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Brahms
Johannes Brahms (May 7, 1833 â April 3, 1897) was a German composer of the Romantic period. He was born in Hamburg and in his later years he settled in Vienna, Austria.
Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works â in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. Thus many admirers (though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and "pure music," as opposed to the New German embrace of program music.
Brahms venerated Beethoven: in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. The main theme of the finale of Brahms's First Symphony is reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, and when this resemblance was pointed out to Brahms he replied that any ass â jeder Esel â could see that.
Ein deutsches Requiem was partially inspired by his mother's death in 1865, but also incorporates material from a Symphony he started in 1854, but abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt. He once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann". The first movement of this abandoned Symphony was re-worked as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto.
Brahms also loved the Classical composers Mozart and Haydn. He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and edited performing editions. He also studied the music of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz and especially Johann Sebastian Bach. His friends included leading musicologists, and with Friedrich Chrysander he edited an edition of the works of François Couperin. He looked to older music for inspiration in the arts of strict counterpoint; the themes of some of his works are modelled on Baroque sources, such as Bach's The Art of Fugue in the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1, or the same composer's Cantata No. 150 in the passacaglia theme of the Fourth Symphony's finale.
Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works â in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. Thus many admirers (though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and "pure music," as opposed to the New German embrace of program music.
Brahms venerated Beethoven: in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. The main theme of the finale of Brahms's First Symphony is reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, and when this resemblance was pointed out to Brahms he replied that any ass â jeder Esel â could see that.
Ein deutsches Requiem was partially inspired by his mother's death in 1865, but also incorporates material from a Symphony he started in 1854, but abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt. He once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann". The first movement of this abandoned Symphony was re-worked as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto.
Brahms also loved the Classical composers Mozart and Haydn. He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and edited performing editions. He also studied the music of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz and especially Johann Sebastian Bach. His friends included leading musicologists, and with Friedrich Chrysander he edited an edition of the works of François Couperin. He looked to older music for inspiration in the arts of strict counterpoint; the themes of some of his works are modelled on Baroque sources, such as Bach's The Art of Fugue in the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1, or the same composer's Cantata No. 150 in the passacaglia theme of the Fourth Symphony's finale.
Messiaen Olivier
This is a list of compositions by Olivier Messiaen. Works are listed initially by genre and can be sorted chronologically by clicking on the "Date" header.
The compositions by Olivier Messiaen include works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, vocal music, music for piano and organ, as well as some of the earliest electronic music, with his use of the ondes martenot in several of his conpositions. Messiaen's work is characterised by rhythmic complexity, his interest in ornithology and birdcalls, and his system of modes of limited transposition.
The compositions by Olivier Messiaen include works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, vocal music, music for piano and organ, as well as some of the earliest electronic music, with his use of the ondes martenot in several of his conpositions. Messiaen's work is characterised by rhythmic complexity, his interest in ornithology and birdcalls, and his system of modes of limited transposition.
Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1 April 1873 - 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, the last great representative of Russian late Romanticism in classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom which included a pronounced lyricism, expressive breadth, structural ingenuity and a tonal palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colors.
Understandably, the piano figures prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output, either as a solo instrument or as part of an ensemble. He made it a point, however, to use his own skills as a performer to explore fully the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Even in his earliest works, he revealed a sure grasp of idiomatic piano writing and a striking gift for melody. In some of his early orchestral pieces he showed the first signs of a talent for tone painting, which he would perfect in The Isle of the Dead, and he began to show a similar penchant for vocal writing in two early sets of songs, Opp. 4 and 8. Rachmaninoff's masterpiece, however, is his choral symphony The Bells, in which all of his talents are fused and unified.
Rachmaninoff sometimes felt threatened by the success of modernists such as Scriabin and Prokofiev and wondered whether to cease composing even before he left Russia. His musical philosophy was rooted in the Russian spiritual tradition, where the role of the artist was to create beauty and to speak the truth from the depths of his heart. In his last major interview, in 1941, he admitted his music, like Russian music, was a product of his temperament. He said, on another occasion, "The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt—they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt."
Understandably, the piano figures prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output, either as a solo instrument or as part of an ensemble. He made it a point, however, to use his own skills as a performer to explore fully the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Even in his earliest works, he revealed a sure grasp of idiomatic piano writing and a striking gift for melody. In some of his early orchestral pieces he showed the first signs of a talent for tone painting, which he would perfect in The Isle of the Dead, and he began to show a similar penchant for vocal writing in two early sets of songs, Opp. 4 and 8. Rachmaninoff's masterpiece, however, is his choral symphony The Bells, in which all of his talents are fused and unified.
Rachmaninoff sometimes felt threatened by the success of modernists such as Scriabin and Prokofiev and wondered whether to cease composing even before he left Russia. His musical philosophy was rooted in the Russian spiritual tradition, where the role of the artist was to create beauty and to speak the truth from the depths of his heart. In his last major interview, in 1941, he admitted his music, like Russian music, was a product of his temperament. He said, on another occasion, "The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt—they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt."
Athur Laurent
Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.
After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.
His early film scripts include Rope (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The Way We Were (1973), and The Turning Point (1977).
Contents
1 Early life
2 Theatrical career
3 Film career
4 Blacklist
5 Memoirs
6 Death
7 Work
7.1 Writing
7.2 Directing
7.3 Additional credits
8 Awards, nominations and honors
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
Early life
Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of middle-class Jewish parents, a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child.
His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish holidays. His Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions, although he continued to identify himself as Jewish. However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."
After graduating from Cornell University, Laurents took an evening class in radio writing at New York University. William N. Robson, his instructor, a CBS Radio director/producer, submitted his script Now Playing Tomorrow, a comedic fantasy about clairvoyance, to the network, and it was produced in the Columbia Workshop series on January 30, 1939, with Shirley Booth in the lead role. It was Laurents' first professional credit. The show's success led to him being hired to write scripts for various radio shows, among them Lux Radio Theater. Laurents' career was interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in the middle of World War II. Through a series of clerical errors, he never saw battle, but instead was assigned to the U.S. Army Pictorial Service located in a film studio in Astoria, Queens, where he wrote training films and met, among others, George Cukor and William Holden. He later was reassigned to write plays for Armed Service Force Presents, a radio show that dramatized the contributions of all branches of the armed forces.
Theatrical career
According to John Clum, "Laurents was always a mirror of his times. Through his best work, one sees a staged history of leftist, gender, and gay politics in the decades after World War II." After graduating from Cornell University in 1937, Laurents went to work as a writer for radio drama at CBS in New York. His military duties during World War II, which consisted of writing training films and radio scripts for Armed Service Force Presents, brought him into contact with some of the best film directors—distinguished director George Cukor directed his first script. Laurents's work in radio and film during World War II was an excellent apprenticeship for a budding playwright and screenwriter. He also had the good fortune to be based in New York City. His first stage play, Home of the Brave, was produced in 1945. The sale of the play to a film studio gave Laurents the entrée he needed to become a Hollywood screenwriter though he continued, with mixed success, to write plays. The most important of his early screenplays is his adaptation of Rope for Alfred Hitchcock.
Soon after being discharged from the Army, Laurents met ballerina Nora Kaye, and the two became involved in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. While Kaye was on tour with Fancy Free, Laurents continued to write for the radio but was becoming discontented with the medium. At the urging of Martin Gabel, he spent nine consecutive nights writing a play In 1962, Laurents directed I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which helped to turn then-unknown Barbra Streisand into a star. His next project was the stage musical Anyone Can Whistle, which he directed and for which he wrote the book, but it proved to be an infamous flop. He later had success with the musicals Hallelujah, Baby! (written for Lena Horne but ultimately starring Leslie Uggams) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), which he directed, however Nick & Nora was not successful.
In 2008, Laurents directed a Broadway revival of Gypsy starring Patti LuPone, and in 2009, he tackled a bilingual revival of West Side Story, with Spanish translations of some dialogue and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While preparing West Side Story, he noted, "The musical theatre and cultural conventions of 1957 made it next to impossible for the characters to have authenticity." Following the production's March 19 opening at the Palace Theatre, Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the translations "an only partly successful experiment" and added, "Mr. Laurents has exchanged insolence for innocence and, as with most such bargains, there are dividends and losses." The national tour (2011-2012) was directed by David Saint, who was Laurents' assistant director on the Broadway production. The Spanish lyrics and dialog were reduced from about 18% of the total to about 10%.
Film career
Laurents' first Hollywood experience proved to be a frustrating disappointment. Director Anatole Litvak, unhappy with the script submitted by Frank Partos and Millen Brand for The Snake Pit (1948), hired Laurents to rewrite it. Partos and Brand later insisted the bulk of the shooting script was theirs, and produced carbon copies of many of the pages Laurents actually had written to bolster their claim. Having destroyed the original script and all his notes and rewritten pages after completing the project, Laurents had no way to prove most of the work was his, and the Writers Guild of America denied him screen credit. Brand later confessed he and Partos had copied scenes written by Laurents and apologized for his role in the deception. Four decades later, Laurents learned he was ineligible for WGA health benefits because he had failed to accumulate enough credits to qualify. He was short by one, the one he failed to get for The Snake Pit.
Upon hearing 20th Century Fox executives were pleased with Laurents' work on The Snake Pit, Alfred Hitchcock hired him for his next project, the film Rope starring James Stewart. Hitchcock wanted Laurents to Americanize the British play Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton for the screen. With his then-lover Farley Granger set to star, Laurents was happy to accept the assignment. His dilemma was how to make the audience aware of the fact the three main characters were homosexual without blatantly saying so. The Hays Office kept close tabs on his work, and the final script was so discreet that Laurents was unsure whether co-star James Stewart ever realized that his character was gay. In later years, Hitchcock asked him to script both Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), However, Laurents, in both cases unenthused by the material, declined the offers.
Laurents also scripted Anastasia (1956) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958). The Way We Were (1973), in which he incorporated many of his own experiences, particularly those with the HUAC, reunited him with Barbra Streisand, and The Turning Point (1977), inspired in part by his love for Nora Kaye, was directed by her husband Herbert Ross. The Fox animated feature film Anastasia (1997) was based in part from his screenplay of the live-action 1956 film of the same title.
