Coordinates	3°8′51″N101°41′36″N
Show name	Ally McBeal
Caption	Original title card
Genre	Comedy-dramaLegal Drama
Creator	David E. Kelley
Starring	Calista FlockhartCourtney Thorne SmithGreg GermannLisa Nicole CarsonJane KrakowskiVonda ShepardPortia de RossiLucy LiuJames LeGrosRegina HallJulianne NicholsonJames MarsdenJosh HopkinsHayden Panettierewith Peter MacNicolthen Robert Downey Jr.and Gil Bellows
Theme music composer	Vonda Shepard
Opentheme	"Searchin' My Soul" performed by Vonda Shepard
Composer	Danny LuxVonda Shepard
Country	United States
Language	English
Num seasons	5
Num episodes	112
List episodes	List of Ally McBeal episodes
Executive producer	David E. KelleyBill D'Elia
Producer	Kayla Alpert(2000–2001)Kim Hamberg(1998–2002)Mike Listo(1997–2000)Jack Philbrick(2000–2002)Steve Robin(1997–2002)Pamela J. Wisne(1997–2002)
Cinematography	Thomas F. DenoveBilly DicksonDavid A. HarpTim Suhrstedt
Camera	Single-camera
Runtime	45–48 minutes
Company	20th Century Fox TelevisionDavid E. Kelley Productions
Channel	Fox
Picture format	4:3 (broadcast)16:9 (seasons 2–5)
First aired
Last aired
Status	Ended

Ally McBeal is an American legal comedy-drama series which aired on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. The series was created by David E. Kelley, who also served as the executive producer, along with Bill D'Elia. The series stars Calista Flockhart in the title role as a young lawyer working in the fictional Boston law firm Cage and Fish with other young lawyers whose lives and loves were eccentric, humorous and dramatic.

Overview

The show focused on the romantic and personal lives of the main characters, often using legal proceedings as plot devices to contrast or reinforce a character's drama. For example, bitter divorce litigation of a client might provide a backdrop for Ally's decision to break up with a boyfriend. Opposing legal arguments were also frequently used to explore multiple sides of various social issues.

Cage & Fish (which becomes Cage/Fish & McBeal or Cage, Fish, & Associates towards the end of the series), the fictional law firm where most of the characters work, is depicted as a highly sexualized environment, symbolized by its unisex public restroom. Lawyers and secretaries in the firm routinely date, flirt with, or have a romantic history with each other, and frequently run into former or potential romantic interests in the courtroom or on the street outside.

The show had many offbeat and frequently surreal running gags and themes, such as Ally's tendency to immediately fall over whenever she met somebody she found attractive, or Richard Fish's wattle fetish and humorous mottos ("Fishisms"), ran through the series. The show used vivid, dramatic fantasy sequences for Ally's and other characters' wishful thinking; particularly notable is the dancing baby.

The show also featured regular visits to a local bar where singer Vonda Shepard regularly performed (though occasionally handing over the microphone to the characters). The series also took place in the same continuity as David E. Kelley's legal drama The Practice (which aired on ABC), as the two shows crossed over with one another on occasion, a very rare occurrence for two shows which aired on different networks.

Episode list

Main cast

Calista Flockhart – Ally McBeal

Greg Germann – Richard Fish

Jane Krakowski – Elaine Vassal

Peter MacNicol – John Cage (episode 2–103; recurring afterwards)

Lisa Nicole Carson – Renée Raddick (seasons 1–4; one guest appearance in series finale)

Portia de Rossi – Nell Porter (episodes 32–112; recurring previously)

Lucy Liu – Ling Woo (episodes 32–96; 103; recurring previously)

Gil Bellows – Billy Allen Thomas (episodes 1–65; recurring afterwards)

Courtney Thorne-Smith – Georgia Thomas (seasons 1–3; recurring afterwards)

Robert Downey Jr. – Larry Paul (season 4; uncredited appearances afterwards)

Dyan Cannon – Jennifer "Whipper" Cone (seasons 1–3 Recurring)

Hayden Panettiere – Maddie Harrington (episodes 5.11–5.22)

Vonda Shepard – Herself (seasons 1–5; recurring previously)

James LeGros – Mark Albert (season 4; recurring previously)

Regina Hall – Corretta Lipp (season 5; recurring previously)

Julianne Nicholson – Jenny Shaw (episodes 91–103)

Josh Hopkins – Raymond Millbury (season 5)

James Marsden – Glenn Foy (episodes 91–103)

Taye Diggs – Jackson Duper (season 4: Recurring; ten episodes)

Reception

The show's ratings began to decline in the third season, but stabilized in the fourth season after Robert Downey Jr. joined the regular cast as Ally's boyfriend Larry Paul. However, Downey's character was written out after the end of the season due to the actor's troubles with drug addiction.

The show was canceled after a significant ratings drop during its fifth season, which saw many regular characters disappear from the series without explanation (also a problem with David E. Kelley's shows Boston Public, Chicago Hope, The Practice and Boston Legal [to an extent]), and the novelty of the show wore off.

US ratings

{|class="wikitable" |- !colspan="2"|Season !!U.S. ratings !!Network !!Rank |- | 1 || 1997–98 ||11.4 million ||Fox ||#59 |- | 2 || 1998–99 ||13.8 million ||Fox ||#20 |- | 3 || 1999–2000 ||12.4 million ||Fox ||#35 |- | 4 || 2000–01 ||12.0 million ||Fox ||#40 |- | 5 || 2001–02 ||9.4 million ||Fox ||#65 |}

Criticism

Despite its success, Ally McBeal did receive some negative criticism from TV critics and feminists who found the title character annoying and demeaning to women (specifically professional women) because of her perceived flightiness, lack of demonstrated legal knowledge, short skirts, and extreme emotional instability. Perhaps the most notorious example of the debate sparked by the show was the June 25, 1998 cover story of Time magazine, which juxtaposed McBeal with three pioneering feminists (Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem) and asked "Is Feminism Dead?". In episode 12 of the second season of the show, Ally talks to her co-worker John Cage about a dream she had, saying "You know, I had a dream that they put my face on the cover of Time magazine as 'the face of feminism'."

Music

Ally McBeal was a heavily music-oriented show. Vonda Shepard, a virtually unknown artist at the time, was featured continually on the show. Her song "Searchin' My Soul" became the show's theme song. Many of the songs Shepard performed were established hits with lyrics that paralleled the events of the episode, including "Both Sides Now", "Hooked on a Feeling", and "Tell Him". Besides recording background music for the show, Shepard frequently appeared at the ends of episodes as a musician performing at a local piano bar frequented by the main characters. On rare occasions, her character would have conventional dialogue.

Due to the popularity of the show and Shepard's music, a soundtrack titled Songs from Ally McBeal was released in 1998, as well as a successor soundtrack titled Heart and Soul: New Songs From Ally McBeal in 1999. Two compilation albums from the show featuring Shepard were also released in 2000 and 2001. Other artists featured on the show include Barry White, Al Green, Tina Turner and Elton John. Josh Groban played the role of Malcolm Wyatt in the May 2001 season finale, performing "You're Still You." The series creator, David E. Kelley, was impressed with Groban's performance at The Family Celebration event, and based on the audience reaction to Groban's singing, Kelley created a character for Groban in this finale. The background score for the show was composed by Danny Lux.

DVD releases

Due to music licensing issues, none of the seasons of Ally McBeal were available on DVD in the United States (only 6 random episodes can be found on the R1 edition) until 2009, though it has been available in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, the UK, Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, Brazil, and the Czech Republic with all the show's music intact since 2005. In the UK, Ireland and Spain all seasons are available in a complete boxset.

20th Century Fox released the complete first season on DVD in Region 1 on October 6, 2009. They also released a special complete series edition on the same day. Season 1 does not contain any special features, the complete series set however does contain several bonus features including featurettes, an all-new retrospective, the episode of The Practice that Calista Flockhart guest starred in and a bonus disc entitled "The Best of Ally McBeal Soundtrack". In addition, both releases contain all of the original music. Season 2 was released on April 6, 2010. Seasons 3, 4 and 5 will all be released on October 5, 2010. Season 1 and 2 are also available on the U.S Itunes Store.

Ally the sitcom

In 1999, at the height of the show's popularity, a half-hour version entitled Ally began airing in parallel to the main program. This version, designed in a sitcom format, used re-edited scenes from the main program, as well as previously unseen footage. The intention was to further develop the plots in the comedy-drama in a sitcom style. It also focused only on Ally's personal life, cutting all the courtroom plots. The repackaged show did not catch on and was canceled partway through its initial run. While thirteen episodes of Ally were created, only ten of those thirteen were actually broadcast.

