Look up Europa in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Europa may refer to:

People and characters[link]

• Europa (mythology), a Phoenician princess in Greek mythology, from whom the name of the continent Europe is taken
• Europa of Macedon, the daughter of Philip II by his last wife, Cleopatra
• Madama Europa, the nickname, or perhaps the real name, of Europa Rossi (fl. 1600), sister of the Jewish violinist and composer Salamone Rossi, who was one of the first opera singers

Geography[link]

• Europa Island, a small island in the Indian Ocean which is a possession of France
• Europa (Roman province), a province within the Diocese of Thrace

Astronomy[link]

• Europa (moon), one of Jupiter's moons
• 52 Europa, the seventh-largest known asteroid

In entertainment[link]

In film[link]

• Europa Europa, a 1990 film by Polish director Agnieszka Holland
• Europa, a 1991 film by Danish director Lars von Trier, released as Zentropa in North America; part of his "Europa trilogy"

In gaming[link]

• Europa (wargame), a series of board wargames launched in 1973
• Europa (Valkyria Chronicles), a fictional place in the video game Valkyria Chronicles
• Europa 1400, a 2002 video game
• Europa Barbarorum, a modification of the PC game Rome: Total War
• Sega Europa-R, an arcade game system board by Sega
• Europa Universalis, a 2000 strategy computer game
• Europa 1912 is an expansion to the board game Ticket to Ride: Europe

In literature[link]

• Europa (novel), by Tim Parks
• Europa, a novel by Romain Gary

In music[link]

• Europa (record label), a German record label
• Europa (album), by Covenant
• "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)", an instrumental from Carlos Santana's 1976 album Amigos
• "Europa" (Blondie song), the lead track on Blondie's 1980 album Autoamerican
• "Europa" (Globus song), a song from the album Epicon by Globus
• "Europa" (Mónica Naranjo song), a song from Mónica Naranjo's 2008 album Tarantula
• "Europa" (Rosetta song)", a song appearing on The Galilean Satellites by post-metal band Rosetta
• "Europa and the Pirate Twins", a song appearing on Thomas Dolby's 1982 album The Golden Age of Wireless

In sports[link]

• NFL Europa (formerly NFL Europe), an American football competition from 1991–2007
• UEFA Europa League, the second most important European competition for UEFA-eligible football clubs

In transportation[link]

• Europa rocket, an early expendable launch system project of the European Launcher Development Organisation
• Europa Aircraft, a light-aircraft kitplane company based in the UK
• Bizzarrini Europa, a small GT car produced by Bizzarrini between 1966 and 1969
• Lotus Europa, a sports car manufactured by Lotus Cars

Ships[link]

• HMS Europa, one of a number of ships and shore establishments of the Royal Navy
• Europa (ship), a traditionally rigged tall ship from the Netherlands, built in 1911
• SS Europa (1922), an immigrant ship on the Europe to North America route in 1950–51 (originally the SS Mongolia)
• SS Europa (1930), an ocean liner operated by the North German Lloyd in 1930–45
• MS Europa (1953), a combined ocean liner / cruise ship operated by the North German Lloyd in 1965–70 and Hapag-Lloyd in 1970–81
• MS Europa (1981), a cruise ship operated by Hapag-Lloyd in 1981–99
• MS Europa (1999), a cruise ship operated by Hapag-Lloyd since 1999
• MS Silja Europa, a cruise ferry operated by Silja Line since 1993
• Costa Europa, a cruise ship operated by Costa Cruises since 2002

Other uses[link]

• Europa (oil company), an oil company that operated in New Zealand until its purchase by BP in 1989
• Europa (web portal), the official web portal of the European Union
• Europa, the name of the 3.3 release of the open-source integrated development environment Eclipse (software)
• Europa Coins, coins with a common theme issued by European countries
• Europa Hotel, a hotel in Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Europa postage stamp, issued annually since 1956, representing the founding six members of the European Coal and Steel Community
• EuropaCorp, a French film studio

See also[link]

• Europe (disambiguation)
• Eupora, Mississippi

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Carlos Santana
Santana in Munich on January 21, 2000
Background information
Birth name	Carlos Augusto Alves Santana
Born	(1947-07-20) July 20, 1947 (age 64) Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, México
Genres	Latin rock, chicano rock, Rock, blues rock, funk, jazz fusion, tejano music, salsa, pop, free jazz
Occupations	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, percussion, violin
Years active	1964–present
Labels	RCA Records (2011-present) [1] Arista, Polydor, Columbia, Polygram, CBS
Associated acts	Santana, Los Lonely Boys, John McLaughlin
Website	Santana.com
Notable instruments
PRS Santana II Yamaha SG2000 Devadip Yamaha SG175 Gibson SG

Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican and American rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, Latin music and jazz fusion. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and African rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales and congas not generally heard in rock music. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[2] He has won 10 Grammy Awards and 3 Latin Grammy Awards.^[3]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Santana was born in Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico. Carlos learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight. His younger brother, Jorge Santana, would also become a professional guitarist. Young Carlos was heavily influenced by Ritchie Valens at a time when there were very few Latinos in American rock and pop music. The family moved from Autlán de Navarro to Tijuana In La Colonia Libertad, the city on Mexico's border with California, and then San Francisco. Carlos stayed in Tijuana but joined his family in San Francisco later and graduated from James Lick Middle School and Mission High School there. He graduated from Mission High in 1965. Carlos was accepted into the California State University, Northridge and Humboldt State University, but turned down both of the offers. Javier Bátiz, a famous guitarist from Tijuana, was said to have been Carlos's guitar teacher who taught him to play a different style of guitar soloing.^[4] After learning Javier Batiz's techniques, Santana would make them his own as well.^[5]

Early career[link]

In San Francisco, he got the chance to see his idols, most notably B.B. King, perform live. He was also introduced to a variety of new musical influences, including jazz and folk music, and witnessed the growing hippie movement centered in San Francisco in the 1960s. After several years spent working as a dishwasher in a diner and busking for spare change, Santana decided to become a full-time musician. In 1966, he gained prominence by a series of accidental events all happening on the same day. Santana was a frequent spectator at Bill Graham's Fillmore West. During a Sunday matinee show, Paul Butterfield was slated to perform there but was unable to do so as a result of being intoxicated. Bill Graham assembled an impromptu band of musicians he knew primarily through his connections with the Grateful Dead, Butterfield's own band and Jefferson Airplane, but he had not yet picked all of the guitarists at the time. Santana's manager, Stan Marcum, immediately suggested to Graham that Santana join the impromptu band and Graham assented. During the jam session, Santana's guitar playing and solo gained the notice of both the audience and Graham.^[7] During the same year, Santana formed the Santana Blues Band, with fellow street musicians, David Brown and Gregg Rolie (bassist and keyboard player, respectively).^[5]

With their highly original blend of Latin-infused rock, jazz, blues, salsa, and African rhythms, the band (which quickly adopted their frontman's name, Santana) gained an immediate following on the San Francisco club circuit. The band's early success, capped off by a memorable performance at Woodstock in 1969, led to him signing a recording contract with Columbia Records, then run by Clive Davis.