Blacklist
Because of a casual remark made by Russel Crouse, Laurents was called to Washington, D.C., to account for his political views. He explained himself to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his appearance had no obvious impact on his career, which at the time was primarily in the theatre. When the McCarran Internal Security Act, which prohibited individuals suspected of engaging in subversive activities from obtaining a passport, was passed in 1950, Laurents and Granger immediately applied for and received passports and departed for Paris with Harold Clurman and his wife Stella Adler. Laurents and Granger remained abroad, traveling throughout Europe and northern Africa, for about 18 months.
Years earlier, Laurents and Jerome Robbins had developed Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948), a stage musical about the world of ballet that ran for 188 performances on Broadway, and starred Nancy Walker and Harold Lang. (Although the musical was ultimately produced with a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, as Laurents left the project.) Robbins approached Paramount Pictures about directing a screen version, and the studio agreed as long as Laurents was not part of the package.
It was not until then that Laurents learned he officially had been blacklisted, primarily because a review of Home of the Brave had been published in the Daily Worker. He decided to return to Paris, but the State Department refused to renew his passport. Laurents spent three months trying to clear his name, and after submitting a lengthy letter explaining his political beliefs in detail, it was determined they were so idiosyncratic he could not have been a member of any subversive groups. Within a week his passport was renewed, and the following day he sailed for Europe on the Ile de France. While on board, he received a cable from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offering him a screenwriting assignment. The blacklist had ended.
Memoirs
Laurents wrote Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, published in 2000. In it, he discusses his lengthy career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships, including those with Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher (August 24, 1929 - October 26, 2006). Hatcher was an aspiring actor whom Gore Vidal suggested Laurents seek out at the Beverly Hills men's clothing store Hatcher was managing at the time. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death on October 26, 2006.
Laurents wrote Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and Other Musicals, published in 2009, in which he discussed musicals he directed and the work of other directors he admired.
His last memoir titled The Rest of the Story was published posthumously in September 2012.
Death
Laurents died at the age of 93 at his home in Manhattan on May 5, 2011 of pneumonia complications, as reported by The New York Times. Following a long tradition, Broadway theatre lights were dimmed at 8 p.m. on May 6, 2011, for one minute in his memory. His ashes were buried alongside those of Tom Hatcher in a memorial bench in Quogue, Long Island, New York.
Work
Writing
Musicals
West Side Story – 1957 – Tony Nomination for Best Musical
Gypsy – 1959 – Tony Nomination for Best Musical
Anyone Can Whistle – 1964
Do I Hear a Waltz? – 1965
Hallelujah, Baby! – 1967 – Tony Award for Best Musical
The Madwoman of Central Park West – 1979
Nick & Nora – 1991
Novel
The Turning Point – 1977; New American Library (New York City); OCLC 11014907
Plays
Home of the Brave – 1945
The Bird Cage – 1950
The Time of the Cuckoo – 1952
A Clearing in the Woods – 1957
Invitation to a March – 1960
Directing
Invitation to a March – 1960
I Can Get It for You Wholesale – 1962
Anyone Can Whistle – 1964
Gypsy – 1974 – Tony Nomination for Best Direction of a Musical
The Madwoman of Central Park West – 1979
La Cage aux Folles – 1983 – Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
Nick & Nora – 1991
Gypsy – 2008 – Tony Award nomination as Best Director of a Musical
West Side Story – 2009 Broadway Revival
Additional credits
Anna Lucasta (screenwriter)
A Clearing in the Woods (playwright)
Invitation to a March (playwright, director)
The Madwoman of Central Park West (playwright, director)
My Good Name (playwright)
Jolson Sings Again (playwright)
The Enclave (playwright, director)
Radical Mystique (playwright, director)
Big Potato (playwright)
Two Lives (playwright)
My Good Name (playwright)
Claudia Lazlo (playwright)
Attacks on the Heart (playwright)
2 Lives (playwright)
New Year's Eve (playwright)
Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are (playwright, director)
Caught (screenwriter)
Rope (screenwriter)
Awards, nominations and honors
A new award was established in 2010, The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award. This is awarded annually "for an un-produced, full-length play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright." The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation will give $50,000 to the writer with a grant of $100,000 towards production costs at a nonprofit theatre. The first award will be given in 2011.
Theatre
1958 Tony Award for Best Musical (West Side Story, nominee)
1960 Tony Award for Best Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
1968 Tony Award for Best Musical (Hallelujah, Baby!, winner)
1975 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical (Gypsy, winner)
1975 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
1984 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (La Cage aux Folles, winner)
2008 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
Film
Academy Award for Best Picture (The Turning Point, nominee)
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (The Turning Point, nominee)
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (Rope, nominee)
Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay (The Turning Point, nominee)
Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay (The Way We Were, nominee; The Turning Point, winner)
National Board of Review Award for Career Achievement (winner)
See also
Biography portal
Film portal
Musical Theatre portal
icon Theatre portal
icon Writing portal
List of Jewish American playwrights
List of novelists from the United States
List of pneumonia victims
List of people from Brooklyn, New York
List of playwrights from the United States
List of theatre directors
References
"Legendary Writer & Director Arthur Laurents Dies at 93". Broadway World. Retrieved May 6, 2011.
John M. Clum. The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014.
"Obituaries: Arthur Laurents". The Daily Telegraph. May 6, 2011.
"When You’re a Shark You’re a Shark All the Way". New York.
Hawtree, Christopher (May 6, 2011). "Arthur Laurents obituary: Playwright and screenwriter who wrote the book for West Side Story". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
Hutchinson, Bill (May 6, 2011). "Playwright Behind 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy,' Arthur Laurents, Dies at Age 93". Daily News.
Arnold, Laurence (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Writer of 'West Side Story,' 'Gypsy' Scripts, Dies at 93". Bloomberg News.
Laurents, Arthur. "Beginnings" Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2001, ISBN 1-55783-467-9, pp. 10–11, 34–35.
Laurents, Arthur. Original Story By. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2000). ISBN 0-375-40055-9, pp. 6–7.
Laurents, p. 133.
Laurents, pp. 12–13.
Laurents, pp. 22–28.
Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal", November 2014, Cambria Press, ISBN 1604978848
Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal"
Laurents, p. 93.
Jones, Kenneth (July 16, 2008). "'West Side Story', This Time With Bilingual Approach, Will Return to Broadway in February 2009". Playbill.
Brantley, Ben (March 20, 2009). "Our Gangs". The New York Times.
Berson, M. (January 8, 2012). "'West Side Story': A classic revived" Archived January 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Seattle Times.
Laurents, pp. 106–120.
Laurents, pp. 115–116, 124–131.
Laurents, p. 136.
""West Side Story Author Arthur Laurents Dies, 93" Archived July 9, 2012, at Archive.today forum.bcdb.com. May 4, 2011.
Laurents, p. 29.
Laurents, pp. 165–190.
Vaill, Amanda (2006). Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins, Random House, Inc. p. 135. ISBN 0-7679-0420-6.
"'Look Ma, I'm Dancin' listing". Internet Broadway Database.
Laurents, pp. 286–289.
"Backstage.com obituary, November 1, 2006". Backstage.
Berkvist, Robert (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Playwright and Director on Broadway, Dies at 93". The New York Times.
Jones, Kenneth (May 6, 2011). "Broadway Lights Will Dim May 6 in Memory of Arthur Laurents" Archived October 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
Gans, Andrew (June 3, 2010). "New Award Named for Arthur Laurents and His Partner, the Late Tom Hatcher" Archived June 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
Further reading
Laurents, Arthur (2000). Original Story by Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40055-9.
Laurents, Arthur (2009). Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-307-27088-2.
Clum, John (2014). The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. ISBN 978-1-60497-884-1.
External links
Arthur Laurents at the Internet Broadway Database Edit this at Wikidata
Arthur Laurents at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Arthur Laurents on IMDb
American Theatre Wing biography
Works by or about Arthur Laurents in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Works by Arthur Laurents at Open Library Edit this at Wikidata
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Works by Arthur Laurents
Writer
Musicals
West Side Story (1957) Gypsy (1959) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) Nick & Nora (1991)
Plays
Home of the Brave (1945) The Time of the Cuckoo (1952)
Films
Rope (1948) Caught (1949) Anastasia (1956) Bonjour Tristesse (1958) The Way We Were (1973) The Turning Point (1977)
Director
I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) Gypsy (1974) The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) La Cage aux Folles (1983) Birds of Paradise (1987) Gypsy (1989) Nick & Nora (1991) Gypsy (2008) West Side Story (2009)
Awards for Arthur Laurents
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Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story (1957)
Characters
Maria
Inspiration
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Adaptations
West Side Story (1961 film) West Side Story Suite (1995 ballet) West Side Story (2020 film)
Variations
Deaf Side Story (c. 2002 musical) Swango (2002 musical) West Bank Story (2005 parody film)
Songs
Act 1
"Something's Coming" "Maria" "Tonight" "America" "Cool" "One Hand, One Heart" "Tonight (Quintet & Chorus)"
Act 2
"I Feel Pretty" "Somewhere" "Gee, Officer Krupke" "A Boy Like That"
Albums
West Side Story (1957 original cast) West Side Story (1959 Previn) West Side Story (1961 soundtrack) West Side Story (1961 Tjader) Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein (1961 Brubeck Quartet) West Side Story (1962 Peterson Trio) Kenton's West Side Story (1962 Kenton) Toshiko–Mariano Quartet (in West Side) (1963 Akiyoshi) West Side Story (1974 Earl Hines)
Related
"The First Time" "Upper West Side Story" Wild Side Story China Girl "Roses" Play It Again Josh Superjail!
