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• 
  

• 
  Argentina
  Argentina ⁱ/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
  Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
  A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.
  
  wn.com/Argentina
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  Australia
  Australia ( /əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
  For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.
  
  wn.com/Australia
• 
  Cadegliano-Viconago
  Cadegliano-Viconago is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Varese in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 60 km northwest of Milan and about 15 km north of Varese, on the border with Switzerland. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 1,760 and an area of 10.2 km².
  Cadegliano-Viconago borders the following municipalities: Cremenaga, Croglio (Switzerland), Cugliate-Fabiasco, Lavena Ponte Tresa, Marchirolo, Marzio, Monteggio (Switzerland), Montegrino Valtravaglia.
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  wn.com/Cadegliano-Viconago
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  Colombia
  Colombia ( /kəˈlʌmbiə/ kə-LUM-biə, or /kəˈlɒmbiə/ kə-LOM-biə), officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: República de Colombia [reˈpuβlika ðe koˈlombja]), is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the northwest by Panama; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Colombia has maritime borders with Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Colombia is the 26th largest country by area and the fourth largest in South America after Brazil, Argentina and Peru. With over 46 million people, Colombia is the 27th largest country in the world by population and has the second largest population of any Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. Colombia is a middle power, with the fourth largest economy in Latin America, and the third largest in South America. Colombia is famous for the production of coffee, flowers, emeralds, coal, and oil. All of these products make up the primary sector of economy.
  
  wn.com/Colombia
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  East Lothian
  East Lothian (Scots: Aest Lowden, Scottish Gaelic: Siorrachd Lodainn an Ear) (formerly Haddingtonshire) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and a lieutenancy Area. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Midlothian. Its administrative centre is Haddington, although its largest town is Musselburgh.
  The council area was created in 1996, under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, with the boundaries of the East Lothian district of the Lothian region. The district had been created in 1975, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and it consisted of the local government county of East Lothian, plus the burgh of Musselburgh and the Inveresk area, both formerly within the county of Midlothian.
  When abolished, for local government purposes, in 1975, the county of East Lothian bordered the county of Midlothian to the west, and the county of Berwick to the south. The county was called Haddingtonshire until 1921. At this time, border changes saw several villages on the outskirts of Edinburgh (e.g. Whitecraig) become part of East Lothian.
  
  wn.com/East_Lothian
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  Italy
  Italy ⁱ/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km² (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
  Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
  
  wn.com/Italy
• 
  Melbourne
  Melbourne ([ˈmelbən, -bn̩, ˈmæl-],rhotically  /ˈmɛlbərn/) is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2010, the greater geographical area had an approximate population of four million. Inhabitants of Melbourne are called Melburnians or Melbournians.
  The metropolis is located on the large natural bay known as Port Phillip, with the city centre positioned at the estuary of the Yarra River (at the northernmost point of the bay). The metropolitan area then extends south from the city centre, along the eastern and western shorelines of Port Phillip, and expands into the hinterland. The city centre is situated in the municipality known as the City of Melbourne, and the metropolitan area consists of a further 30 municipalities.
  Melbourne was founded in 1835 (47 years after the European settlement of Australia) by settlers from Launceston in Van Diemen's Land. It was named by governor Richard Bourke in 1837, in honour of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb—the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Melbourne was officially declared a city by Queen Victoria in 1847. In 1851, it became the capital city of the newly created colony of Victoria. During the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, it was transformed into one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities. After the federation of Australia in 1901, it then served as the interim seat of government of the newly created nation of Australia until 1927.
  
  wn.com/Melbourne
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  Monte Carlo, Monaco
  Monte Carlo (French: Monte-Carlo, Occitan: Montcarles, Monégasque: Monte-Carlu) is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco.
  Monte Carlo is widely known for its casino and its prominence. The permanent population is about 15,000 in Quarter. Monte Carlo quarter includes not only Monte Carlo proper where the Le Grand Casino is located, it also includes the neighbourhoods of Saint-Michel, Saint-Roman/Tenao, and the beach community of Larvotto. It is also one of Monaco's 10 wards, with a population of 3,500. It borders the French town of Beausoleil (sometimes referred to as Monte-Carlo-Supérieur).
  The "Monte Carlo" name is of Italian origin, meaning "Mount Charles" named after the Prince Charles III of Monaco during the time of his reign.
  Founded in 1866, Monte Carlo has a name of Italian origin meaning "Mount Charles", in honor of the then-reigning prince, Charles III of Monaco. The specific mountain is the escarpment at the foot of the Maritime Alps on which the town stands.
  The history of the area and the ruling Grimaldi family, however, dates back centuries. The port of Monaco is first mentioned in historical records as early as 43 BC, when Julius Caesar concentrated his fleet there while waiting in vain for Pompey. In the 12th century, the area fell under the sovereignty of Genoa, which was granted the entire coastline from Porto Venere to Monaco. After much conflict, the Grimaldis regained the rock in 1295, but suffered a significant amount of opposition in the ensuing years. In 1506 the Monegasques, under Lucien, Lord of Monaco, were under siege for some four months by the Genoan army, which had ten times the number of men. Monaco officially received full autonomy in 1524, but experienced difficulty retaining power, and on occasions briefly fell under the domination of Spain, Sardinia, and France.
  
  wn.com/Monte_Carlo,_Monaco
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  Opera
  Opera (English plural: operas; Italian plural: opere) is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble.
  Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence around 1597) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute, a landmark in the German tradition.
  
  wn.com/Opera
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  Philadelphia
  Philadelphia ( /ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə/) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States, with a population of 1,526,006 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Philadelphia is also the commercial, cultural, and educational center of the Delaware Valley, home to 6 million people and the country's fifth-largest metropolitan area. The Philadelphia metropolitan division consists of five counties in Pennsylvania and has a population of 4,008,994. Popular nicknames for Philadelphia are Philly and The City of Brotherly Love, the latter of which comes from the literal meaning of the city's name in Greek (Greek: Φιλαδέλφεια ([pʰilaˈdelpʰeːa], Modern Greek: [filaˈðelfia]) "brotherly love", compounded from philos (φίλος) "loving", and adelphos (ἀδελφός) "brother").
  
  wn.com/Philadelphia
• 
  Scotland
  Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Alba ([ˈalˠ̪apə]  listen (help·info))) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland constitutes over 790 islands including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.
  Edinburgh, the country's capital and second largest city, is one of Europe's largest financial centres. Edinburgh was the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, which transformed Scotland into one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, was once one of the world's leading industrial cities and now lies at the centre of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third largest city in Scotland, the title of Europe's oil capital.
  
  wn.com/Scotland
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  Spoleto
  Spoleto (Latin Spoletium) is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is 20 km (12 mi) S. of Trevi, 29 km (18 mi) N. of Terni, 63 km (39 mi) SE of Perugia; 212 km (132 mi) SE of Florence; and 126 km (78 mi) N of Rome.
  Spoleto was situated on the eastern branch of the Via Flaminia, which forked into two roads at Narni and rejoined at Forum Flaminii, near Foligno. An ancient road also ran hence to Nursia. The Ponte Sanguinario of the 1st century BCE still exists. The Forum lies under today's marketplace.
  Located at the head of a large, broad valley, surrounded by mountains, Spoleto has long occupied a strategic geographical position. It appears to have been an important town to the original Umbri tribes, who built walls around their settlement in the 5th century BC, some of which are visible today.
  The first historical mention of Spoletium is the notice of the foundation of a colony there in 241 BC; and it was still, according to Cicerocolonia latina in primis firma et illustris: a Latin colony in 95 BC. After the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 BC) Spoletium was attacked by Hannibal, who was repulsed by the inhabitants During the Second Punic War the city was a useful ally to Rome. It suffered greatly during the civil wars of Gaius Marius and Sulla. The latter, after his victory over Crassus, confiscated the territory of Spoletium (82 BC). From this time forth it was a municipium.
  
  wn.com/Spoleto

• 
  Aaron Copland
  Aaron Copland ( /ˌærən ˈkoʊplənd/; November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers". He is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and his Fanfare for the Common Man. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. However, he wrote music in different styles at different periods of his life: his early works incorporated jazz or avant-garde elements whereas his later music incorporated serial techniques. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.
  
