Battle attended Portsmouth High School where her teacher and mentor was Charles P. Varney. In a 1985 Time Magazine interview, Varney recalled the first time he heard the eight-year-old Battle sing, describing her as this little thing singing so beautifully. I went to her later, Varney recalled, and told her God had blessed her, in that same interview, music critic Michael Walsh described Battle as the best lyric coloratura in the world. Battle was awarded a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where she studied voice with Franklin Bens and she majored in music education, and proceeded to a masters degree in Music Education. In 1971 she began a career at an inner-city public school in Cincinnati. Later, she studied singing with Daniel Ferro in New York, in 1972, her second year as a teacher, a friend and fellow church choir member phoned her and informed her that the conductor Thomas Schippers was holding auditions in Cincinnati. At her audition Schippers engaged her to sing as the soprano soloist in Brahms German Requiem at the 1972 Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto and her performance there on July 9,1972 marked the beginning of her professional career. During the next years, Battle would go on to sing in several more orchestral concerts in New York, Los Angeles. In 1973 she was awarded a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music to support her career, william Mullen, managing director of the Santa Fe Concert Association was on the panel of judges who made the award. In 2004 he recalled, We would meet monthly, listen to up-and-coming concert artists, a very young Kathleen Battle sang for us. The other judges thought her voice was too small, but I thought she had an ability to communicate through music. I talked the judges into giving her a grant. Thomas Schippers introduced Kathleen Battle to his fellow conductor James Levine who selected Battle to sing in Mahlers Symphony No.8 at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras May Festival in 1974
Kathleen Battle
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Kathleen Battle singing the
Lord's Prayer at the arrival ceremony in honor of
Pope Benedict XVI on the South Lawn of the
White House on April 16, 2008
20.
Jim Carrey
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James Eugene Jim Carrey is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, impressionist, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for his highly energetic slapstick performances, Carrey first gained recognition in 1990 after landing a recurring role in the sketch comedy television series In Living Color. He then starred in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, in the 2010s, he has starred in Mr. Poppers Penguins and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. In 2013, he appeared in Kick-Ass 2 as Colonel Stars and he retracted support for the film two months prior to its release. He issued a statement via his Twitter account that, in light of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, Carrey reprised his role as Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber To. Carrey was born in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, to Kathleen, a homemaker, and Percy Carrey and he has three older siblings, John, Patricia, and Rita. He was raised a Roman Catholic and his mother was of French, Irish, and Scottish descent and his father was of French-Canadian ancestry. Carrey lived in Burlington, Ontario, for eight years, in a Hamilton Spectator interview, Carrey said, If my career in show business hadnt panned out I would probably be working today in Hamilton, Ontario at the Dofasco steel mill. When looking across the Burlington Bay toward Hamilton, he could see the mills and thought, Those were where the great jobs were. While Carrey was struggling to work and make a name for himself, his father tried to help the young comedian put together a stage act. Carreys impersonations bombed and this gave him doubts about his capabilities as a professional entertainer and his familys financial struggles made it difficult for them to support Carreys ambitions. Eventually, the financial problems were resolved and they moved into a new home. With more domestic stability, Carrey returned to the stage with a more polished act, in a short period of time, he went from open-mic nights to regular paid shows, building his reputation in the process. A reviewer in the Toronto Star raved that Carrey was a star coming to life. Carrey was soon noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who signed the young comic to open his tour performances, Dangerfield eventually brought Carrey to Las Vegas. However, Carrey soon decided to move to Hollywood, where he began performing at The Comedy Store and, in 1982, the following year, he debuted his act on The Tonight Show. Carrey was not selected for the position, although he hosted the show in May 1996, January 2011. In 1984 Carrey was in the short-lived sitcom The Duck Factory, from 1990 to 1994, Carrey was a regular cast member of the ensemble comedy television series In Living Color
Jim Carrey
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Carrey at the
Yes Man premiere in 2008
Jim Carrey
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Carrey at the
2009 Cannes Film Festival
Jim Carrey
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Carrey with his family at the
Horton Hears a Who! premiere in 2008
21.