International broadcasters

Awards and nominations

Primetime Emmy Awards

1998 Nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series

1998 Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1999 Award for Outstanding Comedy Series

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Lucy Liu)

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (John Ritter)

1999 Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Tracey Ullman)

2000 Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

2001 Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

2001 Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

2001 Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Robert Downey Jr.)

2001 Nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Jami Gertz)

2001 Nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Bernadette Peters)

Golden Globe Awards

1997 Award for Best Comedy Series

1997 Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1998 Award for Best Comedy Series

1998 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1998 Nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie (Jane Krakowski)

1999 Nomination for Best Comedy Series

1999 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

2000 Nomination for Best Comedy Series

2000 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

2000 Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie (Robert Downey Jr.)

2001 Nomination for Best Comedy Series

2001 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

Screen Actors Guild Awards

1997 Nomination for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series

1997 Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1998 Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series

1998 Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1998 Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1999 Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series (Lucy Liu)

2000 Nomination for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series

2000 Nomination for Outstanding Male Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

2000 Nomination for Outstanding Female Actor in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

Satellite Awards

1998 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

1999 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Calista Flockhart)

2000 Nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Jane Krakowski)

2002 Nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Peter MacNicol)

References

External links

Ally McBeal: Woman of the '90s or Retro Airhead

Ally McBeal on Paramount Comedy

Category:1997 television series debuts Category:2002 American television series endings Category:1990s American television series Category:1990s American comedy television series Category:2000s American comedy television series Category:American comedy-drama television series Category:Best Musical or Comedy Series Golden Globe winners Category:Boston, Massachusetts in fiction Category:English-language television series Category:Fox network shows Category:Legal television series Category:Peabody Award winners Category:Television series by Fox Television Studios Category:Television shows set in Massachusetts

Coordinates	3°8′51″N101°41′36″N
Name	Vonda Shepard
Landscape	Yes
Background	solo_singer
Born	July 07, 1963New York, U.S.
Origin	California, U.S.
Instrument	piano, guitar, bass
Voice type	Contralto
Genre	Rock, Acoustic
Occupation	Singer, Pianist, Songwriter.
Years active	1987–present
Label	Reprise/Warner Bros. Records550 Music/Epic/SME RecordsVesperAlley Records
Url	vondashepard.com

Vonda Shepard (born July 7, 1963) is an American pop/rock singer. She appeared as a regular in the television show Ally McBeal from seasons 1-5 in which she played a resident performer at the bar where the show's characters drank after work. She plays piano, guitar, and bass.

Biography

Vonda Shepard was born in New York but her family relocated to California when she was a child. She played piano from an early age. Her father is Richmond Shepard, a mime and improv actor. Vonda has three sisters: Armina, Rosetta (now Brianna) and Luana.

After performing as a backing singer for many years she was eventually given her own recording contract. Shepard's first chart appearance was in 1987 when she recorded a duet with Dan Hill entitled "Can't We Try". Before this she tried out for the part of Michael J. Fox's sister in Light of Day but lost the part out to Joan Jett. She was also poised to sing on Peter Cetera's duet "The Next Time I Fall" but he picked Amy Grant instead. She released her first self-titled album in 1989 with little fanfare. The album did yield one chart single, "Don't Cry Ilene", a mid-tempo, piano-driven jazz-R&B; flavored song dealing with the break-up of a relationship between a black woman and a white man, arising from adult peer pressure. The track is sung from the perspective of the woman's white female friend, who harbors a desire to have the man for herself, but keeps her distance out of respect for her friend. The song peaked at Number 17 on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary chart and stayed on the charts for 12 weeks.

After her third album, Shepard was signed up to appear on Ally McBeal after being spotted by the show's creator David E Kelley. While on the show she recorded two full soundtrack albums and was featured on two other Ally McBeal compilations. The songs Shepard recorded for Ally McBeal soundtrack albums were mainly covers of old songs with lyrics that paralleled what was happening in the title character's life onscreen. Since appearing in the show, Shepard has released two more studio albums and a live album.

Shepard has been married to music producer Mitchell Froom since 2004; they had their first child, Jack Froom, on 15 April 2006.

Discography

Albums

Vonda Shepard 1989 US: Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, licensed to Vesper Alley Records in 1998

The Radical Light 1992 US: Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, licensed to Vesper Alley Records in 1998

It's Good, Eve 1996 US: Vesper Alley Records / UK: Epic Records

Songs From Ally McBeal 1998 US: 550 Music/Epic/SME Records / UK: Epic Records Number 3 /Spain: Number 1

1999 US: Jacket Records / UK: Epic Records Number 39

1999 US: 550 Music/Epic/SME Records / UK: Epic Records Number 9

Chinatown 2002 US: Jacket Records / UK: Edel Music

Live: A Retrospective 2005 US: Jacket Records

From the Sun 2008 US: Redeye Distribution

''The Best of Ally McBeal - The Songs of Vonda Shepard / Sony Legacy / October 6, 2009

Compilation soundtracks

Ally McBeal: A Very Ally Christmas 2000 US: 550 Music/Epic/SME Records / UK: Epic Records

Ally McBeal: For Once in My Life Soundtrack 2001 US: 550 Music/Epic/SME Records / UK: Epic Records

''The Best of Ally McBeal - The Songs of Vonda Shepard / Sony Legacy / October 6, 2009

Singles

Guest singles

"Can't We Try" (duet with Dan Hill) - Pop Number 6, Adult Contemporary Number 2, 1987

References

External links

Official Vonda Shepard Website

Old Vonda Shepard Website

Vonda Shepard Overview web page

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:American contraltos Category:American female singers Category:American pop singers Category:English-language singers Category:Musicians from California Category:People from New York Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Reprise Records artists Category:Warner Bros. Records artists Category:Epic Records artists

Coordinates	3°8′51″N101°41′36″N
Name	Barry White
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Barry Eugene Carter
Born	September 12, 1944Galveston, Texas, U.S.
Died	July 04, 2003Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Instrument	PianoKeyboardsVocalsDrums
Genre	R&B;SoulFunkDisco
Voice type	Bass
Occupation	Singer-songwriter Record producer Arranger
Years active	1972–2003
Label	20th Century RecordsUnlimited Gold RecordsCasablancaA&M;Eagle Records
Associated acts	Love UnlimitedThe Love Unlimited OrchestraIsaac HayesGerald LeVert, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson

Barry Eugene White (September 12, 1944 – July 04, 2003) was an American record producer and singer-songwriter.

A five-time Grammy Award-winner known for his distinctive bass voice and romantic image, White's greatest success came in the 1970s as a solo singer and with the Love Unlimited Orchestra, crafting many enduring soul, funk, and disco songs such as his two biggest hits, "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" and "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe". Worldwide, White had many gold and platinum albums and singles, with combined sales of over 100 million, according to critics Ed Hogan and Wade Kergan.

Early life and music songwriting

White was born Barry Eugene Carter in Galveston, Texas and grew up in the high-crime areas of South Central Los Angeles. White was the elder of two brothers; his brother Darryl is 13 months younger. As a child, White grew up listening to his mother's classical music collection. White first took to the piano emulating what he heard on the records. White's introduction to music later led to him playing piano on Jesse Belvin's hit single, "Goodnight My Love". During his teenage years, Barry and his brother got involved with crime and gang activity. At age 17, he was jailed for four months for stealing $30,000 worth of Cadillac tires.

While in jail, White listened to Elvis Presley singing "It's Now or Never" on the radio, an experience he later credited with changing the course of his life. After his release, he left gang life and began a musical career at the dawn of the 1960s in singing groups before going out on his own in the middle of the decade.

The marginal success he had to that point was as a songwriter. His songs were recorded by rock singer Bobby Fuller and TV bubblegum act The Banana Splits. He was also responsible in 1963 for arranging "Harlem Shuffle" for Bob & Earl, which became a hit in the UK in 1969. He discovered disco artists, Viola Wills and Felice Taylor in 1965 and signed them to Mustang/Bronco Records, for which he was working as A&R; manager for Bob Keane.

The Seventies as producer

In 1972, he got his big break producing a girl group he had discovered called Love Unlimited. Formed in imitative style of the Motown girl group The Supremes, the group members had gradually honed their talents with White for two years previously until they signed contracts with Uni Records. His best friend, music industry businessman Larry Nunes, helped to finance their album. After it was recorded, Nunes took the recording to Russ Regan, who was the head of the Uni label owned by MCA. The album, 1972's "From A Girl's Point of View We Give to You... Love Unlimited" became a million album seller.

White produced, wrote and arranged their classic soul ballad, "Walking in the Rain (With The One I Love)", which climbed to #14 in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop chart and #6 on the Billboard R&B; chart in late 1972. White's voice can clearly be heard debuting in this piece as he plays the lover who answers the phone call of the female lead.

