51st Grammy Awards

Al Green
Albert Greene (born April 13, 1946), better known as Al Green, is an American gospel and soul music singer. He reached the peak of his popularity in the 1970s, with hit singles such as "You Oughta Be With Me", "I'm Still In Love With You", "Love and Happiness", and "Let's Stay Together". In 2005, Rolling Stone named him #66 in their list of the '100 Greatest Artists of All Time'. The nomination stated that "people are born to do certain things, and Al was born to make us smile." The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Green in 1995, referring to him as "one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music." Green has sold more than 20 million records.
Green was born in Forrest City, Arkansas. He was the sixth of ten children born to Robert and Cora Greene. The son of a sharecropper, he started performing at age ten in a Forrest City quartet called the Greene Brothers; he dropped the final "E" from his last name years later as a solo artist. They toured extensively in the mid-1950s in the South until the Greenes moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, when they began to tour around Michigan. His father kicked him out of the group because he caught Green listening to Jackie Wilson.

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Alan Gilbert
Alan Gilbert (born February 23, 1967) is an American conductor and violinist. He is currently the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, making his debut performance as the orchestra's music director on September 16, 2009.
Alan Gilbert was born in New York City, into a New York Philharmonic family. Both his father, Michael Gilbert, and his Japanese mother, Yoko Takebe, have had careers as violinists in the Philharmonic — his father retired in 2001, and his mother still performs in the orchestra. Growing up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Gilbert attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. As a youth, he learned the violin, viola, and piano.
In the 1980s Gilbert studied music at Harvard University, where he was music director of the Harvard Bach Society Orchestra in 1988–89. While in Boston, Gilbert also studied with violinist Masuko Ushioda at the New England Conservatory of Music. After obtaining his degree at Harvard, Gilbert studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School of Music with Otto-Werner Mueller. In 1994, he won the Georg Solti prize, which garnered him a week's private tutoring with maestro Solti. Also in 1994, Gilbert won first prize at the International Competition for Musical Performance in Geneva.

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Alan Pasqua
Alan Pasqua (born June 28, 1952 in New Jersey) is a jazz pianist, educator and composer who co-composed the CBS Evening News theme. He also has had an extensive career in pop and rock music, most notably as a founding member, keyboardist and songwriter of the 80s hard rock band, Giant. He studied at Indiana University and the New England Conservatory of Music. His latest album Twin Bill, released on October 20, 2011, has been recently nominated a Grammy award.
Pasqua grew up in Roselle Park, New Jersey.
Pasqua joined The New Tony Williams Lifetime and appeared on the albums Believe It and Million Dollar Legs. He then went on to perform with Eddie Money's band, after which he then joined Bob Dylan's band. Pasqua recorded two albums with Dylan (Bob Dylan at Budokan and Street-Legal). In the 1980s he performed with John Fogerty on the album Eye of the Zombie, with Starship on the album No Protection and joined Carlos Santana as keyboardist on Marathon, Zebop! and Havana Moon.
He was also a founding member of the late-1980s rock band Giant, and he co-wrote the band's biggest hit, "I'll See You in My Dreams."

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Albert Lee
Albert William Lee (born 21 December 1943 in Leominster, Herefordshire, England) is an English guitarist known for his fingerstyle and hybrid picking technique. Lee has worked both in the studio and on tour with some of the most famous musicians which stretch through a very wide of genres. He has additionally maintained a solo career and is noted as a composer and musical director as well.
Lee grew up in Blackheath, London. His father was a musician, and Lee studied piano, taking up the instrument at age seven. During this time, he became a fan of Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis. He took up guitar in 1958 when his parents bought him a second-hand Höfner President which he later traded in for a Czechoslovakian Grazioso, the forerunner of the Futurama. Lee left school at the age of 16 to play full-time.
Lee was with a variety of bands from 1959 onwards, playing mostly R&B, country music and rock and roll. In addition to Buddy Holly, his early guitar influences included Cliff Gallup, Grady Martin, The Everly Brothers, Scotty Moore, James Burton and Jerry Reed. Lee first experienced commercial success as the lead guitarist with Chris Farlowe and The Thunderbirds. Lee says that he enjoyed playing the Stax-type material, but he really wanted to play country music. Consequently he left Farlowe and the Thunderbirds in 1968.

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Alex Lacamoire
Alex Lacamoire (b. May 24, 1975) is an American music director and orchestrator, who has worked on many shows both on and off Broadway.
Lacamoire was born in Los Angeles, California, and began to play piano at age three. He and his family moved to Miami, Florida when he was 9. He entered Southwood Middle School, a school known for its fine arts program and went on to New World School of the Arts where he graduated with top honors. He then attended Berklee College of Music, graduating in 1995. At Berklee he studied Jazz Performance, Arranging, and Film Scoring.
His Broadway work includes music director of Wicked in 2005, and Music Supervisor and assisting with the orchestrations for the musical High Fidelity in 2006.
In 2007 he was music director for the Off Broadway production of In the Heights, which earned him a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Orchestrations. Following its successful Off Broadway run, In The Heights transferred to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway. Lacamoire, along with Bill Sherman, won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations for their combined work on In The Heights.

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Alicia Keys
Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. Keys was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began playing the piano. She attended Professional Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian. Keys released her debut album with J Records, having had previous record deals first with Columbia and then Arista Records.
Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million copies. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards in 2005. Later that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged, which debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since Nirvana in 1994.

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Alison Krauss
Alison Maria Krauss (born July 23, 1971) is an American bluegrass-country singer, songwriter and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, winning local contests by the age of ten and recording for the first time at fourteen. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in 1987. She was invited to join the band with which she still performs, Alison Krauss and Union Station (AKUS), and later released her first album with them as a group in 1989.
She has released fourteen albums, appeared on numerous soundtracks, and helped renew interest in bluegrass music in the United States. Her soundtrack performances have led to further popularity, including the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, an album also credited with raising American interest in bluegrass, and the Cold Mountain soundtrack, which led to her performance at the 2004 Academy Awards. As of 2012, she has won 27 Grammy Awards from 41 nominations, making her the most awarded living recipient, and three back of the most honoured artist, classical conductor Sir Georg Solti. She is also the most awarded singer and the most awarded female artist in Grammy history. At the time of her first award, at the 1991 Grammy Awards, she was the second youngest winner ever (currently tied as third youngest).

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Allen Toussaint
Allen Toussaint (IPA: /ˈtuːseɪnt/; born January 14, 1938) is an American musician, composer, record producer, and influential figure in New Orleans R&B.
Many of Toussaint's songs have become familiar through numerous cover versions, including "Working in the Coalmine", "Ride Your Pony", "Fortune Teller", "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)", "Southern Nights," "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky", "I'll Take a Melody" and "Mother-in-Law".
Toussaint grew up in a shotgun house in the New Orleans neighborhood of Gert Town, where his mother welcomed and fed all manner of musicians as they practiced and recorded with her son. After a lucky break at age 17 in which he stood in for Huey Smith at a performance with Earl King's band in Prichard, Alabama, Toussaint was introduced to a group of local musicians who performed regularly at a night club on LaSalle street Uptown; they were known as the Dew Drop Set. Initially, he recorded for RCA Victor as Al Tousan and recorded an album of instrumentals, including the song "Java", which years later became a big hit for Al Hirt (also on RCA).

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Amy Adams
Amy Lou Adams (born August 20, 1974) is an American actress and singer. Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy to American parents, and began her performing career on stage in dinner theaters, before making her screen debut in the 1999 black comedy film Drop Dead Gorgeous. After a series of television guest appearances and roles in B movies, she was cast in the role of Brenda Strong in 2002's Catch Me If You Can, but her breakthrough role was in the 2005 independent film Junebug, playing Ashley Johnsten, for which she received critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Adams subsequently starred in Disney's 2007 film Enchanted, a critical and commercial success, and received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Princess Giselle. She received her second Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations the following year for her role as a young nun, Sister James, in Doubt. Though she has appeared in a range of dramatic and comedic roles, Adams has gained a reputation for playing characters with cheerful and sunny dispositions. Adams starred in Sunshine Cleaning with Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin, and the following year appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. She appeared in Julie & Julia in 2009 portraying writer Julie Powell followed by Leap Year in 2010. Her recent role as Charlene Fleming in The Fighter earned Adams her third Academy Award nomination, her third Golden Globe Award, second BAFTA Award, and fifth Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. In 2011, Adams appeared in the critically acclaimed musical film The Muppets alongside Jason Segel. She is scheduled to play Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel in 2013.

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Amy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was an English singer and songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Her 2006 follow-up album, Back to Black, led to six Grammy Award nominations and five wins, tying the then record for the most wins by a female artist in a single night, and made Winehouse the first British female to win five Grammys, including three of the "Big Four": Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
In 2007 she won a Brit Award for Best British Female Artist; she had also been nominated for Best British Album. She won the Ivor Novello Award three times: once in 2004 for Best Contemporary Song (musically and lyrically) for "Stronger Than Me", once in 2007 for Best Contemporary Song for "Rehab", and once in 2008 for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Love Is a Losing Game".

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Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg (help·info) (pronounced [ˈaːɐ̯nɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛɐ̯k]; 13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the spelling Schönberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), whereupon he altered it to Schoenberg "in deference to American practice" (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45).
Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th-century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking or, in some cases, passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside jazz, as degenerate art^{[citation needed]}.
Schoenberg was widely known early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify pioneering innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested the term "atonality" as inaccurate in describing his intentions) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.

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Audra McDonald
Audra Ann McDonald (born July 3, 1970) is an American actress and singer. She starred in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun. She maintains an active concert and recording career, performing song cycles and operas as well as performing in concert throughout the US. She has won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress four times, twice each for plays and musicals.
Born in Berlin, Germany and raised in Fresno, California, the elder of two daughters, she began to study acting at a young age to counteract her diagnosis as "hyperactive". McDonald graduated from the Roosevelt School of the Arts program within Theodore Roosevelt High School in Fresno. She got her start in acting with Dan Pessano and Good Company Players, beginning in their Junior Company. "I knew I wanted to be involved in theater when I had my first chance to perform with the Good Company Players Junior Company." "The people who have had the most impact on my life: Good Company director Dan Pessano and my mother." She studied classical voice as an undergraduate under Ellen Faull at the Juilliard School, graduating in 1993.

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Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow (born June 17, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter and producer. He is best known for such recordings as "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana (At the Copa)."
In 1978, five of his albums were on the best-selling charts simultaneously, a feat equalled only by Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Mathis. He has recorded a string of Billboard hit singles and multi-platinum albums that have resulted in his being named Radio & Records number one Adult Contemporary artist and winning three straight American Music Awards for Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist. Between 1974 - 1983 Manilow had three number 1 singles and 25 that reached the top 40. Several well-known entertainers have praised Manilow, including Sinatra, who was quoted in the 1970s saying, "He's next." In 1988, Bob Dylan stopped Manilow at a party, hugged him and said, "Don't stop what you're doing, man. We're all inspired by you."
As well as producing and arranging albums for other artists, including Bette Midler and Dionne Warwick, Manilow has written songs for musicals, films, and commercials. From February 2005 to December 30, 2009, he was the headliner at the Las Vegas Hilton, performing hundreds of shows before ending his relationship with the hotel. From March 2010, he has headlined at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. He has sold more than 80 million records worldwide.

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Bart Millard
Bart Marshall Millard (born December 1, 1972 in Greenville, Texas) is an American contemporary Christian singer-songwriter. Millard released the album Hymned No. 1 in 2005, which was his first solo album apart from MercyMe, but he is still a member of that band. His second studio album release came in 2008 called Hymned Again, and this garnered him a solo Grammy nomination in the category of Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album.
In high school, Millard wanted to become a football player, which ended when he injured his ankles at a high school football game. As a result, Millard took choir as an elective. Millard's father died during his freshman year of college, and his youth pastor invited him to work with the church's youth group worship band. Millard accepted and worked with the video and audio systems for the group. James (Jim) Bryson played piano for that band and later went on to play with Bart Millard and the worship band on a trip to Switzerland. This trip inspired Millard to pursue a full-time musical career. Millard and two of his friends moved to Oklahoma City, and formed MercyMe. Since then, the band has recorded six Independent, Seven Studio, two Exclusive, one Christmas, and one Compilation album.

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Beau Bridges
Lloyd Vernet "Beau" Bridges III (born December 9, 1941) is an American actor and director.
Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of actors Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson). He was nicknamed Beau by his parents after Ashley Wilkes' son in Gone with the Wind. His younger brother is actor Jeff Bridges, and he has a younger sister Lucinda. Another brother, Garrett, died in 1948 of sudden infant death syndrome. Beau has shared a close relationship with Jeff, to whom he acted as a surrogate father during childhood, when their father was busy with work.^{[citation needed]} He and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles.
Wanting to become a basketball star, he played in his freshman year at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and later transferred to the University of Hawaii. In 1959, he enlisted in the US Coast Guard and also served for eight years in the Coast Guard Reserve.
In 1949, Bridges played a secondary juvenile role in the movie The Red Pony. In the 1962–63 television season, Bridges, along with his brother, Jeff, appeared on their father's CBS anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show. In 1965 he guest-starred as Corporal Corbett in "Then Came The Mighty Hunter", Season 2, Episode 3 of the TV series Twelve O'Clock High. Other TV roles followed in the mid-1960s on shows including The Fugitive, Bonanza, and The Loner. He found steady work in television and film throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Feature films of note during this time were The Other Side of the Mountain (1975), Greased Lightning (1977), Norma Rae (1979), Heart Like a Wheel (1983), and The Hotel New Hampshire (1984).

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BeBe Winans
Benjamin "BeBe" Winans (born 17 September 1962) is a gospel and R&B singer. He is a member of the noted Winans family, most members of which are also gospel artists.
He released several albums, first with his sister CeCe Winans, and later as a solo artist. Jim Bakker's television show "The PTL Club" took interest in BeBe and his sister CeCe as background vocalists for the show. After going to North Carolina to audition they were accepted. BeBe and CeCe moved to the PTL campus in North Carolina, and were on the show for about five years.
During their time on PTL, BeBe and CeCe recorded "Lord Lift Us Up" on PTL's label after popular demand on the show. Eventually the success warranted another effort: a full length album. The album did well on the charts. BeBe and CeCe left PTL to pursue their singing career and recorded five albums together including self titled BeBe & CeCe Winans, Heaven, Different Lifestyles, First Christmas and Relationships. In 1995, BeBe and CeCe split up to pursue solo careers. But in 2009 they did the album "Still" together. On it was the song "Close to You," which won a Dove award in 2010 in the category of Urban Recorded Song (in a tie).

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Beck
Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell, July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck.
The four-time platinum artist rose to underground popularity with his early works, which combined social criticism (as in "MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack" and "Deep Fried Love") with musical and lyrical experimentation. He first earned wider public attention for his breakthrough single "Loser", a 1994 hit. Beck is known for creating musical collages of different styles.
Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay (1996) and Sea Change (2002).Odelay was awarded Album of the Year by the American magazine Rolling Stone and by UK publications NME and Mojo. Odelay also received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Both Odelay and Sea Change appeared on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Beck was born in Los Angeles, California, to David Campbell, a Canadian musician, and Bibbe Hansen, a visual artist and former Warhol "star". His father is of Scottish heritage and his mother is half Norwegian, a quarter Jewish and a quarter Swedish. His maternal grandfather is Al Hansen, a visual collage artist of the Fluxus school of art. Beck's paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. When his parents separated, Beck stayed with his mother and brother in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his recorded and published work.

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Bernard Haitink
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink, CH, KBE (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbɛrnɑrd ˈhaːi̯tɪŋk]) (born 4 March 1929) is a Dutch conductor and violinist.
Haitink was born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam. He played the violin in orchestras before taking courses in conducting under Ferdinand Leitner in 1954 and 1955.
Haitink became second conductor of the Netherlands Radio Union Orchestra in 1955. He took the post of chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1957. His conducting debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra was on 7 November 1956, substituting for Carlo Maria Giulini. After the sudden death of Eduard van Beinum, Haitink was named first conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra on 1 September 1959. He became principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961, and shared that position jointly with Eugen Jochum until 1963, when Haitink became sole principal conductor. With the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Haitink made many recordings for the Philips label, and later Decca and EMI Classics, and toured widely with the orchestra.