  wn.com/Aaron_Copland
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  Agnes de Mille
  Agnes George de Mille (September 18, 1905 – October 7, 1993) was an American dancer and choreographer.
  Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors. She was the granddaughter of economist Henry George.
  She had a love for acting and originally wanted to be an actress, but was told that she was 'not pretty enough', so she turned her attention to dance. As a child, she had longed to dance, but dance at this time was considered more of an activity, rather than a viable career option, so her parents refused to allow her to dance. When de Mille's younger sister was prescribed ballet classes to cure her flat feet, de Mille joined her. De Mille lacked flexibility and technique, though, and did not have a dancer's body. Classical ballet was the most widely known dance form at this time, and de Mille's apparent lack of ability limited her opportunities. She taught herself from watching film stars on the set with her father in Hollywood; these were more interesting for her to watch than perfectly turned out legs, and she developed strong character work and compelling performances. One of de Mille’s earliest jobs, thanks to her father’s connections, was choreographing the film Cleopatra in 1934, though the dances were later cut from the film. She appeared in The Ragamuffin in 1916, which was her first job.
  
  wn.com/Agnes_de_Mille
• Alan Jay Lerner
  Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
  Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, a chain of dress shops. One of Lerner's cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Alan Jay Lerner was educated at Bedales School in England, The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, (where he wrote "The Choate Marching Song") and Harvard. He attended both Camp Androscoggin and Camp Greylock. At both Choate and Harvard, Lerner was a classmate of John F. Kennedy; at Choate they had worked together on the yearbook staff. Like Cole Porter at Yale and Richard Rodgers at Columbia, his career in musical theater began with his collegiate contributions, in Lerner's case to the annual Harvard Hasty Pudding musicals. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Lerner studied at Juilliard. While attending Harvard, he lost his sight in his left eye due to an accident in the boxing ring. In 1957, Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, another of Lerner's college classmates, collaborated on "Lonely Men of Harvard," a tongue-in-cheek salute to their alma mater.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Jay_Lerner
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  Alexander Schneider
  Alexander Schneider (21 October 1908 – 2 February 1993) was a violinist, conductor, and educator. Born to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Vilnius, Lithuania, he later moved to the United States as a member of the Budapest String Quartet. He died in Manhattan, New York City, at the age of 84.
  Alexander (Sasha) was born Abram Sznejder. At 13 he almost died of tetanus after cutting his knee in an accident. The tetanus distorted his joints and recovery was long and painful. Sasha left Vilnius in 1924 and joined his brother Mischa Schneider in Frankfurt, after securing a scholarship to study violin with Adolf Rebner, the principal violin tutor at the Hoch Conservatory.
  In 1927, Alexander became leader (concertmaster) of an orchestra in Saarbrücken. It was at this point that he changed his name. The orchestra director wanted him as leader but wanted a German-sounding name. Abram took Schneider as a surname because his brother Mischa had already selected it. Alexander appealed to him as a first name. In 1929 he was appointed leader of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra in Hamburg. In 1932, he lost this job as a result of the ongoing Nazi campaign against Jews - soon the time would come to leave Germany.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Schneider
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  Alexandra Danilova
  Aleksandra Dionisyevna Danilova (Russian: Александра Дионисьевна Данилова) (November 20, 1903–July 13, 1997) was a Russian-born prima ballerina who became an American citizen.
  Born in Peterhof, Russia, she trained at the Russian Imperial Ballet School in Leningrad (formerly and currently St. Petersburg). She was best known for being one of the few Russian-trained ballerinas to tour outside Russia. Her first professional post was as a member of the St. Petersburg's Imperial Ballet.
  In 1924, she and George Balanchine left Russia. They were soon picked up by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes; Danilova as a dancer, Balanchine as a choreographer. Danilova also toured for years with the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev, then with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo after Diaghilev's death. She was one of her generation's biggest stars, but Danilova was never good at handling her finances. Her last ballet performance was in 1957, but she made her Broadway musical comedy debut in 1958 in Oh, Captain!. She appeared in a single scene, a dance with the show's star, Tony Randall, which stole the show. Many have said it was the finest dance number in a post-war musical. Unfortunately, the show was a commercial failure and quickly closed. She was desperate when she again met Balanchine on the street in 1964. When he heard of her plight he instantly hired her to teach at the School of American Ballet. One of the most valued members of the faculty, she remained there until her retirement in 1989.
  
  wn.com/Alexandra_Danilova
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  Alvin Ailey
  Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 - December 1, 1989) was an American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring. Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance. Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988, just one year before his death.
  Ailey was born to his 17-year-old mother, Lula Elizabeth Ailey, in Rogers, Texas. His father abandoned the family when Alvin was only six months old. Like many African Americans living in Texas during the Great Depression, Ailey and his mother moved very often and she had a hard time finding work. Ailey grew up during a time of racial segregation, violence and lynchings against African-Americans. When Ailey was five, his 22-year-old mother was raped by a group of white men, leaving him afraid of whites. Early experiences in the Southern Baptist church and jook joints instilled in him a fierce sense of black pride that would later figure prominently in Ailey's signature works.'
  
  wn.com/Alvin_Ailey
• Alwin Nikolais
  Alwin Nikolais (November 25, 1910 in Southington, Connecticut – May 8, 1993) was an American choreographer.
  Nikolais studied piano at an early age and began his performing career as an organist accompanying silent films. As a young artist, he gained skills in scenic design, acting, puppetry and music composition. It was after attending a performance by the German dancer Mary Wigman that he was inspired to study dance. He received his early dance training at Bennington College from the great figures of the modern dance world: Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Louis Horst, and others.
  In 1940, in collaboration with Truda Kaschmann, his first modern dance teacher, Nikolais received a commission to create Eight Column Line, his first ballet. The work was presented at one of the events of Hartford social season that counted Salvador Dalí and Léonide Massine as honorary patrons and was well received.
  
  wn.com/Alwin_Nikolais
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  Antony Tudor
  Antony Tudor (4 April 1908 – 19 April 1987) was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer.
  Tudor, born William Cook, discovered dance accidentally. He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year. A precocious choreographer, at age twenty-three he created for her dancers Cross Garter'd, then Lysistrata, The Planets and other works at the little Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and his two most revolutionary, Jardin Aux Lilas (Lilac Garden) and Dark Elegies, before the age of thirty, himself dancing the main roles.
  In 1938, he founded the London Ballet with Rambert members, including his future life partner, Hugh Laing, Andreé Howard, Agnes de Mille, Peggy van Praagh, Maude Lloyd and Walter Gore, but with the onset of World War II, in 1940 was invited with them to New York, joining Richard Pleasant's and Lucia Chase's reorganized Ballet Theater. Chase's company was later to become the American Ballet Theatre, with which Tudor was closely associated for the rest of his life.
  
  wn.com/Antony_Tudor
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  Arthur Miller
  Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
  Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.
  Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing some 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community. (BBC TV Interview; Miller and Yentob; 'Finishing the Picture,' 2004) The family, including his younger sister Joan, lived on East 110th Street in Manhattan and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
  
  wn.com/Arthur_Miller
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  Arturo Toscanini
  Arturo Toscanini (Italian pronunciation: [arˈtuːro toskaˈniːni]; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. As music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra he became a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
  Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro, Leopoldo Miguez, the locally hired conductor, reached the summit of a two-month escalating conflict with the performers due to his rather poor command of the work, to the point that the singers went on strike and forced the company's general manager to seek a substitute conductor. Carlo Superti and Aristide Venturi tried unsuccessfully to finish the work. In desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera from memory. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was eventually convinced by the musicians to take up the baton at 9:15 P.M., and led a performance of the two-and-a-half hour opera. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth and sheer aplomb of this unknown conductor, then by his solid mastery. The result was astounding acclaim. For the rest of that season Toscanini conducted eighteen operas, all with absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19.
  
  wn.com/Arturo_Toscanini
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  Benny Goodman
  Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".
  In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
  Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.
  Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky (from Kaunas, Lithuania). His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.
  
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  Bette Davis
  Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
  After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
  
  wn.com/Bette_Davis
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  Beverly Sills
  Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.
  Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux.
  After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.
  
  wn.com/Beverly_Sills
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  Cary Grant
  Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English-American actor. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.
  Grant was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. Noted particularly for his work in comedy but also for drama, Grant's best-known films include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), To Catch A Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).
  Nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Grant was continually passed over, and in 1970 was given an Honorary Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards. Frank Sinatra presented Grant with the award, "for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues".
  