Soon after, Regan left Uni for 20th Century Records. Without Regan, White's relationship with Uni soured. With his relationship with Uni over and Love Unlimited contract-bound with the label, White was able to switch both his production deal and the group to 20th Century Records. (They recorded several other hits throughout the 1970s, including "I Belong To You," which spent over five months on the Billboard R&B; chart in 1974 including a week at #1. White also married the lead singer of the group, Glodean James, on July 4, 1974.)

The Seventies as solo artist

White wanted to work with another act but decided to work with a solo male artist. While working on a few demos for a male singer, he made three song demos of himself singing and playing, but Nunes heard them and insisted that he re-record and release them himself as a solo recording artist. After arguing for days about it, White was finally persuaded to release the songs himself although he was initially reluctant to step out in front of the microphone.

He then wrote several other songs and recorded them for what eventually became an entire album of music. He was going to use the name "White Heat," but decided on using his given name instead. White was still hesitating up to the time the label copy was made. It eventually became the first solo White album, 1973's "I've Got So Much to Give". It included the title track and his first solo chart hit, "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby", which also rose to #1 on the Billboard R&B; charts as well as #3 on the Billboard Pop charts in 1973 and stayed in the top 40 for many weeks.

Other chart hits by White included "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up" (#2 R&B;, #7 Pop in 1973), "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" (# 1 Pop and R&B; in 1974), "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" (#1 R&B;, #2 Pop in 1974), "What Am I Gonna Do with You" (#1 R&B;, #8 Pop in 1975), "Let the Music Play" (#4 R&B; in 1976), "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me" (#1 R&B;, #4 Pop in 1977) and "Your Sweetness is My Weakness" (#2 R&B; in 1978). White also had a strong following in the United Kingdom where he scored five Top 10 hits and one number 1 for "You're The First."

The Love Unlimited Orchestra

In 1972 White created The Love Unlimited Orchestra, a 40-piece orchestral group to be used originally as a backing band for the girl-group Love Unlimited. However, White had other plans, and in 1974 he released an album of their music titled "Rhapsody in White", yielding the now-timeless composition "Love's Theme," reaching #1 on the Billboard Pop charts. It was one of only a handful of instrumental recordings ever to do so.

White is sometimes credited with ushering in the "disco" sound, seamlessly combining R&B; music with classical music. Some also regard the song as the first hit in the actual "disco era", but Nino Tempo & the 5th Ave Sax Band's song "Sister James" had already reached the Billboard Hot 100 a few months before and had a disco sound in its own right.

He would continue to make albums with the Orchestra, but never achieved the same kind of success with his debut album. The Orchestra ceased to make albums in 1983, but continued to support White as a backing band.

The Eighties

After six years White left 20th Century in 1979 to launch his own label, Unlimited Gold, with CBS/Columbia Records. Although White's success on the pop charts slowed down as the disco era came to an end, he maintained a loyal following throughout his career. Despite several albums over the next three years he failed to repeat his earlier successes, with no singles managing to reach the Billboard Hot 100 except for 1982's "Change," climbing into the Billboard R&B; Top 20 (#12). His label venture was exacting a heavy financial cost on White, so he concentrated on mostly touring and finally folded his label in 1983.

After four years he signed with A&M; Records, and with the release of 1987's "The Right Night & Barry White," the single titled "Sho' You Right" made it to the Billboard R&B; charts, peaking at #17.

In 1989 he released "The Man Is Back!" and with it had three top 40 singles on the Billboard R&B; charts: "Super Lover", which made it to #34, "I Wanna Do It Good to Ya", which made it to #26, and "When Will I See You Again", which made it to #32.

The Nineties

After White took part in a Quincy Jones record, "The Secret Garden," which topped the R&B; chart in 1990, he mounted an effective comeback with several albums, each one more successful than the last. He returned to the top of the charts in 1991 with the album "Put Me In Your Mix", which reached #8 on the Billboard R&B; Albums chart and the song by the same name reached #2 on the Billboard R&B; singles chart.

In 1994 he released the album The Icon Is Love which went to #1 on the Billboard R&B; album charts, and the single "Practice What You Preach" gave him his first #1 on the Billboard R&B; singles chart in almost twenty years, and was nominated for a Grammy in the Best R&B; Album category (it lost to TLC's "CrazySexyCool").

In 1996, White recorded the duet "In Your Wildest Dreams" with rock icon Tina Turner. 1996 also saw the release of Space Jam and its soundtrack, on which White had a duet with Chris Rock, called "Basketball Jones," a remake of Cheech & Chong's "Basketball Jones" from 1974.

His final album, 1999's Staying Power, resulted in his last hit song "Staying Power," which placed #45 on the Billboard R&B; charts. The single won him two Grammy Awards in the categories Best Male R&B; Vocal Performance and Best Traditional R&B; Vocal Performance.

Acting

Over the course of his career White occasionally did work as a voice actor. He voiced the character Bear in the 1975 film Coonskin and also played the character Sampson in the movie's live-action segments.

He was featured in several episodes of The Simpsons, and most importantly the episode "Whacking Day" in which the townspeople of Springfield used his famously deep bass singing voice, played through loudspeakers placed on the ground, to lull and attract (mostly female) snakes. White was a fan of the show, and had reportedly contacted the staff about wanting to make a guest appearance.

He played the role of a bus driver for a Prodigy commercial in 1995, and he also portrayed the voice of a rabbit in a Good Seasons salad dressing mix commercial, singing a song called "You Can't Bottle Love."

In addition, he did some work for car commercials, most famously for Oldsmobile, and later on, Jeep.

He also provided voice over for Arby's Restaurant commercials on TV and Radio to promote their 'Market Fresh' menu.

He made two guest appearances on the comedy-drama TV series Ally McBeal, as his music was often featured on the show in dream sequences.

Illness and death

White, who had been clinically obese for many of his adult years, had been ill with chronically high blood pressure which resulted in kidney failure in the autumn of 2002.

He suffered a stroke in May 2003, after which he was forced to retire from public life. On July 4, 2003, he died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after suffering from complete renal failure. White was cremated, and his ashes were scattered by his family off the California coast.

On September 20, 2004, he was posthumously inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in New York.

Discography

References

External links

Knol about Barry White written by Gabriel Gianello

Category:1944 births Category:2003 deaths Category:African American record producers Category:African American singer-songwriters Category:American bandleaders Category:American basses Category:American Christians Category:Stroke survivors Category:American dance musicians Category:American male singers Category:American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American soul singers Category:Deaths from renal failure Category:Disease-related deaths in California Category:English-language singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Musicians from California Category:People from Galveston, Texas

Coordinates	3°8′51″N101°41′36″N
Name	Larry White
Position	pitcher
Birthdate	September 25, 1958
Birthplace	San Fernando, California
Bats	Right
Throws	Right
Debutdate	September 20
Debutyear	1983
Debutteam	Los Angeles Dodgers
Finaldate	September 25
Finalyear	1984
Finalteam	Los Angeles Dodgers
Stat1label	Record
Stat1value	0-1
Stat2label	Earned run average
Stat2value	2.37
Stat3label	Strikeouts
Stat3value	15
Teams

Larry David White (born September 25, 1958 in San Fernando, California) was a pitcher in Major League Baseball. He pitched in 11 games for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1983 & 1984 seasons.

External links

Category:Major League Baseball pitchers Category:Los Angeles Dodgers players Category:Baseball players from California Category:1958 births Category:Living people

greets John Cage (second from left) and Merce Cunningham at the 1972 Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran.]]

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. The content of the composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and the piece became one of the most controversial compositions of the twentieth century. Another famous creation of Cage's is the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces, the best known of which is Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48).

His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various Eastern cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living".

Life

1912–31: Early years

Cage was born in Los Angeles, California. His father John Milton Cage Sr. (1886–1964) was an inventor, and his mother Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1885–1969) worked intermittently as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. The family's roots were completely American: in a 1976 interview Cage mentioned "a John Cage who helped [George] Washington in the surveying of Virginia". Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy", while his father is perhaps best characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such as a diesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust bubbles, the senior Cage being uninterested in an undetectable submarine, John Milton Sr. taught his son that "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do." In 1944–45 Cage wrote two small character pieces dedicated to his parents: Crete and Dad. The latter is a short lively piece that ends abruptly, while "Crete" is a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.

Cage's first experiences with music were from private piano teachers in the Greater Los Angeles area and several relatives, particularly his aunt Phoebe Harvey who introduced him to the piano music of the 19th century. He received first piano lessons when he was in the fourth grade at school, but although he liked music, he expressed more interest in sight reading than in developing virtuoso piano technique, and apparently was not thinking of composition. By 1928 Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a writer. That year he graduated from Los Angeles High School as a valedictorian and enrolled at Pomona College, Claremont. However, in 1930 he dropped out, believing that "college was of no use to a writer" by an incident described in the 1991 autobiographical statement:

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left. He subsequently hitchhiked to Galveston and sailed to Le Havre, where he took a train to Paris. Cage stayed in Europe for some 18 months, trying his hand at various forms of art. First he studied Gothic and Greek architecture, but decided he was not interested enough in architecture to dedicate his life to it. Cage started travelling, visited various places in France, Germany and Spain, as well as Capri and, most importantly, Majorca, where he started composing. His first compositions were created using dense mathematical formulae, but Cage was displeased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when he left. Cage's association with theatre also started in Europe: during a walk in Seville he witnessed, in his own words, "the multiplicity of simultaneous visual and audible events all going together in one's experience and producing enjoyment."