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Beyoncé Knowles
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter (née Beyoncé Giselle Knowles; September 4, 1981), known mononymously as Beyoncé (

/biˈjɒnseɪ/ bee-YON-say), is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she enrolled in various performing arts schools and was first exposed to singing and dancing competitions as a child. Knowles rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the world's best-selling girl groups of all time.
During the hiatus of Destiny's Child, Knowles released her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love, in 2003, which spawned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100—"Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy"—and became one of the most successful albums of that year, earning her a then record-tying five Grammy Awards. Following the disbandment of Destiny's Child in 2005, Knowles released her second solo album, B'Day, in 2006, which spawned the top 10 singles "Déjà Vu", "Irreplaceable" and "Beautiful Liar". Her third solo album I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), spawned the hit singles "If I Were a Boy", "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", "Halo" and "Sweet Dreams". The album helped Knowles earn six Grammys in 2010, breaking the record for most Grammy Awards won by a female artist in one night. Knowles' fourth solo album, 4 (2011), became her fourth consecutive number one album on the Billboard 200 as a solo artist. This made her the third artist in history to have her first four studio albums debut atop the chart.

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Big Boi
Antwan André Patton (born February 1, 1975), better known by his stage name Big Boi, is an American rapper, song-writer, record producer and actor, best known for being a member of American hip hop duo OutKast alongside André 3000. His work in the duo has produced six studio albums. During the duo's hiatus, he and André 3000 each announced plans to release a solo album. Big Boi's solo debut Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty was released in July 2010 to respectable sales and critical acclaim.
Patton was born and spent the first half of his childhood in Savannah, Georgia, attending Herschel V. Jenkins High School before moving to Atlanta with his Aunt Renne. Eventually he decided to pursue his interest in music at Tri-Cities High School, a Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School.
He had a strong interest in hip-hop music, and met André "3000" Benjamin while attending Tri Cities High School in the early-1990s. The two eventually joined forces as OutKast and signed with LaFace Records.

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Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American guitarist, composer and arranger.
One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more. He is known for using an array of effects to create unique sounds from his instrument.
Frisell was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but spent most of his youth in the Denver, Colorado area. He studied clarinet with Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony Orchestra as a youth, graduated from Denver East High School, and went to the University of Northern Colorado to study music.
His original guitar teacher in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area was Dale Bruning, with whom Frisell released the 2000 duo album Reunion. After graduating from Northern Colorado, where he studied with Johnny Smith, Frisell went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he studied with Jon Damian and Jim Hall.
Frisell's major break came when guitarist Pat Metheny was unable to make a recording session, and recommended Frisell to Paul Motian who was recording Psalm (1982) for ECM Records. Frisell became ECM's in-house guitar player, and worked on several albums, most notably Jan Garbarek's 1981 Paths, Prints. Frisell's first solo release was In Line featured solo guitar and duets with bassist Arild Andersen.

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Bill Harley
Bill Harley is a children's entertainer and storyteller who has been called "the Mark Twain of contemporary children's music" by Entertainment Weekly. He uses a range of musical styles and appeals to children and adults with quirky, heart-filled lyrics. He received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album For Children (albums consisting of predominantly spoken word versus music or song) for his albums Blah Blah Blah: Stories About Clams, Swamp Monsters, Pirates & Dogs and Yes to Running! Bill Harley Live in 2007 and 2009, respectively. Harley's latest CD is High Dive was released 2012. In addition to children's music, he performs at storytelling festivals around the country including appearances at the National Storytelling Festival.
Harley has also published six books. These include: Sitting Down To Eat which was selected as an American Booksellers Association Pick of the list; Sarah's Story a Storytelling World Award Winner; and The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher his first novel for elementary students. He is currently working on another novel and has another picture book slated for publication. His second novel for children, Night of the Spadefoot Toads, was released in October 2008.

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Blair Underwood
Blair Erwin Underwood (born August 25, 1964) is an American television, film, and stage actor. He is perhaps best known as headstrong attorney Jonathan Rollins from the NBC legal drama L.A. Law, a role he portrayed for seven years. He has gained critical acclaim throughout his career, receiving numerous Golden Globe Award nominations, three NAACP Image Awards and 1 Grammy Award. In recent years, he has appeared on The New Adventures of Old Christine, Dirty Sexy Money and In Treatment and was in NBC's The Event.
Underwood was born in Tacoma, Washington, the son of Marilyn Ann Scales, an interior decorator, and Frank Eugene Underwood, Sr., a United States Army colonel. As a result of his father's military career, Underwood lived on bases and Army Posts in the United States and Stuttgart, Germany, during his childhood. Blair attended Petersburg High School in Petersburg, Virginia. He went on to attend the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

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Brad Paisley
Brad Douglas Paisley (born October 28, 1972) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. His style crosses between traditional country music and Southern rock, and his songs are frequently laced with humor and pop culture references.
Paisley was the 2008 CMA and ACM Male Vocalist of the Year winner. Starting with the release of his 1999 album Who Needs Pictures, Paisley has recorded seven studio albums and a Christmas compilation on the Arista Nashville label, with all of his albums certified gold or higher by the RIAA. In addition, he has charted 25 singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 16 of which have reached #1 with a record 10 consecutive singles reaching the top spot on the chart. On November 10, 2010, Paisley won the Entertainer of the Year award at the 44th annual CMA Awards.
Paisley was born on October 28, 1972 in Glen Dale, West Virginia to Douglas Edward "Doug" Paisley, who worked for the West Virginia Department of Transportation, and Sandra Jean "Sandy" (née Jarvis) Paisley, a teacher. He was raised in Glen Dale, West Virginia. He has stated that his love of country music stems from his maternal grandfather, Warren Jarvis, who gave Paisley his first guitar, a Sears Danelectro Silvertone at 8-years-old and taught him how to play. At age 10, he performed for the first time in public by singing in his church. He later recalled that, "Pretty soon, I was performing at every Christmas party and Mother's Day event. The neat thing about a small town is that when you want to be an artist, by golly, they'll make you one". At age 12, Paisley wrote his first song, entitled, "Born on Christmas Day". He had been taking lessons with local guitarist Clarence "Hank" Goddard. By age 13, Goddard and Paisley formed a band called "Brad Paisley and the C-Notes", with the addition of two of Paisley's adult friends.

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Brandon Heath
Brandon Heath Knell is a contemporary Christian musician from Nashville, Tennessee. He has released three studio albums: Don't Get Comfortable (2006), What If We (2008) and "Leaving Eden" (2011). He is best known for the No. 1 "I'm Not Who I Was" and "Give Me Your Eyes". He was nominated four times at the Dove Awards of 2008 and won in the "New Artist of the Year" category. His second album was nominated for "Gospel Album of the Year" at the 51st Grammy Awards of 2009.
Heath began his career by writing songs as a teenager. His first independently released album, Early Stuff (2004), was a compilation of his earlier songwriting. Also after releasing Soldier in 2004, he signed with Reunion Records to release his first main studio album, Don't Get Comfortable, in late 2006. The album's first single, "Our God Reigns", received a Dove Award nomination in 2007. Heath's song "I'm Not Who I Was" became No. 1 single, staying on top of Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart for several weeks. It received two Dove nominations, including "Song of the Year". Heath returned in mid-2008 with a second project: What If We. The album's first single "Give Me Your Eyes" was released in July 2008 and ended the year as the second most-played song on R&R magazine's Christian CHR chart for 2008. The song received two GMA Dove Awards in 2009: "Song of the Year" and "Pop/Contemporary Song of the Year".

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Brenda Lee
Brenda Mae Tarpley (born December 11, 1944), known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis. She is best known for her 1960 hit "I'm Sorry", and 1958's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", a US holiday standard for more than 50 years.
At 4 ft 9 inches tall, she received the nickname Little Miss Dynamite in 1957 after recording the song "Dynamite"; and was one of the earliest pop stars to have a major contemporary international following.
Lee's popularity faded in the late 1960s as her voice matured, but she continued a successful recording career by returning to her roots as a country singer with a string of hits through the 1970s and 1980s. She is a member of the Rock and Roll, Country Music, Rockabilly and Hit Parade Halls of Fame. Lee currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley in the charity ward of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces at birth. She attended grade schools wherever her father found work, primarily in the corridor between Atlanta and Augusta. Her family was poor, living hand-to-mouth; she shared a bed with her two siblings in a series of three-room houses without running water. Life centered on her parents finding work, their extended family, and the Baptist Church, where she sang solos every Sunday.

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Brent Mason
Brent Mason (born July 13, 1959) is an American session guitarist and occasional songwriter. He is known primarily for his work in the field of country music. In addition to releasing two instrumental studio albums, he holds several credits as a songwriter. He is a 12 time winner of the Academy of Country Music Guitarist of the Year Award and a two time winner of the CMA Award Musician of the Year.
Brent Mason was born on July 13, 1959, in Van Wert, Ohio. At five years old, he taught himself to play guitar by ear. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee after graduating from high school, in order to pursue a career in country music. Eventually, he was discovered by country guitarist Chet Atkins, who invited him to play on his Stay Tuned album. From there, Mason went on to play on several other artists' albums, including those of George Strait, Alan Jackson, Shania Twain, David Gates, and Neil Diamond. Mason also co-wrote singles for Clinton Gregory ("Play, Ruby, Play") and McBride & the Ride ("Hurry Sundown").

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Bruce Hornsby
Bruce Randall Hornsby (born November 23, 1954) is an American singer, pianist, accordion player, and songwriter. Known for the spontaneity and creativity of his live performances, Hornsby draws frequently from classical, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Motown, rock, blues, and jam band musical traditions with his songwriting and the seamless improvisations contained within.
Hornsby's recordings have been recognised on a number of occasions with industry awards, including the Best New Artist Grammy in 1987 with Bruce Hornsby and the Range, the Best Bluegrass Recording Grammy in 1990, and the Best Pop Instrumental Grammy in 1993.
Hornsby has also achieved recognition for his solo albums and performances, his current live act Bruce Hornsby & the Noise Makers, his bluegrass project with Ricky Skaggs, his jazz act The Bruce Hornsby Trio, and his appearances as a session- and guest-musician. He also collaborated with the Grateful Dead and was a member of the band from September 1990 to March 1992, playing at many shows during this period in their history.

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Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.

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Buddy Guy
George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. Critically acclaimed, he is a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation. "A key influence on Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy put the Louisiana hurricane in 1960s electric Chicago blues as a member of Muddy Waters' band and as a house guitarist at Chess Records. A native of the Baton Rouge area, he combined a blazing modernism with a fierce grip on his roots, playing frantic leads heavy with swampy funk on Howlin' Wolf's 'Killing Floor' and Koko Taylor's 'Wang Dang Doodle' as well as on his own Chess sides and the fine series of records he made with harp man Junior Wells. One of the last active connections to the golden age of Chess, Guy still plays with his original fire."
Ranked thirtieth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", Guy is known for his showmanship on stage: playing his guitar with drumsticks or strolling into the audience while playing solos. His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked seventy-eighth in list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time also of Rolling Stone.

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Burning Spear
Winston Rodney, OD (born 1 March 1945), also known as Burning Spear, is a Jamaican roots reggae singer and musician. Burning Spear is known for his Rastafari movement messages.
Rodney was born in Saint Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica, as were reggae singer Bob Marley and political activist Marcus Garvey who both had a great influence on Rodney's life: Garvey in his philosophy, which Burning Spear greatly took to, and Marley in directly helping Burning Spear get started in the music industry (by some accounts) by introducing him to Clement Dodd. Rodney met Marley at the latter's farm in 1969, and having told him that he wanted to get into the music business, Marley advised him to start at Dodd's Studio One label.Reggae singer Larry Marshall claimed that it was he, while visiting St. Ann's Bay with Jackie Mittoo, who was approached by Rodney, and gave him this advice, and arranged the introduction.

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Carol Cymbala
Carol Cymbala is the choir director for the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. She is the wife of pastor Jim Cymbala and daughter of Reverend Clair Hutchins.

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Carrie Underwood
Carrie Marie Underwood (born March 10, 1983) is an American country singer, songwriter and actress who rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol, in 2005. Underwood has since become a multi-platinum selling recording artist, a winner of several Grammy Awards, Billboard Music Awards and American Music Awards, a Golden Globe Award nominee, a three-time Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Female Vocalist winner, and a two-time ACM Entertainer of the Year. She is the first-ever female artist to win back-to-back Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards for Entertainer of the Year (2009/10). Underwood was inducted into and became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2008. She was also inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2009.Billboard named Underwood Country Music's reigning Queen in 2012.

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Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson (born December 4, 1955) is an American jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. Described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating country, blues and folk music into her work, Wilson has won two Grammy Awards.
Cassandra Wilson is the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes, Jr., a guitarist, bassist and music teacher; and Mary McDaniel, an elementary school teacher who eventually earned her PhD in education. Between her mother’s love for Motown and her father’s dedication to jazz, Wilson’s parents sparked her early interest in music.
Wilson’s earliest formal musical education consisted of classical lessons; she studied piano from the age of six to thirteen and played clarinet in the middle school concert and marching bands. When she tired of this training, she asked her father to teach her the guitar. Instead, he gave her a lesson in self-reliance, suggesting she study Mel Bay method books. Wilson explored guitar on her own, developing what she has described as an “intuitive” approach. During this time she began writing her own songs, adopting a folk style. She also appeared in the musical theater productions, including The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy, crossing racial lines in a recently desegregated school system.

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Casting Crowns
Casting Crowns is a Grammy Award and Dove Award winning Contemporary Christian/Christian Rock band. Casting Crowns was started in 1999 by youth pastor Mark Hall at First Baptist Church in Downtown Daytona Beach, Florida as part of a youth group. He now serves as a lead vocalist. Later they moved to Stockbridge, Georgia and more members joined creating the band now known as Casting Crowns. Some members of the band currently work as ministers for Eagles Landing First Baptist Church in Stockbridge, Georgia.
Christian rock group Casting Crowns began as a student worship band in Daytona Beach, FL, in 1999. Led by singer, songwriter, and youth pastor Mark Hall, the group initially included guitarists Juan DeVevo and Hector Cervantes and violinist Melodee DeVevo. The group relocated to Stockbridge, GA, in 2001, adding Chris Huffman on bass, Megan Garrett on keyboards and accordion, and drummer Andy Williams. This augmented version of Casting Crowns released two independent albums on CD, both of which were well received in the Atlanta area. Both independent albums were efforts on the part of Mark Hall and the rest of the group as outreach projects for youth in the area. The group won the GMA regional songwriters competition at Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, Florida in both the "Best Song" and the "Best Artist" categories in 2004. Although the group was not searching for a record label, one of the group's albums found its way into the hands of Mark Miller, lead singer for country group Sawyer Brown, who was struck by Casting Crowns' driving pop/rock style and Hall's vocal delivery of his hard-hitting but devout songs. Miller signed Casting Crowns to his fledgling Beach Street Records, a division of Reunion Records with distribution by the Provident Label Group, making Casting Crowns the first artist signed to Beach Street Records.

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CeCe Winans
Priscilla "CeCe" Marie Winans Love (born October 8, 1964) is an American gospel singer, who has won numerous awards, including Grammys and Stellar Awards.
CeCe Winans was born in Detroit, Michigan, to David and Delores ("Mom" and "Pop") Winans, on October 8, 1964. She is the eighth of ten children, and the eldest of three girls.
CeCe began her solo career with the Platinum certified album Alone in His Presence. It was released in 1995 and earned her a Grammy Award and two Dove Awards, including the Female Vocalist of the Year, an award she earned again in 1997. Winans' next release, the Gold certified Everlasting Love was released in 1998 and featured Winans highest to date Billboard charting solo singles "Well Alright" & "Slippin". The song "On That Day" from the album was written and produced by R&B singer Lauryn Hill. Later that year, Winans released His Gift a holiday album.
In 1999, Winans started her own recording company, "PureSprings Gospel". Her first album on the label was Alabaster Box in 1999. Some production of the disc was done by Gospel singer and musician, Fred Hammond. It included a guest appearance by Take 6. In 2000 Cece released a concert VHS titled Live At The Lambs Theater in New York. The concert contained songs from her previous albums. Winans released her next album, the self titled CeCe Winans, in 2001. The single "Anybody Wanna Pray" included a guest appearance by GRITS. The second single, "Say A Prayer" crossed over into the CCM market.