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  Charles Ives
  Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernistcomposer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original". Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music, and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones, foreshadowing many musical innovations of the 20th century.
  Sources of Ives' tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.
  Charles Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, the son of George Ives, a U.S. Army bandleader in the American Civil War, and his wife Mary Parmelee. A strong influence of Charles's may have been sitting in the Danbury town square, listening to his father's marching band and other bands on other sides of the square simultaneously. George Ives' unique music lessons were also a strong influence on Charles; George Ives took an open-minded approach to musical theory, encouraging his son to experiment in bitonal and polytonal harmonizations. It was from his father that Charles Ives also learned the music of Stephen Foster. Ives became a church organist at the age of 14 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .
  
  wn.com/Charles_Ives
• Charles Wuorinen
  Charles Peter Wuorinen (born June 9, 1938) is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works. In recent years he has dedicated attention to large-scale works for the stage, including collaborations with Salman Rushdie and Annie Proulx.
  Wuorinen was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. His father, John H. Wuorinen, was chairman of the History department at Columbia University and a noted scholar of Scandinavian affairs who also worked for the Office of Strategic Services and was the author of five books on his native Finland. His mother, Alfhild Kalijarvi, received her MA in Biology from Smith College. Wuorinen excelled academically, graduating from Trinity School (New York City) as valedictorian in 1956, and received his Master’s Degree in Music from Columbia University in 1963. Wuorinen’s parents discouraged his pursuing a career in music. Early supporters included Jacques Barzun and Edgard Varèse. Wuorinen is gay.
  
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  Ciro Menotti
  Ciro Menotti (22 January 1798 – 23 May 1831) was an Italian patriot.
  Menotti was born in Migliarina, near Carpi, then part of the Duchy of Modena and Reggio.
  A member of the Carboneria since 1817, he was a fervent democratic and patriot. From 1820 he held contacts with French intellectuals, with the goal to free Modena from the Austrian hegemony.
  Initially, duke Francis IV declared favorably for Menotti's claim, probably encouraged at the possibility of becoming its king in a future unified Northern Italy. Menotti organized a revolt in Modena for 3 February 1831 but, in a brusque volte-face, Francis denied him his support, and even, from his voluntary exile in Mantua, called the help of Austria and its allies.
  Menotti was arrested and, after a summary process, condemned to death by hanging. The sentence was executed in the Citadel of Modena.
  Afterwards Menotti become the idealized figure of patriotic martyr of the Italian Risorgimento. In 1880 the former Garibaldine officer Taddeo Grandi wrote a biography of him. A monument in Modena was built to Menotti in 1879, facing the former Grand Dukes palace.
  
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  Claudette Colbert
  Claudette Colbert (/koʊlˈbɛər/; 13 September 1903 – 30 July 1996) was an American actress of stage and film.
  Born in Paris, France, and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures. She established a successful film career with Paramount Pictures, and was recognized as one of the leading female exponents of screwball comedy. Colbert was the highest paid actress in American cinema during late 1930s, and later became a freelance performer. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her comedic performance in It Happened One Night (1934), and also received Academy Award nominations for her dramatic roles in Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944).
  Colbert's film career declined in the 1950s, and finished in 1961. Later in life, she returned to theater, except brief appearances in television. Her intermittent career lasted more than six decades. She moved in later life to Barbados, where she died at the age of 92, following a series of strokes.
  
  wn.com/Claudette_Colbert
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  Count Basie
  William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother first taught him piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and improvised to accompany silent films at a local theater in his town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them for years, until Moten's death in 1935.
  That year Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump," developed in 1935 in the early days of his band, and "April In Paris".
  
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  César Luis Menotti
  César Luis Menotti, known as El Flaco ("the slim one") (born November 5, 1938 in Rosario) is an Argentine football coach and former player, who as coach, won the 1978 FIFA World Cup for Argentina.
  Menotti grew up in the Fisherton district of Rosario, and played for local clubs before a scout for Rosario Central picked him up. He played in the youth divisions while attending high school (he graduated as a chemical technician) and was signed by Central. He also played for the Argentine national football team and Pelé's Santos FC.
  After retiring from play, he became friends with coach Miguel "Gitano" Juárez, with whom he traveled to the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. Fascinated by the Brazilian style of play led by his pal Pele, he decided to become a coach himself.
  His first significant success was achieving the 1973 Metropolitano title with Huracán, with a legendary attacking lineup: René Houseman, Miguel Brindisi, Roque Avallay, Carlos Babington, and Omar Larrosa, backed up by veteran midfielder Alfio Basile and left-back Jorge Carrascosa, known as el lobo ("the wolf"), who was the team captain.
  
  wn.com/César_Luis_Menotti
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  Danny Kaye
  Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminski; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.
  Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and — perhaps his most accomplished performance — The Court Jester (1956). His films were extremely popular, especially his bravura performances of patter songs and children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his many years of work with the organization.
  David Daniel Kaminski was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminski and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Ekaterinoslav two years before his birth; he was the only one of their sons born in the United States. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. His mother died when he was in his early teens. Clara enjoyed the impressions and humor of her youngest son and always had words of encouragement for them; her death was a great loss for young Danny.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Kaye
• Dominick Argento
  Dominick Argento (b. October 27, 1927, York, Pennsylvania) is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music. Among his most prominent pieces are the operas Postcard from Morocco, Miss Havisham's Fire, and The Masque of Angels, as well as the song cycles Six Elizabethan Songs and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf; the latter earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing, though none of Argento's music approaches the experimental avant garde fashions of the post World War II era. He is particularly well known for sensitive settings of complex, sophisticated texts.
  As a student in the 1950s, Argento divided his time between America and Italy, and his music is greatly influenced both by his instructors in the United States and his personal affection for Italy, particularly the city of Florence. May of Argento's works were written in Florence, where he spends a portion of every year. He has been a professor (and, more recently, a professor emeritus) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and he frequently remarks that he finds that city to be tremendously supportive of his work and that he thinks his musical development would have been impeded had he stayed in the high-pressure world of East Coast music. He was one of the founders of the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera), and indeed Newsweek once referred to the Twin Cities as "Argento's town."
  
  wn.com/Dominick_Argento
• Donald Martino
  Donald Martino (May 16, 1931 – December 8, 2005) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.
  Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola. Most of his mature works (including pseudo-tonal works such as Paradiso Choruses and Seven Pious Pieces) were composed using the twelve-tone method; his sound world more closely resembled the lyrical Dallapiccola's than his other teachers'.
  The pianist Easley Blackwood commissioned Martino's sonata Pianississimo, explicitly requesting that it be one of the most difficult pieces ever written. The resulting work is indeed of epic difficulty, but has been recorded several times. (Blackwood declined to perform it.)
  Martino presented Milton Babbitt with at least two musical birthday cards: B,a,b,b,it,t on his 50th birthday and Triple Concerto on his 60th.
  Martino, who taught at Yale University, the New England Conservatory of Music, Brandeis University, and Harvard University, won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1974 for his chamber work Notturno.
  
  wn.com/Donald_Martino
• Douglas Moore
  Douglas Stuart Moore (August 10, 1893 – July 25, 1969) was an American composer, educator, and author. He wrote music for the theater, film, ballet and orchestra, but his greatest fame is associated with his operas The Devil and Daniel Webster (1938) and The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956).
  Moore was born in Cutchogue, Long Island, New York, and his ancestors can be traced back to the first settlers arriving to Long Island. He was an alumnus of the Hotchkiss School and Yale University. Moore earned two degrees from Yale University, a B.A. in 1915, then a B.Mus in 1917.
  Moore served in the Navy as a lieutenant, after which he studied music with Nadia Boulanger, Vincent d'Indy and Ernest Bloch in Paris.
  Moore served as president of the National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1953 - 1956. He had been a member since 1941.
  In 1921, Moore went to Cleveland as Director of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art, during which he studied with Ernest Bloch at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and performed in plays at the Cleveland Playhouse. He made his debut as a composer and conductor in 1923 conducting his Four Museum Pieces with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1926, Moore joined the music faculty at Columbia University, where he remained until his retirement in 1962. He was an effective and appreciated teacher whose genial manner made him popular amongst students.
  
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  Elia Kazan
  Elia Kazan (IPA: [eˈlia kaˈzan]; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American director, producer, writer and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". He was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents. After studying acting at Yale, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theater in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Lee Strasberg, he introduced Method acting to the American stage and cinema as a new form of self-expression and psychological "realism". Kazan acted in only a few films, including City for Conquest (1940).
  Kazan introduced a new generation of unknown young actors to the movie audiences, including Marlon Brando and James Dean. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He became "one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century" after directing a string of successful films, including, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globes. Among the other actors he introduced to movie audences were Warren Beatty, Carroll Baker, Julie Harris, Andy Griffith, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynne, and Pat Hingle.
  