Authority control Edit this at Wikidata
BNE: XX1122852 BNF: cb140368976 (data) GND: 123286352 ISNI: 0000 0001 1025 0247 LCCN: n85173003 MusicBrainz: e062e9c9-5fd4-4384-ba1d-71495ce3bb7d NKC: xx0026607 NTA: 071341080 SNAC: w6gf56zk SUDOC: 058478094 VIAF: 37116781 WorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 37116781
Categories: 1917 births2011 deathsAmerican memoiristsAmerican musical theatre librettistsAmerican people of World War IIAmerican male screenwritersCornell University alumniDeaths from pneumoniaDrama Desk Award winnersErasmus Hall High School alumniGay writersHollywood blacklistInfectious disease deaths in New York (state)Jewish American novelistsLGBT JewsLGBT memoiristsLGBT writers from the United StatesPeople from Flatbush, BrooklynUnited States Army personnelWriters from New York CityJewish American dramatists and playwrightsAnalysands of Theodor ReikLGBT dramatists and playwrightsLGBT novelistsGolden Globe Award-winning producersAmerican male novelistsLGBT screenwritersLGBT people from New York (state)Tony Award winnersAmerican male dramatists and playwrights20th-century American novelists20th-century American dramatists and playwrightsNovelists from New York (state)20th-century American non-fiction writersAmerican male non-fiction writersScreenwriters from New York (state)American Theater Hall of Fame inductees
After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, Laurents turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), and directing some of his own shows and other Broadway productions.
His early film scripts include Rope (1948) for Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The Way We Were (1973), and The Turning Point (1977).
Contents
1 Early life
2 Theatrical career
3 Film career
4 Blacklist
5 Memoirs
6 Death
7 Work
7.1 Writing
7.2 Directing
7.3 Additional credits
8 Awards, nominations and honors
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
Early life
Born Arthur Levine, Laurents was the son of middle-class Jewish parents, a lawyer and a schoolteacher who gave up her career when she married. He was born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, New York, the elder of two children, and attended Erasmus Hall High School. His sister Edith suffered from chorea as a child.
His paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews, and his mother's parents, although born Jewish, were atheists. His mother kept a kosher home for her husband's sake, but was lax about attending synagogue and observing the Jewish holidays. His Bar Mitzvah marked the end of Laurents's religious education and the beginning of his rejection of all fundamentalist religions, although he continued to identify himself as Jewish. However, late in life he admitted to having changed his last name from Levine to the less Jewish-sounding Laurents, "to get a job."
After graduating from Cornell University, Laurents took an evening class in radio writing at New York University. William N. Robson, his instructor, a CBS Radio director/producer, submitted his script Now Playing Tomorrow, a comedic fantasy about clairvoyance, to the network, and it was produced in the Columbia Workshop series on January 30, 1939, with Shirley Booth in the lead role. It was Laurents' first professional credit. The show's success led to him being hired to write scripts for various radio shows, among them Lux Radio Theater. Laurents' career was interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in the middle of World War II. Through a series of clerical errors, he never saw battle, but instead was assigned to the U.S. Army Pictorial Service located in a film studio in Astoria, Queens, where he wrote training films and met, among others, George Cukor and William Holden. He later was reassigned to write plays for Armed Service Force Presents, a radio show that dramatized the contributions of all branches of the armed forces.
Theatrical career
According to John Clum, "Laurents was always a mirror of his times. Through his best work, one sees a staged history of leftist, gender, and gay politics in the decades after World War II." After graduating from Cornell University in 1937, Laurents went to work as a writer for radio drama at CBS in New York. His military duties during World War II, which consisted of writing training films and radio scripts for Armed Service Force Presents, brought him into contact with some of the best film directors—distinguished director George Cukor directed his first script. Laurents's work in radio and film during World War II was an excellent apprenticeship for a budding playwright and screenwriter. He also had the good fortune to be based in New York City. His first stage play, Home of the Brave, was produced in 1945. The sale of the play to a film studio gave Laurents the entrée he needed to become a Hollywood screenwriter though he continued, with mixed success, to write plays. The most important of his early screenplays is his adaptation of Rope for Alfred Hitchcock.
Soon after being discharged from the Army, Laurents met ballerina Nora Kaye, and the two became involved in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. While Kaye was on tour with Fancy Free, Laurents continued to write for the radio but was becoming discontented with the medium. At the urging of Martin Gabel, he spent nine consecutive nights writing a play In 1962, Laurents directed I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which helped to turn then-unknown Barbra Streisand into a star. His next project was the stage musical Anyone Can Whistle, which he directed and for which he wrote the book, but it proved to be an infamous flop. He later had success with the musicals Hallelujah, Baby! (written for Lena Horne but ultimately starring Leslie Uggams) and La Cage Aux Folles (1983), which he directed, however Nick & Nora was not successful.
In 2008, Laurents directed a Broadway revival of Gypsy starring Patti LuPone, and in 2009, he tackled a bilingual revival of West Side Story, with Spanish translations of some dialogue and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While preparing West Side Story, he noted, "The musical theatre and cultural conventions of 1957 made it next to impossible for the characters to have authenticity." Following the production's March 19 opening at the Palace Theatre, Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the translations "an only partly successful experiment" and added, "Mr. Laurents has exchanged insolence for innocence and, as with most such bargains, there are dividends and losses." The national tour (2011-2012) was directed by David Saint, who was Laurents' assistant director on the Broadway production. The Spanish lyrics and dialog were reduced from about 18% of the total to about 10%.
Film career
Laurents' first Hollywood experience proved to be a frustrating disappointment. Director Anatole Litvak, unhappy with the script submitted by Frank Partos and Millen Brand for The Snake Pit (1948), hired Laurents to rewrite it. Partos and Brand later insisted the bulk of the shooting script was theirs, and produced carbon copies of many of the pages Laurents actually had written to bolster their claim. Having destroyed the original script and all his notes and rewritten pages after completing the project, Laurents had no way to prove most of the work was his, and the Writers Guild of America denied him screen credit. Brand later confessed he and Partos had copied scenes written by Laurents and apologized for his role in the deception. Four decades later, Laurents learned he was ineligible for WGA health benefits because he had failed to accumulate enough credits to qualify. He was short by one, the one he failed to get for The Snake Pit.
Upon hearing 20th Century Fox executives were pleased with Laurents' work on The Snake Pit, Alfred Hitchcock hired him for his next project, the film Rope starring James Stewart. Hitchcock wanted Laurents to Americanize the British play Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton for the screen. With his then-lover Farley Granger set to star, Laurents was happy to accept the assignment. His dilemma was how to make the audience aware of the fact the three main characters were homosexual without blatantly saying so. The Hays Office kept close tabs on his work, and the final script was so discreet that Laurents was unsure whether co-star James Stewart ever realized that his character was gay. In later years, Hitchcock asked him to script both Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), However, Laurents, in both cases unenthused by the material, declined the offers.
Laurents also scripted Anastasia (1956) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958). The Way We Were (1973), in which he incorporated many of his own experiences, particularly those with the HUAC, reunited him with Barbra Streisand, and The Turning Point (1977), inspired in part by his love for Nora Kaye, was directed by her husband Herbert Ross. The Fox animated feature film Anastasia (1997) was based in part from his screenplay of the live-action 1956 film of the same title.
Blacklist
Because of a casual remark made by Russel Crouse, Laurents was called to Washington, D.C., to account for his political views. He explained himself to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his appearance had no obvious impact on his career, which at the time was primarily in the theatre. When the McCarran Internal Security Act, which prohibited individuals suspected of engaging in subversive activities from obtaining a passport, was passed in 1950, Laurents and Granger immediately applied for and received passports and departed for Paris with Harold Clurman and his wife Stella Adler. Laurents and Granger remained abroad, traveling throughout Europe and northern Africa, for about 18 months.
Years earlier, Laurents and Jerome Robbins had developed Look Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948), a stage musical about the world of ballet that ran for 188 performances on Broadway, and starred Nancy Walker and Harold Lang. (Although the musical was ultimately produced with a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, as Laurents left the project.) Robbins approached Paramount Pictures about directing a screen version, and the studio agreed as long as Laurents was not part of the package.
It was not until then that Laurents learned he officially had been blacklisted, primarily because a review of Home of the Brave had been published in the Daily Worker. He decided to return to Paris, but the State Department refused to renew his passport. Laurents spent three months trying to clear his name, and after submitting a lengthy letter explaining his political beliefs in detail, it was determined they were so idiosyncratic he could not have been a member of any subversive groups. Within a week his passport was renewed, and the following day he sailed for Europe on the Ile de France. While on board, he received a cable from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offering him a screenwriting assignment. The blacklist had ended.
Memoirs
Laurents wrote Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, published in 2000. In it, he discusses his lengthy career and his many gay affairs and long-term relationships, including those with Farley Granger and Tom Hatcher (August 24, 1929 - October 26, 2006). Hatcher was an aspiring actor whom Gore Vidal suggested Laurents seek out at the Beverly Hills men's clothing store Hatcher was managing at the time. The couple remained together for 52 years until Hatcher's death on October 26, 2006.
Laurents wrote Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and Other Musicals, published in 2009, in which he discussed musicals he directed and the work of other directors he admired.
His last memoir titled The Rest of the Story was published posthumously in September 2012.
Death
Laurents died at the age of 93 at his home in Manhattan on May 5, 2011 of pneumonia complications, as reported by The New York Times. Following a long tradition, Broadway theatre lights were dimmed at 8 p.m. on May 6, 2011, for one minute in his memory. His ashes were buried alongside those of Tom Hatcher in a memorial bench in Quogue, Long Island, New York.