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Charles Bruffy
Charles Bruffy (born 1958) is an American choral conductor. He is artistic director of the Kansas City Chorale and the Phoenix Chorale and is Chorus Director of the Kansas City Symphony.
A native of Savannah, Missouri, Bruffy received his Bachelors degree from Missouri Western State University in Saint Joseph, Missouri and a Master’s degree in vocal performance from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he also completed all course work for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Conducting. Bruffy has received honorary doctorates from Baker University and Missouri Western State University.
Bruffy has been Artistic Director of the Phoenix Chorale since 1999 and of the Kansas City Chorale since 1988. The choirs are praised for both their live performances and recordings. Bruffy’s eclectic discography of over 13 recordings includes music by Argento, Brahms, Corigliano, Gretchaninov, Martin, Mäntyjärvi, Rachmaninoff, and Vaughan Williams.
Bruffy has conducted workshops across the United States, such as the Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey and for the National Association of Church Musicians Convention in Long Beach, California. In 2003 he conducted Verdi's Messa da Requiem in the Sydney Opera House. As a tenor soloist, Bruffy performed with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers in recordings and concerts in France, and in concerts at Carnegie Hall.

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Charlie Haden
Charles Edward Haden (born August 6, 1937) is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Haden is also known for his signature lyrical bass lines.
Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, and raised in a musical family, which often performed together on the radio playing country music and American folk songs. Haden made his professional debut as a singer when he was two years old, and continued singing with his family until he contracted a mild form of polio when he was 15. The polio damaged his throat muscles and vocal cords, and as a result, Haden was unable to control his pitch while singing. A few years before contracting polio, Haden had become interested in jazz, and began playing his older brother's double bass. Eventually he set his sights on Los Angeles, and to save money for the trip took a job as house bassist for ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.
Haden moved to Los Angeles in 1957. His first recordings were made that year with Paul Bley. He began recording with Ornette Coleman shortly after, including the important The Shape of Jazz to Come. Haden's folk-influenced style complemented the microtonal, Texas blues elements of Coleman. Haden would enter Keith Jarrett's trio and his 'American Quartet' from 1967 to 1976 with Paul Motian and Dewey Redman. He also played in the collective Old and New Dreams.

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Charlie Louvin
Charles Elzer Loudermilk (July 7, 1927 – January 26, 2011), known professionally as Charlie Louvin, was an American country music singer and songwriter. He is best known as one of the Louvin Brothers, and was a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1955.
Born in Henagar, Alabama, Louvin was one of 7 children. He started singing when he was 8 years old.
Louvin began singing professionally with his brother Ira as a teenager on local radio programs in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The boys sang traditional and gospel music in the harmony style they had learned while performing in their church's choir.
After Charlie left the act briefly in 1945 to serve in World War II, the brothers moved first to Knoxville and later to Memphis, working as postal clerks by day while making appearances in the evening. Another brief disbandment due to Charlie's service in the Korean War led to the brothers' relocation to Birmingham, Alabama.
Primarily known as gospel artists, the Louvins were convinced by a sponsor that "you can't sell tobacco with gospel music," and began adding secular music to their repertoire. They began making appearances on the famed Grand Ole Opry during the 1950s, becoming official members in 1955. The Louvin Brothers released numerous singles, such as "When I Stop Dreaming", with over 20 recordings reaching the country music charts. Their rich harmonies served as an influence to later artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons and The Byrds.

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Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (born June 12, 1941) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.
Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Keith Jarrett, he has been described as one of the major jazz piano voices to emerge in the post-John Coltrane era.
His career has been driven by his will to operate as a free agent and compulsively explore different avenues of music making. This hunger has positioned him as an important catalyst in the world of serious, mainstream acoustic jazz, and he is one of the most influential and widely studied figures in the last 40 years.
Corea continued to pursue other collaborations and to explore various musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He is also known for promoting and fundraising for a number of social issues, such as eradicating social illiteracy, and is a Scientologist.

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Chris Tomlin
Christopher Dwayne "Chris" Tomlin (born May 4, 1972) is an American Christian Contemporary Music artist, worship leader, and songwriter from Grand Saline, Texas, United States. He was a staff member at Austin Stone Community Church and is signed to EMI's sixstepsrecords. Tomlin leads worship at many Passion events. Some of his most well-known songs are "How Great Is Our God", "Jesus Messiah", "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)", and the recent song "Our God" which he co-wrote with Matt Redman, Jesse Reeves and Jonas Myrin. He is currently a worship leader at Passion City Church in Atlanta, Georgia with Louie Giglio and Christy Nockels.
He was awarded Male Vocalist of the Year at the 2006, 2007, 2008 GMA Dove Awards, and Grammy Award Winner for Best Contemporary Christian Music Album in 2012. He was named Artist of the Year in 2007. Tomlin released his seventh studio album, And If Our God Is for Us..., on November 16, 2010. He is one of the members of CompassionArt, a charity founded by Martin Smith (and Smith's wife, Anna) of the band Delirious?.

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Chrisette Michele
Chrisette Michele Payne (born December 8, 1982), known professionally as Chrisette Michele, is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter. She is signed to the Island Def Jam Music Group and won a Grammy Award for Best Urban/Alternative Performance in 2009 for her song "Be OK".
Michele was born in Central Islip, New York, and grew up in Patchogue. Her father was a deacon and her mother a choir director. Michele led gospel choirs in high school. She attended Five Towns College in Dix Hills, New York, and graduated with a vocal performance degree.
Michele has been featured on several hip hop albums. She is on The Game's album LAX on "Let Us Live". On Jay-Z's Kingdom Come she was featured on the second single "Lost One", while on Nas' Hip Hop Is Dead, she was featured three times: on the album's second single "Can't Forget About You", the Kanye West-produced "Still Dreaming", and the final track "Hope". She also appeared on the bonus track "Slow Down", from Ghostface Killah's The Big Doe Rehab.

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Christian McBride
Christian McBride (born May 31, 1972, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American jazz bassist. His father, Lee Smith, and his great uncle, Howard Cooper, are well known Philadelphia bassists who served as McBride's early mentors. He is regarded as a virtuoso, and is one of the most recorded musicians of his generation, having appeared on close to 300 recordings as a sideman before the age of 40.
After starting on bass guitar, McBride switched to double bass and studied at the Juilliard School.
He has performed and recorded with a huge number of jazz legends and ensembles, including Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Diana Krall, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Wynton Marsalis, Hank Jones, Joshua Redman, and Ray Brown's "Superbass" with John Clayton, as well as with hip-hop, pop, soul, and classical musicians like The Roots,Kathleen Battle, Carly Simon, Sting, Bruce Hornsby, and James Brown.
In 1996, McBride contributed to the AIDS benefit album Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip produced by the Red Hot Organization.

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Clive Davis
Clive Davis (born April 4, 1932) is an American record producer and music industry executive. He won five Grammy Awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer. From 1967 to 1973 he was the President of Columbia Records. He was the founder and president of Arista Records from 1975 through 2000 until founding J Records. From 2002 until April 2008, Davis was the Chairman and CEO of the RCA Music Group (which included RCA Records, J Records and Arista Records), Chairman and CEO of J Records, and Chairman and CEO of BMG North America. Currently Davis is the Chief Creative Officer of Sony Music Entertainment. He currently plays a part in the careers of Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart, Jennifer Hudson, Christina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Kelly Clarkson, Harry Connick, Jr., Leona Lewis, Barry Manilow, BC Jean and Seattle De Luca. Davis is credited with bringing Whitney Houston to prominence. Clive Davis is an alumnus of New York University, and the recorded music division of its Tisch School for the Arts is named after him.

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Cyndi Lauper
Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper (born June 22, 1953 in Queens, New York) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and LGBT rights activist.
She achieved success in the mid-1980s with the release of the debut solo album She's So Unusual in 1983, which spawned four Billboard Hot 100 top-five songs—"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", "Time After Time", "She Bop" and "All Through the Night"—She's So Unusual was the first album in history to have four top five singles by a female. The album earned Lauper Best New Artist at the 27th Grammy Awards in 1985.
Her success continued with the follow-up, True Colors in 1986, which spawned two Billboard Hot 100 top-ten songs—"True Colors" and "Change of Heart", and earned two nominations at the 29th Grammy Awards.
Since 1989 released from a nine studio albums acclaimed critical, A Night to Remember (1989), Hat Full of Stars (1993), Sisters of Avalon (1996), Merry Christmas... Have a Nice Life (1998),Shine (2001), At Last (2003), The Body Acoustic (2005), Bring Ya to the Brink (2008).

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Cynthia Nixon
Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She has received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and a GLAAD Media Award.
Nixon was born in New York, New York, the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress from Chicago, and Walter E. Nixon, a Texas-born radio journalist. She graduated from Hunter College High School, and attended Barnard College. During her college years she also studied abroad with Semester at Sea in the spring of 1986.
From 1988 to 2003, Nixon was in a relationship with photographer Danny Mozes. They have two children together, a daughter born in 1996 and a son born in 2002. Since 2004, Nixon has been in a relationship with education activist Christine Marinoni. Nixon and Marinoni became engaged in April 2009. Marinoni gave birth to a son in 2011. Nixon and Marinoni were married on May 27, 2012. Regarding her sexual orientation, Nixon remarked in 2007: "I don't really feel I've changed. I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. I'm just a woman in love with another woman." She identified herself as bisexual in 2012.

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Dan Tyminski
Daniel John "Dan" Tyminski (born June 20, 1967 in Rutland, Vermont) is a bluegrass composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. He is a member of the band Alison Krauss and Union Station and has released two solo albums, Carry Me Across the Mountain (2000), on the Doobie Shea Records label, and Wheels (2008), on the Rounder Records label.
He is best known for his updated version of the song "Man of Constant Sorrow," which was featured in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? and won the 2001 CMA award for best single as well as a Grammy Award for best Country Collaboration with Vocals (along with Harley Allen and Pat Enright, filling out the vocals for the movie's Soggy Bottom Boys). In total, he has won 10 Grammy awards for solo and collaborative projects.
Tyminski was born June 20, 1967 in Rutland, Vermont and plays a bluegrass style that blends traditional and pop traditions. Before becoming a member of Union Station in 1994, Tyminski played mandolin and sang in the Lonesome River Band. Though Tyminski's love and feel for traditional bluegrass didn't come from growing up in the southern Appalachians, he absorbed and learned the music just the same. He credits his brother Stan with getting him hooked on the guitar and mandolin at the age of 6. While Stan was in the Navy and home on leave, he left his mandolin with his younger brother.

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Daniel Ho
Daniel Ho is a songwriter and producer specializing in Hawaiian music.
Born in Kaimuki on Oahu, he attended the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles, where he studied composition before returning home to attend the University of Hawaii. After graduation, Daniel returned to Los Angeles and formed a smooth jazz group named Kilauea.
In the late 1990s, Ho started his own record company, Daniel Ho Creations (DHC), and recorded one of his first Hawaiian music albums with slack-key guitarist George Kahumoku, Jr. He has since recorded 18 solo albums, produced over 50 albums, served as a guest lecturer at Stanford University, performed as a soloist with the Honolulu Symphony, and received four Grammy Awards for best Hawaiian music album as a producer. In 2009, he won his first Grammy Award for best Hawaiian music album as an artist rather than as the producer of a compilation album, teaming up with Tia Carrere for the album 'Ikena. The DHC label has also received three Grammy nominations for Hawaiiana, He Nani, and Spirit of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar, three Na Hoku Awards and several nominations, including the 2009 release Aloha Pumehana by Darlene Ahuna.

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Dave Carpenter
Dave Carpenter (November 4, 1959 – June 24, 2008) was an American bass player.
After studying music at Ohio State University, he launched his professional career by moving to New York. It was there that he first toured and recorded with artists such as Buddy Rich, Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson.
Dave Carpenter appeared on countless sessions, and had dozens of television, film themes and soundtracks to his recording credit. He worked with artists such as Allan Holdsworth, Steve Hass, Peter Erskine, Joel Taylor, Mike Stern, Scott Henderson, Mitchel Forman, Eric Marienthal, Lee Ritenour, Tom Scott, Rita Coolidge, Russ Freeman, Rod Stewart, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, David Benoit, Boz Scaggs, Shakira and many more. He also appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles and Berlin philharmonics as well as the Tanglewood and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and was a founding member of the "Lounge Art Ensemble" with Peter Erskine and Bob Sheppard.
Carpenter died suddenly of a heart attack at age 48.

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Dave Grohl
David Eric "Dave" Grohl (born January 14, 1969) is an American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter, who is the lead vocalist, guitarist, primary songwriter and founder of the Foo Fighters, prior to which he was the drummer in the grunge band Nirvana. He is also the drummer and co-founder of the rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. Grohl has additionally written all the music and performed all the instruments for his short-lived side projects Late! and Probot, as well as being involved with Queens of the Stone Age numerous times throughout the past decade. He has performed session work (as a drummer) for a variety of musicians, including Garbage, Killing Joke, Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy, Slash, Juliette Lewis, Tenacious D, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Lemmy Kilmister.
As a child, Grohl's family relocated from Warren, Ohio, to Springfield, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Three years later, when Grohl was six, his parents divorced, and Grohl grew up living with his mother.

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David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour,CBE (born 6 March 1946) is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It is estimated that as of 2010, the group have sold over 250 million records worldwide, including 74.5 million units sold in the United States.
In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of artists, and has enjoyed a successful career as a solo artist. Gilmour has been actively involved with many charities over the course of his career.
In 2003, he was appointed CBE for his charity work and was awarded with the Outstanding Contribution title at the 2008 Q Awards. In 2011, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number 14 in their list of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Gilmour was born in Cambridge, England. His father, Douglas Gilmour, was a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Cambridge and his mother, Sylvia (née Wilson), was a teacher and film editor who raised her family at Grantchester Meadows, later immortalised by a Roger Waters song on Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. He has a younger brother who is also a musician.

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Dean Martin
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?". Nicknamed the "King of Cool", he was one of the members of the "Rat Pack" and a major star in four areas of show business: concert stage/night clubs, recordings, motion pictures, and television.
Martin was born in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian parents, Gaetano and Angela Crocetti (née Barra). His father was from Montesilvano, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy, and his mother was an Italian of part Neapolitan and part Sicilian ancestry. Martin was the younger of two sons. His brother was named Bill. Martin spoke only Italian until he started school. He attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville, and took up the drums as a hobby as a teenager. He was the target of much ridicule for his broken English and ultimately dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because he thought that he was smarter than his teachers. He delivered bootleg liquor, served as a speakeasy croupier, was a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill and boxed as welterweight. He grew up a neighbor to Jimmy the Greek.

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Deitrick Haddon
Deitrick Vaughn Haddon (born May 17, 1973) is a Gospel singer, songwriter, producer and pastor. A popular artist known for his contemporary style of music, he is well known for his progressive gospel styles.
Haddon is a native of Detroit, Michigan.
Haddon launched his solo career as a Christian R&B vocalist with the Lost & Found on Tyscot/Verity in 2002. The set peaked at #1 on Billboard's Top Gospel Charts and received wide critical acclaim and spawned the hit "Sinner's Prayer" which received heavy spins on gospel and mainstream R&B radio stations.
The 70's-leaning Crossroads followed in 2004, led off by the upbeat single "God Is Good". In an uncharacteristic move for marketing a gospel album, Detrick made an appearance on the long-running syndicated series Soul Train performing the single as well as the title track from the album.
Haddon appeared to be pushing his Gospel artistry for many things further into the ranks of mainstream venues with 7 Days, released October 10, 2006. 7 Days was executive produced and produced almost entirely by R&B stalwart producers Tim & Bob (also responsible for hits by Sisqo, Chante Moore, Karen Clark Sheard, and others). Balancing out the contemporary bulk of the album is the traditional gospel flavored lead single "Heaven Knows" which Deitrick produced himself.

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Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪt͡ɕ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович; 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.
Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).
After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque characterize much of his music.

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Earl Klugh
Earl Klugh (pronounced "Clue") (born September 16, 1953, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American smooth jazz/crossover jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and composer. In 2006 Modern Guitar magazine wrote that Klugh "is considered by many to be one of the finest acoustic guitar players today."
At the age of 13, Klugh was captivated by the guitar playing of Chet Atkins when Atkins made an appearance on the Perry Como Show. Klugh was a performing guest on several of Atkins' albums. Atkins, reciprocating as well, joined Earl on his Magic In Your Eyes album. Klugh also appeared with Atkins on several television programs, including Hee Haw and a 1994 TV special entitled "Read my Licks". Klugh was also influenced by Bob James, Ray Parker Jr, Wes Montgomery and Laurindo Almeida. His sound is a blend of these jazz, pop and rhythm and blues influences, forming a potpourri of sweet contemporary music original to only him.
Klugh's first recording, at age 15, was on Yusef Lateef's Suite 16. He played on George Benson's White Rabbit album and two years later, in 1973, joined his touring band.