[edit] Santana

Santana was signed by CBS Records and went into the studio to record their second album. They were not satisfied with the release and decided changes needed to be made. This resulted in the dismissal of Bob Livingston. Santana replaced him with Mike Shrieve, who had a strong background in both jazz and rock. Marcus Malone was forced to quit the band due to personal problems, and the band re-enlisted Michael Carabello. Carabello brought with him percussionist Jose Chepito Areas, who was already well-known in his country, Nicaragua, and, with his skills and professional experience, was a major contributor to the band.

Bill Graham had been a fan of the band from its inception, arranged for the band to appear at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival before their debut album was even released. They were one of the surprises of the festival; their set was legendary and, later, the exposure of their eleven-minute instrumental "Soul Sacrifice" in the Woodstock film and soundtrack albums vastly increased Santana's popularity. Graham also gave the band some key advice to record the Willie Bobo song "Evil Ways", as he felt it would get them radio airplay. His first eponymous album, Santana released in August, became a huge hit, reaching number four on the U.S. album charts, and the catchy single "Evil Ways" reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100.^{[citation needed]}

Santana performing in Hamburg, November 1973

In 1969, Santana's performance at the Woodstock festival introduced the band to an international audience and garnered critical acclaim, although the band's sudden success put pressure on the group, highlighting the different musical directions in which Rolie and Santana were starting to go. Rolie, along with some of the other band members, wanted to emphasize a basic hard rock sound which had been a key component in establishing the band from the start. Santana, however, was increasingly interested in moving beyond his love of blues and rock and wanted more jazzy, ethereal elements in the music, which were influenced by his fascination with Miles Davis and John Coltrane, as well as his growing interest in spirituality. At the same time, Chepito Areas was stricken with a near-fatal brain hemorrhage, and Santana hoped to continue by finding a temporary replacement (first Willie Bobo, then Coke Escovedo), while others in the band, especially Michael Carabello, felt it was wrong to perform publicly without Areas. Cliques formed, and the band started to disintegrate.

Teenage San Francisco Bay Area guitar prodigy Neal Schon was asked to join the band in 1971, in time to complete the third album, Santana III. The band now boasted a powerful dual-lead-guitar act that gave the album a tougher sound. The sound of the band was also helped by the return of a recuperated Chepito Areas and the assistance of Coke Escovedo in the percussion section. Enhancing the band's sound further was the support of popular Bay Area group Tower of Power's horn section, Luis Gasca of Malo, and other session musicians which added to both percussion and vocals, injecting more energy to the proceedings. Santana III was another success, reaching number one on the album charts, selling two million copies, and yielding the hits "Everybody's Everything" and "No One to Depend On".

New Year's Eve 1976; at the Cow Palace, San Francisco

But tension in the band continued. Along with musical differences, drug use became a problem, and Santana was deeply worried it was affecting the band's performance. Coke Escovedo encouraged Santana to take more control of the band's musical direction, much to the dismay of some of the others who thought that the band and its sound was a collective effort. Also, financial irregularities were exposed while under the management of Stan Marcum, whom Bill Graham criticized as being incompetent. Growing resentments between Santana and Michael Carabello over lifestyle issues resulted in his departure on bad terms. James Mingo Lewis was hired at the last minute as a replacement at a concert in New York City. David Brown later left due to substance abuse problems. A South American tour was cut short in Lima, Peru, due to student protests against U.S. governmental policies and unruly fans. The madness of the tour convinced Santana that changes needed to be made in the band and in his life.^{[citation needed]}

In January 1972, Santana, Neal Schon and Coke Escovedo joined former Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles for a concert at Hawaii's Diamond Head Crater, which was recorded for the album, Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles! Live!. The performance was erratic and uneven, but the album managed to achieve gold-record status on the weight of Santana's popularity.

[edit] Caravanserai

In early 1972, Santana and the remaining members of the band started working on their fourth album, Caravanserai. During the studio sessions, Santana and Michael Shrieve brought in other musicians: percussionists James Mingo Lewis and Latin-Jazz veteran, Armando Peraza replacing Michael Carabello, and bassists Tom Rutley and Doug Rauch replacing David Brown. Also assisting on keyboards were Wendy Haas and Tom Coster. With the unsettling influx of new players in the studio, Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon decided that it was time to leave after the completion of the album, even though both contributed to the session. Rolie returned home to Seattle, and after some time later became a founding member of Journey (which Schon would later join as well).

When Caravanserai did emerge in 1972, it marked a strong change in musical direction towards jazz fusion. The album received critical praise, but CBS executive Clive Davis warned Santana and the band that it would sabotage the band's position as a "Top 40" act. Nevertheless, over the years, the album would achieve platinum status. The difficulties Santana and the band went through during this period were chronicled in Ben Fong-Torres' Rolling Stone 1972 cover story "The Resurrection of Carlos Santana".

Santana met Deborah King, whom he later married in 1973. She is the daughter of the late blues singer and guitarist Saunders King. They have three children: Salvador, Stella and Angelica. Together with wife Deborah, Santana founded a not-for-profit organization, the Milagro Foundation, which provides financial aid for educational, medical, and other needs.

Shifting styles and spirituality in the 1970s[link]

In 1972, Santana became a huge fan of the pioneering fusion band The Mahavishnu Orchestra and its guitarist John McLaughlin. Aware of Santana's interest in meditation, McLaughlin introduced Santana and Deborah to his guru, Sri Chinmoy. Chinmoy accepted them as disciples in 1973. Santana was given the name Devadip, meaning "The lamp, light and eye of God." Santana and McLaughlin recorded an album together, Love, Devotion, Surrender with members of Santana and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, along with percussionist Don Alias and organist Larry Young, who both had made appearances on Miles Davis' classic Bitches Brew in 1969.

In 1973, Santana, having obtained legal rights to the band's name, Santana, formed a new version of the band, Santana, with Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas on percussion, Doug Rauch on bass, Michael Shrieve on drums, and Tom Coster and Richard Kermode on keyboards. Santana was later able to recruit jazz vocalist Leon Thomas for a tour of Japan, which was recorded for the live, sprawling, high-energy fusion album Lotus. CBS records would not allow its release unless the material was condensed. Santana did not agree to those terms, and the album was available in the U.S. only as an expensive, imported, three-record set.^[which?] The group later went into the studio and recorded Welcome, which further reflected Santana's interests in jazz fusion and his increasing commitment to the spiritual life of Sri Chinmoy.