1931–36: Apprenticeship

Cage returned to the United States in 1931.) and arts patron Galka Scheyer. in which Cowell suggested that Cage study with Arnold Schoenberg—Cage's musical ideas at the time included composition based on a 25-tone row, somewhat similar to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Cowell mentioned, however, that before approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminary lessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss, a former Schoenberg pupil.

Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to New York City in 1933 and started studying with Weiss as well as taking lessons from Cowell himself at The New School. Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring, with just four hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every day starting at 4 AM. Several months later, still in 1933, Cage became sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg. He could not afford Schoenberg's price, however, and when he mentioned it, the older composer asked whether Cage would devote his life to music. After Cage replied that he would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free of charge.

Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at USC and then at UCLA, as well as privately. particularly as an example of how to live one's life being a composer. Schoenberg's methods and their influence on Cage are well documented by Cage himself in various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is the conversation mentioned in the 1958 lecture Indeterminacy:

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, "In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall."

Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired his teacher, he decided to leave after Schoenberg told the assembled students that he was trying to make it impossible for them to write music. Much later, Cage recounted the incident: "[...] When he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what he had said. I determined then and there, more than ever before, to write music."

1937–49: Modern dance and Eastern influences

The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, then moved to Hollywood. During 1936–38 Cage changed numerous jobs, including one that started his lifelong association with modern dance: dance accompanist at UCLA. He produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course on "Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe. It was during that time that Cage first started experimenting with unorthodox instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, and so on. This was inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the world has a spirit that can be released through its sound." Although Cage did not share the idea of spirits, these words inspired him to begin exploring the sounds produced by hitting various non-musical objects.

In 1938, with help from a fellow Cowell student Lou Harrison, Cage became a faculty member at Mills College, teaching the same program as at UCLA, and collaborating with choreographer Marian van Tuyl. Several famous dance groups were present, and Cage's interest in modern dance grew further.

Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with the idea of music as means of communication: the public rarely accepted his work, and Cage himself, too, had trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. In early 1946 Cage agreed to tutor Gita Sarabhai, an Indian musician who came to the US to study Western music. In return, he asked her to teach him about Indian music and philosophy. Cage also attended, in late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki's lectures on Zen Buddhism, and read the works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

1950s: Discovering chance

Sonatas and Interludes were received well by the public. After a 1949 performance at Carnegie Hall Cage received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, which enabled him to make a trip to Europe, where he met composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. More important, however, was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early 1950. Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic Orchestra, where the orchestra performed Anton Webern's Symphony, op. 21, followed by a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Cage felt so overwhelmed by Webern's piece that he left before the Rachmaninoff; and in the lobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for the same reason. The two composers quickly became friends; some time later Cage, Feldman, and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred to as "the New York school."

In early 1951 Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching—a Chinese classic text which describes a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. The I Ching is commonly used for divination, but for Cage it became a tool to compose using chance. To compose a piece of music, Cage would come up with questions to ask the I Ching; the book would then be used in much the same way as it is used for divination. For Cage, this meant "imitating nature in its manner of operation": his lifelong interest in sound itself culminated in an approach that yielded works in which sounds were free from the composer's will:

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound [...] I don't need sound to talk to me.

Although Cage had used chance on a few earlier occasions, most notably in the third movement of Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–51), the I Ching opened new possibilities in this field for him. The first results of the new approach were Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers, and Music of Changes for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor, whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until Cage's death. Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until early 1960s, when he stopped performing and concentrated on composition. The I Ching became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically every work composed after 1951.

Despite the fame Sonatas and Interludes earned him, and the connections he cultivated with American and European composers and musicians, Cage was quite poor. Although he still had an apartment, at 326 Monroe Street (which he occupied since around 1946) his financial situation in 1951 worsened so much that, while working on Music of Changes, he prepared a set of instructions for Tudor as to how to complete the piece in the event of his death. Nevertheless, Cage managed to survive and maintained an active artistic life, giving lectures, performances, etc. In 1952–53 he completed another mammoth project—the Williams Mix, a piece of tape music, which Earle Brown helped to put together. Also in 1952, Cage wrote down the piece that became his most well-known and most controversial creation: 4′33″. The score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece—four minutes, thirty-three seconds—and is meant to be perceived as consisting of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Cage conceived "a silent piece" years earlier, but was reluctant to write it down; and indeed, the premiere (given by Tudor on August 29, 1952 at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in the audience. The reaction to 4′33″ was just a part of the larger picture, however: on the whole, it was the adoption of chance procedures that had disastrous consequences for Cage's reputation. The press, which used to react favorably to earlier percussion and prepared piano music, ignored his new works, and many valuable friendships and connections were lost. Pierre Boulez, who used to promote Cage's work in Europe, was opposed to Cage's use of chance, and so were other composers who came to prominence during the 1950s, i.e. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis.

From 1953 onwards, Cage was busy composing music for modern dance, particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adopted chance too, out of fascination for the movement of the human body), as well as developing new methods of using chance, in a series of works he referred to as The Ten Thousand Things. In Summer 1954 he moved out from New York and settled in a cooperative community in Stony Point, New York. The composer's financial situation gradually improved: in late 1954 he and Tudor were able to embark on a European tour. From 1956 to 1961 Cage taught classes in experimental composition at The New School, and during 1956–58 he also worked as an art director of a typography. Among the works completed during the last years of the decade were Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58), a seminal work in the history of graphic notation, and Variations I (1958).

1960s: Fame

Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its Music Department from the 1950s until his death in 1992. At the University, the philosopher, poet, and professor of classics Norman O. Brown befriended Cage, an association that proved fruitful to both. In 1960 the composer was appointed a Fellow on the faculty of the Center for Advanced Studies (now the Center for Humanities) in the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan, where he started teaching classes in experimental music. One of the early fruits of Cage's association with the University was the publication, in October 1961, by the Wesleyan University Press of , a collection of Cage's lectures and writings on a wide variety of subjects, including some writings (e.g. the famous Lecture on Nothing) that were "composed", using a complex time length scheme, much like some of Cage's music was composed. Silence was the first book by Cage; he went on to publish five more. It was Silence, however, that remained his most widely read and influential book. But by mid-1960s Cage was receiving so many commissions and requests for appearances, that he was not able to fulfill them. This was accompanied by a busy touring schedule; Cage's compositional output from the decade is accordingly scanty. As set forth by Cage, happenings were theatrical events that abandoned the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur without a sense of definite duration; instead, they are left to chance. They have a minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest the concept of passing time. Cage believed that theater was the closest route to integrating art and (real) life. The term "Happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who was to define it as a genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud’s seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double, and the happenings of this period can be viewed as a forerunner to the ensuing Fluxus movement. In October 1960, Mary Bauermeister's Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik, who in the course of his Etude for Piano cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performer’s hair with shampoo.

In 1967, Cage's A Year from Monday was first published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's parents died during the decade: his father in 1964, and his mother in 1969. Cage had their ashes scattered in Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, and asked for the same to be done to him after his death.

1969–87: New departures

at Shiraz Arts Festival 1971]] Cage's work from the sixties features some of his largest and most ambitious, not to mention socially utopian pieces, reflecting the mood of the era yet also his absorption of the writings of both Marshall McLuhan, on the effects of new media, and R. Buckminster Fuller, on the power of technology to promote social change. HPSCHD (1969), a gargantuan and long-running multimedia work made in collaboration with Lejaren Hiller, incorporated the mass superimposition of seven harpsichords playing chance-determined excerpts from the works of Cage, Hiller, and a potted history of canonical classics, with fifty-two tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6,400 slides of designs many supplied by NASA, and shown from sixty-four slide projectors, with forty motion-picture films. The piece was initially rendered in a five-hour performance at the University of Illinois in 1969, in which the audience arrived after the piece had begun and left before it ended, wandering freely around the auditorium in the time for which they were there.