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Earl Scruggs
Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a three-finger banjo-picking style (now called "Scruggs style") that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. Although other musicians had played in three-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in his group, the Blue Grass Boys.
Scruggs was born near Shelby, Cleveland County, North Carolina, to Georgia Lula Ruppe and George Elam Scruggs, a farmer and bookkeeper, who played banjo and died when Scruggs was four years old. His older brothers, Junie and Horace, plus his two older sisters, Eula Mae and Ruby, all played banjo and guitar. Scruggs' mother played the organ. He grew up in Cleveland County, North Carolina.
Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in late 1945, and quickly popularized his syncopated, three-finger picking style. In 1948 Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt left Monroe's band and formed the Foggy Mountain Boys, also later known simply as Flatt and Scruggs. In 1969, they broke up, and he started a new band, the Earl Scruggs Revue, featuring several of his sons.

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Eddie Vedder
Eddie Vedder (born Edward Louis Severson III; December 23, 1964) is an American musician and singer-songwriter who is best known for being the lead singer and one of three guitarists of the alternative rock band Pearl Jam. Known for his powerful vocals, he is widely considered an icon of alternative rock.
He is also involved in soundtrack work and contributes to albums by other artists. In 2007, Vedder released his first solo album as a soundtrack for the film Into the Wild (2007). His second album, Ukulele Songs, along with a live DVD titled Water on the Road, was released on 31 May 2011.
Vedder was born Edward Louis Severson III in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, son of Karen Lee Vedder and Edward Louis Severson, Jr. His parents divorced in 1965, when Vedder was one year old. His mother soon remarried a man named Peter Mueller, an attorney, and Vedder was raised believing that Mueller was his biological father. His adopted name became Edward Mueller. While living in Evanston, Vedder's family fostered seven younger children in a group home.

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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.

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Eric Benét
Eric Benét, (born Eric Benét Jordan on October 15, 1966) is an American singer. His duet with Tamia, "Spend My Life With You" was a number one song for three weeks on the US Billboard R&B chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2000.
Benét was his mother's maiden name, and he was born in Mobile, Alabama and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is the youngest of five siblings.
Benét sang with a Top 100-style group called Gerard in the late 1980s. Benét, his sister Lisa, and his cousin George Nash Jr. formed a band called Benét and released a self-titled album in 1992, and it went on to sell over 100,000 copies.
Benét's career, however, was interrupted by a series of personal tragedies. His father died of cancer. His girlfriend Tami Marie Stauff died on April 29, 1993 from injuries suffered in an automobile accident; their daughter, India, was born in 1991 leaving Eric a single father to a two year old.
From 2001 to 2005, he was married to Halle Berry. On July 31, 2011, he married Prince's ex-wife, Manuela Testolini, who gave birth to their first child, a baby girl Lucia Bella, on December 21, 2011.

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Fantasia Barrino
Fantasia Monique Barrino (born June 30, 1984), commonly known simply as Fantasia, is an American R&B singer and actress. She rose to fame as the winner of the third season of the reality television series American Idol in 2004. Following her victory, she released her debut single, "I Believe", which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Subsequently, she released her debut album, Free Yourself, which went on to be certified Platinum by the RIAA and garnered Barrino three Grammy nominations in 2006.
In 2006, she released her second album, Fantasia, which featured the single "When I See U" which topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for eight weeks. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA and received three Grammy nominations in 2008. She then played the part of Celie in the Broadway musical The Color Purple, for which she won a 2007 Theatre World Award. Her third studio album, Back to Me, was released worldwide on August 24, 2010 and features the single "Bittersweet," which peaked in the top ten on the R&B chart. The single won her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. As of February 2012, Barrino has sold 2,842,000 albums and 1,425,000 tracks in the United States.

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Felix Cavaliere
Felix Cavaliere (born November 29, 1942) is an American songwriter, singer, music producer, and musician.
Although he was a member of Joey Dee and His Starlighters best known for their hit "Peppermint Twist", he is best known for his association with The Young Rascals during the 1960s. The other members of The Rascals were Eddie Brigati, Dino Danelli, and Gene Cornish. Cavaliere sang vocals on six of their successful singles. At an early age he joined The Stereos and moved on to form The Escorts, whilst at university. He later produced albums by other artists such as Laura Nyro and Jimmie Spheeris.
Cavaliere had a solo hit with "Only A Lonely Heart Sees" (1980), which made #36 in th Billboard Pop 100 chart and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Cavaliere and former Rascals bandmate Dino Danelli joined Steve Van Zandt to record Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul's album Men Without Women (1982). However, Cavaliere strongly disputes this and claims that was never a member of Little Steven's band.

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Flo Rida
Tramar Dillard (born December 16, 1979) better known by his stage name Flo Rida (pronounced

/floʊ ˈraɪdə/), is an American rapper. He released his debut album, Mail on Sunday, in March 2008. His debut single "Low", featuring T-Pain, was a No. 1 hit for ten weeks in United States in early 2008. Two other singles resulted from Mail on Sunday: "Elevator" and "In the Ayer". In 2009, his second album R.O.O.T.S. was released; its most successful single "Right Round" was at the top of the Hot 100 for six weeks. Since then, he has released his third studio album titled Only One Flo (Part 1), which will see a sequel titled Wild Ones.

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Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (German: [fʁant͡s lɪst]); Hungarian: Liszt Ferencz, in modern use Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.
Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age. In the 1840s he was considered by some to be perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also a well-known composer, piano teacher, and conductor. He was a benefactor to other composers, including Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony. He also played an important role in popularizing a wide array of music by transcribing it for piano.

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Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁants ˈʃuːbɛɐ̯t]; 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer.
Although he died at the age of 31, Schubert was a prolific composer, having written some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of Schubert's music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th century. Today, Schubert is seen as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.
Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund (now a part of Alsergrund), Vienna, on 31 January 1797. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, the son of a Moravian peasant, was a parish schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth Vietz, was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith, and had also been a housemaid for a Viennese family prior to her marriage. Of Franz Theodor's fourteen children (one illegitimate child was born in 1783), nine died in infancy; five survived. Their father was a well-known teacher, and his school in Lichtental, a part of Vienna's 9th district, was well attended. He was not a musician of fame or with formal training, but he taught his son some elements of music.

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Fred Hammond
Fred Hammond (born December 29, 1961]]. in Detroit, Michigan) is a gospel singer, bass guitar player, and record producer.
Hammond has been active both as a member of the gospel performing group Commissioned, and as a solo artist (currently for Verity Records). He is a multiple Grammy-, Dove-, Stellar- award winner and nominee as a performer, producer and writer.
Hammond first gained recognition while playing bass guitar for the gospel group The Winans. By 1985 he was one of the six original members of the group Commissioned, participating in 10 of the group's 12 albums.
After his stint with Commissioned ended, he regained fame in the gospel community after selling millions of albums with his musical group Radical For Christ.
In 2002 Hammond returned to the group Commissioned (now with members Keith Staten, Marvin Sapp, Mitchell Jones, Karl Reid, Michael Williams, and Marcus Cole) to produce the Commissioned Reunion Live album.
Hammond produced Make Me Like The Moon, a stirring gospel ballad co-written by Chante Moore and Kenny Lattimore for their 2006 double-CD of gospel and R&B love songs entitled Uncovered/Covered (released October 10, 2006 by LaFace/Verity/Zomba Music Group). He also performs with Sean Combs on the album Thank You.

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Gary Burton
Gary Burton (born January 23, 1943, Anderson, Indiana) is an American jazz vibraphonist.
A true original on the vibraphone, Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused Burton to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in jazz education due to his 30 years at the Berklee College of Music.
Beginning music at six years old, Burton for the most part taught himself to play marimba and vibraphone. He also began studying piano at age sixteen as he finished high school in Princeton, Indiana (56-60). Burton has cited jazz pianist Bill Evans as a main inspiration for his approach toward the vibraphone.
Burton attended Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1960-61. He studied with Herb Pomeroy and soon befriended the composer and arranger Michael Gibbs. After establishing his career during the 1960s, he returned to join the staff of Berklee from 1971–2004, serving first as Professor, then Dean and finally as Executive Vice President during his last decade at the college.

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Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as a singing cowboy on the radio, in movies, and on television for more than three decades beginning in the early 1930s. Autry was also owner of a television station, several radio stations in Southern California, and the Los Angeles/California Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997.
From 1934 to 1959, Autry appeared in 94 films and 91 episodes of The Gene Autry Show television series. During the 1930s and 1940s, he personified the straight-shooting hero—honest, brave, and true—and profoundly touched the lives of millions of Americans. Autry was also one of the most important figures in the history of country music, considered the second major influential artist of the genre's development after Jimmy Rogers. His singing cowboy movies were the first vehicle to carry country music to a national audience. In addition to his signature song, "Back in the Saddle Again", Autry is still remembered for his Christmas holiday songs, "Here Comes Santa Claus", which he wrote, "Frosty the Snowman", and his biggest hit, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

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George Avakian
George Avakian (Armenian: Ջորջ Ավագյան; Russian: Геворк Авакян; born Armavir, Russian SFSR, March 15, 1919) is an American record producer and executive known particularly for his work with Columbia Records, and his production of albums by Miles Davis and other notable jazz musicians.
Avakian was born in Armavir, Russia, to Armenian parents. His younger brother was the photographer and filmmaker Aram Avakian (1926–1987). The elder Avakian attended Yale University, and became an avid collector and fan of jazz music. While still at Yale he was responsible for the first reissues Columbia put out around 1940, discovering some unissued Louis Armstrong masters from his Hot Five and Hot Seven period in the process. He later produced some of Armstrong's most important albums of the traditional jazz revival era, including Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy. His annotations were noted for the education they provided to their listeners. To expand on this concept, in 1946, Avakian started a course in jazz history at Columbia University.

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George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, actor and writer/author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.
Carlin was noted for his black humor as well as his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and various taboo subjects. Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5–4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's power to regulate indecent material on the public airwaves.
The first of his fourteen stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977. In 1988, the 1990s and 2000s, Carlin's routines focused on socio-cultural criticism of modern American society. He often commented on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture. His final HBO special, It's Bad for Ya, was filmed less than four months before his death.

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George Strait
George Harvey Strait (born May 18, 1952) is an American country music singer, actor, and music producer. Strait is referred to as the "King of Country," and critics call Strait a living legend. He is known for his unique style of western swing music, bar-room ballads, honky-tonk style, and fresh yet traditional Country music. George Strait holds the world record for more number-one hit singles than any other artist in the history of music on any chart or in any genre, having recorded 59 number-one hit singles as of 2012.
Strait rocketed to success after his first single "Unwound" was a hit in 1981. While contributing to the neo-traditional movement of the 1980s, he amassed seven number one albums in the decade with his most popular hits including "Fool Hearted Memory" and "Ocean Front Property". By the 1990s, Strait had influenced a new breed of performers while continuing his own successes, having charted upwards of 20 number-one hits including "Heartland" and "Blue Clear Sky". In the 2000s, Strait was named Artist of the Decade by the Academy of Country Music, was elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and won his first Grammy award for his hit album Troubadour. Strait continued his previous successes throughout the decade, producing a more contemporary sound with moderate cross-over hits including "She'll Leave You with a Smile" and "You'll Be There".

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Gerald Albright
Gerald Albright (born August 30, 1957) is an American jazz saxophonist.
Albright has sold over 1,000,000 albums in the U.S. alone^{[citation needed]}. His self-produced music features him on bass guitar, keyboards, flutes, drum programming, and background vocals.
Born in Los Angeles, Albright grew up in its South Central neighborhood. He began piano lessons at an early age, even though he professed no great interest in the instrument. His love of music picked up considerably when he was given a saxophone that belonged to his piano teacher. It was further reinforced when he attended Locke High School, a breeding ground for many young West Coast musicians.^{[citation needed]} After high school, he attended the University of Redlands where he received a B.S. degree in business management, minoring in music. Already a polished saxophonist by the time he enrolled in college, Albright suddenly switched to bass guitar after he saw Louis Johnson in concert.
Immediately after college, Albright began to master his talent by working extensively in the studio with such artists as Anita Baker, Ray Parker, Jr., The Temptations, and Olivia Newton-John. A few months after graduating from college, Gerald joined Patrice Rushen, who was in the process of forming her own band, in which he played the saxophone. Later, when the bass player left in the middle of a tour, Albright replaced him and finished the tour on bass guitar. Consequently, he often performed on both instruments. Around the same time he also began to tour Europe with drummer Alphonse Mouzon.

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Giovanni Hidalgo
Giovanni Hidalgo a.k.a. "Mañenguito" (born November 22, 1963) is an educator, percussionist and recording artist in the genre' of Latin jazz.
Hidalgo was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico where he received his primary education. His grandfather had also been a musician, as well as his father José Manuel Hidalgo "Mañengue", who was a renowned conga player. Therefore, Hidalgo was raised in a household surrounded by drums, bongos, congas and timbales. He received a conga for his eighth birthday which had been handmade by his father. As a young child he practiced and developed his speed and playing skills on the conga and on the other instruments in his house. Hidalgo would drum a tune with sticks and then play the same tune with his hands.
Hidalgo auditioned and was hired by the Batacumbele Band in 1980. In 1981, he traveled with the band to Cuba where he met a musician by the name of José Luis Quintana "Changuito". Together they were able to create a unique style of rhythm and ushered in a new musical era in Latin music.

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Gustavo Dudamel
Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez (born January 26, 1981) is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. He is the principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Gothenburg, Sweden, and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Los Angeles, California. Dudamel is also the artistic director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela.
Dudamel was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, the son of a trombonist and a voice teacher. He studied music from an early age, becoming involved with El Sistema, the famous Venezuelan musical education program, and took up the violin at age ten. He soon began to study composition. He attended the Jacinto Lara Conservatory, where he was taught the violin by José Luis Jiménez. He then went on to work with José Francisco del Castillo at the Latin-American Violin Academy. He began to study conducting in 1995, first with Rodolfo Saglimbeni, then later with José Antonio Abreu. In 1999, he was appointed music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, the national youth orchestra of Venezuela, and toured several countries. He attended Charles Dutoit's master class in Buenos Aires in 2002, and worked as assistant for Simon Rattle in Berlin and Salzburg in 2003.

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Hank Jones
Henry "Hank" Jones (July 31, 1918 – May 16, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with a Doctorate Degree for his musical accomplishments.
Jones recorded over sixty albums under his own name, and countless others as a sideman.
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Henry "Hank" Jones moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where his father, Henry Jones Sr. a Baptist deacon and lumber inspector, bought a three-story brick home. One of seven children, Jones was raised in a musical family. His mother Olivia Jones sang; his two older sisters studied piano; and his two younger brothers—Thad, a trumpeter, and Elvin, a drummer—also became prominent jazz musicians. He studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, and Art Tatum. By the age of 13 Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio. While playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids and Lansing in 1944 he met Lucky Thompson, who invited Jones to work in New York City at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page.

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Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer, German pronunciation: [hans ˈfloːʁi̯aːn ˈtsɪmɐ]; (born 12 September 1957) is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including award winning film scores for The Lion King (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), Gladiator (2000), The Last Samurai (2003),The Dark Knight (2008), and Inception (2010).
Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios, and works with other composers through the company which he founded, Remote Control Productions.
Zimmer's works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has received four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Classical BRIT Award, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph.
Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As a young child, he lived in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home, but had piano lessons only briefly as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons. He moved to London as a teenager, where he attended Hurtwood House school. In an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006, he commented: "My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend."

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Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz (pronounced: [ɛktɔʁ bɛʁˈljoːz]; 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.
Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. His father, a respected provincial physician and scholar, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education. His father, Louis-Joseph Berlioz, was an atheist, with a liberal outlook; his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was an orthodox Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.

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Hila Plitmann
Hila Plitmann (born in Jerusalem 1973) is an operatic soprano specializing in the performance of new works. She currently resides in London with her husband, composer Eric Whitacre, and their son.
Plitmann's professional career began in 1998, when she premiered Pulitzer Prize winner David Del Tredici's The Spider and the Fly with The New York Philharmonic under the baton of Maestro Kurt Masur. She has since become one of the world's top headliners for premiering new works.
Comments made by her husband Eric Whitacre, collaborator Per Lichtman and Plitmann herself suggest that Plitmann has cultivated talent as a composer and lyricist in her own right and may be working on a commercial release.
Notable performances as a featured soloist include appearances with the following groups:
Her theatrical acting debut was in the role of Sharon in the Fountain Theater’s production of Master Class by Terrence McNally.
Other Notable performances include the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Del Tredici’s Paul Revere’s Ride with the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano; and the world premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Wing on Wing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall; the premiere of Eric Whitacre and David Noroña's groundbreaking Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings in Los Angeles; John Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man with the Brooklyn Philharmonic; the world premiere of Andrea Clearfield's The Long Bright with Orchestra 2001; the premiere of a new song cycle written for her by Pulitzer prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis; the Naxos world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man with the Buffalo Philharmonic, JoAnn Falletta, conductor; and David Del Tredici’s Final Alice with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin.