Santana during his "inner secrets" tour in the Netherlands; 1978

A collaboration with John Coltrane's widow, Alice Coltrane, Illuminations, followed. The album delved into avant-garde esoteric free jazz, Eastern Indian and classical influences with other ex-Miles Davis sidemen Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland. Soon after, Santana replaced his band members again. This time Kermode, Thomas and Rauch departed from the group and were replaced by vocalist Leon Patillo (later a successful Contemporary Christian artist) and returning bassist David Brown. He also recruited soprano saxophonist, Jules Broussard to the lineup. The band recorded one studio album Borboletta, which was released in 1974. Drummer Leon "Ndugu" Chancler later joined the band as a replacement for Michael Shrieve, who left to pursue a solo career.

By this time, the Bill Graham's management company had assumed the affairs of the group. Graham was critical of Santana's direction into jazz and felt he needed to concentrate on getting Santana back into the charts with the edgy, street-wise ethnic sound that had made them famous. Santana himself was seeing that the group's direction was alienating many fans. Although the albums and performances were given good reviews by critics in jazz and jazz fusion circles, sales had plummeted.

Santana along with Tom Coster, producer David Rubinson, and Chancler formed yet another version of Santana, adding vocalist Greg Walker. The 1976 album Amigos, which featured the songs "Dance, Sister, Dance" and "Let It Shine", had a strong funk and Latin sound. The album also received considerable airplay on FM album-oriented rock stations with the instrumental "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)" and re-introduced Santana back into the charts. In 1976, Rolling Stone ran a second cover story on Santana entitled "Santana Comes Home".

The albums conceived through the late 1970s followed the same formula, although with several lineup changes. Among the personnel who came and left the band was percussionist Raul Rekow, who joined in early 1977 and remains to this day. Most-notable of the band's commercial efforts of this era was a version of the 1960s Zombies hit, "She's Not There", on the 1977 album Moonflower.

The relative success of the band's albums in this era allowed Santana to pursue a solo career funded by CBS. First, Oneness: Silver Dreams - Golden Reality, in 1979 and The Swing of Delight in 1980, which featured some of his musical heroes: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams from Miles Davis' legendary 1960s quintet.^{[citation needed]}

The pressures and temptations of being a high-profile rock musician and requisites of the spiritual lifestyle which guru Sri Chinmoy and his followers demanded, were great sources of conflict to Santana's lifestyle and marriage. He was becoming increasingly disillusioned with what he thought was Chinmoy's unreasonable rules imposed on his life, in particular, his refusal to allow Santana and Deborah to start a family. He felt too that his fame was being used to increase the guru's visibility. Santana and Deborah eventually ended their relationship with Chinmoy in 1982.

The 1980s[link]

Santana, 1984 Barcelona, Spain

More radio-pleasing singles followed from Santana and the band. "Winning" in 1981 and "Hold On" (a remake of Canadian artist Ian Thomas' song) in 1982 both reached the top twenty. After his break with Sri Chinmoy, Santana went into the studio to record another solo album with Keith Olson and legendary R&B producer Jerry Wexler. The 1983 album revisited Santana's early musical experiences in Tijuana with Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" and the title cut, Chuck Berry's "Havana Moon". The album's guests included Booker T. Jones, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Willie Nelson and even Santana's father's mariachi orchestra. Santana again paid tribute to his early rock roots by doing the film score to La Bamba, which was based on the tragically short life of rock and roll legend Ritchie Valens and starred Lou Diamond Philips.

Although the band had concentrated on trying to produce albums with commercial appeal during the 1980s, changing tastes in popular culture began to reflect in the band's sagging record sales of their latest effort Beyond Appearances. In 1985, Bill Graham had to once again pull strings for Santana to convince principal Live Aid concert organizer Bob Geldof to allow the band to appear at the festival.^{[citation needed]} The group's high-energy performance proved they were still a top concert draw the world over despite their poor performance on the charts. Santana regained a great deal of respect in both jazz and rock circles, with Prince and guitarist Kirk Hammett of Metallica citing him as an influence.^{[citation needed]}

The band Santana returned in 1986 with a new album Freedom.

L to R: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Santana (Mick Taylor not visible) in Hamburg, May 1984

Growing weary of trying to appease record company executives with formulaic hit records, Santana took great pleasure in jamming and making guest appearances with notables such as the jazz fusion group Weather Report, jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, Blues legend John Lee Hooker, Frank Franklin, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, and West African singer Salif Keita. He and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead later recorded and performed with Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who conceived one of Santana's famous 1960s drum jams, "Jingo". In 1988, Santana organized a reunion with past members from the Santana band for a series of concert dates. CBS records released a 20-year retrospective of the band's accomplishments with Viva Santana!.

That same year Santana formed an all-instrumental group featuring jazz legend Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophone. The group also included Patrice Rushen on keyboards, Alphonso Johnson on bass, Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas on percussion, and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler on drums. They toured briefly and received much acclaim from the music press, who compared the effort with the era of Caravanserai. Santana released another solo record, Blues for Salvador, which won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

In 1990, Santana left Columbia Records after twenty-two years and signed with Polygram. The following year, he made a guest appearance on Ottmar Liebert's album Solo Para Ti, on the songs "Reaching out 2 U" and on a cover of his own song, "Samba Pa Ti". In 1992, Santana hired jam band Phish as his opening act.

Return to commercial success[link]

Santana performing in 2000

Santana's record sales in the 1990s were very low.^{[citation needed]} Toward the end of the decade, he was without a contract. However, Arista Records' Clive Davis, who had worked with Santana at Columbia Records, signed him and encouraged him to record a star-studded album with mostly younger artists. The result was 1999's Supernatural, which included collaborations with Everlast, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Cee-Lo, Maná, Dave Matthews, K. C. Porter, J. B. Eckl, and others.

However, the lead single was what grabbed the attention of both fans and the music industry. "Smooth", a dynamic cha-cha stop-start number co-written and sung by Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, was laced throughout with Santana's guitar fills and runs. The track's energy was immediately apparent on radio, and it was played on a wide variety of station formats. "Smooth" spent twelve weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming in the process the last #1 single of the 1990s. The music video, set on a hot barrio street, was also very popular. Supernatural reached number one on the US album charts and the follow-up single, "Maria Maria", featuring the R&B duo The Product G&B, also hit number one, spending ten weeks there in the spring of 2000. Supernatural eventually sold over 15 million copies in the United States, making it Santana's biggest sales success by far.

Carlos Santana, alongside the classic Santana lineup of their first two albums, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. He performed "Black Magic Woman" with the writer of the song, Fleetwood Mac's founder Peter Green. Green was inducted the same night.

In 2000 Supernatural won nine Grammy Awards (eight for Santana personally), including Album of the Year, Record of the Year for "Smooth", and Song of the Year for Thomas and Itaal Shur. Santana's acceptance speeches described his feelings about music's place in one's spiritual existence. Later that year at the Latin Grammy Awards he won three awards including Record of the Year. In 2001, Santana's guitar skills were featured in Michael Jackson's song "Whatever Happens", from the album Invincible.