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  Elliott Carter
  Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music. His compositions, which have been performed all over the world, include orchestral and chamber music as well as solo instrumental and vocal works.
  He has been extremely productive in his later years, publishing more than 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100, and over 14 more since he turned 100 in 2008.
  Carter's father, Elliott Carter Sr., was a businessman and his mother was the former Florence Chambers. The family was well-to-do. As a teenager, he developed an interest in music and was encouraged in this regard by the composer Charles Ives (who sold insurance to his family). In 1924, a galvanized 15-year-old Carter was in the audience when Pierre Monteux conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the New York première of The Rite of Spring, according to a 2008 report. Carter was again in attendance (see below) at Carnegie Hall, on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2008, when the orchestra, now under the baton of James Levine, again performed the Stravinsky piece as part of its tribute to Carter. Although Carter majored in English at Harvard College, he also studied music there and at the nearby Longy School of Music. His professors included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst. He sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He did graduate work in music at Harvard, from which he received a Master's degree in music in 1932. He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger (as did many other American composers). Carter worked with Mlle Boulanger from 1932–35 and in 1935 he received a doctorate in music (D Mus) from the Ecole Normale in Paris. Later in 1935, he returned to the US where he wrote music for the Ballet Caravan.
  
  wn.com/Elliott_Carter
• Eugene Ormandy
  Eugene Ormandy (November 18, 1899 – March 12, 1985) was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.
  Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music (now the Franz Liszt Academy of Music) at the age of five. He gave his first concerts as a violinist at age seven and, studying with Jenő Hubay, graduated at 14 with a master's degree. In 1920, he obtained a university degree in philosophy. In 1921, he moved to the United States of America. Around this time Blau changed his name to "Eugene Ormandy," "Eugene" being the equivalent of the Hungarian "Jenő." Accounts differ on the origin of "Ormandy"; it may have either been Blau's own middle name at birth, or his mother's. He was first engaged by conductor Erno Rapee, a former Budapest friend and fellow Academy graduate, as a violinist in the orchestra of the Capitol Theatre in New York City, a 77-player ensemble which accompanied silent movies. He became the concertmaster within five days of joining and soon became one of the conductors of this group. Ormandy also made 16 recordings as a violinist between 1923 and 1929, half of them using the acoustic process.
  
  wn.com/Eugene_Ormandy
• Francis Menotti
  Francis "Chip" Menotti (born Francis Phelan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States in 1938) is an actor and former figure skater who was the president and artistic director of Festival dei Due Mondi.
  A son of Francis J. Phelan of Philadelphia, Phelan studied at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, and with Lee Strasberg in New York, and participated in the American Shakespeare Festival.
  In the mid-1960s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti began working frequently with Phelan, then a young actor and figure skater. Phelan began to appear in many of Gian Carlo Menotti's performances. He appeared as a mime in such Menotti operas as The Medium, The Saint of Bleecker Street and The Egg. The two developed a relationship, and in 1974, Gian Carlo Menotti legally adopted Phelan, known as Chip, as his son. Francis Phelan took the last name of Menotti.
  On August 24, 1985, at Yester Parish Church, in Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland, Francis Menotti married Malinda Fitler Murphy (1960–2005), the youngest daughter of Dr. James S. Murphy and his former wife, Happy, the widow of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Gian Carlo Menotti's nearby home, Yester House, was given to the couple as a wedding present.
  
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  Frank Sinatra
  Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra,  /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
  Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
  He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
  
  wn.com/Frank_Sinatra
• Frederick Loewe
  Frederick Loewe (/ˈloʊ/, originally German Friedrich (Fritz) Löwe [ˈløːvə]; June 10, 1901 – February 14, 1988), was an Austrian-American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on the long running Broadway musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot, with book and lyrics by Lerner, both of which were made into films.
  Loewe was born in Berlin, Germany, to Viennese parents Edmond and Rosa Loewe. His father was a noted Jewish operetta star who performed throughout Europe and in North and South America; he starred as Count Danilo in the original production of The Merry Widow.
  Frederick Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian cadet school from the age of five until he was thirteen. At an early age Loewe learned to play piano by ear and helped his father rehearse, and he began composing songs at age seven. He eventually attended a music conservatory in Berlin, one year behind virtuoso Claudio Arrau, and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d'Albert. He won the coveted Hollander Medal awarded by the school and gave performances as a concert pianist while still in Germany. At 13, he was the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic.
  
  wn.com/Frederick_Loewe
• Gail Kubik
  Gail Thompson Kubik (September 5, 1914, South Coffeyville, Oklahoma – July 20, 1984, Covina, California) was an American composer, motion picture scorist, violinist, and teacher.
  Kubik studied at the Eastman School of Music, the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago with Leo Sowerby, and Harvard University with Walter Piston and Nadia Boulanger. He taught violin and composition at Monmouth College and composition and music history at Columbia University (1937), Teachers College and Scripps College.
  Joining NBC Radio as staff composer in New York in 1940, he was music director for the Motion Picture Bureau at the Office of War Information, where, during World War II, he composed and conducted the music scores of motion pictures. He won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Symphony Concertante.
  He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.
  
  wn.com/Gail_Kubik
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  Gene Kelly
  Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly (August 23, 1912 - February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer. Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen.
  Although he is known today for his performances in Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris, he was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until this art form fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.
  Kelly was the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors, and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute; in 1999, the American Film Institute also numbered him 15th in their Greatest Male Stars of All Time list.
  
  wn.com/Gene_Kelly
• George Abbott
  George Francis Abbott (June 25, 1887 – January 31, 1995) was an American theater producer and director, playwright, screenwriter, and film director and producer whose career spanned more than nine decades.
  Abbott was born in Forestville, New York, and later moved to the town of Salamanca, which twice elected his father mayor. In 1898, his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he attended Kearney Military Academy. Within a few years, his family returned to New York, and he graduated from Hamburg High School in 1907. Four years later, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, where he wrote his first play, Perfectly Harmless, for the University Dramatic Club.
  Abbott then went to Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker. Under his tutelage, he wrote The Head of the Family, which was performed at the Harvard Dramatic Club in 1912. He then worked for a year as assistant stage manager at the Bijou Theatre in Boston, where his play The Man in the Manhole won a contest.
  
  wn.com/George_Abbott
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  George Burns
  George Burns (January 20, 1896 – March 9, 1996), born Naftaly Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.
  He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three quarters of a century. Beginning at the age of 79, Burns' career was resurrected as an amiable, beloved and unusually active old comedian, continuing to work until shortly before his death, in 1996, at the age of 100.
  Naftaly (late called Nathan) Birnbaum was the ninth of 12 children born to Louis and Dorah (nèe Bluth) Birnbaum, Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States from Romania. Burns was an active member of the First Roumanian-American congregation. His father was a substitute cantor at the local synagogue but usually worked as a coat presser. During the influenza epidemic of 1903, Lippe Birnbaum contracted the flu and died at the age of 47. Nattie (as he was then called) went to work to help support the family, shining shoes, running errands, and selling newspapers.
  
  wn.com/George_Burns
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  Giacomo Puccini
  Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒaːkomo putˈtʃiːni]; 22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his arias, such as "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi, "Che gelida manina" from La bohème, and "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, have become part of popular culture.
  Described by Encyclopædia Britannica Online as "one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism", he is regarded as one of the last major Italian opera composers. His repertoire is essentially rooted in verismo, or a post-Romantic operatic tradition and literary style. Whilst his work is essentially based on traditional late-19th century Italian opera, his music shows some influences from then-contemporary composers and movements such as Igor Stravinsky and Impressionism. Common themes within his operas include the important role, yet usually tragic end, of his heroines, as well as love; furthermore, there is a strong presence of exoticism in his operas, with several being set in faraway locations.
  
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  Gian Carlo Menotti
  Gian Carlo Menotti (pronounced [dʒan ˈkarlo meˈnɔtːi]) (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007) was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular taste. He won the Pulitzer Prize for two of them: The Consul (1950) and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1955). He founded the noted Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of the Two Worlds) in 1958 and its American counterpart, Spoleto Festival USA, in 1977. In 1986 he commenced a Melbourne Spoleto Festival in Australia, but he withdrew after three years.
  Born in Cadegliano-Viconago, Italy, near Lake Maggiore and the Swiss border, Menotti was the sixth of eight children of Alfonso and Ines Menotti, his father being a coffee merchant. Menotti began writing songs when he was seven years old, and at eleven wrote both the libretto and music for his first opera, The Death of Pierrot. He began his formal musical training at the Milan Conservatory in 1923.
  
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  Harry Belafonte
  Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. (born March 1, 1927) is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". Throughout his career he has been an advocate for civil rights and humanitarian causes and was a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush Administration.
  Born Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr., at Lying-in Hospital, Harlem, New York, Belafonte was the son of Melvine (née Love) – a housekeeper of Jamaican descent – and Harold George Bellanfanti, Sr., a Martiniquan who worked as a chef in the National Guard. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with his grandmother in her native country of Jamaica. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre. He subsequently received a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac.
  