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Hilary Hahn
Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is a Grammy-winning American violinist.
Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia. Beginning her studies when she was three years old at Baltimore's Peabody Institute, she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age ten, and in 1991, made her major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Hahn signed her first musical recording contract at age sixteen in 1996 with Sony Music. She graduated from the Curtis Institute in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Music degree.
Hahn plays on an 1864 copy of Paganini's Cannone made by Vuillaume. Her main interest is in solo performance; she also performs chamber music.
Hahn began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki Program of Baltimore's Peabody Institute. She participated in a Suzuki class for a year. Between 1984 and 1989 Hahn studied in Baltimore under Klara Berkovich. In 1990, at ten, Hahn was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she became a student of Jascha Brodsky. Hahn studied with Brodsky for seven years and learned the études of Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès, Rode, and the Paganini Caprices. She learned twenty-eight violin concertos, recital programs, and several other short pieces.

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J Moss
J. Moss (born James Moss, December 25, 1971), Detroit, Michigan is an American singer-songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer.
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan as James Moss went to Cass Technical High School, the son of Gospel star Bill Moss, Sr., James spent much of his childhood on tours with his father's popular group, Bill Moss and the Celestials, and his cousin's group The Clark Sisters. As an early teen, Moss was teamed with his brother Bill Moss,Jr. in the singing duo The Moss Brothers. They toured on weekends around the midwest and recorded two major label albums during their seven years together.
In this period James developed as a keyboardist and burgeoning songwriter. He was also learning first-hand the business of music. He attended Michigan State University for two years, but the desire to write and perform was too strong, and he left to seek a career in music.
Upon his return to Detroit, Moss signed with a small local Christian label Aviday Records and released two albums to little fanfare. Yet, during this time he became acquainted with Paul Allen and Walter Kearney. The three began working together as PAJAM. Moss spent the mid-90s touring with The Clark Sisters and was signed, along with Karen Clark-Sheard, his cousin, to Island Records in 1996 to record a solo album. While a proper release never materialized for Moss before Island Black Music shut its doors, Clark's became a smash and introduced the Gospel world to the production powerhouse of PAJAM.

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Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette (born 9 August 1942) is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer. An important figure of the fusion era of jazz, DeJohnette is one of the most influential jazz drummers of the 20th century, due to extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians like Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Sonny Rollins, and John Scofield.
DeJohnette was born on 9 August 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. He began his musical career as a piano player, studying from age four and beginning to play professionally at age 14, but he decided to forsake it and took on the drums as his main instrument. DeJohnette would later credit an uncle, Roy I. Wood Sr., as the person in his life who inspired him to play music. Wood was a Chicago disc jockey who would later become vice president of the National Network of Black Broadcasters.
DeJohnette began his drumming career playing R&B, hard bop, and avant-garde music in Chicago, leading his own groups while playing also with Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, both of whom were members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. In the early 1960s, Dejohnette had the opportunity to perform with John Coltrane and his quintet, an early foray into playing with big name jazz musicians.

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Jake Owen
Joshua Ryan "Jake" Owen (born August 28, 1981) is an American country music artist. Signed to RCA Records Nashville in 2005, he released his debut album Startin' with Me that year. The album produced three singles, all of which reached Top 20 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart: "Yee Haw", "Startin' with Me", and "Something About a Woman". A second album, 2009's Easy Does It, has accounted for three more singles: "Don't Think I Can't Love You", "Eight Second Ride", and "Tell Me". In September 2011, Owen achieved his first number one on the country charts with the title track to his third album, Barefoot Blue Jean Night. He has also toured as an opening act for several country acts, including Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Little Big Town, Sugarland, and Keith Urban.
Joshua "Jake" Owen and his fraternal twin brother Jarrod were born in Vero Beach, Florida on August 28, 1981. The brothers regularly participated in a variety of sports. Jake eventually took up golf, and began pursuing a career as a professional golfer, winning his first tournament at fifteen. After graduating from Vero Beach High School, they attended Florida State University. A wakeboarding accident which resulted in reconstructive surgery left Jake unable to continue playing the sport.

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Jakob Dylan
Jakob Luke Dylan (born December 9, 1969) is the lead singer and songwriter of the rock band The Wallflowers and is a son of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and Sara Dylan. He has also recorded two solo albums.
Dylan is the youngest of four children born to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and wife Sara. He married his childhood sweetheart, actress Nicole Paige Dylan, in a ceremony at Sara Dylan's house in 1992. Jakob Dylan and his wife reside in Los Angeles; they have four sons.
The Wallflowers started out playing alongside other aspiring rockers at Canter's delicatessen in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles in 1989. The band signed to Virgin Records and made a self-titled album, the cover of which had a picture of all the band members' feet, and drummer Peter Yanowitz's dog.
The debut sold poorly, however, and after they were released from Virgin Records, the band regrouped. They toured with 10,000 Maniacs, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Cracker, and The Spin Doctors, and gained and lost several band members along the way. With the help of their manager Andrew Slater, the band secured a new major label record deal with Interscope Records.

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James Burton
James Burton (born August 21, 1939, in Dubberly, Louisiana) is an American guitarist. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2001 (his induction speech was given by longtime fan Keith Richards), Burton has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Critic Mark Demming writes that "Burton has a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest guitar pickers in either country or rock ... [Burton is] one of the best guitar players to ever touch a fretboard."
James Burton is also known as the "Master of the (Fender) Telecaster."
Since the 1950s, Burton has recorded and performed with an array of notable singers, including Bob Luman, Dale Hawkins, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Glen Campbell, John Denver, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Lee Lewis, Claude King, Elvis Costello, Joe Osborn, Roy Orbison, Joni Mitchell, Vince Gill, Suzi Quatro and Allen "Puddler" Harris.
Burton was born in Dubberly in south Webster Parish near Minden, Louisiana, to Guy M. Burton (1909–2001) and the former Lola Poland (1914–2011), a native of rural Fryeburg in Bienville Parish. She was the daughter of James and Althius Poland. Burton's wife is Louise Burton. One of his sisters, Mary B. DeMoss, is deceased. His surviving siblings are Jim Burton and wife Amelia, Dorothy B. Martin, and Billie B. Pool.

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James Conlon
James Conlon (born March 18, 1950) is an American conductor and the current Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera.
Conlon grew up in a family of five children on Cherry Street in Douglaston, Queens, New York. His mother, Angeline L. Conlon, was a freelance writer. His father was an assistant to the New York City Commissioner of Labor in the Robert F. Wagner administration. His siblings were not musically inclined, nor were his parents. When he was eleven, he went to a production of La traviata by an amateur company founded by the mother of a friend (Edith Mugdan, the mother of the young Conlon's best friend, Walter Mugdan, and the founder of the North Shore Opera ). He asked for music lessons and became a treble (boy soprano) in a children's chorus in an opera company in Queens. He dreamed about being a tenor, then a baritone, and even wanted to sing the role of Carmen at one point. Finally it dawned on him that the only way to do everything in opera was to become an operatic conductor.

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James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films. The recipient of eight Academy Award nominations, some of Howard's best known film scores include The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), King Kong (2005), I Am Legend (2007), and, most recently Green Lantern (2011) and The Hunger Games (2012). He is also known for his collaboration with director M. Night Shyamalan, having scored all his films since The Sixth Sense (1999).
Howard was born in Los Angeles, California. Twenty-five years after the death of his father, Howard learned that his father's family was Jewish (Howard later became a practicing Reconstructionist Jew).
Throughout his career as a composer/musician/songwriter, he has scored films of all scales and genres, earning multiple award nominations for his work. Howard began studying music as a child and went on to attend the Thacher School in Ojai, California, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and then majored in piano performance at the University of Southern California.

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James Otto
James Allen Otto (born July 29, 1973) is an American country music artist who is a member of the MuzikMafia, a group of country musicians known for their "country music without prejudice". Otto began his career on Mercury Nashville Records in 2002, charting three minor singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts and recording his debut album Days of Our Lives for the label before being dropped in 2004.
In late 2007, he signed to Warner Bros. Records. His second album, Sunset Man, was released in April 2008. It was produced by John Rich (of Big & Rich) and Jay DeMarcus (of Rascal Flatts), the latter of whom is Otto's brother-in-law. The lead-off single to Sunset Man, "Just Got Started Lovin' You", became Otto's first Number One hit, as well as the Number One country single of 2008 according to Billboard.
James Otto was born on July 29, 1973 on the Fort Lewis Army Base in the state of Washington. He first took up singing at age two and later learned to play violin and saxophone. However, he wanted to learn to play guitar as well, and at age thirteen, he received a guitar for his birthday.

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James Taylor
James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
Taylor achieved his major breakthrough in 1970 with the #3 single "Fire and Rain" and had his first #1 hit the following year with "You've Got a Friend", a recording of Carole King's classic song. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. His commercial achievements declined slightly until a big resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums (including Hourglass, October Road and Covers) were released.
James Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1948, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, was a resident physician. His father was from a well-off family of Southern Scottish ancestry. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard, had studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an aspiring opera singer before the couple's marriage in 1946. James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (1947-1993), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950), and Hugh (born 1952).

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Jamey Johnson
Jamey Johnson (born July 14, 1975) is an American Grammy Award nominated country music artist. Signed to BNA Records in 2005, Johnson made his debut with his single "The Dollar," the title track to his 2006 album The Dollar. Johnson was dropped from BNA in 2006 and signed to Mercury Nashville Records in March 2008, releasing his second album, the gold-certified That Lonesome Song. This album has produced two more singles: the Top 10 hit "In Color" and "High Cost of Living." In addition to most of his own material, Johnson has co-written singles for Trace Adkins, George Strait, James Otto, Joe Nichols and Jessie James.
Johnson was born on July 14, 1975, in Enterprise, Alabama, but raised in Montgomery, Alabama. From an early age, he was influenced by country acts such as Alabama and Alan Jackson, the latter of whom was the first act that he saw in concert. After graduating high school (Jeff Davis High School), Johnson attended Jacksonville State University, the same university from which Alabama lead singer Randy Owen graduated. During his time at Jacksonville State University, he was a member of Sigma Nu in the Iota Lambda chapter.

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Jamie Foxx
Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), professionally known as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer-songwriter, rapper, stand-up comedian, and talk radio host who began playing the piano when he was five years old. As an actor, his work in the film Ray earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical/comedy. He is also a Grammy Award winning musician, producing three albums which have charted highly on the Billboard 200: Unpredictable, which topped the chart, Best Night of My Life and Intuition.
Born in Terrell, Texas, Foxx was raised by his mother's adoptive parents. He performed in high school and was awarded with a scholarship to United States International University. In his twenties, Foxx began performing stand-up at comedy clubs, and eventually joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991; this exposure helped him land film roles and star in his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show. He released his debut album, Peep This, in 1994, but he did not gain significant musical success until 2004 when he was featured in Twista's song "Slow Jamz". Also in 2004, Foxx played critically acclaimed roles in the films Collateral and Ray. He released his second album, Unpredictable, in 2005, which was helped by his collaboration on Kanye West's number-one single "Gold Digger". His third album Intuition was released in 2008 and was anchored by the single "Blame It". Foxx released his fourth studio album, Best Night of My Life, in 2010.

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Jason Ingram
Jason Ingram is a Christian music producer and songwriter. He has served as a songwriter for many Christian artists, including Sonicflood, Rebecca St. James, Bebo Norman,Point of Grace, and Brandon Heath, among others.
Around the end of 2001, he was the first artist to be signed to Resonate Records, an INO Records partnership with Sonicflood's lead vocalist Rick Heil. He subsequently released his self-titled debut album, Jason Ingram, on March 5, 2002.
Since 2003, Ingram has been the lead vocalist of Christian pop rock band The Longing. Jason is currently the lead Vocalist for the band "One Sonic Society"
Ingram has written songs for many contemporary Christian music artists—most notably, he has penned hit songs such as Bebo Norman's "I Will Lift My Eyes" and Salvador's "Shine". At the annual SESAC Awards, held in Nashville on March 5, 2007, Ingram received the "Christian Songwriter of the Year" award. After receiving the honor, he told Billboard, "I had no idea, it never crossed my mind. I am so thrilled. You write and you hope the songs affect people and get out there. It's cool when you see that really happens".

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Jason Mraz
Jason Mraz (

/məˈræz/; born June 23, 1977 in Mechanicsville, Virginia) is an American singer-songwriter. Mraz released his debut album, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, which contained the hit single "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)", in 2002, but it was not until the release of his second album, Mr. A-Z, in 2005, that Mraz achieved major commercial success. The album peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and sold over 100,000 copies in the US. In 2008, Mraz released his third studio album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and was a commercial success worldwide, peaking in the top ten of many international charts.
Mraz's international breakthrough came with the release of the single "I'm Yours" from the album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. The single peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Mraz his first top ten single. The song was on the Hot 100 for 76 weeks, beating the previous record of 69 weeks held by LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live". The song was a huge commercial success in the US, receiving a 5x platinum certification from the RIAA for sales of over five million. The song was successful internationally, topping the charts in New Zealand and Norway and peaking in the top ten of multiple international charts.

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Jazmine Sullivan
Jazmine Marie Sullivan (born April 9, 1987) is an American recording artist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is also the protégé of rapper Missy Elliott. Her debut single "Need U Bad" reached number one on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, while her second single, "Bust Your Windows" peaked at number four. Elements of reggae, dub, pop, jazz, Neo soul and doo-wop can be heard in her work. Jazmine cites singers Kim Burrell, Lauryn Hill, Brandy, Dorinda Clark Cole, Lady Saw, and Changing Faces as her biggest influences and inspirations.

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Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius (

pronunciation (help·info); 8 December 1865 – 20 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period. His music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."
The core of Sibelius's oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies. Like Beethoven, Sibelius used each successive work to further develop his own personal compositional style. His works continue to be performed frequently in the concert hall and are often recorded.
In addition to the symphonies, Sibelius's best-known compositions include Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto in D minor and The Swan of Tuonela (one of the four movements of the Lemminkäinen Suite). Other works include pieces inspired by the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala; over 100 songs for voice and piano; incidental music for 13 plays; the opera Jungfrun i tornet (The Maiden in the Tower); chamber music; piano music; Masonic ritual music; and 21 separate publications of choral music.

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Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Kate Hudson (born September 12, 1981) is an American recording artist, actress and spokesperson. She came to prominence in 2004 as one of the finalists on the third season of American Idol, coming in seventh place. She made her film debut in the 2006 film Dreamgirls, which won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, an NAACP Image Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
She won a Grammy Award for her eponymous debut album, Jennifer Hudson, which was released in 2008 on Arista Records and was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over 800,000 copies in the US; sales exceeded 1 million copies worldwide. Additionally, it spawned the hit single Spotlight. Her second album, I Remember Me, was released in March 2011, and reached number two on the Billboard 200, selling 165,000 copies in its first week of release. The album was certified gold by the RIAA, for shipping over 500,000 copies in the US.
In late 2008, after Hudson's mother, brother and nephew were killed in a shooting, Hudson stepped out of the limelight for three months. Hudson resumed her public appearances in 2009, and has since performed at the Super Bowl XLIII, the Grammy Awards, American Idol, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Hudson has been described as a friend of President Barack Obama, who invited her to appear with him at a fundraiser in Beverly Hills in May 2009. She also performed at the White House at the "Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement" event. Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano. Hudson has sold 1,280,000 albums and 2,237,000 tracks in the United States as of February 2012.

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Jennifer Nettles
Jennifer Nettles (born September 12, 1974 in Douglas, Georgia) is an American country music artist. She is known primarily for her role as lead vocalist of the duo Sugarland alongside Kristian Bush. Before Sugarland's inception, she also fronted Atlanta, Georgia-based bands called Soul Miner's Daughter and Jennifer Nettles Band. She also charted as a duet partner on the country version of rock band Bon Jovi's 2006 single "Who Says You Can't Go Home", a Number One hit on the Billboard country charts.
Nettles is a judge on American Broadcast Company's Duets which premiered on May 24, 2012.
Nettles began performing at school assemblies, her Southern Baptist church, and in community theater. She was also a member of Georgia 4-H's Clovers & Company performing arts group from 1986 to 1993.
Nettles studied Sociology and Anthropology at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia and graduated in 1997. While a student there, Nettles and Cory Jones (who at the time was studying classical guitar at the University of Georgia) formed the group Soul Miner’s Daughter. Performing as both an acoustic duo and with a band, they released two albums: The Sacred and Profane in 1996 and Hallelujah in 1998, both of which were composed of songs written collaboratively by Jones and Nettles. Soul Miner's Daughter was invited to perform at the Atlanta installment of Lilith Fair in 1999.