In 2002, Santana released Shaman, revisiting the Supernatural format of guest artists including P.O.D. and Seal. Although the album was not the runaway success its predecessor had been, it produced two radio-friendly hits. "The Game of Love" featuring Michelle Branch, rose to number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent many weeks at the top of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, and "Why Don't You & I" written by and featuring Chad Kroeger from the group Nickelback (the original and a remix with Alex Band from the group The Calling were combined towards chart performance) which reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. "The Game of Love" went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

In early August 2003, Santana was named fifteenth on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

On April 21, 2005, Santana was honored as a BMI Icon at the 12th annual BMI Latin Awards. Santana was the first songwriter designated a BMI Icon at the company's Latin Awards. The honor is given to a creator who has been "a unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers." ^[8]

Carlos Santana during a concert in 2005

In 2005, Herbie Hancock approached Santana to collaborate on an album again using the Supernatural formula. Possibilities was released on August 30, 2005, featuring Carlos Santana and Angélique Kidjo on "Safiatou". Also, in 2005, fellow Latin star Shakira invited Santana to play the soft rock guitar ballad "Illegal" on her second English-language studio album Oral Fixation Vol. 2.

Santana's 2005 album All That I Am consists primarily of collaborations with other artists; the first single, the peppy "I'm Feeling You", was again with Michelle Branch and The Wreckers. Other musicians joining the mix this time included Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Kirk Hammett from Metallica, hip-hop/reggae star Sean Paul and R&B singer Joss Stone. In April and May 2006, Santana toured Europe, where he promoted his son Salvador Santana's band as his opening act.

In 2007, Santana appeared, along with Sheila E. and José Feliciano, on Gloria Estefan's album 90 Millas, on the single "No Llores". He also teamed again with Chad Kroeger for the hit single "Into the Night".

In 2008, Santana started working with his long-time friend, Marcelo Vieira, on his solo album Marcelo Vieira's Acoustic Sounds, which is due to be released at the end of the year. It features tracks such as "For Flavia" and "Across the Grave", the latter featuring heavy melodic riffs by Santana.

Carlos Santana performed at the 2009 American Idol Finale with the top 13 finalists, which starred many acts such as KISS, Queen and Rod Stewart. On July 8, 2009, Carlos Santana appeared at the Athens Olympic Stadium in Athens with his 10-member all-star band as part of his "Supernatural Santana – A Trip through the Hits" European tour. On July 10, 2009, he also appeared at Philip II Stadium in Skopje, Macedonia. With 2.5 hours concert and 20 000 people, Santana appeared for the first time in that region. "Supernatural Santana – A Trip through the Hits" is currently playing at The Hard Rock hotel in Las Vegas, where it will play through 2011.

Santana is featured as a playable character in the music video game Guitar Hero 5. A live recording of his song "No One To Depend On" is included in game, which was released on September 1, 2009.^[9]

Carlos recently opened a chain of upscale Mexican restaurants called "Maria Maria". It is a combined effort with Chef Roberto Santibañez. They are located in Tempe, Arizona; Mill Valley (now closed); Walnut Creek, Danville, San Diego, California; Austin, Texas; and Boca Raton, Florida.^[10]

Influences[link]

Around the age of 8, Santana "fell under the influence" of blues performers like B.B. King and John Lee Hooker.^[11] He also credits Jimi Hendrix, Mike Bloomfield and Peter Green as important influences; he considered Bloomfield a direct mentor, writing of a key meeting with Bloomfield in San Francisco in the foreword he wrote to a biography of Bloomfield, Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues-An Oral History in 2000.^[12]

Equipment[link]

Guitars and effects[link]

Santana's Yamaha SG2000 Devadip (1976, with inlay) on exhibit in the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum

Santana played a red Gibson SG Special with P-90 pickups at the Woodstock festival. In the time of Abraxas and Santana III (1970–1972), He used different Gibson Les Paul`s and a Black Gibson SG Special. From 1976 until 1982, his main guitar was a Yamaha SG 175B and sometimes a white Gibson SG Custom with 3 single coil pick-ups. In 1982 he started to use a custom made PRS Custom 24 guitar, in 1988 he made his first Signature model PRS Santana I. In 1999 Carlos Santana and PRS Guitars come with the most expensive, high-end PRS Santana II model also known as "Supernatural". Some of the changes were the materials, Santana II was built from the best materials available. Though it was an extraordinarily high-priced instrument, Santana II guitar was offered for nearly nine years, until 2007. Because the second edition was so expensive, reduction of the cost was needed which helped to spur the introduction of the next model in the series, the Santana III in 2001. In 2008, Carlos along with Paul Reed Smith has developed a Santana Signature model which combines some of the best features of all the previous models, called PRS Santana MD "The Multidimensional".

Santana currently uses a Santana II model guitar using PRS Santana III pickups with nickel covers and a tremolo, with .009-.042 gauge D'Addario strings and PRS Santana MD Guitar^[13] Santana's guitar necks and fretboards are constructed out of a single solid piece of Brazilian Rosewood;^[14] this helps create the smooth, singing, glass-like tone for which he is known.

Santana Signature Models:

• PRS Santana I "The Yellow"(1988)
• PRS Santana II "Supernatural" (1999)
• PRS Santana III (2001)
• PRS Santana SE (2001)
• PRS Santana SE II (2003)
• PRS Santana Shaman SE-Limited Edition (2003)
• PRS Santana MD "The Multidimensional" (2008)
• PRS Santana Abraxas SE-Limited Edition (2009)
• PRS Santana SE "The Multidimensional" (2011)

Santana also uses a classical guitar, the Alvarez Yairi CY127CE with Alvarez tension nylon strings.^[15]

Santana does not use many effects pedals. His PRS guitar is connected to a Mu-Tron wah wah pedal (or, more recently, a Dunlop 535Q wah) and a T-Rex Replica delay pedal.^[16][17] then through a customized Jim Dunlop amp switcher which in turn is connected to the different amps or cabinets.

Previous setups include an Ibanez Tube Screamer^[18] right after the guitar. He is also to have been known to use an Electro Harmonix Big Muff distortion for his famous sustain. In the song "Stand Up" from the album Marathon, Santana uses a Heil talk box in the guitar solo.

Amplifiers[link]

Carlos Santana's distinctive guitar tone is produced by PRS Santana signature guitars plugged into multiple amplifiers. The amps consist of a Mesa Boogie Mark I, Dumble Overdrive Reverb and more recently a Bludotone amplifier. Carlos Santana attributes the tonal qualities of each amplifier to that of a singer producing head/nasal tones, chest tones, and belly tones. A three-way amp switcher is employed on Carlos's pedal board to enable him to switch between amps. Often the unique tones of each amplifier are blended together, complimenting each other producing a richer tone.