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  Howard Hanson
  Howard Harold Hanson (October 28, 1896 – February 26, 1981) was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music. He won a Pulitzer Prize for one of his works and received numerous other awards.
  Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, to Swedish immigrant parents, Hans and Hilma (Eckstrom) Hanson. In his youth he studied music with his mother. Later, he studied at Luther College in Wahoo, receiving a diploma in 1911, then at the Institute of Musical Art, the forerunner of the Juilliard School, in New York City, where he studied with the composer and music theorist Percy Goetschius in 1914. Afterward he attended Northwestern University, where he studied composition with church music expert Peter Lutkin and Arne Oldberg in Chicago. Throughout his education, Hanson studied piano, cello and trombone. Hanson earned his BA degree in music from Northwestern in 1916, where he began his teaching career as a teacher's assistant.
  
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  Hume Cronyn
  Hume Blake Cronyn, OC (July 18, 1911 – June 15, 2003) was a Canadian actor of stage and screen, who enjoyed a long career, often appearing professionally alongside his second wife, Jessica Tandy.
  Hume Cronyn, one of five children, was born in London, Ontario, Canada, the son of Hume Blake Cronyn, Sr., a businessman and a Member of Parliament for London (after whom the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory and asteroid (12050) Humecronyn are named) and Frances Amelia (née Labatt), an heiress of the brewing company of the same name. His paternal grandfather, Verschoyle Cronyn, was the son of the Right Reverend Benjamin Cronyn, an Anglican cleric of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, who served as first bishop of the Anglican diocese of Huron, and founder of Huron College, from which grew the University of Western Ontario. His great-uncle, Benjamin, Jr., was both a prominent citizen and early mayor of London, Ontario, but was later indicted for fraud and fled to Vermont; during his tenure in London he built a mansion called Oakwood, which currently serves as the head office of the Info-Tech Research Group. Cronyn was also a cousin of Canadian-born theater producer, Robert Whitehead, and a first cousin of the Canadian-British artist Hugh Verschoyle Cronyn GM (1905–1996).
  
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  Isaac Stern
  Isaac Stern (Ukrainian: Исаак Стерн, Russian: Айзек Стерн; July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was a Ukrainian-born violinist and conductor. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.
  Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother, then in 1928 enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."
  
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  James Cagney
  James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing tough guys. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its 50 Greatest American Screen Legends.
  In his first professional acting performance, he danced dressed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a hoofer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.
  
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  James Stewart
  James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime Achievement award. He was a major MGM contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II and Vietnam War veteran, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.
  James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. Stewart's parents were of Scottish descent and Presbyterians. His maternal ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. The eldest of three children (he had two younger sisters, Virginia and Mary), he was expected to continue his father's business, which had been in the family for three generations. His mother was an excellent pianist but his father discouraged Stewart's request for lessons. But when his father accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, young Stewart quickly learned to play the instrument, which became a fixture off-stage during his acting career. As the family grew, music continued to be an important part of family life.
  
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  Jessica Tandy
  Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy (June 7, 1909 - September 11, 1994) was an English-American stage and film actress.
  She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among other roles, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
  She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katherine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea). Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (1977, playing in the two-hander play opposite Hume Cronyn). Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.
  
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• Joel Honig
  Joel Honig (October 13, 1936-September 25, 2003) was an American music critic, copy editor, writer, and pianist. He is best remembered for his extensive contributions to Opera News magazine.
  Born in Chicago, Illinois, Honig studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music before entering Columbia University where he was part of a social group of young men that included composer John Corigliano and theatre director Michael Kahn. During his junior year he studied French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. He was a close friend of playwright William M. Hoffman whom he met at a bar in Greenwich Village in the 1950s. Hoffman said of the event, "I was dead drunk, reciting a Jean Genet poem in French at the top of my lungs, and Joel came up to me and finished the poem. And we became fast friends."
  In the late 1950s Honig served as the personal secretary of composer Gian Carlo Menotti, notably working with him when he founded the Festival dei Due Mondi in 1958. Around that same time he began working as a freelance writer and music critic. He notably was a regular contributor to Opera News magazine for 40 years. In the 1960s, he served as the rehearsal accompanist and concert pianist for the Harkness Ballet and also worked in the studios of many of the era’s leading ballet instructors. He even attempted, unsuccessfully, to teach Rebekah Harkness to play the piano. He later worked for 19 years as a copy editor for Charles Scribner's Sons. He barely contained a fantastic intellect within a searing wit. There were few subjects, and few people, he had no opinion about. A longtime friend of Raymond Guy Wilson, Juilliard graduate also of Harkness House, and the Director of the National Academy of Dance and Music. He led a life of loyalty to old friends, contempt of stupidity, and grudging hope in the improvement of Mankind. Quote: "Expectations are very limited."
  
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• Karel Husa
  Karel Husa (born August 7, 1921 in Prague) is a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition. In 1954 he came to the United States and became an American citizen in 1959.
  Husa learned to play the violin and the piano in early childhood and, after passing his final examination at high school, he enrolled in the Prague Conservatory in 1941 where he studied in a class of Jaroslav Řídký, and attended courses in conducting led by Metod Doležil and Pavel Dědeček.
  After the end of the Second World War, Husa was admitted to the graduate school of the Prague Academy, where he attended courses led by Řídký and graduated in 1947. At the same time, he decided to continue his studies of composition and conducting in Paris. In 1947 he studied with Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger. He studied conducting with Jean Fournet, Eugène Bigot and André Cluytens. After finishing his courses in conducting at École Normale de Musique de Paris and at Conservatoire de Paris he embarked on a career during which he has conducted the world's leading orchestras and participated in many major projects. He divided his time between composing and conducting, taking an ever more active part in Parisian and international musical life.
  
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  Katherine Dunham
  Katherine Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, and company director as well as an author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."
  During her heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States, where the Washington Post called her "dance's Katherine the Great." For almost thirty years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than ninety individual dances. Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology.
  Katherine Mary Dunham was born in June 1909 in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a village about fifteen miles west of Chicago. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Katherine was four years old. After her father's remarriage a few years later, the family moved to a predominately white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois, where Mr. Dunham ran a dry cleaning business.
  
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  Lena Horne
  Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.
  Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
  Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.
  
  wn.com/Lena_Horne
• Leo Sowerby
  Leo Sowerby (May 1, 1895–July 7, 1968), American composer and church musician, was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1946, and was often called the “Dean of American church music” in the early to mid 20th century.
  Sowerby was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he began to compose at the age of ten. Early recognition came when his violin concerto was premiered in 1913 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Stalford & Meckna 2001). In 1921 he was awarded the Rome Prize (from the American Academy in Rome), the first composer to receive this. In addition he received the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his cantata, the Canticle of the Sun, written in 1944 (Stalford & Meckna 2001).
  In 1927 he became organist-choirmaster at St James’s Episcopal Church, Chicago, which was consecrated as a cathedral while he was there (1955). Previously, Sowerby was associate organist at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago (1919).
  In 1962, after his retirement from St James’s, he was called to Washington National Cathedral to become the founding director of the College of Church Musicians, a position he held until his death in 1968 (Stalford & Meckna 2001). He died in Port Clinton, Ohio, while at Camp Wa-Li-Ro, in Put-in-Bay, Ohio, the summer choir camp where he had taught for many years.
  
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• Leon Kirchner
  Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.
  Kirchner was born in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles with Ernest Bloch and Arnold Schoenberg. Kirchner began graduate studies with Bloch at the University of California, Berkeley and before completing his degree served in the military and studied with Roger Sessions in New York. He was Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music at Harvard from 1961 to 1991.
  While Kirchner lived in California, his piano teacher introduced him to the composer Ernst Toch. Kirchner also took a composition course with Schoenberg at the University of California at Los Angeles. Having won UCLA's highest musical award, the Prix de Paris, he had hoped to study in Europe, but was prevented from doing so by the outbreak of war there, and instead went to New York for private study with Sessions. Kirchner's musical style is generally linear, chromatic, and rhythmically irregular; it is heavily influenced by Schoenberg but does not employ the twelve-tone technique.
  
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  Leonard Bernstein
  Leonard Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstaɪn/ US dict: bûrn′·stīn; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
  His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, as well as Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town and his own Mass.
  Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. In addition, he was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.
  As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and commercial success of West Side Story.
  
  wn.com/Leonard_Bernstein
• Leonard Kastle
  Leonard Gregory Kastle (11 February 1929 – May 18, 2011) was an opera composer, librettist, and director, though he is best known as the writer/director of The Honeymoon Killers, his only venture into the cinema, for which he did all his own research. He was educated at the Curtis Institute of Music studying under opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti and also the Juilliard School. He was an adjunct member of the SUNY Albany music faculty.
  His operas include Deseret (1961), on a libretto by Anne Howard Bailey about Brigham Young, which he directed for the NBC Opera Theatre. He wrote in a Romantic style that he believed the music academy did not hold in high regard as something for contemporary composers to do. His favorite composer was Gustav Mahler, whom he believed was not at all respected when he was in music school.
  In 1956, Kastle composed a thirteen-minute "made-to-measure" opera, titled The Swing, for two singers, a speaking part, and piano accompaniment. It was commissioned by and broadcast on the NBC television network on Sunday, June 10, 1956, at noon. He also wrote The Pariahs, about the sinking of the whaling ship Essex, a trilogy of operas about the Shakers known under the collective title The Passion of Mother Ann: A Sacred Festival Play, a children's opera called Professor Lookalike and the Children, a piano concerto, sonatas for piano and violin, and three unproduced screenplays, Wedding at Cana, Change of Heart, and Shakespeare's Dog. In a 2003 interview for the Criterion Collection, he said that no producer wanted Wedding at Cana, just another Honeymoon Killers, which he did not want to do.
  