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Jerry Douglas
Jerry Douglas (born Gerald Calvin Douglas, May 28, 1956 in Warren, Ohio) is an American record producer and resonator guitar player. Called "Dobro's matchless contemporary master," by The New York Times, and lauded as "my favorite musician" by John Fogerty, Douglas is one of the world’s most renowned musicians.
In addition to his thirteen solo recordings, Douglas has played on more than 1600 albums. As a sideman, he has recorded with artists as diverse as Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Phish, Dolly Parton, Paul Simon, Mumford & Sons, Keb' Mo', Ricky Skaggs, Elvis Costello, and Johnny Mathis, as well as performing on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. He has been part of such notable groups as The Whites, J. D. Crowe and the New South, The Country Gentlemen, Strength in Numbers, and Elvis Costello's "Sugar Canes".
As a producer, he has overseen albums by Alison Krauss, the Del McCoury Band, Maura O'Connell, Jesse Winchester and the Nashville Bluegrass Band. Along with Aly Bain, he serves as Music Director of the popular BBC Television series, "Transatlantic Sessions".

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Joan Sebastian
Joan Sebastian (pronounced: [xoˈan seβaˈstjan]) (born in Juliantla, Guerrero, in 1951) is a popular Mexican singer and songwriter. He has composed hundreds of songs and been a regular staple on the top-40 charts in Mexico since his career began in 1977. His music is a mixture of Latin pop, ranchera and grupera music. His success is not only found in music but also in his short acting career when he became the main protagonist of a Mexican soap opera. In 1996 he made his acting debut in the Mexican soap opera Tú y Yo (You and I) sharing credits with Maribel Guardia (his former wife and mother to one of his sons) the soap opera became an instant televised hit.
Before he had a big successful music career Jose Manuel Figueroa (Joan Sebastian's legal name) passed most of his childhood from place to place. At age eight he was sent away by his parents to Guanajuato for school. When he was eleven he return to Juliantla, his native town, this return inspired him to begin formally composing. But he was sent off again to a monastery in Morelos where he was under the care of father David Salgado. Due to the influence Father Salgado had on Sebastian he took the decision of becoming a priest. So at age 14 he enrolled in the Seminario Conciliar de San Jose(located in Cuernavaca, Morelos). But he soon realized that music was his true calling so when he was 17 years old he abandoned the seminary to dedicate himself completely to the music business.

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JoAnn Falletta
JoAnn Falletta (born February 27, 1954, in Queens, New York City) is an American classical musician and orchestral conductor.
Falletta was educated at the Mannes College of Music and The Juilliard School in New York City. She began her musical career as a virtuoso guitar and mandolin player, and as a teenager often was called to perform with the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic when a work called for a mandolin or guitar obbligato. She entered Mannes in 1971 as a guitar student, but began conducting the student orchestra in her freshman year, immediately precipitating her desire for a career as a conductor. While the Mannes administration at that time expressed doubts about the ability of any woman to gain a music directorship, it consented to an official transfer of emphasis for Falletta. After graduation, she pursued further study at Queens College (M.A. in orchestral conducting) and the Juilliard School of Music (M.M., D.M.A. in orchestral conducting). Falletta studied conducting with Jorge Mester, Semyon Bychkov, and others, including master classes under Leonard Bernstein.

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Joe Chiccarelli
Joe Chiccarelli, a native of Boston, Massachusetts is a music producer, mixer and engineer who has been active since the 1970s. He has produced albums by Stan Ridgway, Oingo Boingo, Sandra Bernhard, My Morning Jacket, Counting Crows, The Shins, Augie March, Manchester Orchestra, Minus the Bear, Kurt Elling, Big Talk. Other artists include Elton John, Rufus Wainright, U2, Beck, Etta James, Jamie Cullum, Tori Amos, Liquid Blue, Pink Martini, Christina Perri and Jason Mraz. He also engineered Frank Zappa's albums Sheik Yerbouti, Joe's Garage Acts I, II & III and Tinseltown Rebellion, and engineered the White Stripes 2007 album Icky Thump. He also engineered The Raconteurs "Consolers of The Lonely" for which he received his eighth Grammy award, for Best Engineered Album of 2008.
Chiccarelli got his first taste of the studio through a cousin who owned Boston's Fleetwood Studio. Chiccarelli moved west in the late '70s where he scored an assistant engineer gig at L.A.'s Cherokee Studios. He got his career break engineering Frank Zappa's album Sheik Yerbouti (1979). In an interview with HitQuarters, Chiccarelli said: "[Zappa's] engineer couldn’t make the session and so he decided to take a chance on me. I’m so thankful ever since that day because he gave me a career."

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John Corigliano
John Corigliano (born 16 February 1938, New York City, New York) is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.
Italian American Corigliano was born to a musical family. His father, John Corigliano Sr., was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years, and his mother, Rose Buzen, is an accomplished educator and pianist. He is a former student of Otto Luening,Vittorio Giannini and Paul Creston. Corigliano attended P.S. 241 and Midwood High School in Brooklyn. He studied composition at Columbia University (BA 1959) and at the Manhattan School of Music. Before achieving success as composer, Corigliano worked as assistant to the producer on the Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts, and as a session producer for classical artists such as André Watts.
Most of Corigliano's work has been for symphony orchestra. He employs a wide variety of styles, sometimes even within the same work, but aims to make his work accessible to a relatively large audience. He has written symphonies, as well as works for string orchestra, and wind band. Additionally, Corigliano has written concerti for clarinet, flute, violin, oboe, and piano; film scores; various chamber and solo instrument works, and the opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, which enjoyed a success at the premiere.

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John Jorgenson
John Jorgenson (born 6 July 1956 in Madison, Wisconsin) is a US musician. Although best known for his guitar work with bands such as the Desert Rose Band and The Hellecasters, Jorgenson is also proficient in the mandolin, mandocello, Dobro, pedal steel, piano, upright bass, clarinet, bassoon and saxophone. While a member of the Desert Rose Band, Jorgenson won the Academy of Country Music's "Guitarist of the Year" award three consecutive years.
Jorgenson has also recorded or toured with many artists including Elton John, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams Jr., Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, Roy Orbison, Patty Loveless, Michael Nesmith and Bonnie Raitt.
Jorgenson has played professionally since the age of fourteen, and had been playing both the piano and clarinet since age eight.
He was born in 1956 in Madison, Wisconsin, into a musical family. His mother was a piano teacher and his father an orchestra conductor and college music professor.

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John Legend
John Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), better known by his stage name John Legend, is an American singer-songwriter and actor. He has won nine Grammy Awards, and in 2007, he received the special Starlight award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Prior to the release of his debut album, Stephens' career gained momentum through a series of successful collaborations with multiple established artists. Stephens added his voice to those of other artists, assisting in them reaching chart-topper hits. He lent his voice to Kanye West's All of the Lights, on Slum Village's "Selfish" and Dilated Peoples' "This Way". Other artists included Jay-Z's "Encore", and he sang backing vocals on Alicia Keys' 2003 song "You Don't Know My Name" and Fort Minor's "High Road." Stephens played piano on Lauryn Hill's "Everything Is Everything."
Stephens was born on December 28, 1978, in Springfield, Ohio. He is the son of Phyllis, a seamstress, and John Mills, a factory worker and former National Guardsman. Throughout his childhood, Stephens was homeschooled on and off by his mother. At the age of four, he began playing the piano and at the age of seven, he performed with his church choir. When he was ten, his parents divorced, causing his mother to suffer a breakdown. At the age of 12, Stephens attended North High School, from which he graduated four years later. He graduated salutatorian.

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John Mayer
John Clayton Mayer (

/ˈmeɪ.ər/ MAY-ər; (born October 16, 1977) is an American pop and blues rock musician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and music producer. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, he attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. He moved to Atlanta in 1997, where he refined his skills and gained a following, and he now lives in New York City. His first two studio albums, Room for Squares and Heavier Things, did well commercially, achieving multi-platinum status. In 2003, he won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Your Body Is a Wonderland."
Mayer began his career performing mainly acoustic rock, but gradually began a transition towards the blues genre in 2005 by collaborating with renowned blues artists such as B. B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton, and by forming the John Mayer Trio. The blues influence can be heard throughout his 2005 live album Try! with the John Mayer Trio and his third studio album Continuum, released in September 2006. At the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in 2007 Mayer won Best Pop Vocal Album for Continuum and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Waiting on the World to Change". He released his fourth studio album, Battle Studies, in November 2009. His fifth album, Born and Raised, was released on May 22, 2012. He has sold over 10 million albums in the U.S. and 20 million albums worldwide.

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John Williams
John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, War Horse, Home Alone and the first three Harry Potter films. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg's major feature films.
Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News, the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, and the television series Lost in Space. Williams has also composed numerous classical concerti, and he served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993; he is now the orchestra's conductor laureate.
Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, and 21 Grammy Awards. With 47 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most nominated person, after Walt Disney. John Williams was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music. Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

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Jordin Sparks
Jordin Brianna Sparks (born December 22, 1989) is an American pop / R&B recording artist, songwriter and actress who rose to fame as the winner of the sixth season of American Idol. She hails from Glendale, Arizona. Sparks won when she was 17 years old, making her the youngest winner in Idol history and remains the last female to win American Idol. She followed her American Idol victory with the release of her self-titled debut album in 2007, which has gone platinum in the U.S. and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Sparks' single, "No Air" is the highest-selling single by any American Idol contestant, selling over 3 million digital copies in the U.S. and Canada. Due to the success of her debut album and its four top 20 singles, she has received numerous awards and nominations including an American Music Award in 2008 and her first Grammy nomination in 2009. In 2009, Billboard magazine's 91st-best-selling music artist of the 2000–2009 decade.

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Josh Groban
Joshua Winslow "Josh" Groban (born February 27, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. His first four solo albums have been certified multi-platinum, and in 2007, he was charted as the number-one best selling artist in the United States with over 21 million records in that country. To date, he has sold over 24 million albums worldwide, and is the top selling classical artist of the 2000s in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Groban originally studied acting, but as his voice changed, it developed into a "significant instrument". Groban attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, a free public school where students received a conservatory-style education. His life changed when his vocal coach, Seth Riggs, submitted a tape of Josh singing "All I Ask of You", from The Phantom of the Opera, to Riggs' friend, producer, composer and arranger David Foster. Foster called him to stand in for an ailing Andrea Bocelli to rehearse a duet, "The Prayer," with Celine Dion at the rehearsal for the Grammy Awards in 1998.Rosie O'Donnell immediately invited him to appear on her talk show. Foster asked him to sing at the California Governor's Gray Davis' 1999 inauguration. He was cast on Ally McBeal by the show's creator, David E. Kelley, performing "You're Still You" for the 2001 season finale.

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José Feliciano
José Feliciano (born September 10, 1945) is a Puerto Rican singer, virtuoso guitarist and composer known for many international hits including the 1970 Christmas single "Feliz Navidad".
Feliciano was born in Lares, Puerto Rico, on September 10, 1945. Left permanently blind at birth as a result of congenital glaucoma, Feliciano was first exposed to music at age three and would play on a tin cracker can while accompanying his uncle playing the Cuatro. When he was five, his family moved to Spanish Harlem, New York City, and at age nine, he played the Teatro Puerto Rico in the Bronx. He started his musical life playing the accordion until his father and family friend, Benjamin Borges, gave him his first guitar in a brown paper bag. He played every chance he had by himself in his room for up to 14 hours a day listening to 1950s rock'n'roll records, classical guitarists such as Andrés Segovia, and jazz players such as Wes Montgomery. He later had classical lessons with Harold Morris, who earlier had been a student of Segovia.

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Juanes
Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez (born August 9, 1972), better known as Juanes (for the contraction of his first and second name) is a Colombian musician who was a member of heavy metal band Ekhymosis and is now a solo artist. In 2000, his solo debut album Fíjate Bien won three Latin Grammy Awards. According to his record label, Juanes has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.
Raised in Medellín, Colombia, Juanes began playing guitar at age seven. He started his first band, Ekhymosis, in 1988, which experienced commercial success in Colombia but had difficulty achieving popularity outside of the country. In 2000, Juanes released his solo debut album, Fíjate Bien, which earned him three Latin Grammys. His follow-up album, Un Dia Normal, was released in 2002 and was later certified platinum in multiple countries throughout Latin America. Juanes' third album, Mi Sangre, achieved success due to the single "La Camisa Negra". He has since released La Vida... Es Un Ratico (2007) and P.A.R.C.E. (2010).

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Julius Röntgen
Julius Engelbert Röntgen (9 May 1855 – 13 September 1932) was a German-Dutch composer of classical music.
Julius Röntgen was born in Leipzig, Germany, to a family of musicians. His father, Engelbert Röntgen, was first violinist in the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig; his mother, Pauline Klengel, was a pianist, the aunt of renowned Julius Klengel.
Julius was a gifted child. Neither he nor his sisters attended school; he was taught music by his parents and grandparents, and other subjects by private tutors. His first piano teacher was Carl Reinecke, the director of the Gewandhaus orchestra, while his early compositions were influenced by Reinecke, but also by Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.
In 1870, at the age of 14, Julius Röntgen visited Franz Liszt in Weimar; after playing piano for him he was invited to a soiree at Liszt's house.
In Leipzig, he and his parents were part of the musical circle around Heinrich von Herzogenberg, and it was at their house that he first met Brahms. Later Röntgen moved to Munich, where he studied piano under Franz Lachner, a friend of Franz Schubert. At the age of 18 he became a professional pianist. During a concert tour through southern Germany he became acquainted with the singer Julius Stockhausen; at this time he also met a Swedish music student Amanda Maier, whom he would marry in 1880.

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Justin Timberlake
Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, actor, and businessman. He achieved early fame when he appeared as a contestant on Star Search, and went on to star in the Disney Channel television series The New Mickey Mouse Club, where he met future bandmate JC Chasez. Timberlake became famous in the late 1990s as the lead singer and youngest member of the boy band 'N Sync, whose launch was financed by Lou Pearlman.
In 2002, he released his debut solo album, Justified, which sold more than seven million copies worldwide. The album was a commercial success, spawning the hits "Cry Me a River" and "Rock Your Body". Timberlake continued his success with his second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006), debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and produced the US number-one hit singles "SexyBack", "My Love", and "What Goes Around... Comes Around".
Timberlake has won six Grammy Awards and four Emmy Awards. His first two albums made him one of the most commercially successful singers in the world, each selling in excess of 7 million copies. He also has an acting career, having starred in films such as The Social Network, Bad Teacher and Friends with Benefits. His other ventures include record label Tennman Records, fashion label William Rast, and the restaurants Destino and Southern Hospitality.

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Kanye West
Kanye Omari West (

/ˈkɑːnjeɪ/; born June 8, 1977) is an American musician, film director and fashion designer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson. His style of production originally used pitched-up vocal samples from soul songs incorporated with his own drums and instruments. However, subsequent productions saw him broadening his musical palette and expressing influences encompassing '70s R&B, baroque pop, trip hop, arena rock, folk, alternative, electronica, synthpop, and classical music.
West released his debut album The College Dropout in 2004, his second album Late Registration in 2005, his third album Graduation in 2007, his fourth album 808s & Heartbreak in 2008, and his fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010. West released a collaborative album, Watch the Throne with Jay-Z in 2011, which is the duo's first collaborative album. His five solo albums, all of which have gone platinum, have received numerous awards and critical acclaim. As of 2012, West has won a total of eighteen Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all-time. All albums have been very commercially successful, with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy becoming his fourth consecutive No. 1 album in the U.S. upon release. West has had 5 songs exceed 3 million in digital sales as of July 2011, with "Gold Digger" selling 3,086,000, "Stronger" selling 4,402,000, "Heartless" selling 3,742,000, "E.T." selling over 4,000,000 and "Love Lockdown" selling over 3,000,000 placing him third in overall digital sales of the past decade. He has sold over 30 million digital songs in the United States making him one of the best-selling digital artists of all-time.