He also put the "Boogie" in Mesa Boogie: "Santana exclaimed to "That little thing really Boogies!"^[19]

Specifically, Santana combines a Mesa/Boogie Mark I head running through a Boogie cabinet with Altec 417-8H (or recently JBL E120s) speakers, and a Dumble Overdrive Reverb and/or a Dumble Overdrive Special running through a Brown or Marshall 4x12 cabinet with Celestion G12M "Greenback" speakers, depending on the desired sound. Shure KSM-32 microphones are used to pick up the sound, going to the PA. Additionally, a Fender Cyber-Twin Amp is mostly used at home.

During his early career Santana used a GMT transistor amplifier stack and a silverface Fender Twin. The GMT 226A rig was used at the legendary Woodstock concert as well as during recording the Santana's debut album. During this era Santana had also began to use the Fender Twin, which was as well used on the debut and proceedingly at the recording sessions of Abraxas.

Personal life[link]

Carlos Santana became a naturalized American citizen in 1965.^[20]

On October 19, 2007, his wife of 34 years, Deborah, filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences".^[21]

Carlos Santana became engaged to Cindy Blackman, after proposing to her during a concert of the Universal Tone Tour at Tinley Park in Chicago, Illinois on July 9, 2010. The two were married in December 2010.^[22][23] They currently live in Marin County, California.

Discography[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

Santana's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Soul Sacrifice; The Carlos Santana Story Simon Leng 2000
• Space Between The Stars Deborah Santana 2004
• Rolling Stone "The Resurrection of Carlos Santana" Ben Fong Torres 1972
• New Musical Express "Spirit of Santana" Chris Charlesworth November 1973
• Guitar Player Magazine 1978
• Rolling Stone "The Epic Life of Carlos Santana" 2000
• Santana I – Sony Legacy Edition: liner notes
• Abraxas – Sony Legacy Edition: liner notes
• Santana III – Sony Legacy edition: liner notes
• Viva Santana – CBS CD release 1988; liner notes
• Power, Passion and Beauty – The Story of the Legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra Walter Kolosky 2006
• Best of Carlos Santana – Wolf Marshall 1996; introduction and interview

Further reading[link]

• Chipley Slavicek, Louise. Carlos Santana, Chelsea House Publications or Facts on File, 2006, 119 p., ISBN 0-7910-8844-8
• Leng, Simon. Soul Sacrifice: The Santana Story, Firefly-S.A.F. Publishing, 2000, 224 p., ISBN 0-946719-29-2. Republ. as Santana, Catedra, 2002, ISBN 84-376-1947-5
• McCarthy, Jim; Ron Sansoe, Ron, foreword by Carlos Santana. Voices of Latin Rock: The People and Events That Created This Sound, Omnibus Press, 2004 and Hal Leonard Publishing, 2005, 316 p., ISBN 0-634-08061-X
• Miller, Hal; Santana Debbie; Faulkner, John (ed.), w/ a foreword by Bill Graham. Santana: A Retrospective of the Santana Band's Twenty Years in Music, San Francisco Mission Cultural Center, 1987 or 1988, 50p., no ISBN. Includes a 4-p genealogical tree w/ the members's name for every Santana band from 1966.
• Molenda, Michael (ed.). Guitar Player Presents Carlos Santana, Backbeat Books, 2010, 124 p., ISBN 978-0-87930-976-3
• Remstein, Henna. Carlos Santana (Latinos in the Limelight), Chelsea House Publications, 2001, 64 p., ISBN 0-7910-6473-5
• Shapiro, Marc. Carlos Santana: Back on Top, St-Martin's Press, 2000 and 2002, 288 p., ISBN 0-312-28852-2
• Sumsion, Michael. Maximum Santana: The Unauthorized Biography of Santana, Chrome Dreams, 2003, ISBN 1-84240-107-6. A CD-audio biog
• Weinstein, Norman. Carlos Santana: A Biography, Greenwood Press, 2009, 152 p., ISBN 978-0-313-35420-5
• Woog, Adam. Carlos Santana: Legendary Guitarist, Lucent Books, 2006, 104 p., ISBN 1-59018-972-8

External links[link]

	Book: Santana
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Carlos Santana

• Official website
• Milagro Foundation
• Information about Carlos Santana
• Concerts online at Wolfgang's Vault

Gato Barbieri
Gato Barbieri in 1970
Background information
Born	(1932-11-28) November 28, 1932 (age 79) Rosario, Argentina
Genres	Jazz, Latin jazz, smooth jazz
Occupations	Musician, bandleader
Labels	Impulse! Records, A&M Records, Flying Dutchman Records, United Artists Records, ESP-Disk, Durium Records, Columbia Records

Leandro Barbieri (born November 28, 1932, in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, Argentina), known as Gato Barbieri (Spanish for "Barbieri the Cat"), is an Argentinean jazz tenor saxophonist and composer who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and is known for his Latin jazz recordings in the 1970s.^[1]

Biography[link]

Born to a family of musicians, Barbieri began playing music after hearing Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time". He played the clarinet and later the alto saxophone while performing with the Argentinean pianist Lalo Schifrin in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, while playing in Rome, he also worked with the trumpeter Don Cherry. By now influenced by John Coltrane's late recordings, as well as those from other free jazz saxophonists such as Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders, the warm and gritty tone, which would become his trademark sound, began to develop. In the late 1960s, he was fusing music from South America into his playing and contributed to multi-artist projects like Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill. His score for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris earned him a Grammy Award and led to a record deal with Impulse! Records.^[1]

By the mid-70s, he was recording for A&M Records and moved his music towards soul-jazz and jazz-pop with albums like Caliente! in 1976 (including his best known song, Carlos Santana's Europa) and the 1977 follow-up, Ruby Ruby, both produced by fellow musician and label co-founder, Herb Alpert.

Although he continued to record and perform well into the 1980s, the death of his wife Michelle led him to withdraw from the public arena. He returned to recording and performing in the late 1990s with the soundtrack for the film Seven Servants by Daryush Shokof (1996) and the album Qué Pasa (1997), playing music that would fall more into the arena of smooth jazz.