Work
Writing
Musicals
West Side Story – 1957 – Tony Nomination for Best Musical
Gypsy – 1959 – Tony Nomination for Best Musical
Anyone Can Whistle – 1964
Do I Hear a Waltz? – 1965
Hallelujah, Baby! – 1967 – Tony Award for Best Musical
The Madwoman of Central Park West – 1979
Nick & Nora – 1991
Novel
The Turning Point – 1977; New American Library (New York City); OCLC 11014907
Plays
Home of the Brave – 1945
The Bird Cage – 1950
The Time of the Cuckoo – 1952
A Clearing in the Woods – 1957
Invitation to a March – 1960
Directing
Invitation to a March – 1960
I Can Get It for You Wholesale – 1962
Anyone Can Whistle – 1964
Gypsy – 1974 – Tony Nomination for Best Direction of a Musical
The Madwoman of Central Park West – 1979
La Cage aux Folles – 1983 – Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical
Nick & Nora – 1991
Gypsy – 2008 – Tony Award nomination as Best Director of a Musical
West Side Story – 2009 Broadway Revival
Additional credits
Anna Lucasta (screenwriter)
A Clearing in the Woods (playwright)
Invitation to a March (playwright, director)
The Madwoman of Central Park West (playwright, director)
My Good Name (playwright)
Jolson Sings Again (playwright)
The Enclave (playwright, director)
Radical Mystique (playwright, director)
Big Potato (playwright)
Two Lives (playwright)
My Good Name (playwright)
Claudia Lazlo (playwright)
Attacks on the Heart (playwright)
2 Lives (playwright)
New Year's Eve (playwright)
Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are (playwright, director)
Caught (screenwriter)
Rope (screenwriter)
Awards, nominations and honors
A new award was established in 2010, The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award. This is awarded annually "for an un-produced, full-length play of social relevance by an emerging American playwright." The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation will give $50,000 to the writer with a grant of $100,000 towards production costs at a nonprofit theatre. The first award will be given in 2011.
Theatre
1958 Tony Award for Best Musical (West Side Story, nominee)
1960 Tony Award for Best Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
1968 Tony Award for Best Musical (Hallelujah, Baby!, winner)
1975 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical (Gypsy, winner)
1975 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
1984 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (La Cage aux Folles, winner)
2008 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Gypsy, nominee)
Film
Academy Award for Best Picture (The Turning Point, nominee)
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (The Turning Point, nominee)
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (Rope, nominee)
Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay (The Turning Point, nominee)
Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay (The Way We Were, nominee; The Turning Point, winner)
National Board of Review Award for Career Achievement (winner)
See also
Biography portal
Film portal
Musical Theatre portal
icon Theatre portal
icon Writing portal
List of Jewish American playwrights
List of novelists from the United States
List of pneumonia victims
List of people from Brooklyn, New York
List of playwrights from the United States
List of theatre directors
References
"Legendary Writer & Director Arthur Laurents Dies at 93". Broadway World. Retrieved May 6, 2011.
John M. Clum. The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014.
"Obituaries: Arthur Laurents". The Daily Telegraph. May 6, 2011.
"When You’re a Shark You’re a Shark All the Way". New York.
Hawtree, Christopher (May 6, 2011). "Arthur Laurents obituary: Playwright and screenwriter who wrote the book for West Side Story". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
Hutchinson, Bill (May 6, 2011). "Playwright Behind 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy,' Arthur Laurents, Dies at Age 93". Daily News.
Arnold, Laurence (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Writer of 'West Side Story,' 'Gypsy' Scripts, Dies at 93". Bloomberg News.
Laurents, Arthur. "Beginnings" Original Story By Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2001, ISBN 1-55783-467-9, pp. 10–11, 34–35.
Laurents, Arthur. Original Story By. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2000). ISBN 0-375-40055-9, pp. 6–7.
Laurents, p. 133.
Laurents, pp. 12–13.
Laurents, pp. 22–28.
Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal", November 2014, Cambria Press, ISBN 1604978848
Clum, John, "The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal"
Laurents, p. 93.
Jones, Kenneth (July 16, 2008). "'West Side Story', This Time With Bilingual Approach, Will Return to Broadway in February 2009". Playbill.
Brantley, Ben (March 20, 2009). "Our Gangs". The New York Times.
Berson, M. (January 8, 2012). "'West Side Story': A classic revived" Archived January 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Seattle Times.
Laurents, pp. 106–120.
Laurents, pp. 115–116, 124–131.
Laurents, p. 136.
""West Side Story Author Arthur Laurents Dies, 93" Archived July 9, 2012, at Archive.today forum.bcdb.com. May 4, 2011.
Laurents, p. 29.
Laurents, pp. 165–190.
Vaill, Amanda (2006). Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins, Random House, Inc. p. 135. ISBN 0-7679-0420-6.
"'Look Ma, I'm Dancin' listing". Internet Broadway Database.
Laurents, pp. 286–289.
"Backstage.com obituary, November 1, 2006". Backstage.
Berkvist, Robert (May 5, 2011). "Arthur Laurents, Playwright and Director on Broadway, Dies at 93". The New York Times.
Jones, Kenneth (May 6, 2011). "Broadway Lights Will Dim May 6 in Memory of Arthur Laurents" Archived October 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
Gans, Andrew (June 3, 2010). "New Award Named for Arthur Laurents and His Partner, the Late Tom Hatcher" Archived June 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.
Further reading
Laurents, Arthur (2000). Original Story by Arthur Laurents: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40055-9.
Laurents, Arthur (2009). Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-307-27088-2.
Clum, John (2014). The Works of Arthur Laurents: Politics, Love, and Betrayal. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. ISBN 978-1-60497-884-1.
External links
Arthur Laurents at the Internet Broadway Database Edit this at Wikidata
Arthur Laurents at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Arthur Laurents on IMDb
American Theatre Wing biography
Works by or about Arthur Laurents in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Works by Arthur Laurents at Open Library Edit this at Wikidata
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Works by Arthur Laurents
Writer
Musicals
West Side Story (1957) Gypsy (1959) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) Nick & Nora (1991)
Plays
Home of the Brave (1945) The Time of the Cuckoo (1952)
Films
Rope (1948) Caught (1949) Anastasia (1956) Bonjour Tristesse (1958) The Way We Were (1973) The Turning Point (1977)
Director
I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) Gypsy (1974) The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) La Cage aux Folles (1983) Birds of Paradise (1987) Gypsy (1989) Nick & Nora (1991) Gypsy (2008) West Side Story (2009)
Awards for Arthur Laurents
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Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story (1957)
Characters
Maria
Inspiration
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Adaptations
West Side Story (1961 film) West Side Story Suite (1995 ballet) West Side Story (2020 film)
Variations
Deaf Side Story (c. 2002 musical) Swango (2002 musical) West Bank Story (2005 parody film)
Songs
Act 1
"Something's Coming" "Maria" "Tonight" "America" "Cool" "One Hand, One Heart" "Tonight (Quintet & Chorus)"
Act 2
"I Feel Pretty" "Somewhere" "Gee, Officer Krupke" "A Boy Like That"
Albums
West Side Story (1957 original cast) West Side Story (1959 Previn) West Side Story (1961 soundtrack) West Side Story (1961 Tjader) Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein (1961 Brubeck Quartet) West Side Story (1962 Peterson Trio) Kenton's West Side Story (1962 Kenton) Toshiko–Mariano Quartet (in West Side) (1963 Akiyoshi) West Side Story (1974 Earl Hines)
Related
"The First Time" "Upper West Side Story" Wild Side Story China Girl "Roses" Play It Again Josh Superjail!
Authority control Edit this at Wikidata
BNE: XX1122852 BNF: cb140368976 (data) GND: 123286352 ISNI: 0000 0001 1025 0247 LCCN: n85173003 MusicBrainz: e062e9c9-5fd4-4384-ba1d-71495ce3bb7d NKC: xx0026607 NTA: 071341080 SNAC: w6gf56zk SUDOC: 058478094 VIAF: 37116781 WorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 37116781
Categories: 1917 births2011 deathsAmerican memoiristsAmerican musical theatre librettistsAmerican people of World War IIAmerican male screenwritersCornell University alumniDeaths from pneumoniaDrama Desk Award winnersErasmus Hall High School alumniGay writersHollywood blacklistInfectious disease deaths in New York (state)Jewish American novelistsLGBT JewsLGBT memoiristsLGBT writers from the United StatesPeople from Flatbush, BrooklynUnited States Army personnelWriters from New York CityJewish American dramatists and playwrightsAnalysands of Theodor ReikLGBT dramatists and playwrightsLGBT novelistsGolden Globe Award-winning producersAmerican male novelistsLGBT screenwritersLGBT people from New York (state)Tony Award winnersAmerican male dramatists and playwrights20th-century American novelists20th-century American dramatists and playwrightsNovelists from New York (state)20th-century American non-fiction writersAmerican male non-fiction writersScreenwriters from New York (state)American Theater Hall of Fame inductees
Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project were a British progressive rock band active between 1975 and 1990, founded by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons.
Most of the Project's titles, especially the early work, share common traits (likely influenced by Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, on which Parsons was the audio engineer in 1973). They were concept albums, and typically began with an instrumental introduction which faded into the first song, often had an instrumental piece in the middle of the second LP side, and concluded with a quiet, melancholic, or powerful song. The opening instrumental was largely done away with by 1980; no later Project album except Eye in the Sky featured one (although every album includes at least one instrumental somewhere in the running order). The instrumental on that album, "Sirius", eventually became the best-known (or at least most frequently heard) Parsons instrumental because of its use as entrance music by various American sports teams, most notably by the Chicago Bulls during their 1990s NBA dynasty as well as during broadcasts of Pittsburgh Steelers games on their flagship station WDVE (which is coincidentally a classic rock station) just before the start of the game itself or the second half. It was also used as the entrance theme for Ricky Steamboat in pro wrestling of the mid 1980's.
The group was notable for using several vocal performers instead of having a single lead vocalist. Lead vocal duties were shared by guest vocalists chosen by their vocal style to complement each song. Woolfson sang lead on many of the group's hits (including "Time" and "Eye in the Sky") and the record company pressured Parsons to use him more, but Parsons preferred "real" singers, which Woolfson admitted he was not. In addition to Woolfson, Chris Rainbow, Lenny Zakatek, John Miles, David Paton and The Zombies' Colin Blunstone made regular appearances. Other singers, such as Arthur Brown, Procol Harum's Gary Brooker, Dave Terry aka Elmer Gantry, Vitamin Z's Geoff Barradale and Marmalade's Dean Ford, have recorded only once or twice with the Project. Parsons himself only sang lead on one song ("The Raven") through a vocoder, and can be heard singing backup on a few others, including "To One in Paradise". Both of those songs appeared on Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
Most of the Project's titles, especially the early work, share common traits (likely influenced by Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, on which Parsons was the audio engineer in 1973). They were concept albums, and typically began with an instrumental introduction which faded into the first song, often had an instrumental piece in the middle of the second LP side, and concluded with a quiet, melancholic, or powerful song. The opening instrumental was largely done away with by 1980; no later Project album except Eye in the Sky featured one (although every album includes at least one instrumental somewhere in the running order). The instrumental on that album, "Sirius", eventually became the best-known (or at least most frequently heard) Parsons instrumental because of its use as entrance music by various American sports teams, most notably by the Chicago Bulls during their 1990s NBA dynasty as well as during broadcasts of Pittsburgh Steelers games on their flagship station WDVE (which is coincidentally a classic rock station) just before the start of the game itself or the second half. It was also used as the entrance theme for Ricky Steamboat in pro wrestling of the mid 1980's.