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Karina Pasian
Karina Pasian (born July 18, 1991) is a Grammy Award nominated recording artist and pianist.
Karina Pasian was born in New York City, of Dominican and Armenian descent. Her first language was Russian, and she can sing in six other languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, and French. She first began taking piano lessons at the age of three from her babysitter, and began classical piano training while in kindergarten. She began working with a vocal coach at the age of eight, and attended the Professional Performing Arts School in New York City alongside Taylor Momsen and Mark Indelicato.
In 2003, Pasian met Quincy Jones, who invited her and her family to his home in Bel Air, California. Soon after this, Pasian performed and won on Star Search. She also performed at Quincy Jones' We Are The Future concert in Rome. On June 22, 2007, Pasian performed at the White House for President George W. Bush, in celebration of Black Music Month, making her the first person of Dominican descent to perform there.

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Karrin Allyson
Karrin Allyson (pronounced KAH-rin; born Karrin Allyson Schoonover on July 27, 1963 in Great Bend, Kansas) is an American jazz vocalist. She has been nominated for four Grammy Awards, and has received positive reviews from several prominent sources, including the New York Times, which has called her a "singer with a feline touch and impeccable intonation."
Karrin Allyson was born in Great Bend, Kansas; her father was a Lutheran minister and her mother was a psychotherapist, teacher and classical pianist. She grew up in Omaha, and spent her senior high school year in San Francisco. In her youth she studied classical piano, sang at her local church and in musical theatre, and also began songwriting.
Allyson attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha on a classical piano scholarship; she majored in classical piano and minored in French. In addition to her classical-music studies at university, Allyson was lead singer for her own all-female rock band, Tomboy. She also developed an avid interest in jazz, performing both in a jazz swing choir at UNO and in her own jazz ensemble, which had gigs at various Omaha venues.

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Katy Perry
Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known by her stage name Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Perry grew up with gospel music, and during her first year of high school she pursued a music career as Katy Hudson, releasing her first studio album called Katy Hudson which failed to chart. She recorded a solo album later, which was never released. After signing with Capitol Music Group in 2007, her fourth record label in seven years, she adopted the stage name Katy Perry.
She first gained recognition with the release of her first mainstream album, One of the Boys in 2008, which spawned three Billboard Hot 100 top-ten songs—"I Kissed A Girl", "Hot n Cold" and "Waking Up In Vegas". Perry supported the album with her Hello Katy Tour. In 2010, her third studio album, Teenage Dream (2010), which topped the Billboard 200 chart, and spawned five number one singles—"California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Firework", "E.T." and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"—Teenage Dream was the only album (after Michael Jackson's Bad)—to do so, and the first female in history to achieve this milestone. She embarked on the California Dreams Tour, which grossed nearly $60 million worldwide. Perry re-released the album under the name of Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection on March 26, 2012, and the re-release has already spawned the number-one single "Part of Me".

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Keith Urban
Keith Lionel Urban (born 26 October 1967) is a Australian country music singer, songwriter and guitarist whose commercial success has been mainly in the United States and Australia. Urban was born in New Zealand and began his career in Australia at an early age. In 1991, he released a self-titled debut album, and charted four singles in Australia before moving to the United States in 1992. Eventually, Urban found work as a session guitarist before starting a band known as The Ranch, which recorded one studio album on Capitol Records and charted two singles on the Billboard country charts.
Still signed to Capitol, he made his solo American debut in 1999 with the album Keith Urban. Certified platinum in the U.S., it also produced his first American Number One in "But for the Grace of God". His breakthrough hit was the Number One "Somebody Like You", from his second Capitol album Golden Road (2002). This album also earned Urban his first Grammy Award win for "You'll Think of Me", its fourth single and the fourth Billboard Number One of his career. 2004's Be Here, his third American album, produced three more Number Ones, and became his highest-selling album, earning 4× Multi-Platinum certification. Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing was released in 2006, producing the record-setting No.17 country chart debut of "Once in a Lifetime", as well as Urban's second Grammy for the song "Stupid Boy", while a Greatest Hits package entitled Greatest Hits: 18 Kids followed in late 2007. This album was re-released a year later as Greatest Hits: 19 Kids with one track added: the number one "You Look Good in My Shirt", which he had previously recorded on Golden Road. Additional albums Defying Gravity and Get Closer were released on 31 March 2009 and 16 November 2010, respectively.

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Kenna
Kenna Zemedkun, known professionally as simply Kenna, (b. 1978 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is an Ethiopian-born American musician. His track "Say Goodbye To Love" was nominated for Best Urban/Alternative Performance in the 2009 Grammy Awards.
Kenna is the eldest son of an Ethiopian family that immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio. He was later raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Kenna began to express an interest in music upon receiving a copy of U2's The Joshua Tree.
With the release of his first single in 2001, "Hell Bent", Kenna gained moderate popularity and an underground following of fans who eagerly awaited the release of his debut album, New Sacred Cow. After many delays and swapping of record labels, the album was finally released under the Sony imprint Flawless in 2003. A subsequent North American tour was launched in the Summer of 2003 with Depeche Mode front man Dave Gahan.
The album, which was co-produced by Chad Hugo of The Neptunes, contained elements of electronica, synth pop, post rock, and house music. Two singles, "Sunday After You" and "Freetime" followed the release of the album; the music video of the latter, along with "Hell Bent", appeared sporadically on MTV2. "Freetime" reached #19 on the U.S. Dance charts.

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Kenny Chesney
Kenneth Arnold "Kenny" Chesney (born March 26, 1968) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Chesney has recorded 15 albums, 14 of which have been certified gold or higher by the RIAA. He has also produced more than 30 Top Ten singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, 20 of which climbed to the top of the charts.
Over the life of his career, Chesney has been honored with numerous awards from the Academy of Country Music (ACM), Country Music Association (CMA), American Music Awards (AMA), Country Music Television (CMT), Billboard Music Awards (BMA), People's Choice Awards (PCA), and the French Country Music Awards (FCMA).
Chesney recently produced and co-directed a film for ESPN, "The Boys Of Fall". Chesney has received six Academy of Country Music awards(including four consecutive Entertainer of the Year Awards from 2005 to 2008), as well as six Country Music Association awards. He is one of the most popular touring acts in country music, regularly selling out the venues at which he performs. His 2007 Flip-Flop Summer Tour was the highest-grossing country road trip of the year.

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Keyshia Cole
Keyshia Cole (born October 15, 1981) is an American singer–songwriter and actress. She gained nationwide acclaim when her 2005 debut album, The Way It Is went platinum. Her second album Just Like You went into production shortly after that and was released in September 2007. Her third studio album, A Different Me was released on December 16, 2008 and is certified Gold for selling 900,000+ units in the United States. She also achieved moderate success for her reality/documentary series Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is which aired on BET from 2006-2008 which gave a close look at Cole's career and personal life with her biological mother and sister. In December 2010, she released her fourth studio album, Calling All Hearts.
Keyshia Cole was born on October 15, 1981 in Oakland, California, where she was raised. Cole was born to Francine "Frankie" Lons and Sal, her now deceased father. She was later adopted by family friend Yvonne Cole and raised by Yvonne's husband's family and friends from the age of two. Yvonne learned that Cole could sing when she was five. At a school function, she snuck away from her mother and the next thing she knew, Cole had won a talent show. Along with her brother Sean, Cole was first introduced to the music industry at the age of 12, when she met and recorded with MC Hammer. She later formed a friendship with Tupac Shakur, who promised to help start her singing career before he died unexpectedly. Cole remembers Shakur as "really outspoken and really bright. He was definitely a guy who gave off a superstar vibe." Cole moved to Los Angeles when she was 18 to pursue a music career. During this time, Cole collaborated with artists from her native Bay Area, among them D'Wayne Wiggins of Tony Toni Tone and Messy Marv. In 2002, she was introduced to A&M Records executive Ron Fair, who signed her and began mentoring her after hearing her singing a verse of her hit song "Love".

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Kid Rock
Robert James "Bob" Ritchie (born January 17, 1971), known by his stage name Kid Rock, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist and rapper with five Grammy Awards nominations. Kid Rock released several studio albums that mostly went unnoticed before his 1998 record Devil Without a Cause, released with Atlantic Records, sold 11 million albums behind the hits, "Bawitdaba", "Cowboy", and "Only God Knows Why". In 2000, he released The History of Rock, a compilation of remixed and remastered versions of songs from previous albums as well as the hit single, "American Bad Ass" and the previously unreleased "Abortion".
Kid Rock released the follow-up in 2001, Cocky. After a slow start, his country-flavored hit "Picture" with Sheryl Crow resurrected the album and it went gold as a single and pushed the album's sales over 5 million. It was followed by 2003's self-titled release, which went platinum in the USA and reached No. 8 on the Billboard charts. In 2006 he released Live Trucker, a greatest hits live album that went mostly unnoticed.

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Kim Burrell
Kimberly Burrell is an American gospel singer from Houston, Texas. She calls her musical style jazz gospel. Though she is comparatively new to the gospel music industry, having only performed since 1989, she has quickly become one of the most influential voices in the genre, often said to be "this generation's Ella Fitzgerald". In 2010, she founded The Love & Liberty Fellowship COGIC, where she serves as Pastor/Overseer & Bishop.
Though Burrell battled double pneumonia for eight years as a child, she performed her first solo with the church choir at the age of only one year old singing Andraé Crouch's "Hallelujah Praise". She is the daughter of a pastor in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Burrell began her gospel career proper performing with Reverend James Cleveland's GMWA Youth Mass Choir (also known as Rev. James Cleveland's Kids), Trinity Temple Full Gospel Mass Choir of Dallas and The Inspirational Sounds Mass Choir of Houston.
In 1996, she appeared on Ricky Dillard & New G's "Worked It Out" album, as the feature on the reprise of "Jesus Paid It All", which is credited as the turning point of her national career.

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Kirk Franklin
Kirk Dwayne Franklin (born January 26, 1970) is an American Gospel music musician, choir director, and author, and is most notably known for leading urban contemporary gospel choirs such as The Family, God's Property and One Nation Crew (1NC).
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Franklin was raised by his grandmother, Gertrude, having been abandoned as a baby by his mother.^{[dead link]} Gertrude collected and resold aluminum cans to raise money for Kirk to take piano lessons from the age of four. Kirk excelled in music, being able to read and write music, while also play by ear.
He received his first contract offer at the age of seven, which his aunt turned down. He joined the church choir and became music director of the Mt. Rose Baptist Church adult choir at the age of eleven.
Despite his strict religious upbringing, Franklin rebelled in his teenage years, and in an attempt to keep him out of trouble, his grandmother arranged an audition for him at a professional youth conservatory associated with a local university. He was accepted and, while his life seemed to be on track for a while, the announcement of a girlfriend's pregnancy and his eventual expulsion from school for behavioral problems proved otherwise.

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Kurt Deutsch
Kurt Deutsch is an actor, director, and record producer.
Deutsch was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Syracuse University and the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center. He resides in New York City with his wife, actress Sherie Rene Scott and their son Elijah.
In 2000, Deutsch and Scott founded Sh-K-Boom Records. They named the company after themselves (Sherie and Kurt). The label's first two releases were Scott's debut album, "...Men I've Had," and the debut of her former Rent co-star Adam Pascal. Sh-K-Boom also participated in the marketing of the debut album of another Rent co-star, Anthony Rapp. In 2004, a new musical theater subsidiary of Sh-K-Boom, Ghostlight Records, was created. The company has over 60 albums in its catalog.
As producer, Deutsch received a 2009 Grammy for Best Musical Show Album for The Original Broadway Cast Album In The Heights along with fellow producers Alex Lacamoire, Andrés Levin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Joel Moss & Bill Sherman. Additionally, Deutsch as producer, with Joel Moss, was honored with 2006 Grammy Award nominations in the "Musical Show" category for two Ghostlight albums, the Actors' Fund Benefit Recording of Hair and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. A third Ghostlight album, the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels cast recording, was nominated in the same category.

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Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his most well known work The Threepenny Opera, a Marxist critique of capitalism, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill was a socialist^{[unreliable source?]} who held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose. He also wrote a number of works for the concert hall, as well as several Judaism-themed pieces.
Kurt Julian Weill was born on March 2, 1900, the third of four children to Albert Weill (1867–1950) and Emma Weill née Ackermann (1872–1955). He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the "Sandvorstadt", the Jewish quarter in Dessau, Germany, where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Kurt Weill started taking piano lessons and made his first attempts at writing music; his earliest preserved composition was written in 1913 and is titled Mi Addir. Jewish Wedding Song.

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Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE (

/ˈkaɪliː mɨˈnoʊɡ/; born 28 May 1968) — often known simply as Kylie — is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, showgirl, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a recording artist in 1987. Her first single, "Locomotion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart and became the highest selling single of the decade. This led to a contract with songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Her debut album, Kylie (1988), and the single "I Should Be So Lucky", each reached number one in the United Kingdom, and over the next two years, her first 13 singles reached the British top ten. Her debut film, The Delinquents (1989) was a box-office hit in Australia and the UK, and received generally positive reviews.
Initially presented as a "girl next door", Minogue attempted to convey a more mature style in her music and public image. Her singles were well received, but after four albums her record sales were declining, and she left Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992 to establish herself as an independent performer. Her next single, "Confide in Me", reached number one in Australia and was a hit in several European countries in 1994, and a duet with Nick Cave, "Where the Wild Roses Grow", brought Minogue a greater degree of artistic credibility. Drawing inspiration from a range of musical styles and artists, Minogue took creative control over the songwriting for her next album, Impossible Princess (1997). It failed to attract strong reviews or sales in the UK, but was successful in Australia.

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Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (/ˈstɛfəniː dʒʌrməˈnɑːtə/ STE-fə-nee jurr-mə-NAH-tə; born March 28, 1986), known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to focus on her musical career. She began performing in the rock music scene of Manhattan's Lower East Side, and was signed with Streamline Records by the end of 2007. During her employment as a songwriter for the record company, her vocal abilities captured the attention of recording artist Akon, who signed her to his label Kon Live Distribution.
Lady Gaga came to prominence as a recording artist following the release of her debut album The Fame (2008), which was a critical and commercial success that topped charts around the world and included the international number-one singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". After embarking on the The Fame Ball Tour, she followed the album with The Fame Monster (2009), which spawned the worldwide hit singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro". The album's success allowed her to embark on the eighteen-month long Monster Ball Tour, which later became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time. Her most recent album Born This Way (2011) topped the charts of most major markets and generated more international chart-topping singles, including "Born This Way", "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory". Besides her musical career, she involves herself with humanitarian causes and LGBT activism.

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Larry Carlton
Larry Carlton (born March 2, 1948, Torrance, California) is an American jazz, smooth jazz, jazz fusion, pop, and rock guitarist. He has divided his recording time between solo recordings and session appearances with various well-known bands. Over his career, Carlton has won four Grammy Awards for his performances and compositions, including performing on the theme song for the hit television series, Hill Street Blues (1981).
Carlton started learning to play guitar when he was six years old, studying under Slim Edwards near his Torrance home. Taking an interest in jazz while at high school, his playing style was influenced by Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, and B.B. King. Saxophonist John Coltrane has also made a notable impression on Carlton, and Carlton's live albums have featured cuts from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Carlton was a session musician in Los Angeles, making up to five hundred recordings a year, including albums by Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, The Four Tops, Christopher Cross, Barbra Streisand, the Partridge Family, and Charly García's Clics Modernos. His guitar work on Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne" from their 1976 LP The Royal Scam has been listed as the third best guitar solo on record by Rolling Stone Magazine. From 1971 to 1976 he played with the jazz-rock group The Crusaders. In 1977 he signed with Warner Bros. Records for a solo career. In 1979 he played guitar on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall. Although still relatively unknown outside his fan-base, Carlton produced six albums from 1978 to 1984, during which his adaptation of Santo Farina's "Sleepwalk" climbed the pop and adult contemporary charts and his 1983 LP Friends garnered a Grammy nomination. In 1979, Carlton appeared on the Grammy award winning, self titled, debut album by Christopher Cross. Guitar great Eric Johnson also played on that same album.