He received the UNICEF Award at the Argentinian Consulate in November 2009.^[2]

Discography[link]

As leader[link]

• Menorama (private pressing, 1960)
• In Search of the Mystery (1967)
• Obsession (rec. 1967, not released until later)
• The Third World (1969)
• El Pampero (1971)
• Fenix (1971)
• Last Tango in Paris (1972)
• Bolivia (1973)
• Under Fire (1973)
• Chapter One: Latin America (Impulse!, 1973)
• Chapter Two: Hasta Siempre (Impulse!, 1973)
• Chapter Three: Viva Emiliano Zapata (Impulse!, 1974)
• Yesterdays (1974)
• The Third World Revisited (1974)
• Chapter Four: Alive in New York (Impulse!, 1975)
• Confluence (1975)
• El Gato (1975)
• Caliente! (1976)
• I Grandi del Jazz (1976)
• Ruby Ruby (1977)
• Tropico (1978)
• Euphoria (1979)
• Bahia (1982)
• Apasionado (1983)
• Para Los Amigos (1984)
• Passion And Fire (1984)
• Qué Pasa (1997)
• Che Corazón (1999)
• The Shadow of The Cat (2002)
• New York Meeting (2010)

As sideman[link]

With Carla Bley and Paul Haines

• Escalator Over The Hill (1971)

With Dollar Brand

• Hamba Khale (aka Confluence)(1968)

With Gary Burton

• A Genuine Tong Funeral (RCA, 1967)

With Don Cherry

• Togetherness (1965)
• Complete Communion (Blue Note, 1966)
• Live at Jazzhus Montmartre 1966 (1966)
• Symphony for Improvisers (Blue Note, 1966)

With Charlie Haden

• Liberation Music Orchestra (Impulse!, 1969)

With the Jazz Composer's Orchestra

• The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (1968)

With Alan Shorter

• Orgasm (1968)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Gato Barbieri Music - The Official Gato Barbieri Website
• Gato Barbieri at Allmusic
• Gato Barbieri discography, news, bio from Music City
• Gato Barbieri was the inspiration for the design of the saxophonist Muppet 'Zoot'

Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier at Cannes in 2000
Born	Lars Trier (1956-04-30) 30 April 1956 (age 56) Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Occupation	Film director and screenwriter
Influenced by	Andrei Tarkovsky, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Douglas Sirk, David Lynch, Jørgen Leth, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Bertolt Brecht
Spouse	Cæcilia Holbek (m. 1987–1995)[1] Bente Frøge (m. 1997–present)

Lars von Trier (Danish pronunciation: [ˈlɑːs fʌn ˈtʁiːˀɐ]; born Lars Trier; 30 April 1956)^[2] is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement – although his own films have taken a variety of approaches. His work has frequently divided the critics.^[3]

Von Trier began making films at the age of eleven. Raised by a communist mother and a socialist father in an austere environment, he converted at the age of 30 to the Catholic Church. Von Trier suffers periodically from depression, as well as various fears and phobias, including an intense fear of flying. As he himself said in an interview, "Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking".^[4]. His first publicly released film was an experimental short called The Orchid Gardener (1977) and his first feature film came seven years later with The Element of Crime (1984). Among many other prizes, awards and nominations, he is the recipient of the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix, and the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Early life and career[link]

Lars Trier was born in Kongens Lyngby, north of Copenhagen, the son of Inger Trier (née Høst, 1915—1989). He had believed that his biological father was Ulf Trier (1907—1978), until his mother revealed to him on her deathbed that he had been conceived as a result of an affair she had with her employer, Fritz Michael Hartmann. His mother considered herself a communist, while his father was social democrat, and both were committed nudists,^[5] and the young Lars went on several childhood holidays to nudist camps. They regarded the disciplining of children as reactionary. Trier has noted that he was brought up in an atheist family, and that although Ulf Trier was Jewish, he was not religious. He did not discover the identity of his biological father until 1989. His parents did not allow much room in their household for "feelings, religion, or enjoyment", and also refused to make any rules for their children,^[6] with complex results for von Trier's personality and development.^[7] He began making his own films at the age of 11 after receiving a Super-8 camera as a gift and continued to be involved in independent moviemaking throughout his high school years.^[3]

In 1979, he was enrolled in the National Film School of Denmark.^[8] His peers at the film school nicknamed him "von Trier". The name is sort of an inside-joke with the von (German "of" or "from" used as a nobiliary particle), suggesting nobility and a certain arrogance, while Lars is a very common and Trier not an unusual name in Denmark.^[9] He reportedly kept the "von" name in homage to Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg, both of whom also added it later in life.^[10] During his time as a student at the school he made the films Nocturne (1980) and The Last Detail (Den sidste detalje, 1981),^[11] both of which won Best Film awards at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools,^[12] and he graduated with Images of a Relief (Befrielsesbilleder, 1982) in 1983.

Europe trilogy[link]

After graduation he began work on the very stylized crime drama, The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens element 1984), which won a technical award at the Cannes Film Festival.

His next film was Epidemic (1987), which was also shown at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. The film is partly a dark science fiction-tale of a future plague epidemic, and partly chronicles two filmmakers (played by Lars von Trier and screenwriter Niels Vørsel) preparing that film, with the two storylines ultimately colliding.

For television von Trier directed Medea (1988), which won the Jean d'Arcy prize in France. It was based on a screenplay by Carl Th. Dreyer and starred Udo Kier.

He completed the Europe-trilogy in 1991 with Europa (released as Zentropa in the U.S.), which won the Prix du Jury at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival^[13] and picked up awards at other major festivals.

In 1990 he also directed the music video for the worldwide hit "Bakerman" by Laid Back.^[14] This video was reused in 2006 by the English DJ and artist Shaun Baker who did a remake of Bakerman.

[edit] Zentropa and The Kingdom

In 1992 he and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen founded the movie production company Zentropa Entertainment, named after a train company in Europa, their most recent film at the time.^[8] The reason for doing this was to achieve financial independence and to have total creative control. The production company has produced many movies other than von Trier's own as well as television series. It is also the world's only mainstream film studio to have produced hardcore sex films:^{[citation needed]} Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999), HotMen CoolBoyz (2000) and All About Anna (2005).

In order to make money for his newly founded company,^[15] he made The Kingdom (Riget, 1994) and The Kingdom II (Riget II, 1997), a pair of miniseries recorded in the Danish national hospital, the name "Riget" being a colloquial name for the hospital known as Rigshospitalet (lit. The Kingdom's Hospital) in Danish. A projected third installment in the series was derailed by the 1998 death of Ernst-Hugo Järegård, who played Helmer, one of the major characters.

Dogme 95[link]

In 1995, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg presented their manifesto for a new cinematic movement which they called Dogme 95. It would however take a while before the first of these films appeared, and at this point many thought of the concept mainly as a radical idea with no future.^{[citation needed]}

In 1996, von Trier conducted an unusual theatrical experiment in Copenhagen involving 53 actors, which he titled Psychomobile 1: The World Clock. A documentary chronicling the project was directed by Jesper Jargil, and was released in 2000 with the title De Udstillede (The Exhibited).

Von Trier's next film, Breaking the Waves (1996), the first film in von Trier's 'Golden Heart Trilogy', won the Grand Prix at Cannes and featured Emily Watson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Its grainy images and hand-held photography pointed towards Dogme 95. The second was The Idiots (1998), nominated for a Palme d'Or, which he presented in person at the Cannes Film Festival notwithstanding his dislike of travelling. Dancer in the Dark (2000) was the final component of the trilogy.

As originator of the Dogme 95 concept, which has led to international interest in Danish film as a whole, he has inspired filmmakers all over the world.^[16] Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the Dogme 95 Manifesto and the "Vow of Chastity" together with their fellow Dogme directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen shared in 2008 the European Film Award European Achievement in World Cinema.