The group was notable for using several vocal performers instead of having a single lead vocalist. Lead vocal duties were shared by guest vocalists chosen by their vocal style to complement each song. Woolfson sang lead on many of the group's hits (including "Time" and "Eye in the Sky") and the record company pressured Parsons to use him more, but Parsons preferred "real" singers, which Woolfson admitted he was not. In addition to Woolfson, Chris Rainbow, Lenny Zakatek, John Miles, David Paton and The Zombies' Colin Blunstone made regular appearances. Other singers, such as Arthur Brown, Procol Harum's Gary Brooker, Dave Terry aka Elmer Gantry, Vitamin Z's Geoff Barradale and Marmalade's Dean Ford, have recorded only once or twice with the Project. Parsons himself only sang lead on one song ("The Raven") through a vocoder, and can be heard singing backup on a few others, including "To One in Paradise". Both of those songs appeared on Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
Carl Orff
Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982) was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.
Orff is most known for Carmina Burana (1937), a "scenic cantata". It is the first of a trilogy that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. Carmina Burana reflected his interest in medieval German poetry. Together the trilogy is called Trionfi, or "Triumphs". The composer described it as the celebration of the triumph of the human spirit through sexual and holistic balance. The work was based on thirteenth-century poetry found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex latinus monacensis found in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1803 and written by the Goliards; this collection is also known as Carmina Burana. While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy, with infectious rhythms and easy tonalities. The medieval poems, written in Latin and an early form of German, are often racy, but without descending into smut. "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi", commonly known as "O Fortuna", from Carmina Burana is often used to denote primal forces, for example in the Oliver Stone movie The Doors.. The work's association with fascism also led Pier Paolo Pasolini to use the movement "Veris Leta Facies" to accompany the concluding scenes of torture and murder in his final film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.
With the success of Carmina Burana, Orff disowned all of his previous works except for Catulli Carmina and the Entrata (an orchestration of "The Bells" by William Byrd (1539–1623)), which were rewritten until acceptable by Orff. As an historical aside, Carmina Burana is probably the most famous piece of music composed and premiered in Nazi Germany. Carmina Burana was in fact so popular that Orff received a commission in Frankfurt to compose incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was supposed to replace the banned music by Mendelssohn. After the war, he claimed not to be satisfied with the music and reworked it into the final version that was first performed in 1964.
Orff is most known for Carmina Burana (1937), a "scenic cantata". It is the first of a trilogy that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. Carmina Burana reflected his interest in medieval German poetry. Together the trilogy is called Trionfi, or "Triumphs". The composer described it as the celebration of the triumph of the human spirit through sexual and holistic balance. The work was based on thirteenth-century poetry found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex latinus monacensis found in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1803 and written by the Goliards; this collection is also known as Carmina Burana. While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy, with infectious rhythms and easy tonalities. The medieval poems, written in Latin and an early form of German, are often racy, but without descending into smut. "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi", commonly known as "O Fortuna", from Carmina Burana is often used to denote primal forces, for example in the Oliver Stone movie The Doors.. The work's association with fascism also led Pier Paolo Pasolini to use the movement "Veris Leta Facies" to accompany the concluding scenes of torture and murder in his final film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.
With the success of Carmina Burana, Orff disowned all of his previous works except for Catulli Carmina and the Entrata (an orchestration of "The Bells" by William Byrd (1539–1623)), which were rewritten until acceptable by Orff. As an historical aside, Carmina Burana is probably the most famous piece of music composed and premiered in Nazi Germany. Carmina Burana was in fact so popular that Orff received a commission in Frankfurt to compose incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was supposed to replace the banned music by Mendelssohn. After the war, he claimed not to be satisfied with the music and reworked it into the final version that was first performed in 1964.
John Field
John Field (26 July 1782, baptised 30 September 1782 – 23 January 1837) was an Irish pianist, composer, and teacher. Field is best known as the inventor of the nocturne, but there is evidence to suggest that this is a posthumous accolade. He is mentioned in passing in War and Peace when Countess Rostova calls on the Rostov household musician to play her favourite nocturne.He was born in Dublin into a musical family, and received his early education there, in particular with the immigrant Tommaso Giordani. The Fields soon moved to London, where Field studied under Muzio Clementi. Under his tutelage, Field quickly became a famous and sought-after concert pianist. Together, master and pupil visited Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. Ambiguity surrounds Field's decision to remain in the former Russian capital, but it is likely that Field acted as a sales representative for the Clementi Pianos.
Traditional
Tony Renis
Tony Renis (born May 13, 1938), stage name of Elio Cesari, is an Italian singer, composer, music producer and film actorBorn in Milan, he debuted in the mid-1950s, paired with Adriano Celentano, performing an impression of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. In 1958, he signed to the label "Combo Record" as a singer and started releasing covers of Italian and American songs. In 1961, Renis debuted at the Sanremo Music Festival with the song "Pozzanghere".
Klaus Badelt
Klaus Badelt (born 1968) is a German composer, best known for composing film scores.
Badelt was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He started his musical career composing for many successful movies and commercials in his homeland. In 1998, Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer invited Badelt to work at Media Ventures in Santa Monica, his studio co-owned by Jay Rifkin. Since then, Badelt has been working on a number of his own film and television projects such as The Time Machine and K-19: The Widowmaker. He has also collaborated with other Media Ventures composers, such as Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, and Zimmer.
While collaborating with Zimmer, Badelt has contributed to the Oscar-nominated scores for The Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt, as well as writing music for many well known directors including Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Terrence Mallick, John Woo, Kathryn Bigelow, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Gore Verbinski, and Steven Spielberg.
Badelt co-produced the score to Hollywood box office hit Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, as well as writing portions of the score with singer/composer Lisa Gerrard. Having contributed music to Gladiator, Mission: Impossible 2 and Michael Kamen's score for X-Men, Badelt was involved in the three most successful movies in 2000. Badelt also collaborated with Zimmer on other successful films, such as The Pledge, and 2001 blockbusters Hannibal and Pearl Harbor. One of his more famous - and more popular - scores is the score to the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Among Badelt's most critically celebrated scores are the Chinese fantasy film The Promise and Dreamworks' remake of The Time Machine, the latter which earned him the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards 2003.
Badelt was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He started his musical career composing for many successful movies and commercials in his homeland. In 1998, Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer invited Badelt to work at Media Ventures in Santa Monica, his studio co-owned by Jay Rifkin. Since then, Badelt has been working on a number of his own film and television projects such as The Time Machine and K-19: The Widowmaker. He has also collaborated with other Media Ventures composers, such as Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, and Zimmer.
While collaborating with Zimmer, Badelt has contributed to the Oscar-nominated scores for The Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt, as well as writing music for many well known directors including Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Terrence Mallick, John Woo, Kathryn Bigelow, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Gore Verbinski, and Steven Spielberg.
Badelt co-produced the score to Hollywood box office hit Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, as well as writing portions of the score with singer/composer Lisa Gerrard. Having contributed music to Gladiator, Mission: Impossible 2 and Michael Kamen's score for X-Men, Badelt was involved in the three most successful movies in 2000. Badelt also collaborated with Zimmer on other successful films, such as The Pledge, and 2001 blockbusters Hannibal and Pearl Harbor. One of his more famous - and more popular - scores is the score to the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Among Badelt's most critically celebrated scores are the Chinese fantasy film The Promise and Dreamworks' remake of The Time Machine, the latter which earned him the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards 2003.
Big Bang
Big Bang (Korean: 빅뱅), commonly stylized as BIGBANG, is a Korean boyband made up of five Korean singers. Although their debut was somewhat successful, it was not until the release of "거짓말" ("Lies") that the group gained mainstream success.
Big Bang's music style can be classified for the most part as hip pop music (as seen with the songs "La, La, La" and "Goodbye Baby"), with a little vibe of R&B (as seen with the songs "We Belong Together" and "Forever With You"), dance ("Shake It") and mainstream ("This Love") music. Rock with "Oh My Friend". Finally, becoming the greatest hit songs of 2007, (as seen with the songs "Lies", "Last Farewell", and "Haru Haru (Day By Day)") electronica is seemingly becoming the new music trend in Korea. However, the members have branched out into different genres in their solo work, including singing ballads and mainstream pop music. Big Bang even once mentioned in an interview that if they want to, they might do trot someday. Daesung's first digital single, "Look at Me, GwiSun" ("날 봐, 귀순"), was a trot song, which had been somewhat controversial considering Big Bang's primary focus on hip-hop.
The members of Big Bang often contribute to writing lyrics for their own music as well as composing despite only debuting in 2006. The most notable from the group to compose and write is leader G-Dragon, as he has composed and written numerous songs for the group, including "Lies" and "Last Farewell." Aside from G-Dragon, the others members have contributed to writing lyrics as well. T.O.P has also written a song for their third mini album Stand up, called "Good Man". On a whole, Big Bang has received praises from critics, fans, and other singers alike for contributions to their own materials.
Big Bang's music style can be classified for the most part as hip pop music (as seen with the songs "La, La, La" and "Goodbye Baby"), with a little vibe of R&B (as seen with the songs "We Belong Together" and "Forever With You"), dance ("Shake It") and mainstream ("This Love") music. Rock with "Oh My Friend". Finally, becoming the greatest hit songs of 2007, (as seen with the songs "Lies", "Last Farewell", and "Haru Haru (Day By Day)") electronica is seemingly becoming the new music trend in Korea. However, the members have branched out into different genres in their solo work, including singing ballads and mainstream pop music. Big Bang even once mentioned in an interview that if they want to, they might do trot someday. Daesung's first digital single, "Look at Me, GwiSun" ("날 봐, 귀순"), was a trot song, which had been somewhat controversial considering Big Bang's primary focus on hip-hop.