However, also in 1969, Cage produced the first fully notated work in years: Cheap Imitation for piano. The piece is a chance-controlled reworking of Erik Satie's Socrate, and, as both listeners and Cage himself noted, openly sympathetic to its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's music was well-known, it was highly unusual for him to compose a personal work, one in which the composer is present. When asked about this apparent contradiction, Cage replied: "Obviously, Cheap Imitation lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work in general, and that's disturbing. I'm the first to be disturbed by it." Cage's fondness for the piece resulted in a recording—a rare occurrence, since Cage disliked making recordings of his music—made in 1976. Overall, Cheap Imitation marked a major change in Cage's music: he turned again to writing fully notated works for traditional instruments, and tried out several new approaches, such as improvisation, which he previously discouraged, but was able to use in works from the 1970s, such as Child of Tree (1975).

Cheap Imitation became the last work Cage performed in public himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since 1960, and by early 1970s his hands were painfully swollen and rendered him unable to perform. Nevertheless, he still played Cheap Imitation during the 1970s, before finally having to give up performing. Preparing manuscripts also became difficult: before, published versions of pieces were done in Cage's calligraphic script; now, manuscripts for publication had to be completed by assistants. Matters were complicated further by David Tudor's departure from performing, which happened in early 1970s. Tudor decided to concentrate on composition instead, and so Cage, for the first time in two decades, had to start relying on commissions from other performers, and their respective abilities. Such performers included Grete Sultan, Paul Zukofsky, Margaret Leng Tan, and many others. Aside from music, Cage continued writing books of prose and poetry (mesostics). M (John Cage book) was first published by Wesleyan University Press in 1973. In January 1978 Cage was invited by Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press to engage in printmaking, and Cage would go on to produce series of prints every year until his death; these, together with some late watercolors, constitute the largest portion of his extant visual art. In 1979 Cage's Empty Words was first published by Wesleyan University Press.

1987–92: Final years and death

In 1987 Cage completed a piece called Two, for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to the number of performers needed; the music consisted of short notated fragments to be played at any tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty such pieces, usually employing a variant of the same technique; together, these works are known as Number Pieces. The process of composition, in many of the later Number Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that range, using chance procedures; One¹¹ (i.e. the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film. Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas, all sharing the same title Europera, in 1987–91.

Already in the course of the eighties, Cage's health worsened progressively: he suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciatica and arteriosclerosis. He suffered a stroke that left the movement of his left leg restricted, and, in 1985, broke an arm. During this time, Cage pursued a macrobiotic diet. Nevertheless, ever since arthritis started plaguing him, the composer was aware of his age, and, as biographer David Revill observed, "the fire which he began to incorporate in his visual work in 1985 is not only the fire he has set aside for so long—the fire of passion—but also fire as transitoriness and fragility." On August 11, 1992, while preparing evening tea for himself and Cunningham, Cage suffered another stroke. He was taken to the nearest hospital, where he died on the morning of August 12. According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated, and the ashes scattered in the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York, the same place where Cage scattered the ashes of his parents, years before. Merce Cunningham outlived his partner by 17 years, and died peacefully in his home, of natural causes, on July 26, 2009.

Music

Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony

Cage's first completed pieces are currently lost. According to the composer, the earliest works were very short pieces for piano, composed using complex mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual appeal and expressive power." Cage then started producing pieces by improvising and writing down the results, until Richard Buhlig stressed to him the importance of structure. Most works from the early 1930s, such as Sonata for Clarinet (1933) and Composition for 3 Voices (1934), are highly chromatic and betray Cage's interest in counterpoint. Around the same time, the composer also developed a type of a tone row technique with 25-note rows. After studies with Schoenberg, who never taught dodecaphony to his students, Cage developed another tone row technique, in which the row was split into short motives, which would then be repeated and transposed according to a set of rules. This approach was first used in Two Pieces for Piano (c. 1935), and then, with modifications, in larger works such as Metamorphosis and Five Songs (both 1938).

Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and music for modern dance, he started using a technique that placed the rhythmic structure of the piece into the foreground. In Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) there are four large sections of 16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each section is divided into four subsections, the first three of which were all 5 bars long. First Construction (in Metal) (1939) expands on the concept: there are five sections of 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4 units respectively. Each unit contains 16 bars, and is divided the same way: 4 bars, 3 bars, 2 bars, etc. Finally, the musical content of the piece is based on sixteen motives. Such "nested proportions", as Cage called them, became a regular feature of his music throughout the 1940s. The technique was elevated to great complexity in later pieces such as Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–48), in which many proportions used non-integer numbers (1¼, ¾, 1¼, ¾, 1½, and 1½ for Sonata I, for example), or A Flower, a song for voice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.

In late 1940s Cage started developing further methods of breaking away with traditional harmony. For instance, in String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) Cage first composed a number of gamuts: chords with fixed instrumentation. The piece progresses from one gamut to another. In each instance the gamut was selected only based on whether it contains the note necessary for the melody, and so the rest of the notes do not form any directional harmony.

Chance

involves obtaining a hexagram by random generation (such as tossing coins), then reading the chapter associated with that hexagram.]] Chart system was also used (along with nested proportions) for the large piano work Music of Changes (1951), only here material would be selected from the charts by using the I Ching. All of Cage's music since 1951 was composed using chance procedures, most commonly using the I Ching. For example, works from Music for Piano were based on paper imperfections: the imperfections themselves provided pitches, and the I Ching was used to determine the methods of sound production, or the rhythms, etc. A whole series of works was created by applying chance operations, i.e. the I Ching, to star charts: Atlas Eclipticalis (1961–62), and a series of etudes: Etudes Australes (1974–75), Freeman Etudes (1977–90), and Etudes Boreales (1978). Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to perform, a characteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views: the difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible"—this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's political and social problems is impossible. Cage described himself as an anarchist, and was influenced by Henry David Thoreau.

Another series of works applied chance procedures to pre-existing music by other composers: Cheap Imitation (1969; based on Erik Satie), Some of "The Harmony of Maine" (1978; based on Belcher), and Hymns and Variations (1979). In these works, Cage would borrow the rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it with pitches determined through chance procedures, or just replace some of the originals' pitches. Yet another series of works, the so-called Number Pieces, all completed during the last five years of the composer's life, make use of time brackets: the score consists of short fragments with indications of when to start and to end them (e.g. from anywhere between 1′15″ and 1′45″, and to anywhere from 2′00″ to 2′30″).

Cage's method of using the I Ching was far from simple randomization, however. The procedures varied from composition to composition, and were usually complex. For example, in the case of Cheap Imitation, the exact questions asked to the I Ching were these: # Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using? # Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using? # For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which note am I using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote? In another example of late music by Cage, Etudes Australes, the compositional procedure involved placing a transparent strip on the star chart, identifying the pitches from the chart, transferring them to paper, then asking the I Ching which of these pitches were to remain single, and which should become parts of aggregates (chords), and the aggregates were selected from a table of some 550 possible aggregates, compiled beforehand.

Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those completed during the 1960s, feature instructions to the performer, rather than fully notated music. The score of Variations I (1958) presents the performer with six transparent squares, one with points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines the squares and uses lines and points as a coordinate system, in which the lines are axes of various characteristics of the sounds, such as lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc. Some of Cage's graphic scores (e.g. Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Fontana Mix (both 1958)) present the performer with similar difficulties. Still other works from the same period consist just of text instructions. The score of 0'00" (1962; also known as 4'33" No. 2) consists of a single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." The first performance had Cage write that sentence. Musicircus (1967) simply invites the performers to assemble and play together. The first Musicircus featured multiple performers and groups in a large space who were all to commence and stop playing at two particular time periods, with instructions on when to play individually or in groups within these two periods. The result was a mass superimposition of many different musics on top of one another as determined by chance distribution, producing an event with a specifically theatric feel. Many Musicircuses have subsequently been held, and continue to occur even after Cage's death. This concept of circus was to remain important to Cage throughout his life and featured strongly in such pieces as Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), a many-tiered rendering in sound of both his text Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake, and traditional musical and field recordings made around Ireland. The piece was based on James Joyce's famous novel, Finnegans Wake, which was one of Cage's favorite books, and one from which he derived texts for several more of his works.

Improvisation

Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the performer's likes and dislikes from music, Cage disliked the concept of improvisation, which is inevitably linked to the performer's preferences. However, in a number of works beginning in the 1970s, he found ways to incorporate improvisation. In Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) the performers are asked to use certain species of plants as instruments, for example the cactus. The structure of the pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the musical output; the performers had no knowledge of the instruments. In Inlets (1977) the performers play large water-filled conch shells - by carefully tipping the shell several times, it is possible to achieve a bubble forming inside, which produced sound. Yet, as it is impossible to predict when this would happen, the performers had to continue tipping the shells - as a result the performance was dictated by pure chance.

Visual art, writings, and other activities

Although Cage started painting in his youth, he gave it up in order to concentrate on music instead. His first mature visual project, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, dates from 1969. The work comprises two lithographs and a group of what Cage called plexigrams: silk screen printing on plexiglas panels. The panels and the lithographs all consist of bits and pieces of words in different typefaces, all governed by chance operations.