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  Leontyne Price
  Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.
  One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant", "soaring" and "a Price beyond pearls", as well as "genuinely buttery, carefully produced but firmly under control", with phrases that "took on a seductive sinuousness." Time magazine called her voice "Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C."
  A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric") soprano, she was considered especially well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her voice ranged from A-flat below middle C to the E above high C. (She said she reached F "in the shower.")
  After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals and orchestral concerts for another 12 years.
  
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• Leslie Bassett
  Leslie Bassett (born January 22, 1923 in Hanford, California) is an American composer of classical music, and the University of Michigan’s Albert A. Stanley Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Composition. Bassett received the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Variations for Orchestra.
  He studied composition with Homer Keller at the University of Michigan.
  He was a member of the Gamma Pi chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at California State University-Fresno, 1942.
  His notable students include John Anthony Lennon, Andy Brick, John Burke, Evan Chambers, Robin Cox, Gabriela Lena Frank, Joseph Lukasik, Frank Ticheli, Mark Kilstofte, and Richard Toensing.
  
  
  
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  Lillian Gish
  Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987. She was called "The First Lady of American Cinema".
  She was a prominent film star of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly associated with the films of director D.W. Griffith, including her leading role in Griffith's seminal Birth of a Nation (1915). Her sound-era film appearances were sporadic, but included memorable roles in the controversial western Duel in the Sun (1946) and the offbeat thriller Night of the Hunter (1955). She did considerable television work from the early 1950s into the 1980s, and closed her career playing, for the first time, opposite Bette Davis in the 1987 film The Whales of August.
  The American Film Institute (AFI) named Gish 17th among the greatest female stars of all time. She was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1971, and in 1984 she received an AFI Life Achievement Award.
  
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  Lucille Ball
  Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu, which produced many successful and popular television series.
  Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
  
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  Maria Callas
  Maria Callas, Commendatore OMRI (Greek: Μαρία Κάλλας) (December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts. An extremely versatile singer, her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini; further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her remarkable musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina.
  Born in New York City and raised by an overbearing mother, she received her musical education in Greece and established her career in Italy. Forced to deal with the exigencies of wartime poverty and with myopia that left her nearly blind onstage, she endured struggles and scandal over the course of her career. She turned herself from a heavy woman into a svelte and glamorous one after a mid-career weight loss, which might have contributed to her vocal decline and the premature end of her career. The press exulted in publicizing Callas's allegedly temperamental behaviour, her supposed rivalry with Renata Tebaldi and her love affair with Aristotle Onassis. Her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press. However, her artistic achievements were such that Leonard Bernstein called her "The Bible of opera"; and her influence was so enduring that, in 2006, Opera News wrote of her: "Nearly thirty years after her death, she's still the definition of the diva as artist—and still one of classical music's best-selling vocalists."
  
  wn.com/Maria_Callas
• Mario Davidovsky
  Mario Davidovsky (born March 4, 1934) is an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the US, where he lives today. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape.
  Davidovsky was born in Médanos, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, a town nearly 600 km southwest of the city of Buenos Aires and close to the seaport of Bahía Blanca. He is a first-generation Argentinian, his family having emigrated there from Lithuania.^{[citation needed]} Along with the surrounding South American culture, including a strong agrarian economy and Catholic faith, his family's European values and Jewish history shaped his growth and education.^{[citation needed]} At seven he began his musical studies on the violin. At thirteen he began composing. He studied composition and theory under Guillermo Graetzer at the University of Buenos Aires, from which he eventually graduated.
  
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  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was also the mother of actor Larry Hagman.
  Mary Martin's life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and happy. She had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an instinctive ear for recreating musical sounds.
  Martin's father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer and her mother, Juanita Presley, was a violin teacher. Although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy. Her birth was an event as all of the neighbors gathered around Juanita's bedroom window, waiting for the raising of a curtain to signal the baby’s arrival.
  
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  Merce Cunningham
  Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance. He is also notable for his frequent collaborations with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage and David Tudor, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman, designer Romeo Gigli, and architect Benedetta Tagliabue. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.
  As a choreographer, teacher and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies, and they include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d’Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Floanne Ankah and Jonah Bokaer.
  
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  Myrna Loy
  Myrna Loy (August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). Her successful pairing with William Powell resulted in 14 films together, including five subsequent Thin Man films. In 1937, she was crowned the "Queen of Hollywood" by a nationwide poll.
  Loy was born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, Montana, to Adelle Mae (née Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams, in nearby Radersburg. Her paternal grandparents were natives of Wales, and her maternal grandparents were Swedish and Scottish. Her first name came from a train station whose name her father liked. Her father was also a banker and real estate developer and the youngest man ever elected to the Montana state legislature. Her mother studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.
  
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• Nathan Milstein
  Nathan Mironovich Milstein (January 13, 1904 [O.S. December 31, 1903] – December 21, 1992) was a Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.
  Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and for works from the Romantic period. He was also known for his long career: he performed at a high level into his mid 80s, retiring only after suffering a broken hand.
  He was born in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), the fourth child of seven, to a middle-class Jewish family with virtually no musical background. It was a concert by the 11-year-old Jascha Heifetz that inspired his parents to make a violinist out of Milstein. As a child of seven, he started violin studies (as suggested by his parents, to keep him out of mischief) with the eminent violin pedagogue Pyotr Stolyarsky, also the teacher of renowned violinist David Oistrakh.
  When Milstein was 11, Leopold Auer invited him to become one of his students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Milstein reminisced:
  
  wn.com/Nathan_Milstein
• Norman Dello Joio
  Norman Dello Joio (January 24, 1913 – July 24, 2008) was an American composer.
  He was born Nicodemo DeGioio in New York City to Italian immigrants. He began his musical career as organist and choir director at the Star of the Sea Church on City Island in New York at age 14. His father was an organist, pianist, and vocal coach and coached many opera stars from the Metropolitan Opera. He taught Norman piano starting at the age of four. In his teens, Norman began studying organ with his godfather, Pietro Yon, who was the organist at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. In 1939, he received a scholarship to the Juilliard School, where he studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar.
  While he was a student, he worked as organist at St. Anne's Church, but he soon decided that he didn't want to make his living as an organist. In 1941, he began studying with Paul Hindemith, who encouraged him to follow his own lyrical bent, rather than sacrificing it to the atonal systems then popular.
  By the late forties, he was considered one of the foremost American composers.^{[citation needed]} He received numerous awards and much recognition. He was a prolific composer in a variety of genres, but is perhaps best known for his choral music. Perhaps Dello Joio's most famous work in the wind ensemble category is his Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn, which was composed for the Michigan State University Wind Ensemble and has since been performed thousands of times across the world. Dello Joio also wrote several pieces for high school and professional string orchestra, including the difficult piece Choreography: Three Dances for String Orchestra. In 1948 he became associated with the dancer Martha Graham, for whom he wrote several works, including Diversion of Angels and Seraphic Dialogue, a recomposition for chamber orchestra of his Symphony: The Triumph of Saint Joan.
  
  wn.com/Norman_Dello_Joio
• 
  Perry Como
  Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como (May 18, 1912 – May 12, 2001) was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records for Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show, which set the standards for the genre and proved to be one of the most successful in television history. Como was seen weekly on television from 1949 to 1963, then continued hosting the Kraft Music Hall variety program on a monthly basis until 1967. His television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world. Also a popular recording artist, Perry Como produced numerous hit records with record sales so high the label literally stopped counting at Como's behest. His combined success on television and popular recordings was not matched by any other artist of the time. Como's appeal spanned generations and he was widely respected for both his professional standards and the conduct in his personal life. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Composer Ervin Drake said of him, "... [o]ccasionally someone like Perry comes along and won't 'go with the flow' and still prevails in spite of all the bankrupt others who surround him and importune him to yield to their values. Only occasionally."
  