Isaac Stern
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Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born American violinist and conductor. The son of Solomon and Clara Stern, Isaac Stern was born into a Volhynian-Jewish family in Kremenets and he was 14 months old when his family moved to San Francisco in 1921. He received his first music lessons from his mother, in 1928, he enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, at his public début on 18 February 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto No.3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Stern toured the Soviet Union in 1951, the first American violinist to do so, in 1967, Stern stated his refusal to return to the USSR until the Soviet regime allowed artists to enter and leave the country freely. His only visit to Germany was in 1999, for a series of master classes and his first marriage, in 1948 to ballerina Nora Kaye, ended in divorce after 18 months, but the two of them subsequently remained friends. On 17 August 1951, he married Vera Lindenblit and they had three children together, including conductors Michael and David Stern. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1994 after 43 years, in 1996, Stern married his third wife, Linda Reynolds. His third wife, his three children, and his five grandchildren survived him, in 1940, Stern began performing with Russian-born pianist Alexander Zakin, collaborating until 1977. Within musical circles, Stern became renowned both for his recordings and for championing certain younger players, among his discoveries were cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jian Wang, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. In the 1960s, he played a major role in saving New York Citys Carnegie Hall from demolition. Following the purchase of Carnegie Hall by New York City, the Carnegie Hall Corporation was formed, and Stern was chosen as its first president, Carnegie Hall later named its main auditorium in his honor. The Dutilleux concerto, entitled Larbre des songes was a 1985 commission by Stern himself and he also dubbed actors violin-playing in several films, such as Fiddler on the Roof. Stern served as advisor for the 1946 film, Humoresque, about a rising violin star and his patron, played respectively by John Garfield. He was also the violin soloist on the soundtrack for the 1971 film of Fiddler on the Roof. In 1999, he appeared in the film Music of the Heart, along with Itzhak Perlman and several other famed violinists, with a youth orchestra led by Meryl Streep. In his autobiography, co-authored with Chaim Potok, My First 79 Years, Stern cited Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux as major influences on his style of playing. He won Grammys for his work with Eugene Istomin and Leonard Rose in their famous chamber music trio in the 1960s and 70s, while there, he collaborated with the China Central Symphony Society under the direction of conductor Li Delun
Isaac Stern
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Stern at his 60th birthday concert at
Lincoln Center, 1980
Isaac Stern
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Isaac Stern in 1979
Isaac Stern
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Bezalel Schatz painting a portrait of Isaac Stern
22.
Mstislav Rostropovich
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Mstislav Leopoldovich Slava Rostropovich was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He is considered to be one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century, in addition to his interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works, which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since. Rostropovich was internationally recognized as an advocate of human rights. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and had two daughters, Olga and Elena Rostropovich, mstislavs father was born in Voronezh to Witold Rostropowicz, a composer of Polish noble descent, and Matilda Rostropovich, née Pule. The Polish part of his family bore the Bogoria coat of arms, mstislavs mother Sofiya and her elder sister Nadezhda were the daughters of the founder of the Fedotov Music School in Orienburg, Nikolay Fedotov. Nadezhda married the cellist Semyon Kozolupov, who was thus Rostropovichs uncle by marriage, Rostropovich grew up in Baku and spent his youth there. During World War II his family moved back to Orenburg and then in 1943 to Moscow, at the age of four, Rostropovich learned the piano with his mother. He began the cello at the age of 10 with his father, in 1943, at the age of 16, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied cello with his uncle Semyon Kozolupov, piano, conducting and composition with Vissarion Shebalin. His teachers also included Dmitri Shostakovich, in 1945 he came to prominence as a cellist when he won the gold medal in the Soviet Unions first ever competition for young musicians. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1948, and became professor of cello there in 1956, Rostropovich gave his first cello concert in 1942. He won first prize at the international Music Awards of Prague, in 1950, at the age of 23 he was awarded what was then considered the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, the Stalin Prize. At that time, Rostropovich was already known in his country and while actively pursuing his solo career, he taught at the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1955, he married Galina Vishnevskaya, a soprano at the Bolshoi Theatre. Rostropovich had working relationships with Soviet composers of the era, in 1949 Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Cello Sonata in C, Op.119, for the 22-year-old Rostropovich, who gave the first performance in 1950, with Sviatoslav Richter. Prokofiev also dedicated his Symphony-Concerto for cello to him, this was premiered in 1952, Rostropovich and Dmitry Kabalevsky completed Prokofievs Cello Concertino after the composers death. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote both his first and second cello concertos for Rostropovich, who gave their first performances. His international career started in 1963 in the Conservatoire of Liège, Rostropovich went on several tours in Western Europe and met several composers, including Benjamin Britten, who dedicated his Cello Sonata, three Solo Suites, and his Cello Symphony to Rostropovich. Britten was also renowned as a piano accompanist and together they recorded, among other works, Schuberts Sonata for Arpeggione and his daughter claimed that this recording moved her father to tears of joy even on his deathbed
Mstislav Rostropovich
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Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Rostropovich
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Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten in 1964
Mstislav Rostropovich
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Rostropovich playing the
Duport Stradivarius at the White House in 1978.