From 1978 to his death Cage worked at Crown Point Press, producing series of prints every year. The earliest project completed there was the etching Score Without Parts (1978), created from fully notated instructions, and based on various combinations of drawings by Henry David Thoreau. This was followed, the same year, by Seven Day Diary, which Cage drew with his eyes closed, but which conformed to a strict structure developed using chance operations. Finally, Thoreau's drawings informed the last works produced in 1978, Signals.

Between 1979 and 1982 Cage produced a number of large series of prints: Changes and Disappearances (1979–80), On the Surface (1980–82), and Déreau (1982). These were the last works in which he used engraving. In 1983 he started using various unconventional materials such as cotton batting, foam, etc., and then used stones and fire (Eninka, Variations, Ryoanji, etc.) to create his visual works. In 1988–1990 he produced watercolors at the Mountain Lake Workshop. The only film Cage produced was one of the Number Pieces, One¹¹, commissioned by composer and film director Henning Lohner who worked with Cage to produce and direct the 90-minute monochrome film. It was completed only weeks before his death in 1992. One¹¹ consists entirely of images of chance-determined play of electric light. It premiered in Cologne, Germany, on September 19, 1992, accompanied by the live performance of the orchestra piece 103.

Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some of his lectures were included in several books he published, the first of which was (1961). Silence included not only simple lectures, but also texts executed in experimental layouts, and works such as Lecture on Nothing (1959), which were composed in rhythmic structures. Subsequent books also featured different types of content, from lectures on music to poetry—Cage's mesostics.

Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist: he co-founded the New York Mycological Society with four friends, Prominent critics of serialism, such as the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, were similarly hostile towards Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance in music was "an abuse of language and [...] an abrogation of a composer's function."

An article by teacher and critic Michael Steinberg, Tradition and Responsibility, criticized avant-garde music in general:

The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his Landscapes for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of the artist's power.

Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, among others, prominent writer and critic Douglas Kahn. In his 1999 book Noise, Water, Meat Kahn acknowledged the influence Cage had on culture, but noted that "one of the central effects of Cage's battery of silencing techniques was a silencing of the social."

While much of Cage's work remains controversial, his influence on countless composers, artists, and writers is undeniable. After Cage introduced chance, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remained critical, yet all adopted chance procedures in some of their works (although in a much more restricted manner); and Stockhausen's piano writing in his later Klavierstücke was influenced by Cage's Music of Changes and David Tudor. Other composers who adopted chance procedures in their works included Witold Lutosławski, Mauricio Kagel, and many others. Music in which some of the composition and/or performance is left to chance was labelled aleatoric music—a term popularized by Pierre Boulez. Helmut Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.

Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced an even greater number of composers, starting at first with his close American associates Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff (and other American composers, such as La Monte Young), and then spreading to Europe. For example, almost all composers of the English experimental school acknowledge his influence: Michael Parsons, Christopher Hobbs, John White, Gavin Bryars, who studied under Cage briefly, and even Howard Skempton, a composer seemingly very different from Cage, and one whose work has been described as "the emancipation of consonance." Cage's influence is also evident in the Far East: one of Japan's most prominent classical composers of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu, was influenced by his music.

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock bands, such as Sonic Youth (who performed some of the Number Pieces) and Stereolab (who named a song after Cage), composer and rock and jazz guitarist Frank Zappa, and various noise music artists and bands: indeed, one writer traced the origin of noise music to 4′33″. The development of electronic music was also influenced by Cage: in the mid-1970s Brian Eno's label Obscure Records released works by Cage. Prepared piano, which Cage popularized, is featured heavily on Aphex Twin's 2001 album Drukqs. Cage's work as musicologist helped popularize Erik Satie's music, and his friendship with Abstract expressionist artists such as Robert Rauschenberg helped introduce his ideas into visual art. Cage's ideas also found their way into sound design: for example, Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work as a major influence.

==Archives==

The archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard College in upstate New York..

The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contains most of the composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations, and unfinished works.

The John Cage Papers are held in Special Collections and Archives department of Wesleyan University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut. They contain manuscripts, interviews, fan mail, and ephemera. Other material, including clippings, gallery and exhibition catalogs, a collection of Cage's books and serials, posters, objects, exhibition and literary announcement postcards, and brochures from conferences and other organizations

The John Cage Collection at Northwestern University in Illinois contains the composer's correspondence, ephemera, and the Notations collection.

Cultural references

The Tragically Hip recorded a song called "Tiger the Lion" for their Music @ Work album which refers to John Cage and some of his ideas. (see liner notes on album)

Sonic Youth on their SYR4 album perform two realizations of Cage's piece Six and one of Four⁸.

"John Cage Is Dead" is a track on Mickey Hart's Mystery Box album.

Who Put John Cage on the Guestlist? is the name of an album by Norwegian electronic research group Hemmelig Tempo.

"Jaune d'Oeuf en Cage" (Yolk in a Cage) is a track by David Fenech on his first album Grand Huit. It is a joke around the John Cage / Jaune Cage homophone in French.

In the musical Rent, Cage's name is mentioned during the song "La Vie Bohème" among other artists.

In December 2010, 18 years posthumously, Cage made his debut in the UK singles charts with "4' 33" (Cage Against the Machine Version)". The piece peaked at number 21 on the Christmas UK chart.

Footnotes

Notes

References

Books

Bernstein, David W., and Hatch, Christopher (ed.). 2001. Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226044076

Boulez, Pierre, and Cage, John. 1995. The Boulez-Cage Correspondence. Edited by Robert Samuels and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Robert Samuels. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521485584

Brown, Kathan. 2001. John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind. Crown Point Press. ISBN 1891300164, ISBN 978-1891300165

Cage, John. 1973. Silence: Lectures and Writings, Wesleyan University Press Paperback (first edition 1961). ISBN 0-8195-6028-6

Fetterman, William. 1996. John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances. Routledge. ISBN 3718656434

Kostelanetz, Richard. 2003. Conversing with John Cage, Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93792-2

Nicholls, David (ed.). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521789680

Nicholls, David. 2007. John Cage. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252032152

Patterson, David W. (ed.). John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0815329954

Perloff, Marjorie, and Junkerman, Charles. 1994. John Cage: Composed in America. University of Chicago Press, 1994. ISBN 0226660575

Pritchett, James. 1993. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521565448

Revill, David. 1993. The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1559702206, ISBN 978-1559702201

Encyclopedias

Taruskin, Richard. 2005. Oxford History of Western Music, The. Vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford UP, Inc. Indeterminacy pp. 55–101.

Dissertations and articles

Campana, Deborah. 1985. Form and Structure in the Music of John Cage. Dissertation, Northwestern University.

Curreri, Enrico. 2008. W: A Case Study in John-Cage-Centered Music Therapy. MA Thesis, New York University.

Emmerik, Paul van. 1996. Thema's en Variaties: Systematische Tendensen in de Compositietechnieken van John Cage. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam.

Haskins, Rob. 2004. "An Anarchic Society of Sounds": The Number Pieces of John Cage. Ph.D., Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

External links

General information and catalogues

A Project by John Cage called ORGAN2/ASLSP is the longest concert ever created.

John Cage Database, includes a complete catalogue of Cage's music with details on individual compositions, as well as a discography, a bibliography and a list of forthcoming performances of Cage's work.

A John Cage Compendium, website by Cage scholar Paul van Emmerik, in collaboration with performer Herbert Henck and András Wilheim. Includes exhaustive catalogues and bibliography, chronology of Cage's life, etc.

Larry Solomon's John Cage Pages, a complete catalogue of Cage's music and a filmography, as well as other materials.

Silence: Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage

James Pritchett: Writings, articles on Cage's music in HTML and PDF form by Cage scholar James Pritchett.

Edition Peters: John Cage Biography and Works, Cage's principal publisher since 1961.

Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection

Silence/Stories: related texts and poems by, among others, Lowell Cross, AP Crumlish, Karlheinz Essl, Raymond Federman, August Highland, George Koehler, Richard Kostelanetz, Ian S. Macdonald, Beat Streuli, Dan Waber, Sigi Waters and John Whiting

Link collections

John Cage Online

Specific topics

Beyst, Stefan. John Cage's Europeras: a light- and soundscape as musical manifesto, essay.

Bunger, Richard. The Well-Prepared Piano, Colorado College Music Press, 1973.

Kasper, Ulrike. "Sounds Visions, The Work of Jacques Pourcher, Perspectives on John Cage", essay on the exhibition "John Cage and Jacques Pourcher, Works on Paper", Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.

The Music of Chance, article from the UK Guardian newspaper, quotes from various people who knew Cage.

ORGAN²/ASLSP: As Slow as Possible — John-Cage-Orgelprojekt Halberstadt, Web site about a current ongoing performance of one of the longest pieces of music ever written, lasting 639 years; see: As Slow As Possible.