  wn.com/Perry_Como
• 
  Pietro Mascagni
  Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjɛːtro anˈtɔːnjo ˈsteːfano masˈkaɲɲi]; December 7, 1863 – August 2, 1945) was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music. Though it has been stated that Mascagni, like Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, this is inaccurate. L'amico Fritz and Iris have been popular in Europe since their respective premieres. In fact, Mascagni himself claimed that at one point Iris was performed in Italy more often than Cavalleria (cf. Stivender).
  Mascagni wrote fifteen operas, an operetta, several orchestral and vocal works, as well as songs and piano music. He enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, both as a composer and conductor of his own and other people's music. If he never repeated the international success of Cavalleria, it was probably because Mascagni refused to copy himself. The variety of styles in his operas — the Sicilian passion and warmth of Cavalleria, the exotic flavor of Iris, the idyllic breeze that ventilates the charming L'amico Fritz and Lodoletta, the Gallic chiaroscuro of Isabeau, the steely, Veristic power of Il piccolo Marat, the overripe postromanticism of the lush Parisina — demonstrate a versatility that surpasses even that of Puccini.
  
  wn.com/Pietro_Mascagni
• 
  Plácido Domingo
  Plácido Domingo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈplaθiðo ðoˈmiŋɡo]; born 21 January 1941), born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range. In March 2008, he debuted in his 128th opera role, and as of July 2011, his 136 roles give Domingo more roles than any other tenor.
  One of The Three Tenors, he has also taken on conducting opera and concert performances, and he is the General Director of the Los Angeles Opera in California.
  Plácido Domingo was born on January 21, 1941, in the distrito de Retiro section of Madrid, Spain, and in 1949 moved to Mexico with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. He studied piano at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.
  In 1957, Domingo made his first professional appearance, performing with his mother in a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. He made his opera debut performing in Manuel Fernández Caballero's zarzuela, Gigantes y cabezudos, singing a baritone role. At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, taking baritone roles and as an accompanist for other singers. Among his first performances was a minor role in the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady where he was also the assistant conductor and assistant coach. The company gave 185 performances, which included a production of Lehár's The Merry Widow in which he performed alternately as either Camille or Danilo.
  
  wn.com/Plácido_Domingo
• Quincy Porter
  Quincy Porter (February 7, 1897 – November 12, 1966) was an American composer and teacher of classical music.
  Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he went to Yale University where his teachers included Horatio Parker and David Stanley Smith. Porter received two awards while studying music at Yale: the Osborne Prize for Fugue, and the Steinert Prize for orchestral composition. He performed the winning composition, a violin concerto, at graduation. Porter earned two degrees at Yale, an A.B. from Yale College and a Mus. B from the music school.
  After graduation he spent a year in Paris, studying at Schola Cantorum, then went to New York where he studied with Ernest Bloch and Vincent d'Indy. In 1923 Porter joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music where he was later appointed head of the Theory Department. He remained there until 1928 when he resigned to focus on composition. Returning to Paris on a Guggenheim Fellowship Porter began composing in earnest. During his 3 years in Paris he composed Blues Lointains (1928), the Suite for Viola Alone (1930), his 3rd String Quartet (1930), 4th String Quartet (1931), his 2nd Violin Sonata (1929), and his Piano Sonata (1930).
  
  wn.com/Quincy_Porter
• 
  Ray Charles
  Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company.Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”
  The influences upon his music were mainly jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and country artists of the day such as Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Louis Armstrong. His playing reflected influences from country blues and barrelhouse, and stride piano styles.
  Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004, and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"
  
  wn.com/Ray_Charles
• 
  Richard Wagner
  Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( /ˈvɑːɡnər/; German pronunciation: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ]; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and polemicist primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as he later called them). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Perhaps the two best-known extracts from his works are the Ride of the Valkyries from the opera Die Walküre, and the Wedding March (Bridal Chorus) from the opera Lohengrin.
  Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works such as The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser which were broadly in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner transformed operatic thought through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"). This would achieve the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts and was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realized this concept most fully in the first half of the monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, his thoughts on the relative importance of music and drama were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional operatic forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Wagner
• Roger L. Stevens
  Roger Lacey Stevens (March 12, 1910 – February 2, 1998) was an American theatrical producer, arts administrator, and a real estate executive. He is the founding Chairman of both the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1961), and National Endowment for the Arts (1965).
  Born in Detroit, Michigan, Stevens was educated at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut and at the University of Michigan. He produced more than 100 plays and musicals over his career, including West Side Story, Bus Stop, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1971, he received Special Tony Award for his body of work.
  Stevens was the General Administrator of the Actors Studio as well as one of the producers of the Playwrights Company, a member of the board of the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), and one of the members of a Broadway producing company he founded in 1953 with Robert Whitehead, and Robert Dowling. In 1961, he was asked by President John F. Kennedy to help establish a Natural Cultural Center, and became Chairman of Board of Trustees of what was eventually named the Kennedy Center from 1961 to 1988.
  
  wn.com/Roger_L._Stevens
• Rosario Scalero
  Natale Rosario Scalero (24 December 1870 in Moncalieri - 25 December 1954 in Ivrea) was an Italian violinist, music teacher and composer.
  By the age of six, Scalero was under the tutelage of Pietro Bertazzi, a violinist, musical instrument maker and instructor at the Conservatorio St. Cecilia in Torino. In 1881, Scalero entered the Liceo Musicale di Torino under Luigi Avalle. At the age of 15, Scalero came under the tutelage of César Thomson. Scalero appears to have returned to his home at Moncalieri for a time for health reasons, before returning to Torino (Turin) to study with Camillo Sivori through 1889, appearing during this time with the Sivorni Quartet.
  In 1891, Scaleri made his debut as a recitalist in Leipzig, following which he performed in Milan, Rome, London, and throughout Europe to critical acclaim. In 1895, Scaleri went to London to study and assist violinist August Wilhelmj (concert master of the world premiere of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs in Bayreuth). In 1900 he left London for Vienna, where he became a composition student of Eusebius Mandyczewski.
  
  wn.com/Rosario_Scalero
• Rudolf Serkin
  Rudolf Serkin (March 28, 1903 – May 8, 1991), was a Bohemian-born pianist.
  Serkin was born in Eger, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Cheb, Czech Republic) to a Russian-Jewish family.
  Hailed as a child prodigy, he was sent to Vienna at the age of 9, where he studied piano with Richard Robert and, later, composition with Joseph Marx, making his public debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. From 1918 to 1920 he studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg and participated actively in Schoenberg's Society for the Private Performance of Music. He began a regular concert career in 1920, living in Berlin with the German violinist Adolf Busch and his family, which included a then 3-year-old daughter Irene, whom Serkin would marry 15 years later. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Serkin performed throughout Europe both as soloist and with Busch and the Busch Quartet. With the rise of Hitler in Germany in 1933, Serkin and the Busches (who were not Jewish but who vehemently opposed the Nazi regime) left Berlin for Basel, Switzerland.
  
  wn.com/Rudolf_Serkin
• 
  Sammy Davis, Jr.
  Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities.
  Primarily a dancer and singer, Davis started as a child vaudevillian who became known for his performances on Broadway and Las Vegas. He went on to become a world famous recording artist, television and film star. Davis was also a member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack".
  At the age of three Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and "uncle" as the Will Mastin Trio, toured nationally, and after military service, returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, he lost his left eye in an automobile accident.
  His film career began as a child in 1933. In 1960 he appeared in the first Rat Pack film, Ocean's 11. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956's Mr Wonderful, Davis returned to the stage in 1964's Golden Boy, and in 1966 had his own TV variety show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. Davis' career slowed in the late sixties, but he had a hit record with "The Candy Man", in 1972, and became a star in Las Vegas earning him the nickname Mister Show Business.
  
  wn.com/Sammy_Davis,_Jr.
• 
  Samuel Barber
  Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. He is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century; music critic Donal Henahan stated that "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." His Adagio for Strings (1936) has earned a permanent place in the concert repertory of orchestras. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music, for his opera Vanessa (1956–57) and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1962). Also widely performed is his Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947), a work for soprano and orchestra, which sets a prose text by James Agee. Unusual among contemporary composers, nearly all of his compositions have been recorded.
  Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Marguerite McLeod (née Beatty) and Samuel Le Roy Barber. He was born into a comfortable, educated, social, and distinguished Irish-American^{[citation needed]} family. His father was a physician, and his mother was a pianist. His aunt, Louise Homer, was a leading contralto at the Metropolitan Opera and his uncle, Sidney Homer, was a composer of American art songs. Louise Homer is known to have influenced Barber's interest in voice. Through his aunt, Barber had access to many great singers and songs.
  