Explicit images[link]

Von Trier's use of sexually explicit images in The Idiots (1998) started a wave^{[citation needed]} of arthouse mainstream films with unsimulated sex, such as Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999), Baise-Moi (2000), Intimacy (2001), Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny (2003) and Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004).

In 1998, Lars von Trier also made history by having his company Zentropa be the world's first mainstream film company to produce hardcore pornographic films. Three of these films, Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999) and the adult/mainstream crossover-feature All About Anna (2005), were made primarily for a female audience, and were extremely successful in Europe, with the first two being directly responsible for the March 2006 legalizing of pornography in Norway.^[17]

Women too like to see other people having sex. What they don’t like is the endless close-ups of hammering bodyparts without a story. Lars von Trier is the first to have realised this and produced valuable quality porn films for women.

— Stern No. 40, 27 September 2007^[18]

Lars von Trier's initiative spearheaded a European wave of female-friendly porn films from directors such as Anna Span, Erika Lust and Petra Joy, while von Trier's company Zentropa was forced to abandon the experiment due to pressure from English business partners.^[19] In July 2009, women's magazine Cosmopolitan ranked Pink Prison as No. 1 in its Top Five of the best women’s porn, calling it the "role model for the new porn-generation".^[20] Lars von Trier would return to explicit images in his self-directed Antichrist (2009), exploring darker themes.

2000s[link]

In 2000, von Trier premiered a musical featuring Icelandic musician Björk, Dancer in the Dark. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.^[21] The song "I've Seen It All" (which Trier co-wrote) received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song.

The Five Obstructions (2003), made by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, is a documentary, but also incorporates lengthy sections of experimental films. The premise is that Lars von Trier challenges director Jørgen Leth, his friend and mentor, to remake his old experimental film The Perfect Human (1967) five times, each time with a different 'obstruction' (or obstacle) specified by von Trier.^[22]

He then directed two films in his announced 'U.S. trilogy': Dogville (2003), starring Nicole Kidman and Manderlay (2005), starring Bryce Dallas Howard in the same role – as Grace. Both films are extremely stylized, with the actors playing their parts on a nearly empty soundstage with little but chalk marks on the floor to indicate the sets. Both films had huge casts of major international actors (Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, etc.), and questioned various issues relating to American society, such as intolerance in Dogville and slavery in Manderlay.

Controversy erupted on the 2004 set for Manderlay when actor John C. Reilly walked off the Trollhättan, Sweden, set in late March. Reilly walked off the film when he learned that an upcoming scene involved the slaughter of a donkey for food. The film's producer says the animal—who was old and not expected to live much longer—was killed off-camera by a certified veterinarian, in accordance with Swedish law. Reilly was replaced by Zeljko Ivanek.^[23]

The U.S. was also the scene for Dear Wendy (2005), a feature film directed by von Trier's "Dogme-brother" Thomas Vinterberg from a script by von Trier. It starred Jamie Bell and Bill Pullman and dealt with gun worship and violence in American society.

In 2006, von Trier released a Danish-language comedy film, The Boss of it All. It was shot using a process that von Trier has called Automavision, which involves the director choosing the best possible fixed camera position and then allowing a computer to randomly choose when to tilt, pan or zoom.

It was followed by an autobiographical film, De unge år: Erik Nietzsche sagaen del 1 (2007), scripted by von Trier but directed by Jacob Thuesen, which tells the story of von Trier's years as a student at the National Film School of Denmark. It stars Jonatan Spang as von Trier's alter ego, called "Erik Nietzsche", and is narrated by von Trier himself. All main characters in the film are based on real people from the Danish film industry,^{[citation needed]} with the thinly veiled portrayals including Jens Albinus as director Nils Malmros, Dejan Čukić as screenwriter Mogens Rukov and Søren Pilmark in an especially unflattering portrayal as sex-obsessed school principal Henning Camre.

Von Trier's next feature film was a horror movie, Antichrist, about "a grieving couple who retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping a return to Eden will repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage; but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse". The film, which includes sexually explicit content, stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It premiered in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where the festival's jury honoured the movie by giving the Best Actress award to Gainsbourg.^[24] The Cannes Film Festival Ecumenical Jury, which gives prizes for movies that promote spiritual, humanist and universal values, also "honoured" the film with a special "anti-award"; a spokesman for the jury described it as "the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world."^[25] In 2010 the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on their website that the film production company Zentropa is reportedly making more revenue from suing movie pirates in Germany that have downloaded Antichrist illegally than from box office and DVD sales, demanding a payment of around 1,300 euros per download to avoid legal action.^[26]

2010s[link]

Von Trier's latest work is Melancholia, a psychological disaster drama;^[27] shot between 22 July and 8 September 2010 at Film i Väst's studios in Trollhättan, Sweden,^[28] and with exteriors in the area surrounding the Tjolöholm Castle.^[29] Magnolia Pictures has acquired the distribution rights for North America.^[30] The film was in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.^[31]

Von Trier announced that after finishing Melancholia he hopes to begin production of The Nymphomaniac, a two-part film about the sexual awakening of a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg).^[32] The director explained how he got the idea for the upcoming project: "my DP on [Melancholia], Manuel Claro, at one point voiced a surprising prejudice. He urged me not to fall into the trap that so many aging directors fall into – that the women get younger and younger and nuder and nuder. That's all I needed to hear. I most definitely intend for the women in my films to get younger and younger and nuder and nuder."^[33]

Phobias[link]

Von Trier suffers from multiple phobias, including an intense fear of flying.^[34] His fear of air travel frequently places severely limiting constraints on him and his crew, necessitating that virtually all of his films be shot in either Denmark or Sweden, even those set in the United States or other foreign countries. Von Trier has had a number of his films featured at the Cannes Film Festival over the course of his career, and each time has insisted on driving from Denmark to France for the festival and back.

On numerous occasions von Trier has also stated that he suffers from occasional depression which renders him incapable of performing his work and unable to fulfill social obligations.^[35]

Filming techniques[link]

Lars von Trier has said that "a film should be like a stone in your shoe". In order to create original art he feels that filmmakers must distinguish themselves stylistically from other films, often by placing restrictions on the filmmaking process. The most famous restriction is the cinematic "vow of chastity" of the Dogme95 movement with which he is associated, though only one of his films, The Idiots, is an actual Dogme 95 film. In Dancer in the Dark, jump shots^[36] and dramatically-different color palettes and camera techniques were used for the "real world" and musical portions of the film, and in Dogville everything was filmed on a sound stage with no set where the walls of the buildings in the fictional town were marked as lines on the floor.

Von Trier often shoots digitally and operates the camera himself, preferring to continuously shoot the actors in-character without stopping between takes. In Dogville he let actors stay in character for hours, in the style of method acting. These techniques often put great strain on actors, most famously with Björk during the filming of Dancer in the Dark. Often he uses the same regular group of actors in many of his films: some of his frequently used actors are Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier and Stellan Skarsgård.