The members of Big Bang often contribute to writing lyrics for their own music as well as composing despite only debuting in 2006. The most notable from the group to compose and write is leader G-Dragon, as he has composed and written numerous songs for the group, including "Lies" and "Last Farewell." Aside from G-Dragon, the others members have contributed to writing lyrics as well. T.O.P has also written a song for their third mini album Stand up, called "Good Man". On a whole, Big Bang has received praises from critics, fans, and other singers alike for contributions to their own materials.
The Supremes
The Supremes were an American female singing group and a premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s. Founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, the Supremes were the most commercially successful of Motown's acts and are, to date, America's most successful vocal group with 12 number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Most of these hits were written and produced by Motown's main songwriting and production team, Holland–Dozier–Holland. At their peak in the mid-1960s, the Supremes rivaled the Beatles in worldwide popularity, and it is said that their success made it possible for future African American R&B and soul musicians to find mainstream success.
Claude François
Claude Antoine Marie François (French pronunciation: ; 1 February 1939 – 11 March 1978), also known by the nickname Cloclo, was a French pop singer, composer, songwriter, music producer, drummer and dancer. François co-wrote the lyrics of "Comme d'habitude" (composed by Jacques Revaux and himself), the original version of "My Way" and composed the music of "Parce que je t'aime mon enfant", the original version of "My Boy". Among his most famous songs are "Le Téléphone Pleure", "Le lundi au soleil", "Magnolias for Ever", "Alexandrie Alexandra" and "Cette année là".
Mikhail Glinka
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Гли́нка, tr. Mikhaíl Ivánovich Glínka, IPA: (About this soundlisten); 1 June 1804 – 15 February 1857) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music. Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music.
Jay Ungar
Jay Ungar (born November 14, 1946) is an American folk musician and composer.Ungar was born in the Bronx, New York City. He frequented Greenwich Village music venues during his formative period in the 1960s. In the late 1960s, he became a member of Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys and later, the Putnam String County Band. Although he performs with David Bromberg, he is probably best known for "Ashokan Farewell" (1982), composed as a lament, and used as the theme tune to the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War (1990). Many of his other compositions are familiar as contradance tunes, notably "The Wizard's Walk."In 1991, Ungar married fellow musician Molly Mason. They met during the 1970s. They continue to perform as a duo, with their band, Swingology, and as the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band with Jay's daughter Ruth Ungar (her mother is Lyn Hardy) and her husband Michael Merenda.
Marco Barrientos
Marco Antonio Barrientos Zumpano, known as Marco Barrientos (born June 20, 1963) is an Evangelical Christian musician, pastor, author, teacher, and speaker known for combining practical biblical principles with the flow of prophetic songs.Barrientos has an extensive discography, and is best known for his productions "Sin Reservas", "Es Hora de Adorarle", "Transformados", and "Ilumina".He has been nominated for the Arpa Awards in many times and Latin Grammy Awards three times, for Best Christian Album for his productions "Viento + Fuego" in 2005, "Transformados" in 2011, and "Amanece" in 2015.
Loïs Le Van
Hailed by critics for his albums Vind (2019), Rendez-vous à l'Ovyne (2017) recorded with the Bravo Big Band, Loïs le Van had already distinguished himself with So much more, accompanied by Sylvain Rifflet on saxophone, Bruno Ruder on piano, Chris Jennings on double bass. This opus, released in 2016, convinced Télérama (obtaining the mention “fff”), Jazzmag (mention “Shock”), Jazznews (classified “Indispensable”) and Citizen jazz (“Elu”).Loïs le Van had previously stood out in the jazz world by being part of the "French Revelations 2014" by Jazz Magazine, in particular thanks to the album The Other Side by Loïs le Van Sextet (mentions "Révélation" by Jazz Magazine and “Elect” of Citizen Jazz). In 2012, it was her performance at the international “Voicingers” competition in Zory, Poland, which won the votes of the jury, made up of Patricia Barber, Lars Danielsson and Thierry Quenum.
kagamine rin
Kagamine Rin & Len (Japanese: 鏡音リン・レン), sometimes referred to as Rin & Len Kagamine, are humanoid personas voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media, headquartered in Sapporo, Japan. They use Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2 and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technology. Their voices are sampled by Asami Shimoda. They have performed at live concerts onstage as animated hologram projections.Their names are derived from the concept of 'left' and 'right', like in stereophonic sound. Their surnames came from the Japanese words for "mirror" (鏡, kagami) and "sound" (音, ne) as they are each other's mirror image.
Chopin
Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period. He is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets.
He was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father, and in his early life was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of 20, Chopin went abroad; following the suppression of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–31, he became one of many expatriates of the Polish "Great Emigration."
In Paris, he made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. A Polish patriot,
Chopin's extant compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. Though technically demanding, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than virtuosity. Chopin invented musical forms such as the ballade and was responsible for major innovations in forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music.
He was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father, and in his early life was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of 20, Chopin went abroad; following the suppression of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–31, he became one of many expatriates of the Polish "Great Emigration."
In Paris, he made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. A Polish patriot,
Chopin's extant compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. Though technically demanding, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than virtuosity. Chopin invented musical forms such as the ballade and was responsible for major innovations in forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music.
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Ferencz Liszt, in modern usage Ferenc Liszt, from 1859 to 1865 officially Franz Ritter von Liszt) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher. He was also the father-in-law of Richard Wagner. In 1865 he became abbot in the Roman Catholic Church.
Liszt became renowned throughout Europe during the 19th century for his great skill as a performer. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.
Liszt became renowned throughout Europe during the 19th century for his great skill as a performer. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.
yuhki kuramoto
uhki Kuramoto is a Japanese pianist and composer. His given name is Minoru Kitano (北野 實, Kitano Minoru). He writes primarily for the piano, though ...
Eduardo Di Capua
DescriptionEduardo Di Capua was a Neapolitan composer, singer and songwriter. Date of birth: March 12, 1865, Naples, Italy Date and place of death: 3 October 1917, Milan, Italy Education: Music conservatories of Naples Genre: Classical music Albums: O Sole Mio
Giovanni Bottesini
Giovanni Bottesini (22 December 1821 – 7 July 1889), was an Italian Romantic composer, conductor, and a double bass virtuoso.Born in Crema, Lombardy, he was taught the rudiments of music by his father, an accomplished clarinetist and composer, at a young age and had played timpani in Crema with the Teatro Sociale before the age of eleven. He studied violin with Carlo Cogliati, and probably would have continued on this instrument except for a unique turn of events. His father sought a place for him in the Milan Conservatory, but due to the Bottesini family's lack of money, Bottesini needed a scholarship.
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin (/ˈdʒɒplɪn/; January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the mid 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic/acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist with her own backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band.
Her first ever large scale public performance was at the Monterey Pop Festival, which led to her becoming very popular and one of the major attractions at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Joplin charted five singles; other popular songs include: "Down on Me," "Summertime," "Piece of My Heart," "Ball 'n' Chain," "Maybe," "To Love Somebody," "Kozmic Blues," "Work Me, Lord," "Cry Baby," "Mercedes Benz," and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee."
Her first ever large scale public performance was at the Monterey Pop Festival, which led to her becoming very popular and one of the major attractions at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Joplin charted five singles; other popular songs include: "Down on Me," "Summertime," "Piece of My Heart," "Ball 'n' Chain," "Maybe," "To Love Somebody," "Kozmic Blues," "Work Me, Lord," "Cry Baby," "Mercedes Benz," and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee."
Rick Astley
Richard Paul Astley (born 6 February 1966) is an English singer, songwriter and radio personality, who has been active in music for several decades. He gained worldwide fame in the 1980s, having multiple hits including his signature song "Never Gonna Give You Up", "Together Forever" and "Whenever You Need Somebody", and returned to music full-time in the 2000s. Outside his music career, Astley has occasionally worked as a radio DJ and a podcaster.Born and raised in Lancashire, Astley became a musician after leaving school, as the drummer for the soul band FBI. Three years later, he rose to fame through his association with the production trio Stock Aitken Waterman; releasing the 1987 album Whenever You Need Somebody, which sold 15.2 million copies worldwide. His debut single "Never Gonna Give You Up" was a number 1 hit single in 25 countries, winning the 1988 Brit Award for Best British Single.
Sister Act
Sister Act is a 1992 American comedy film released by Touchstone Pictures. Directed by Emile Ardolino, it features musical arrangements by Marc Shaiman and stars Whoopi Goldberg as a Reno lounge singer who has been put under protective custody in a San Francisco convent and has to pretend to be a nun when a mob boss puts her on his hit list. Also in the cast are Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy, Wendy Makkena, Mary Wickes, and Harvey Keitel. The film is #83 on Bravo's The 100 Funniest Movies list.
The film was followed by a 1993 sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. It also inspired a musical stage version that premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California in 2006.
The film was followed by a 1993 sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. It also inspired a musical stage version that premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California in 2006.
Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro na
Yoake Mae yori Ruriiro na, also known as Crescent Love, is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by August and first released on September 22, 2005 for Windows. It was later ported to the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable.
H. Walford Davies
Sir Henry Walford Davies KCVO OBE was an English composer, organist, and educator who held the title Master of the King's Music from 1934 until 1941.
Carl Reinecke
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke (June 23, 1824 – March 10, 1910) was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.
Reinecke is best known for his flute sonata "Undine", but he is also remembered as one of the most influential and versatile musicians of his time. He served as a teacher for 35 years, until 1902. His students included Edvard Grieg, Basil Harwood, Christian Sinding, Leoš Janáček, Isaac Albéniz, Johan Svendsen, Richard Franck, Felix Weingartner, Max Bruch, and Felix Fox among many others.