  wn.com/Samuel_Barber
• Shirley Verrett
  Shirley Verrett (May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010) was an African-American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles i.e. soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s, particularly well known for singing the works of Verdi and Donizetti.
  Born into an African-American family of devout Seventh-day Adventists in New Orleans, Louisiana, Verrett was raised in Los Angeles, California. She sang in church and showed early musical abilities, but initially a singing career was frowned upon by her family. Later Verrett went on to study with Anna Fitziu and with Marion Szekely Freschl at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1961 she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
  In 1957, Verrett made her operatic debut in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. In 1958, she made her New York City Opera debut as Irina in Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars. In 1959, she made her European debut in Cologne, Germany in Nabokov's Rasputins Tod. In 1962, she received critical acclaim for her Carmen in Spoleto, and repeated the role at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1963, and at the NY City Opera in 1964 (opposite Richard Cassilly and Norman Treigle). Verrett first appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1966 as Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera.
  
  wn.com/Shirley_Verrett
• 
  Twyla Tharp
  Twyla Tharp (born July 1, 1941) is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.
  Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.
  When Tharp was a young child she spent a few months each year living with her Quaker grandparents on their farm in Indiana. In 1950 Tharp's family—younger sister Twanette, twin brothers Stanley and Stanford, mother Lecile and father William—moved to Rialto, California. Her parents opened a drive-in movie theater, where Tharp worked from the time she was 8 years old. The drive-in was on the corner of Acacia and Foothill, the major east–west artery in Rialto and the path of Route 66. She attended Pacific High School in San Bernardino and studied at the Vera Lynn School of Dance. Tharp, a "devoted bookworm," admits that this schedule left little time for a social life. Tharp attended Pomona College in California but later transferred to Barnard College in New York City, where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 1963. It was in New York that she studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. In 1963 Tharp joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
  
  wn.com/Twyla_Tharp
• 
  Virgil Thomson
  Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoclassicist, a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose, "expressive voice was always carefully muted," until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to, "moments of real passion", and a neoromantic.
  
  wn.com/Virgil_Thomson
• Walter Piston
  Walter Hamor Piston Jr., (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter.
  Piston was born in Rockland, Maine. His paternal grandfather, a sailor named Antonio Pistone, changed his name to Anthony Piston when he came to America from Genoa, Italy. In 1905, the composer's father Walter Piston Sr. moved with his family to Boston.
  Walter Jr. first trained as an engineer at the Mechanical Arts High School in Boston, but he was artistically inclined. Upon graduating in 1912, he proceeded to the Massachusetts Normal Arts School, where he completed a course of study in draftsmanship in 1916.
  During the 1910s, Piston made a living playing piano and violin in dance bands and later playing violin in orchestras led by Georges Longy. During World War I, Piston joined the U.S. Navy as a band musician, after rapidly teaching himself to play the saxophone; he later stated that, when "it became obvious that everybody had to go into the service, I wanted to go in as a musician". Playing in a service band, Piston taught himself to play most of the wind instruments. "They were just lying around" he later observed, "and no one minded if you picked them up and found out what they could do".
  
  wn.com/Walter_Piston
• William Schuman
  William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910 – February 15, 1992) was an American composer and music administrator.
  Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. While still in high school, he formed a dance band, "Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra", that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs in which Schuman played string bass.
  In 1928 he entered New York University's School of Commerce to pursue a business degree, at the same time working for an advertising agency. He also wrote popular songs with E. B. Marks, Jr., a friend he had met long before at summer camp. About then Schuman met lyricist Frank Loesser and wrote some forty songs with him. Loesser's first published song, "In Love with a Memory of You", credits the music to William H. Schuman.
  
  wn.com/William_Schuman
• 
  Yehudi Menuhin
  Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
  Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City, United States, to Bielorussian Jewish parents from what is now Belarus. His sisters were the concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.
  Menuhin began violin instruction at age four under violinist Sigmund Anker; his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to be his teacher, but Persinger refused. Menuhin displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Persinger then agreed to take Menuhin as a student. When the Menuhins went to Paris, Persinger suggested Yehudi go to his own teacher, Eugène Ysaÿe. He did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but did not like his method or the fact that he was very old. Instead, he went to the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch. In 1929 he played in Berlin, under Bruno Walter's baton, three concerti by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting, and between 1934 and 1936 he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.
  
  wn.com/Yehudi_Menuhin

• The Consul: Act I, Scene 1. "Tu reviendras et voudras m'enfermer dans tes bras"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 1. "Quick, John! The Police!"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 1. "Don't move yet"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 1. "Now, O lips, say goodbye"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 1. Interlude
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 2. "Next. Yes... What can I do for you?"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 2. "Next. Next!"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 2. "Next. Hello. Oh! It's you!"
• The Consul: Act I, Scene 2. "I beg your pardon, Madam"
• The Consul: Act II, Scene 1. "Tu reviendras et voudras m'enfermer dans tes bras"
• The Consul: Act II, Scene 1. "I shall find for you shells and stars"
• The Consul: Act II, Scene 1. "John, John, why did you bring me..."
• The Consul: Act II, Scene 1. "It is the signal!"
• The Consul: Act II, Scene 1. "Mother, why are you so still, Mother!"
• The Consul: Act II, Scene 1. Interlude

• The Medium: Act I. Introduction
• The Medium: Act I. "Where, oh, where"
• The Medium: Act I. "Be careful, Baba's coming!"
• The Medium: Act I. "Where have you been all night?"
• The Medium: Act I. "Get ready! Hurry!"
• The Medium: Act I. "Good evening, Madame Flora"
• The Medium: Act I. "Is this the first time"
• The Medium: Act I. "It happened long ago"
• The Medium: Act I. "It's time to begin"
• The Medium: Act I. "You must be very silent"
• The Medium: Act I. "Mother, mother, are you there?"
• The Medium: Act I. "Doodly, Doodly, are you happy?"
• The Medium: Act I. "Mummy, Mummy dear"
• The Medium: Act I. "Mother, mother, are you there?"
• The Medium: Act I. "Send my son to me..."
• The Medium: Act I. "What is it? Who is it?"
• The Medium: Act I. "But why be afraid?"
• The Medium: Act I. "Baba, what has happened?"
• The Medium: Act I. "Where is Toby?"
• The Medium: Act I. "The sun has fallen"
• The Medium: Act I. "The spools unravel"
• The Medium: Act I. "Oh God! What is happening to me?"
• The Medium: Act II. Introduction
• The Medium: Act II. "Bravo!" (Monica's waltz)
• The Medium: Act II. "What is the matter Toby?"
• The Medium: Act II. Baba's Entrance
• The Medium: Act II. "Toby, you know that I love you"
• The Medium: Act II. "But first you must tell me"
• The Medium: Act II. "Perhaps it was not you after all"
• The Medium: Act II. "Good evening, Madame Flora"
• The Medium: Act II. "Not to know my daughter's own voice?"
• The Medium: Act II. "Please let us have our séance, Madame Flora"
• The Medium: Act II. "And you, you too get out"
• The Medium: Act II. Toby's Exit
• The Medium: Act II. "Mother, mother, are you there?"
• The Medium: Act II. "Afraid, am I afraid?"
• The Medium: Act II. "The dead never come back"
• The Medium: Act II. "O God, forgive my sins"
• The Medium: Act II. "Who's there?"
• The Medium: Act II. "I've killed the ghost!"

• Amahl! Amahl!
• Oh, Mother, you should go out and see!
• Stop bothering me!
• Poor Amahl!
• Don't cry, Mother dear
• From far away we come
• Amahl...Yes, Mother?
• Good Evening! Good Evening!
• Come In, Come In
• Are you a real King?
• This is my box
• Amahl, I told you not to be a nuisance!
• Oh, these beautiful things
• Have you seen a Child?
• Shepherds! Shepherdesses!
• Emily, Emily
• Olives and quinces
• Shepherd's Dance
• Thank you, good friends
• All that gold!
• Thief! Thief!
• Don't you dare!
• Oh, woman, you can keep the gold
• Oh, no, wait
• I walk, Mother
• Do you really want to go?
• Shepherds, arise!

• Prelude
• Amahl! Amahl!
• What Was Keeping You Outside
• Don't Cry, Mother Dear
• From Far Away We Come
• Amahl, Go See Who's Knocking
• Good Evening
• March
• It Is Nice Here
• I Was a Shepherd
• This Is My Box
• Amahl, I Told You Not to Be a Nuisance!
• Have You Seen a Child?
• Shepherds, Shepherds
• Don't Be Bashful
• Dance
• Thank You, Good Friends
• All That Gold!
• Thief! Thief!
• Oh Woman, You May Keep the Gold
• I Walk, Mother
• Look Mother, I Can Dance
• What to Do With Your Crutch?
• Shepherds Arise

Born: 1911-07-07

Died: 2007-02-01