Mstislav Rostropovich
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Mstislav Rostropovich with wife
Galina Vishnevskaya in 1965
23.
Gregory Peck
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Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor who was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck continued to major film roles until the late 1980s. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor and he had also been nominated for an Oscar for the same category for The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentlemans Agreement and Twelve OClock High. Other notable films he appeared in include Spellbound, Roman Holiday, Moby Dick, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, How the West Was Won, The Omen, President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood cinema and he was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983. His father was of English and Irish heritage and his mother of English and she converted to her husbands religion, Roman Catholicism, when she married his father, and Peck was raised as a Catholic. Pecks parents divorced when he was five and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, at the age of 10 he was sent to a Catholic military school, St. Johns Military Academy in Los Angeles. While he was a student there, his grandmother died, at 14, he moved back to San Diego to live with his father, attended San Diego High School, and after graduating enrolled for one year at San Diego State Teachers College. While there he joined the team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses. Peck however had ambitions to be a doctor and the following year gained admission to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major, standing 6 ft 3 in, he rowed on the university crew. Although his tuition fee was only $26 per year, Peck still struggled to pay, at Berkeley, encouraged by the acting coach, who saw in him perfect material for university theatre, Peck became more and more interested in acting. He was recruited by Edwin Duerr, director of the universitys Little Theater, Peck would later say about Berkeley that, it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life. It woke me up and made me a human being, in 1997, Peck donated $25,000 to the Berkeley rowing crew in honor of his coach, the renowned Ky Ebright. He was often broke and sometimes slept in Central Park and he worked at the 1939 Worlds Fair and as a tour guide for NBCs television broadcasting. In 1940, Peck learned more of the craft, working in exchange for food, at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, appearing in five plays including Family Portrait. His stage career began in 1941 when he played the secretary in a Katharine Cornell production of George Bernard Shaws play The Doctors Dilemma, unfortunately, the play opened in San Francisco just one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams The Morning Star in 1942 and his second Broadway performance that year was in The Willow and I with Edward Pawley. Twentieth Century Fox claimed he had injured his back while rowing at university, ive been trying to straighten out that story for years
Gregory Peck
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Publicity photo of Peck, 1948
Gregory Peck
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Gregory Peck in the
Designing Woman trailer
Gregory Peck
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Gregory Peck in
The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1952
Gregory Peck
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Peck in 1973, by
Allan Warren
24.
James Taylor
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James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and he is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No.3 single Fire and Rain and had his first No.1 hit the year with Youve Got a Friend. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies, following his 1977 album, JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over a million copies and his chart performance had a resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work. He achieved his first number one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World. He is notable for his covers of other peoples songs, such as How Sweet It Is. James Vernon Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on March 12,1948 and his father was from a well-off family of Southerners of Scottish ancestry. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard, studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an opera singer before the couples marriage in 1946. James was the second of five children, the others being Alex, Kate, Livingston and they built a house in the Morgan Creek area off the present Morgan Creek Road, which was sparsely populated. James would later say, Chapel Hill, the Piedmont, the hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape, James attended public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaacs career prospered, but he was away from home, on military service at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Isaac Taylor later rose to dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. The Taylors spent summers on Marthas Vineyard beginning in 1953, Taylor first learned to play the cello as a child in North Carolina and switched to the guitar in 1960. He began attending Milton Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts in fall 1961. Summering before then with his family on Marthas Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, the two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar quickly realized that Taylors singing had a natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing, Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at 14, and he continued to learn the instrument effortlessly
James Taylor
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Taylor in the mid-1970s
James Taylor
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Taylor in the early 1970s
James Taylor
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Mise en scène for
Two-Lane Blacktop:
Boswell, Oklahoma
James Taylor
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At Winterfest, 1985
25.