The online music review La Folia has an in-depth article about 1951 and Cage’s Music of Changes

Listening

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 1

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 2

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 3

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 4

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 5

Media

John Cage at UbuWeb: historical, sound, film.

John Cage's etchings at the Crown Point Press website

Art of the States: John Cage, six works by the composer

Indeterminacy, Cage's short stories taken from various publications and accessed in random order.

FontanaMixer: computer program by Karlheinz Essl which generates a realtime version of John Cage's "Fontana Mix" (1958)

Other Minds Archive: John Cage interviewed by Jonathan Cott, streaming audio

Other Minds Archive: John Cage and David Tudor Concert at The San Francisco Museum of Art (January 16, 1965), streaming audio

Suite for Toy Piano (1948) performed by Margaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.

1982 performance of Speech for 5 radios and reel (1955) on YouTube

Water Walk on YouTube from Cage's appearance on the game show I've Got a Secret in January 1960.

4′33″ and Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano performed by James Tenney at SASSAS sound, concert archive. Excerpts available on 'YouTube': 1, 2

John Cage, Aria performed by Elena Antonenko

The Anarchy of Silence. John Cage and Experimental Art (2009) a lecture by Julia E. Robinson on occasion of Cage's exhibition at the MACBA, Barcelona

Notes towards a re-reading of the “Roaratorio” the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA

The Rest isn't Silence... it doesn't exist! Analytical material and recordings going back to the first rehearsal and performance of Imaginary Landscape No 4 in 1951.

Category:1912 births Category:1992 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:American anarchists Category:American composers Category:American writers Category:Anarchist poets Category:Harvard University people Category:Anarchist musicians Category:Experimental composers Category:Fluxus Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT composers Category:Opera composers Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Western mystics Category:Black Mountain College faculty Category:Wesleyan University faculty Category:Contemporary classical music performers Category:American Zen Buddhists Category:American experimental musicians Category:Avant-garde pianists Category:Cornish College of the Arts faculty

Coordinates	3°8′51″N101°41′36″N
Bgcolour	#EEDD82
Name	Leonardo da Vinci
Caption	Self-portrait in red chalk, circa 1512 to 1515.
Birthname	Leonardo di Ser Piero
Birthdate	April 15, 1452
Birth place	Vinci, in the present day Province of Florence, Italy
Deathdate	May 02, 1519
Deathplace	Amboise, Touraine (in present-day Indre-et-Loire, France)
Nationality	Italian
Field	Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences
Movement	High Renaissance
Works	Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man
Signature	Da Vinci Signature.svg

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci () (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".

Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.

Leonardo was and is renowned being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

Leonardo is revered the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Life

Childhood, 1452–1466

.|alt=Photo of a building of rough stone with small windows, surrounded by olive trees.]] |alt=Pen drawing of a landscape with mountains, a river in a deep valley, and a small castle.]]

Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, "at the third hour of the night" in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci". Leonardo received an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics but did not show any particular signs of aptitude.

When Leonardo was sixteen his father married again, twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini. It was not until his third and fourth marriages that Ser Piero produced legitimate heirs. In later life, Leonardo only recorded two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face. The second occurred while exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there, and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside. Vasari, the 16th-century biographer of Renaissance painters tells of how a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo responded with a painting of monster spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a shield decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.

(1472–1475)—Uffizi, by Verrocchio and Leonardo|alt=Painting showing Jesus, naked except for a loin-cloth, standing in a shallow stream in a rocky landscape, while to the right, John the Baptist, identifiable by the cross that he carries, tips water over Jesus' head. Two angels kneel at the left. Above Jesus are the hands of God, and a dove descending.]]

Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476

In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio whose workshop was "one of the finest in Florence". Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.

Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus's robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again. This is probably an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint, the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.

Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of David in the Bargello, and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel. From that date until 1478 there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts. In 1478 he left Verroccio's studio and was no longer resident at his father's house. One writer, the "Anonimo" Gaddiano claims that in 1480 he was living with the Medici and working in the garden of the Piazza San Marco in Florence. Neither important commission was completed, the second being interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.

In 1482 Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a most talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici sent Leonardo, bearing the lyre as a gift, to Milan, to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint.

Leonardo continued work in Milan between 1482 and 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was his mother.

Leonardo worked on many different projects for Ludovico, including the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's statue of Gattemelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo". |alt=A page with two drawings of a war-horse, one from the side, and the other showing the chest and right leg.]] Leonardo began making detailed plans for its casting, where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.|group="nb"}}

In Cesena, in 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. Leonardo's painting is only known from preparatory sketches and several copies of the centre section, of which the best known, and probably least accurate is by Peter Paul Rubens.|group="nb"}} In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.

In 1506 Leonardo returned to Milan. Many of his most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.

Old age, 1513–1519

From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. It was for Francis that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical lion which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.|group="nb"}} In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé near the king's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi. Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in Château d'Amboise. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak "of good stuff" with a fur edge.

Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."

Relationships and influences

Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background

Florence, at the time of Leonardo's youth was the centre of Christian Humanist thought and culture. Leonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor Donatello, died. The painter Uccello whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the portrait sculptor, Mino da Fiesole whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni. and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Alberti's Treatise were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.

Leonardo's political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478. Ludovico il Moro who ruled Milan between 1479–1499 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo's age. Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment.

(1500) Louvre.]]

Personal life

Within Leonardo's lifetime, his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind" as described by Vasari, as well as all other aspects of his life, attracted the curiosity of others. One such aspect is his respect for life evidenced by his vegetarianism and his habit, described by Vasari, of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.

Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or for their historical significance. They included the mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s, as well as Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d'Este. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for his friendship with Isabella d'Este. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua, and which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait now lost.

Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi. Melzi, writing to inform Leonardo's brothers of his death, described Leonardo's feelings for his pupils as both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of a sexual or erotic nature. Court records of 1476, when he was aged twenty-four, show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy, and acquitted.

(c. 1514)—Louvre]]

Assistants and pupils

Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, nicknamed Salai or Il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One" i.e., the devil), entered Leonardo's household in 1490. After only a year, Leonardo made a list of his misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton", after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on clothes. Nevertheless, Leonardo treated him with great indulgence and he remained in Leonardo's household for the next thirty years. Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him a great deal about painting", Salai owned the Mona Lisa at the time of his death in 1525, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait.

In 1506, Leonardo took on another pupil, Count Francesco Melzi, the son of a Lombard aristocrat, who is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo, and remained with him until the latter's death.

These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities which have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. Among the qualities that make Leonardo's work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Virgin of the Rocks.

Early works

Leonardo's early works begin with the Baptism of Christ painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, }} long and }} high. It is a "predella" to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, }} long. In both these Annunciations, Leonardo has used a formal arrangement, such as in Fra Angelico's two well known pictures of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now almost universally attributed to Leonardo.

In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God's will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise.|group="nb"}}

Paintings of the 1480s

, Louvre, possibly 1505–1508, demonstrates Leonardo's interest in nature.]] In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of St. Jerome in the Wilderness. Bortolon associates this picture with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, and the signs of melancholy in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die." Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water. While the painting is quite large, about , it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about fifty and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment, until the next century. This, according to Vasari, was beyond the comprehension of the prior, who hounded him until Leonardo asked Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the Duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model.

When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation, but it deteriorated rapidly, so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined". Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface which was subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos.

Paintings of the 1500s

or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507)—Louvre, Paris, France]] Among the works created by Leonardo in the 16th century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or "la Gioconda", the laughing one. In the present era it is arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called "sfumato" or Leonardo's smoke. Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that "the smile was so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original".|group="nb"}}

Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils, but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable. Vasari expressed the opinion that the manner of painting would make even "the most confident master ... despair and lose heart." The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is extremely rare in a panel painting of this date.

In the Virgin and Child with St. Anne (see below ) the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful" and harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese.

(c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, London]]

Drawings

Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper.

Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body, the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London.

Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all day observing them. There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salai, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile". These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior. His notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirl pools, war machines, helicopters and architecture. The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by Bill Gates, and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world.

Leonardo's journals appear to have been intended for publication because many of the sheets have a form and order that would facilitate this. In many cases a single topic, for example, the heart or the human foetus, is covered in detail in both words and pictures, on a single sheet. Why they were not published within Leonardo's lifetime is unknown. Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by his pupil Francesco Melzi and eventually published as Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci in France and Italy in 1651, and Germany in 1724, with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicholas Poussin. According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into sixty two editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art". argues that Leonardo was a fundamentally different kind of scientist from Galileo, Newton and other scientists who followed him. Leonardo's experimentation followed clear scientific method approaches, and his theorising and hypothesising integrated the arts and particularly painting; these, and Leonardo's unique integrated, holistic views of science make him a forerunner of modern systems theory and complexity schools of thought.