Reinecke is best known for his flute sonata "Undine", but he is also remembered as one of the most influential and versatile musicians of his time. He served as a teacher for 35 years, until 1902. His students included Edvard Grieg, Basil Harwood, Christian Sinding, Leoš Janáček, Isaac Albéniz, Johan Svendsen, Richard Franck, Felix Weingartner, Max Bruch, and Felix Fox among many others.
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, dancer and entertainer. Referred to as the King of Pop, he is the most commercially successful entertainer of all time, and one of the most influential. His contributions to music, dance and fashion, along with a much publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades.
Alongside his brothers, he made his debut as lead singer and youngest member of The Jackson 5 in 1964. He began his solo career in 1971. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album ever, with Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995) also among the world's best-selling albums. He is widely credited with having transformed the music video from a promotional tool into an art form with videos for his songs such as "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" making him the first African American artist to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound, vocal style, and choreography, is credited with stretching across and breaking down cultural, racial, economic, generational, and global barriers that has inspired countless pop, rock, R&B and hip hop artists.
One of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, his other achievements feature multiple Guinness World Records—including the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time"—15 Grammy Awards (including the "Living Legend Award" and the "Lifetime Achievement Award"), 26 American Music Awards (24 only as a solo artist, including one for "Artist of the Century")—more than any artist—, 17 number one singles in the US (including the four as a member of the Jackson 5), and estimated sales of up to 750 million records worldwide making him the world's best selling artist in history.
Jackson's personal relationships and life generated controversy for years. His changing appearance was noticed from the late 1970s onwards, with changes to his nose and to the color of his skin drawing media publicity. He was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993 though no charges were brought, and in 2005 he was tried and acquitted when the jury ruled him not guilty on all charges. He married twice, first in 1994 and again in 1996, and brought up three children, one born to a surrogate mother. While preparing for the This Is It concert tour in 2009, Jackson died at the age of 50 after suffering from cardiac arrest. He reportedly had been administered drugs such as propofol and lorazepam, and his death was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles County coroner. His death triggered an outpouring of grief from around the world with his globally live broadcast memorial service attracting an audience of up to one billion people; as well as a huge surge in his album sales, resulting in him becoming the best selling artist of 2009 with sales in excess of 8.2 million in the United States where he became the first artist ever to have 4 of the top 20 best-selling albums in a single year, and 29 million albums globally, where he had an unprecedented 8 of the top 25 best-selling albums worldwide.
Alongside his brothers, he made his debut as lead singer and youngest member of The Jackson 5 in 1964. He began his solo career in 1971. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album ever, with Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995) also among the world's best-selling albums. He is widely credited with having transformed the music video from a promotional tool into an art form with videos for his songs such as "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" making him the first African American artist to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound, vocal style, and choreography, is credited with stretching across and breaking down cultural, racial, economic, generational, and global barriers that has inspired countless pop, rock, R&B and hip hop artists.
One of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, his other achievements feature multiple Guinness World Records—including the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time"—15 Grammy Awards (including the "Living Legend Award" and the "Lifetime Achievement Award"), 26 American Music Awards (24 only as a solo artist, including one for "Artist of the Century")—more than any artist—, 17 number one singles in the US (including the four as a member of the Jackson 5), and estimated sales of up to 750 million records worldwide making him the world's best selling artist in history.
Jackson's personal relationships and life generated controversy for years. His changing appearance was noticed from the late 1970s onwards, with changes to his nose and to the color of his skin drawing media publicity. He was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993 though no charges were brought, and in 2005 he was tried and acquitted when the jury ruled him not guilty on all charges. He married twice, first in 1994 and again in 1996, and brought up three children, one born to a surrogate mother. While preparing for the This Is It concert tour in 2009, Jackson died at the age of 50 after suffering from cardiac arrest. He reportedly had been administered drugs such as propofol and lorazepam, and his death was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles County coroner. His death triggered an outpouring of grief from around the world with his globally live broadcast memorial service attracting an audience of up to one billion people; as well as a huge surge in his album sales, resulting in him becoming the best selling artist of 2009 with sales in excess of 8.2 million in the United States where he became the first artist ever to have 4 of the top 20 best-selling albums in a single year, and 29 million albums globally, where he had an unprecedented 8 of the top 25 best-selling albums worldwide.
Owl City
Owl City is an American synthpop musical project by Adam Young. Young started out making music in his parents' basement in Owatonna, Minnesota which he claims is a result of his insomnia.
Young's influences are disco and European electronic music. After two independent albums, Owl City gained mainstream popularity from the 2009 major label debut album Ocean Eyes, which spawned the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit single "Fireflies". "Fireflies" topped the US and Canadian charts and became the most-downloaded song on iTunes in the US, and the album Ocean Eyes reached the top ten on the US album charts and topped the US electronic charts. Ocean Eyes also reached Amazon MP3's top 10 most downloaded album list. By December 2009, it was certified Gold in the United States.
Young's influences are disco and European electronic music. After two independent albums, Owl City gained mainstream popularity from the 2009 major label debut album Ocean Eyes, which spawned the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit single "Fireflies". "Fireflies" topped the US and Canadian charts and became the most-downloaded song on iTunes in the US, and the album Ocean Eyes reached the top ten on the US album charts and topped the US electronic charts. Ocean Eyes also reached Amazon MP3's top 10 most downloaded album list. By December 2009, it was certified Gold in the United States.
Chris Martin
Christopher Anthony John Martin is an English singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He is the lead singer, pianist, and co-founder of the alternative rock band Coldplay.
Mitch Leigh
Mitch Leigh (born Irwin Michnick; January 30, 1928 – March 16, 2014) was an American musical theatre composer and theatrical producer best known for the musical Man of La Mancha.Leigh was born in Brooklyn, New York as Irwin Michnick. He graduated from Yale in 1951 with a Bachelor of Music, and in 1952 received his Master of Music under Paul Hindemith.He began his career as a jazz musician, and writing commercials for radio and television. In 1955 the little-known LP recording of Jean Shepherd Into the Unknown with Jazz Music was produced with Leigh writing the music for the jazz interludes between radio broadcaster Jean Shepherd's improvisations.
Sam Cardon
Sam Cardon is a composer whose credits include 15 large-format films: Titans Of The Ice Age, Mummies, Mystic India, Texas, The Big Picture, Forces Of Nature, Lewis and Clark, The Legendary Journeys, ...
Marta Keen
Marta Keen Thompson (b. 1953) is an American composer and educator. After completing a B.A. in English and music at Texas Christian University in 1975, she completed K-12 vocal music certification at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and began teaching elementary music and English in 1979.
Yann Tiersen
Guillaume Yann Tiersen (born 23 June 1970) is a French musician and composer known internationally for composing the score to the Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie Amélie. His music is recognized by its use of a large variety of instruments in relatively minimalist compositions, often with a touch of either European classical music or French folk music, using primarily the piano, accordion or violin together with instruments like the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, ondes martenot, harpsichord and typewriter. His musical style is reminiscent of Frédéric Chopin, Erik Satie, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman.
Stephen Flaherty
Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway shows Once on This Island, which was nominated for eight Tony Awards, Seussical , which was nominated for the Grammy Award and Ragtime, which was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won Best Original Score. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards with Lynn Ahrens for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (/ɡuːˈnoʊ/; French: ; 17 June 1818 – 17 or 18 October 1893) was a French composer, best known for his Ave Maria, based on a work by Bach, as well as his opera Faust. Another opera by Gounod that is still performed today is Roméo et Juliette.
Gounod died at Saint-Cloud in 1893, after a final revision of his twelve operas. His funeral took place ten days later at the Church of the Madeleine, with Camille Saint-Saëns playing the organ and Gabriel Fauré conducting. He was buried at the Cimetière d'Auteuil in Paris.
Gounod died at Saint-Cloud in 1893, after a final revision of his twelve operas. His funeral took place ten days later at the Church of the Madeleine, with Camille Saint-Saëns playing the organ and Gabriel Fauré conducting. He was buried at the Cimetière d'Auteuil in Paris.
Pedro Laurenz
Pedro Laurenz was a bandoneon player, director and composer of Argentine tango music. He was born on October 10, 1902, and died on July 7, 1972. Pedro was born into a musical family in the La Boca neighbourhood of Buenos Aires and later moving to Uruguay, where he was attracted to the bandoneón.
Dima Bilan
Dima Nikolayevich Bilan is a Russian singer, songwriter, and actor. He represented Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 with "Never Let You Go", finishing second, and he won the contest in 2008 in Belgrade, with the song "Believe". He has had several Russian number one hit records.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (/ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈbeɪt(h)oʊvən/ (About this soundlisten); German: (About this soundlisten); baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the classical and romantic eras in classical music, he remains one of the most recognized and influential musicians of this period, and is considered to be one of the greatest composers of all time.
Beethoven was born in Bonn, the capital of the Electorate of Cologne, and part of the Holy Roman Empire. He displayed his musical talents at an early age and was vigorously taught by his father Johann van Beethoven, and was later taught by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At age 21, he moved to Vienna and studied composition with Joseph Haydn. Beethoven then gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, and was soon courted by Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in Opus 1 in 1795.
Beethoven was born in Bonn, the capital of the Electorate of Cologne, and part of the Holy Roman Empire. He displayed his musical talents at an early age and was vigorously taught by his father Johann van Beethoven, and was later taught by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At age 21, he moved to Vienna and studied composition with Joseph Haydn. Beethoven then gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, and was soon courted by Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in Opus 1 in 1795.
Evanescence
Evanescence is an American rock band founded in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995 by singer/pianist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody.
After recording two private EPs and a demo CD named Origin, with the help of Bigwig Enterprises in 2000, the band released their first full-length album, Fallen, on Wind-up Records in 2003. Fallen sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and helped the band win two Grammy Awards. A year later, Evanescence released their first live album, Anywhere but Home, which sold more than one million copies worldwide. In 2006, the band released their second studio album, The Open Door, which has sold more than four million copies.
The band has suffered several line-up changes, including co-founder Moody leaving in 2003, followed by guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray in 2007. Lee is now the only original member of Evanescence remaining in the band.