Bill Clinton
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William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the Presidency he was the 40th Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, before that, he served as Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideogically a New Democrat, Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton, who served as United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 and U. S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and served the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham both earned degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the states education system, Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, defeating incumbent George H. W. Bush. At age 46, he was the third-youngest president and the first from the Baby Boomer generation, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. After failing to pass health care reform, the Democratic House was ousted when the Republican Party won control of the Congress in 1994. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second term, Clinton passed welfare reform and the State Childrens Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. Clinton was acquitted by the U. S. Senate in 1999, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clintons presidency. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U. S. Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U. S. President since World War II, since then, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes, such as the prevention of AIDS, in 2004, Clinton published his autobiography, My Life. In 2009, Clinton was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U. S. Presidents. Clinton was born on August 19,1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas and he was the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr. a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, and Virginia Dell Cassidy. His parents had married on September 4,1943, but this later proved to be bigamous. Soon after their son was born, his mother traveled to New Orleans to study nursing, leaving her son in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, in 1950, Bills mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton Sr. who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his brother and Earl T. Ricks. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950, although he immediately assumed use of his stepfathers surname, it was not until Clinton turned fifteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. Johns Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School—where he was a student leader, avid reader
Bill Clinton
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Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
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William Jefferson Blythe III, in 1950 at age four
Bill Clinton
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Clinton's boyhood home in
Hope, Arkansas
Bill Clinton
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Clinton ran for President of the
Student Council while attending the School of Foreign Service at
Georgetown University.
26.
Elie Wiesel
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Eliezer Elie Wiesel KBE was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, along with writing, he was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes, and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, in his political activities he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa and Nicaragua and genocide in Sudan. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a defender of human rights during his lifetime. He had been described as the most important Jew in America by the Los Angeles Times and he was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active throughout his life. Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Maramureș in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania and his parents were Sarah Feig and Shlomo Wiesel. At home, Wiesels family spoke Yiddish most of the time, but also German, Hungarian, Wiesels mother, Sarah, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a celebrated Vizhnitz Hasid and farmer from a nearby village. Dodye was active and trusted within the community, Wiesels father, Shlomo, instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Wiesel has said his father represented reason while his mother Sarah promoted faith, Wiesel was instructed that his genealogy traced back to Rabbi Schlomo, son of Yitzhak, and was a descendant of Rabbi Yeshayahu ben Abraham Horovitz ha-Levi, an author. Wiesel had three siblings—older sisters Beatrice and Hilda, and younger sister, Tzipora, Beatrice and Hilda survived the war and were reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to North America, with Beatrice moving to Montreal, Quebec, Tzipora, Shlomo, and Sarah did not survive the Holocaust. In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary which extended the Holocaust into that country, immediately after they were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were murdered. Wiesel and his father were selected to perform labor so long as they remained able-bodied, Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Until that transfer, he admitted to Oprah Winfrey, his motivation for trying to survive Auschwitz was knowing that his father was still alive, I knew that if I died. After they were taken to Buchenwald, his father died before the camp was liberated, in Night, Wiesel recalled the shame he felt when he heard his father being beaten and was unable to help. Wiesel was tattooed with inmate number A-7713 on his left arm, the camp was liberated by the U. S. Third Army on April 11,1945, when they were just prepared to be evacuated from Buchenwald and this home was subsequently moved to Taverny and operated until 1947. Afterwards Wiesel traveled to Paris where he learned French and studied literature, philosophy and he heard lectures by philosopher Martin Buber and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and he spent his evenings reading works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann
Elie Wiesel
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Wiesel at the
2012 Time 100
Elie Wiesel
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The house where Wiesel was born
Elie Wiesel
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Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945. Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left, next to the bunk post.
Elie Wiesel
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Wiesel in 1987.
27.