Anatomy

Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features.

As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting. He drew the heart and vascular system, the sex organs and other internal organs, making one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero. Leonardo's journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, and a steam cannon. On May 17, 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn.

For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a light hang glider and a machine resembling a helicopter. Some of those designs proved a success, whilst others faired less well when practically tested.

Leonardo the legend

receiving the last breath of Leonardo da Vinci, by Ingres, 1818.]] Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. The interest in Leonardo has never slackened. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in. introduced his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words:

, Florence|alt=Statue of Leonardo da Vinci by Luigi Pampaloni, Uffizi]]

The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano ("The Courtier"), wrote in 1528: "... Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled ..." while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, c. 1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf ...".

The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing Henry Fuseli to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius ..." This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents."

By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. Hippolyte Taine wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries."

The famous art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: "Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values."

The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found. Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: "Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge ... Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe."

See also

About Leonardo

Cultural depictions of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood (essay)

Leonardo da Vinci, investigation, attribution and speculation

Leonardo da Vinci's personal life

List of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci

:Category:Leonardo da Vinci paintings

Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci

Codex Arundel

Related subjects

Aerial perspective

History of the internal combustion engine

Italian Renaissance painting

Leonardo da Vinci Airport

Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute

List of Italian painters

List of vegetarians

Medical Renaissance

Renaissance technology

Footnotes

References

Bibliography

volume 2: ISBN 0-486-22573-9. A reprint of the original 1883 edition. [The chapter "The Graphic Works" is by Frank Zollner & Johannes Nathan].

External links

Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, Design (review)

Complete text & images of Richter's translation of the Notebooks

Vasari Life of Leonardo: in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Web Gallery of Leonardo Paintings

Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci

Da Vinci Decoded Article from The Guardian

The true face of Leonardo Da Vinci?

Leonardo da Vinci's Ethical Vegetarianism

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci at BBC Science

Category:1452 births Category:1519 deaths Category:15th century in science Category:15th-century scientists Category:16th century in science Category:16th-century scientists Category:Ballistics experts Category:Fabulists Category:History of anatomy Category:Italian anatomists Category:Italian civil engineers Category:Italian inventors Category:Italian military engineers Category:Italian physiologists Category:Italian Renaissance humanists Category:Italian Roman Catholics Category:Italian vegetarians Category:Mathematics and culture Category:Members of the Guild of Saint Luke Category:People from the Province of Florence Category:People prosecuted under anti-homosexuality laws Category:Physiognomists Category:Priory of Sion hoax Category:Renaissance architects Category:Renaissance artists Category:Renaissance painters Category:Roman Catholic Church painters Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:Tuscan painters

Coordinates	3°8′51″N101°41′36″N
Name	Calista Flockhart
Caption	Calista Flockhart at the 2009 Deauville American Film Festival.
Birth name	Calista Kay Flockhart
Birth date	November 11, 1964
Birth place	Freeport, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1989–present
Spouse	Harrison Ford (m. 2010-present; 1 adopted child)

Calista Kay Flockhart (born November 11, 1964) is an American actor who is primarily recognized for her work in television. She is best known for playing the title character in the Fox comedy-drama series Ally McBeal (1997–2002) for which she won a Golden Globe Award. She currently stars as Sally Field’s character’s daughter, Kitty Walker McCallister, on the ABC drama, Brothers & Sisters.

Early life

Flockhart was born in Freeport, Illinois, the daughter of Kay, a teacher of English, and Ronald Flockhart, an executive for Kraft Foods. Her parents are retired and live in Morristown, Tennessee. She has one older brother, Gary. Her mother, Kay Calista, reversed her own first and middle names in naming her Calista Kay. Calista also had a great-grandmother named "Calista".

Because her father's job required the family to move often, Flockhart and her brother grew up in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Norwich in New York, and New Jersey. As a child, she wrote a play called Toyland in which she performed to a small audience at a dinner party.

Flockhart attended Shawnee High School in Medford Township, New Jersey. Following her graduation in 1983, Flockhart attended the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While there, she attended a specialized and competitive class, lasting from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. In her sophomore year at Rutgers, Flockhart met aspiring actress Jane Krakowski, the best friend of her roommate. Later they would both work together on Ally McBeal.

Flockhart's acting ability was recognized when William Esper (Mason Gross' theatre director and Flockhart's acting teacher) made an exception to policy by allowing Flockhart to perform on the main stage. Though this venue is usually reserved for juniors and seniors, Harold Scott insisted that Flockhart perform there in his production of William Inge's Picnic. Flockhart graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theatre in 1988, as one of only a few students who successfully completed the course. She was inducted into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni on May 3, 2003.

After receiving her degree, Flockhart moved to New York City in 1989, where she remained until 1997, living with three other women in a two-bedroom apartment and working as a waitress and aerobics instructor, while she simultaneously sought auditions.

Career

Early career

In spring 1989, Flockhart made her first television appearance in a minor role in an episode of Guiding Light as a babysitter. She made her professional debut on the New York stage, appearing in Beside Herself alongside Melissa Joan Hart, at the Circle Repertory Theatre. Two years later, Flockhart appeared in the television movie Darrow. Though she later appeared in films Naked in New York (1993) and Getting In (1994), her first substantial speaking part in a film was in Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford.

Flockhart debuted on Broadway in 1994, as Laura in The Glass Menagerie. Actress Julie Harris felt Flockhart should be hired without further auditions, claiming that she seemed ideal for the part. Flockhart received a Clarence Derwent Award for her performance. In 1995, Flockhart became acquainted with actors such as Dianne Wiest and Faye Dunaway when she appeared in the movie Drunks. Later that year, Flockhart starred in Jane Doe as a drug addict. In 1996, Flockhart appeared as the daughter of Dianne Wiest and Gene Hackman's characters in The Birdcage. Throughout that year, she continued to work on Broadway, playing the role of Natasha in Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters.

Ally McBeal

In 1997 Flockhart was requested to audition for the starring role in David E. Kelley's Fox television series, Ally McBeal. Kelley, having heard of Flockhart, wanted her to audition for the contract part. Though Flockhart at first hesitated due to the necessary commitment to the show in a negotiable contract, she was swayed by the script and travelled to Los Angeles to audition for the part, which she won. She earned a Golden Globe Award for the role in 1998. Flockhart also appeared on the June 29, 1998, cover of Time magazine, placed as the newest iteration in the evolution of feminism, relating to the ongoing debate about the role depicted by her character.

Throughout her professional career, Flockhart has maintained her naturally lean figure. However, many have commented that Flockhart had become dangerously thin, particularly when the actress made red carpet appearances in clothing that revealed a somewhat emaciated physique. She had maintained throughout the show's run that she was never diagnosed with either anorexia or bulimia, nor was she a user of illegal drugs. She did remark, however, that while starring in the show she refrained from eating sweets, retaining her slimness with intense workouts and running. In 2006, she admitted that she had a problem at the time, and was "exercising too much" and "eating too little".

Other work

Flockhart played the role of Helena in the 1999 film version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2000, she appeared in Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her and , later accompanying Eve Ensler to Kenya in order to protest violence against women, particularly female genital mutilation. Flockhart also starred in the off-Broadway production of Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.

In 2004, Flockhart appeared as Matthew Broderick's deranged girlfriend in The Last Shot. In the same year, Flockhart travelled to Spain for the filming of Fragile, which premiered in September 2005 at the Venice Film Festival.

She was offered the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, but declined. The role went to Teri Hatcher. Flockhart currently co-stars as communication advisor, Senator's wife and now candidate Kitty Walker, opposite Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths and Matthew Rhys, in the ABC prime time series Brothers & Sisters, which premiered in September 2006 in the time slot after Desperate Housewives. Flockhart's character was significant throughout the series first four years, but it was announced her schedule of appearances will be reduced for the 2010–2011 season, coinciding with the departure of TV husband Rob Lowe.

Personal life

Dated director Sam Mendes in the late spring and summer of 1999. at the 2009 Deauville American Film Festival.]] As of 2008, Flockhart is the national spokesperson for Peace Over Violence.

On January 11, 2001, Flockhart adopted a ten-day-old baby, Liam (born January 1, 2001), in San Diego.

In March 2009 it was reported that Flockhart became engaged to Harrison Ford on Valentine's Day, after more than 7 years together. On June 15, 2010, they were married in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The ceremony was presided over by Governor Bill Richardson and New Mexico Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Daniels.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

References

External links

http://www.cincohermanos.tk (Foro en castellano, actualizado)

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Category:Actors from Illinois Category:American film actors Category:American soap opera actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:Clarence Derwent Award winners Category:People from Freeport, Illinois Category:People from Norwich, New York Category:Rutgers University alumni Category:Shakespearean actors Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (television) winners Category:Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:1964 births Category:Living people