After recording two private EPs and a demo CD named Origin, with the help of Bigwig Enterprises in 2000, the band released their first full-length album, Fallen, on Wind-up Records in 2003. Fallen sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and helped the band win two Grammy Awards. A year later, Evanescence released their first live album, Anywhere but Home, which sold more than one million copies worldwide. In 2006, the band released their second studio album, The Open Door, which has sold more than four million copies.
The band has suffered several line-up changes, including co-founder Moody leaving in 2003, followed by guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray in 2007. Lee is now the only original member of Evanescence remaining in the band.
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa Jr. American guitarist, singer, composer. He was born a Sicilian father and a Franco-Italian mother.
Date of birth: December 21, 1940, Baltimore, Maryland, United States Date and place of death: December 4, 1993, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA
Date of birth: December 21, 1940, Baltimore, Maryland, United States Date and place of death: December 4, 1993, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA
Danilo Montero
Danilo Montero is a Costa Rican contemporary Christian music singer, author, and pastor, who currently serves as pastor of Lakewood Church's Spanish-speaking congregation.
Philip E. Silvey
He grew up in rural Pennsylvania, one of ten children born to an elementary principal (Dad) and a registered nurse (Mom). My mom says she knew I was musical by the way I could not stop swaying on stage when my kindergarten class performed. I started piano lessons in second grade, tried to quit a couple of years later, but had to stick to a three-year commitment I made with my folks (good thing I did). I remember during opening exercises in third grade, sitting on the crowded carpet with my legs crossed, loving the sound of all of us singing White Coral Bells in three-part canon. In sixth grade I sang my first solo, Gershwin’s I’m Bidin’ My Time, wearing a too-big-for-me cowboy hat supplied by my hippie generation music teacher, Mrs. Holsinger (yes, “singer” was right there in her name).
Isaac Albeniz
Isaac Albéniz i Pascual (Spanish pronunciation: ) (May 29, 1860 – May 18, 1909) was a Spanish pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music.
Albéniz’ Suite Española Op.47 is comprised mainly of pieces written in 1886, and grouped together in 1887 in honor of the Queen of Spain. Like many of Albéniz' piano pieces, these works are miniature tone pictures of different geographical regions and musical idioms of Spain. The eight original titles are Granada, Cataluna, Sevilla, Cadiz, Asturias, Aragon, Castilla and Cuba but only the first three titles and Cuba appeared in the original collection. The other pieces were published in later collections, often with different titles. The publisher Hofmeister published all eight titles of Suite Espanola in 1911 after Albéniz’ death, appropriating other pieces for the other four titles so those pieces do not always accurately reflect the geographic designation of the titles, most obviously in the case of Asturias (Leyenda) whose Andalusian flamenco rhythms bear little resemblance to the music of the northern province Asturias. The opus number 47 assigned by Hofmeister has no relation to any chronological order in Albéniz’ oeuvre, in which opus numbers were randomly given by publishers or by Albéniz himself, with some pieces appearing in more than one collection.
Albéniz’ Suite Española Op.47 is comprised mainly of pieces written in 1886, and grouped together in 1887 in honor of the Queen of Spain. Like many of Albéniz' piano pieces, these works are miniature tone pictures of different geographical regions and musical idioms of Spain. The eight original titles are Granada, Cataluna, Sevilla, Cadiz, Asturias, Aragon, Castilla and Cuba but only the first three titles and Cuba appeared in the original collection. The other pieces were published in later collections, often with different titles. The publisher Hofmeister published all eight titles of Suite Espanola in 1911 after Albéniz’ death, appropriating other pieces for the other four titles so those pieces do not always accurately reflect the geographic designation of the titles, most obviously in the case of Asturias (Leyenda) whose Andalusian flamenco rhythms bear little resemblance to the music of the northern province Asturias. The opus number 47 assigned by Hofmeister has no relation to any chronological order in Albéniz’ oeuvre, in which opus numbers were randomly given by publishers or by Albéniz himself, with some pieces appearing in more than one collection.
System Of A Down
System of a Down is an Armenian-American alternative metal band formed in California in 1994. Group; consists of vocalist Serj Tankian, guitarist Daron Malakian, bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan. Having released five studio albums since its inception, the group released the "B.Y.O.B." won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song. The band members disbanded in August 2006 and reunited in November 2010.
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer and pianist of the Romantic era. He is best known for the opera Carmen.
Bizet was born at 26 rue de la Tour d'Auvergne in the 9th arrondissement of Paris in 1838. He was registered with the legal name Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, but he was baptised on 16 March 1840 with the first name Georges, and he was always known thereafter as Georges Bizet. His father Adolphe Armand Bizet (1810-86) was an amateur singer and composer, and his mother, Aimée Léopoldine Joséphine née Delsarte (1814-61), was the sister of the famous singing teacher François Delsarte.
He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music on 9 October 1848, a fortnight before his tenth birthday. His teachers there were Pierre Zimmermann (fugue and counterpoint; often assisted by his son-in-law Charles Gounod), Antoine François Marmontel (piano), François Benoist (organ) and, on Zimmermann's death, Fromental Halévy, whose daughter he himself later married. He won first prizes for organ and fugue in 1855 and completed his earliest compositions.
His first symphony, the Symphony in C, was written in November 1855, when he was seventeen, evidently as a student assignment. It was unknown to the world until 1933, when it was discovered in the archives of the Paris Conservatory library. Upon its first performance in 1935, it was immediately hailed as a junior masterwork and a welcome addition to the early Romantic period repertoire. The symphony bears a stylistic resemblance to the first symphony of Gounod, first played earlier in the same year, and which Bizet had arranged for two pianos although present-day listeners may discern a similarity to music of Franz Schubert, whose work was little known in France at the time the symphony was written.
In 1857, a setting of the one-act operetta Le docteur Miracle won him a share in a prize offered by Jacques Offenbach. He also won the music composition scholarship of the Prix de Rome, the conditions of which required him to study in Rome for three years. There, his talent developed as he wrote such works as the opera buffa Don Procopio (1858-59). There he also composed his only major sacred work, Te Deum (1858), which he submitted to the Prix Rodrigues competition, a contest for Prix de Rome winners only. Bizet failed to win the Prix Rodrigues, and the Te Deum score remained unpublished until 1971. He made two attempts to write another symphony in 1859, but destroyed the manuscripts in December of that year. Apart from this period in Rome, Bizet lived in the Paris area all his life.
Shortly after leaving Rome in July 1860, but while still touring in Italy, he had the idea of writing a symphony in which each of the four movements would be a musical evocation of a different Italian city – Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples. On hearing of his mother's serious illness he cut short his Italian travels and returned to Paris in September 1860; she died a year later. The Scherzo of the symphony was completed by November 1861, but it was not until 1866 that the first version of the whole symphony was written. He subjected it to a number of revisions through to 1871, but died before ever producing what he considered the definitive version. For this reason, the work is sometimes described as "unfinished", but this is an inaccurate description as it was fully scored. It was published in 1880 as the Roma Symphony.
Bizet was born at 26 rue de la Tour d'Auvergne in the 9th arrondissement of Paris in 1838. He was registered with the legal name Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, but he was baptised on 16 March 1840 with the first name Georges, and he was always known thereafter as Georges Bizet. His father Adolphe Armand Bizet (1810-86) was an amateur singer and composer, and his mother, Aimée Léopoldine Joséphine née Delsarte (1814-61), was the sister of the famous singing teacher François Delsarte.
He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music on 9 October 1848, a fortnight before his tenth birthday. His teachers there were Pierre Zimmermann (fugue and counterpoint; often assisted by his son-in-law Charles Gounod), Antoine François Marmontel (piano), François Benoist (organ) and, on Zimmermann's death, Fromental Halévy, whose daughter he himself later married. He won first prizes for organ and fugue in 1855 and completed his earliest compositions.
His first symphony, the Symphony in C, was written in November 1855, when he was seventeen, evidently as a student assignment. It was unknown to the world until 1933, when it was discovered in the archives of the Paris Conservatory library. Upon its first performance in 1935, it was immediately hailed as a junior masterwork and a welcome addition to the early Romantic period repertoire. The symphony bears a stylistic resemblance to the first symphony of Gounod, first played earlier in the same year, and which Bizet had arranged for two pianos although present-day listeners may discern a similarity to music of Franz Schubert, whose work was little known in France at the time the symphony was written.
In 1857, a setting of the one-act operetta Le docteur Miracle won him a share in a prize offered by Jacques Offenbach. He also won the music composition scholarship of the Prix de Rome, the conditions of which required him to study in Rome for three years. There, his talent developed as he wrote such works as the opera buffa Don Procopio (1858-59). There he also composed his only major sacred work, Te Deum (1858), which he submitted to the Prix Rodrigues competition, a contest for Prix de Rome winners only. Bizet failed to win the Prix Rodrigues, and the Te Deum score remained unpublished until 1971. He made two attempts to write another symphony in 1859, but destroyed the manuscripts in December of that year. Apart from this period in Rome, Bizet lived in the Paris area all his life.
Shortly after leaving Rome in July 1860, but while still touring in Italy, he had the idea of writing a symphony in which each of the four movements would be a musical evocation of a different Italian city – Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples. On hearing of his mother's serious illness he cut short his Italian travels and returned to Paris in September 1860; she died a year later. The Scherzo of the symphony was completed by November 1861, but it was not until 1866 that the first version of the whole symphony was written. He subjected it to a number of revisions through to 1871, but died before ever producing what he considered the definitive version. For this reason, the work is sometimes described as "unfinished", but this is an inaccurate description as it was fully scored. It was published in 1880 as the Roma Symphony.
Mikko Tarmia
Mikko Tarmia is a Finnish video game music composer known for working with Codeblender Software, Frictional Games, and Wolfire Games. He founded the independent record label The Sound of Fiction.His first work was with the Macintosh developer Codeblender Software, and between 2002 and 2005 worked on four games with them. He is most well known for making the music for the Penumbra series. His record label released the soundtrack for the games in January 2010. He also worked with Frictional Games for their game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, with a feature about him being included with the games special features.