He is heavily influenced by the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer^[37] and the film The Night Porter.^[38] He was so inspired by the short film The Perfect Human directed by Jørgen Leth that he challenged Leth to redo the short five times in feature film The Five Obstructions.^[39]

Trilogies[link]

Von Trier has on occasion referred to his films as falling into thematic and stylistic trilogies. This pattern began with his first feature film, marking the beginning of The Europa Trilogy, though he claims a trilogy was not initially planned, instead being applied to the films in retrospect. The Europe trilogy illuminated the traumas of Europe in the past and future. This trilogy includes The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991).

The Golden Heart trilogy was about naive heroines who maintain their 'golden hearts' despite the tragedies they experience. This trilogy consists of Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). While all three films are sometimes associated with the Dogme 95 movement, only The Idiots is a certified Dogme 95 film.

The USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy follows the character of Grace, and is set in a stylized American past. Von Trier has stated he was inspired to make a trilogy about the United States as a reaction to Americans at the Cannes film festival who said he had no right to make the Dancer in the Dark,^[8] which was often viewed as being critical of a country he has never been to (and has no intention of ever visiting, due to his phobia of travel); however, von Trier himself has stated in interviews he did not intend it to be a criticism of America, saying the film takes place in a "fictional America". Von Trier proposed the films as ‘a series of sermons on America’s sins and hypocrisy’^{[citation needed]}, inspired by the fact that American movie makers have made many movies about places across the world to which they have not travelled. All three movies will be shot in the same distinctive style, on a bare sound stage with no set and buildings marked by lines on the floor. This style is inspired by 1970s televised theatre. The trilogy will consist of Dogville (2003), Manderlay (2005) and the so far not produced Wasington.

The Kingdom (Riget) was planned as a trilogy of three seasons with 13 episodes in total, but the third season was not filmed due to death of star Ernst-Hugo Järegård shortly after completion of the second season.

Biological father[link]

In 1989, von Trier's mother revealed on her deathbed that the man whom he thought was his father was not, and that she had had a tryst with her former employer, Fritz Michael Hartmann (1909–2000),^[40] who descended from a long line of Roman Catholic classical musicians (his grandfather was Emil Hartmann, his great grandfather J.P.E. Hartmann, his uncles included Niels Gade and Johan Ernst Hartmann and thus Niels Viggo Bentzon was his cousin). She stated that she did this in order to give her son "artistic genes".^[41]

Until that point I thought I had a Jewish background. But I'm really more of a Nazi. I believe that my biological father's German family went back two further generations. Before she died, my mother told me to be happy that I was the son of this other man. She said my foster father had had no goals and no strength. But he was a loving man. And I was very sad about this revelation. And you then feel manipulated when you really do turn out to be creative. If I'd known that my mother had this plan, I would have become something else. I would have shown her. The slut!^[42]

During the German occupation of Denmark, Fritz Michael Hartmann worked as a civil servant and joined a resistance group (Frit Danmark), actively counteracting any pro-German and pro-Nazi colleagues in his department.^[43] Another member of this infiltrative resistance group was Hartmann's colleague Viggo Kampmann, who would later become prime minister of Denmark.^[44]

After four awkward meetings with his biological father, the man refused further contact.^[45] The revelations led von Trier to attempt to "erase" the connections with his stepfather by converting to Catholicism, and to rework his filmmaking into a style emphasizing "honesty".^[3]

I don't know if I'm all that Catholic really. I'm probably not. Denmark is a very Protestant country. Perhaps I only turned Catholic to piss off a few of my countrymen.^[42]

In 2009, he declared, "I'm a very bad Catholic. In fact I'm becoming more and more of an atheist."^[46]

Controversy at 2011 Cannes Film Festival[link]

On 19 May 2011, Cannes Film Festival's board of directors declared von Trier persona non grata for comments he made during a press conference for his film Melancholia the day before, an unprecedented move for the film festival.^[47][48] Responding to a question by The Times film critic Kate Muir about his German roots and his comments in a Danish film magazine about the Nazi aesthetic, von Trier claimed to have some sympathy for and understanding of Adolf Hitler,^[49] and then jokingly claimed to be a Nazi himself:^[50][51]

Von Trier at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. ... He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I'm not for the Second World War, and I'm not against Jews. ... I am of course very much for Jews, no not too much, because Israel is pain in the ass, but still how can I get out of this sentence. ...

— Press Conference for Melancholia, Cannes, 2011^[52][53]

Referring to the art of Nazi architect Albert Speer, von Trier added:

... he had some talent that was kind of possible for him to use during... Ok, I'm a Nazi.

Then, to Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell, who questioned whether Melancholia could be an answer to Hollywood blockbusters and asked von Trier if he could “envison doing a film on a grander scale than this”, von Trier replied:

On a grander scale? Yeah. Yeah that's what we Nazis, we have a tendency to do things on a greater scale. Yeah, maybe you could persuade me into the final solution with journalists. ...

Hours later, von Trier released a brief statement of apology about his comments at the press conference: "If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologise. I am not anti-semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi."^[54] The next day, the festival directors held an extraordinary meeting, deciding his remarks were "unacceptable, intolerable and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival. [...] The board of directors condemns these comments and declares Lars von Trier persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately."^[54]

Afterwards, von Trier held a news conference of his own in Danish. His first remark to the Danish journalists was: "If any of you journalists will beat me, so just do it. I will enjoy it." He went on to say that "The Holocaust is the worst crime that ever happened. I have nothing against Jews. I have a Jewish name, and all my children have Jewish names." He admitted that his remarks about the Nazis had been misguided, saying "It was really stupidly done and it was in the wrong forum. At the press conference with Danish journalists, there were no problems, but I do not think the international journalists understand my Danish humor." But he also said he was proud to have been kicked out of the Cannes festival: "I am proud to have been declared 'persona non grata'. It is perhaps the first time in cinematic history, it has happened. ... I think one reason is that French people treated the Jews badly during World War II. Therefore, it is a sensitive topic for them. I respect the Cannes festival very highly, but I also understand that they are very angry at me right now."^[55][54]

Speaking to other news outlets he said that his comments were "very sarcastic and very rude, but that's very Danish." He also added, "I don't sympathize with Hitler for one second."^[56]

In the October 2011 issue of GQ, von Trier is quoted in an interview saying he was not really sorry for the comments he made, only sorry he didn't make it clear that he was joking. He added, "I can't be sorry for what I said—it's against my nature."^[57] On 5 October 2011, von Trier was interviewed by police in Denmark about his remarks at Cannes. Afterwards, he announced that he had 'decided from this day forth to refrain from all public statements and interviews'.^[58]

Honours[link]

Von Trier was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog on 14 January 1997.^[59] Ten years later von Trier decided to hand back the prize, saying that the Danish royal family are just "simple people of bad quality".^[60]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Notes[link]