Philip Glass
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Philip Morris Glass is an American composer. He is considered one of the most influential makers of the late 20th century. Glasss compositions have been described as music, similar to other minimalist composers including La Monte Young, Steve Reich. However, Glass has described himself instead as a composer of music with repetitive structures, Glass founded the Philip Glass Ensemble, with which he still performs on keyboards. He has written numerous operas and musical works, eleven symphonies, eleven concertos, seven string quartets and various other chamber music. Three of his scores have been nominated for Academy Awards. Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Ida and his family were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. His father owned a store and his mother was a librarian. She developed a plan to help them learn English and develop skills so they could find work and his sister, Sheppie, would later do similar work as an active member of the International Rescue Committee. Glass developed his appreciation of music from his father, discovering later his fathers side of the family had many musicians and his cousin Cevia was a classical pianist, while others had been in vaudeville. He learned his family was related to Al Jolson. Glasss father often received promotional copies of new recordings at his music store and he spent many hours listening to them, developing his knowledge and taste in music. This openness to modern sounds affected Glass at an age, My father was self-taught, but he ended up having a very refined and rich knowledge of classical, chamber. Typically he would come home and have dinner, and then sit in his armchair, I caught on to this very early, and I would go and listen with him. The elder Glass promoted both new recordings and a selection of composers to his customers, sometimes convincing them to try something new by allowing them to return records they didnt like. His store soon developed a reputation as Baltimores leading source of modern music, Glass cites Schuberts work as a big influence growing up. He studied the flute as a child at the school of the Peabody Institute. At the age of 15, he entered a college program at the University of Chicago where he studied mathematics
Philip Glass
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Philip Glass in 1993
Philip Glass
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Glass performing Book of Longing in Milan, September 2008
28.
Marilyn Horne
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Marilyn Horne is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and she is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. She has won four Grammy Awards, Horne was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, but moved with her parents to Long Beach, California, when she was 11. At the age of 13, she became part of the newly formed Los Angeles Concert Youth Chorus and she attended the University of Southern California where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She is an alumna of Long Beach Polytechnic High School and returned in 1989 in a performance to benefit its music program, as a high school student, Marilyn was part of the St. Lukes Choir of Long Beach under the direction of William Ripley Dorr. This prestigious choir often worked for the studios and recorded with Capitol Records. Marilyn and her sister Gloria were part of St. Lukes Quartet along with tenor Bob James and she studied voice under William Vennard at the University of Southern California School of Music and participated in Lotte Lehmanns vocal master classes. Hornes first major engagement was in 1954, when she dubbed the singing voice of Dorothy Dandridge in the film Carmen Jones.98. She made her Los Angeles debut the year when she performed the role of Hata in The Bartered Bride with the Los Angeles Guild Opera. Her first major breakthrough came when her ability was recognized by Igor Stravinsky. She remained in Europe for three seasons singing for the Gelsenkirchen Opera and she was highly acclaimed for her performance as Marie in Alban Bergs Wozzeck at the inauguration of Gelsenkirchens new opera house on May 22,1960. In 1964, she returned to the United States to appear in Wozzeck at the San Francisco Opera, for many years, Horne was associated with the Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland in their performances of the bel canto repertoire. They first performed together in a version of Vincenzo Bellinis Beatrice di Tenda at The Town Hall in Manhattan in February 1961. This performance was so successful, it was repeated twice at Carnegie Hall, Horne made her debut at the Royal Opera House in October 1964 as Marie in Wozzeck. Her La Scala debut was as Jocasta in Stravinskys opéra-oratorio Œdipus rex on March 13,1969, another of Hornes breakthroughs occurred that same year during a performance of Rossinis Le siège de Corinthe at La Scala, when Horne received a remarkable mid-act seven-minute ovation. Horne made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1970 as Adalgisa in Bellinis Norma with Sutherland in the title role and she thereafter appeared regularly at the Met, opening the 1972/1973 season as Carmen. A great success there was in Meyerbeers Le prophète, in John Dexters production, in 1984, she sang the title role of Handels opera seria Rinaldo, the first Handel opera ever performed at the Met. Although best known for her bel canto and opera seria roles, Horne also sang much American music, both contemporary music by composers such as William Bolcom, and traditional popular songs
Marilyn Horne
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Marilyn Horne and
Henry Lewis in 1961, photo by
Carl Van Vechten