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Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Noelle Hill (born May 26, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, and actress.
Early in her career, she established her reputation as a member of the Fugees. In 1998, she launched her solo career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. The recording earned Hill 5 Grammy Awards, including the coveted Album of the Year and Best New Artist.
Following the success of her debut album, Hill largely dropped out of public view, in part due to her displeasure with fame and the music industry. After a four-year hiatus, she released MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, a live recording of "deeply personal songs" performed mostly solo with an acoustic guitar. In more recent years, she has recorded songs for soundtracks and mixtapes, as well as performing live at several music festivals. Hill has 6 children, five of whom are with Rohan Marley, one of reggae musician Bob Marley's sons.
Lauryn Hill was born in South Orange, New Jersey of Haitian and African-American descent,^{[citation needed]} the second of two children born to high school English teacher Valerie Hill and computer programmer Mal Hill. As a child, Hill listened to her parents' Motown 1960s soul records. Music was a central part of the Hill home. Mal Hill sang at weddings, Valerie played the piano, and Lauryn's older brother Malaney played the saxophone, guitar, drums, harmonica, and piano. In 1988, Hill appeared as an Amateur Night contestant on It's Showtime at the Apollo. She sang her own version of Smokey Robinson's song "Who's Lovin' You?", where she was booed tremendously, but persevered and ended up with audience applause.

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LeAnn Rimes
Margaret LeAnn Rimes Cibrian (born August 28, 1982), best known as LeAnn Rimes, is an American country/pop singer. She is known for her rich vocals and her rise to fame as an eight-year-old champion on the original Ed McMahon version of Star Search, followed by the release of the Bill Mack song "Blue" when she was 13 to become the youngest country music star since Tanya Tucker in 1972.
Rimes made her breakthrough into country music in 1996 with her debut album, Blue, which reached #1 on the Top Country Albums chart and was certified multiplatinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album's eponymous leadoff single, "Blue," was originally intended to be recorded by Patsy Cline in the early 1960s. It became a Top 10 hit and Rimes gained national acclaim for her similarity to Cline's vocal style. When she released her sophomore studio effort in 1997, You Light up My Life: Inspirational Songs, she moved towards country pop material, which set the trend for a string of albums released into the next decade.

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Lee Ann Womack
Lee Ann Womack (born August 19, 1966 in Jacksonville, Texas, United States) is an American country music singer and songwriter, who is best known for her old fashioned-styled country music songs that often discuss subjects such as cheating and lost love. Her 2000 single, "I Hope You Dance" was a major crossover music hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard Country Chart and the Top 15 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her signature song.
Although Lee Ann Womack emerged as a contemporary country artist in 1997 with the release of her first album, her material closely resembled that of Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, mixing Womack's music with an old fashioned style, as well as contemporary elements, making her different from her counterparts. Her 2000 release I Hope You Dance, however, was an entirely different sound, using pop music elements instead of traditional country, helping to establish Womack as a pop crossover artist. It was not until the release of There's More Where That Came From in 2005 that Womack returned to recording traditional country music.

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Leona Lewis
Leona Louise Lewis (born 3 April 1985) is a British singer and songwriter. Lewis came to prominence in 2006 when she won the third series of the British television series The X Factor.
Lewis has released two albums to date, Spirit and Echo, in 2007 and 2009 respectively. A multi-platinum selling artist and three-time Grammy Award nominee, her most successful single, "Bleeding Love", reached number one in over thirty countries around the world, and was the best-selling single worldwide in 2008. Other notable singles include "Better in Time", "Happy" and "I Got You". She was proclaimed 'Top New Artist' by Billboard magazine in 2008.
Lewis's debut tour, The Labyrinth, took place in 2010, and her third album, Glassheart, is scheduled for release in 2012. It was preceded by "Collide", a single from the album, which became her seventh top-five hit in the United Kingdom. Lewis's net worth was estimated at £12 million in April 2012.

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Lil Wayne
Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. (born September 27, 1982), better known by his stage name Lil Wayne, is an American rapper. At the age of nine, Lil Wayne joined Cash Money Records as the youngest member of the label, and half of the duo, The B.G.'z, with B.G.. In 1997, Lil Wayne joined the group Hot Boys, which also included rappers Juvenile, B.G., and Young Turk. Hot Boys debuted with Get It How U Live! that year. Lil Wayne gained most of his success with the group's major selling album Guerrilla Warfare, released in 1999. Also in 1999, Lil Wayne released his Platinum debut album Tha Block Is Hot, selling over one million copies in the U.S.
Although his next two albums Lights Out (2000) and 500 Degreez (2002) were not as successful (only reaching Gold status), Lil Wayne reached higher popularity in 2004 with Tha Carter, which included the single "Go D.J." Wayne also appeared on the Destiny's Child top ten single "Soldier" that year. In 2005, the sequel to Tha Carter, Tha Carter II, was released. In 2006 and 2007, Lil Wayne released several mixtapes and appeared on several popular rap and R&B singles. His most successful album, Tha Carter III, was released in 2008 and sold over 1 million copies in the U.S. its first week of release. It included the number-one single "Lollipop" featuring Static Major. It also includes the singles "A Milli" and "Got Money" featuring T-Pain and won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album.

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Linda Jones
Linda Jones (December 14, 1944 - March 14, 1972) was an American soul singer.
Jones was born in Newark, New Jersey. She started singing in her family's gospel group the Jones Singers at the age of six. Her first recording was "Lonely Teardrops" under the name Linda Lane, on Cub Records in 1963, and she had unsuccessful singles on Atco Records in 1964 and Blue Cat Records the following year. She signed with Warner Bros. Records subsidiary Loma Records in 1967 and released the biggest of several hits, "Hypnotized". Soon after her career took off, however, she was diagnosed with diabetes and died at home in Harlem in 1972 while resting between matinee and evening shows at the Apollo Theater.

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Lloyd Green
Lloyd Green (born October 4, 1937 in Leaf, Mississippi) is an American steel guitarist. Green is most notable for his session work, having played on records with artists such as Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, Lynn Anderson, Don Williams, Paul McCartney, Charley Pride and many others.
Lloyd Green was born on October 4, 1937 in Leaf, Mississippi. He moved with his family to Mobile, Alabama at the age of four, where he began to take music lessons.
At the age of seven he learned to play a Hawaiian string guitar and eventually learned how to play the steel guitar. By the time he was ten, he was playing professionally in clubs a couple of nights a week with a rhythm guitarist.
Green graduated from high school in 1955, and went on to study psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. He left college at the age of nineteen and went to Nashville, Tennessee to seek fame as a steel guitarist.
Over the years, Lloyd Green has become one of the most popular and respected pedal steel guitarist of all time, and arguably the best player of the E9th tuning on the pedal steel guitar.

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Ludacris
Christopher Brian Bridges (born September 11, 1977), better known by his stage name Ludacris, is an American rapper and actor. Along with his manager, Chaka Zulu, Ludacris is the co-founder of Disturbing tha Peace, an imprint distributed by Def Jam Recordings. Ludacris has won a Screen Actors Guild, Critic's Choice, MTV, and three Grammy Awards during his career. Along with fellow Atlantans Big Boi and Andre 3000 of OutKast, Ludacris was one of the first and most influential Dirty South artists to achieve mainstream success.
Born in Champaign, Illinois, Ludacris moved to Atlanta, Georgia at age nine, where he began rapping. After a brief stint as a disc jockey, he released his debut album Back for the First Time in 2000, which contained the singles "Southern Hospitality" and "What's Your Fantasy". In 2001, he released Word of Mouf, followed by Chicken-n-Beer in 2003. He took a more serious approach with his next three albums, The Red Light District (2004), Release Therapy (2006), and Theater of the Mind (2008). His latest record, Battle of the Sexes, was released in 2010.

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Lupe Fiasco
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 16, 1982), better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco (

/ˈluːpeɪ/ LOO-pay), is an American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. He also performs as the frontman of rock band Japanese Cartoon under his real name. As an entrepreneur, Fiasco is the chief executive officer of 1st and 15th Entertainment.
Raised in Chicago, Fiasco developed an interest in hip hop after initially disliking the genre for its use of vulgarity. After adopting the name Lupe Fiasco and recording songs in his father's basement, 19-year-old Fiasco joined a group called Da Pak. The group disbanded shortly after its inception, and Fiasco soon met rapper Jay-Z who helped him sign a record deal with Atlantic Records. In 2006, Fiasco released his debut album Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor on the label, which received three Grammy nominations. He released his second album, Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, in December 2007. The lead single "Superstar" peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. He released Lasers on March 8, 2011 after a two-year delay. The album's lead single "The Show Goes On" peaked at number 9 on the chart, thus becoming his most successful single since "Superstar".

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Maiysha
Maiysha Kai (Born April 16, 1978) is a Progressive/ Soul/ R & B/ recording artist. Her first album "This Much is True" was released August 26, 2008. Produced by Scott Jacoby, her first album features 12 all new tracks and a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer". The album also features a duet with Martin Luther (who starred in 2007's Across the Universe).
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Maiysha went to Sarah Lawrence College where she studied vocal performance as well as creative writing and race and gender studies. After graduating, Maiysha moved to New York City to teach at a private school in Manhattan. She also was signed to Ford Models.
"This Much is True" is the first release on the Eusonia label. Maiysha's first single off the album, "Wanna Be", was released to iTunes on June 24, 2008. The album was highly anticipated, and Maiysha has already been featured in USA Today Newsweek, and TV Guide.
Maiysha is nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for her song "Wanna Be."

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Marcus Miller
Marcus Miller (born William Henry Marcus Miller Jr., June 14, 1959, Brooklyn, New York) is an American jazz composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Miller is best known as a bassist, working with trumpeter Miles Davis, pianist Herbie Hancock, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, as well as maintaining a prolific solo career. Miller is classically trained as a clarinetist and also plays keyboards, saxophone and guitar.
Miller was born in 1959 and raised in a musical family that includes his father, William Miller (a church organist and choir director) and jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. By 13, Marcus was proficient on clarinet, piano and bass guitar, and already writing songs. Two years later he was working regularly in New York City, eventually playing bass and writing music for jazz flautist Bobbi Humphrey and keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith. Miller soon became a first call session musician, gracing well over 500 albums, a short list of which includes Michael Jackson, Herbie Hancock, Mariah Carey, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Frank Sinatra, Dr. John, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Grover Washington Jr., Donald Fagen, Bill Withers, Chaka Khan, LL Cool J, Me'shell Ndegé Ocello and Flavio Sala.

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Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She made her recording debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and released her self-titled debut studio album, Mariah Carey. The album went multi-platinum and spawned four consecutive number one singles, on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following her marriage to Mottola in 1993, a series of hit records, including Emotions (1991), Music Box (1993) and Merry Christmas (1994), established her position as Columbia's highest-selling act. Daydream (1995), made music history when the second single, "One Sweet Day" a duet with Boyz II Men, spent a record sixteen weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and remains the longest running number one song in US chart history. During the recording of the album Carey began to deviate from her pop background, and slowly traversed into R&B and Hip-hop. After her separation from Mottola, this musical change was evident with the release of Butterfly (1997).

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Martina McBride
Martina McBride (born July 29, 1966) is an American country music singer and songwriter. McBride has been called the "Céline Dion of Country Music" for her big-voiced ballads and soprano range.
McBride was signed to RCA Records in 1991, and made her debut the following year as a neo-traditionalist country singer with the single, "The Time Has Come." It was not until 1997, when she released her fourth album, Evolution, that she broke through into the country music industry with a new pop-styled crossover sound, similar to that of Faith Hill and Shania Twain. From that point on, McBride has had a string of major hit singles on the Billboard country chart and occasionally on the adult contemporary chart. Five of these singles went to No. 1 on the country chart between 1995 and 2001, and one peaked at No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart in 2003.
McBride has recorded a total of nine studio albums, one greatest hits compilation, one "live" album, a Christmas compilation, as well as two additional compilation albums. Seven of her studio albums and two of her compilations have received an RIAA Gold certification, or higher. In the U.S. she has sold over 14 million albums. In addition, McBride has won the Country Music Association's "Female Vocalist of the Year" award four times (tied with Reba McEntire for the most wins) and the Academy of Country Music's "Top Female Vocalist" award three times.

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Matthew Santos
Matthew Santos is an American rock and folk singer-songwriter, musician and painter. He is best known for his collaboration with Chicago native Lupe Fiasco on the single "Superstar." He was signed to Lupe Fiasco's 1st & 15th Entertainment record label, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records.
Matthew Santos was born on December 28, 1982 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His mother, Judy, is from Denmark and his father, Dave, is of Filipino and Spanish descent.
He graduated from Southwest High School in Minneapolis. He moved to Chicago in 2001 to study music composition at Columbia College Chicago.
Santos released his album Matters of the Bittersweet in November 2007 under indie-label Candyrat Records. Following the release of the album, he developed a following surrounding his video performances on YouTube. His five-piece band includes Aviva Jaye (vocals, keyboard), Robert Tucker (drums), Graham Burris (bass), and Matthew Nelson (keyboard).
In 2006, Santos was featured on Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor album on the song "American Terrorist." Santos was featured on three additional tracks on Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, released in December 2007; "Superstar", "Streets On Fire", and "Fighters." Santos joined Fiasco on his world tour in 2008, including appearances on MTV's TRL and Spring Break, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and a debut talk show performance on David Letterman's first live show after the 2007 Writer's Guild of America Strike.

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Michael Doucet
Michael Doucet (b. Feb 14, 1951) is a Cajun fiddler, singer and songwriter who founded the Cajun band BeauSoleil from Lafayette, Louisiana.
In 2005 Doucet was one of 12 recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA award, which recognizes artistic excellence, cultural authenticity and an artist's contributions, is the highest honor in U.S. folk and traditional arts. Doucet received Grammy Awards in both 1998 and 2009 for work with Beausoleil.
He was named a 2007 USA Collins Family Foundation Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists. In 2008, he released From Now On, his solo cajun fiddle album, on Smithsonian Folkways.
He learned the banjo by age six, the guitar by his eighth year, and was researching Cajun music as a college student. In his youth he performed as part of a duo at a music festival in France. At the festival he was exposed to centuries-old French music, which he identified with the Cajun music of French Louisiana.

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Michael Feinstein
Michael Jay Feinstein (born September 7, 1956) is an American singer, pianist, and music revivalist. He is an interpreter of, and an anthropologist and archivist for, the repertoire known as the Great American Songbook. In 1988 he won a Drama Desk Special Award for celebrating American musical theatre songs. Feinstein is also a multi-platinum-selling, five-time Grammy-nominated recording artist. He currently serves as Artistic Director for The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana.
Feinstein was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Florence Mazie (née Cohen), an amateur tap dancer, and Edward Feinstein, a sales executive for the Sara Lee Corporation and a former amateur singer. At the age of five, he studied piano for a couple of months until his teacher became angered that he wasn't reading the sheet music she gave him, since he was more comfortable playing by ear. As his mother saw no problem with her son's method, she took him out of lessons and allowed him to enjoy music his own way.

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Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman; September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995. He and fellow Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann earned the nickname "the rhythm devils".
Before joining the Grateful Dead, Hart and his father, Leonard Hart, a champion rudimental drummer, owned and operated Hart Music, selling drums and musical instruments in San Carlos, California.
Hart joined the Grateful Dead in September 1967, and left in February 1971 when he extricated himself from the band, due to conflict between band management and Mickey's father. During his sabbatical, in 1972, he recorded the album Rolling Thunder. He returned to the Dead in 1974, and remained with the group until their official dissolution in 1995. Collaboration with the remaining members of the Grateful Dead continues, under the band name The Dead.

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Mike Stern
Mike Stern (born Mike Sedgwick on January 10, 1953) is an American jazz guitarist. After playing for a few years with Blood, Sweat & Tears, he landed a gig with drummer Billy Cobham and then broke through with trumpeter Miles Davis' comeback band from 1981 to 1983, and again in 1985. Following that he launched a solo career, releasing more than a dozen albums. He was hailed as the Best Jazz Guitarist of 1993 by Guitar Player magazine, and in 2009 was listed on Down Beat's list of 75 best jazz guitar players.
Stern was born Mike Sedgwick in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Helen Burroughs and Henry Dwight Sedgwick V. He is the half-brother of actress Kyra Sedgwick; his full sister, Holly, is the mother of actor Philip Nozuka and singers George Nozuka, Justin Nozuka, and Henry Nozuka. Stern is married to guitarist and vocalist Leni Stern.
At the Berklee College of Music in Boston his focus shifted to jazz. Stern landed a gig with Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1976 and remained with the band for two years, appearing on the BS&T albums More Than Ever and Brand New Day.

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Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.
Miles Dewey Davis was born on May 26, 1926, to an affluent African American family in Alton, Illinois. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist. In 1927 the family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. They also owned a substantial ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.
Davis' mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted her son to learn the piano; she was a capable blues pianist but kept this fact hidden from her son. His musical studies began at 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Davis later suggested that his father's instrument choice was made largely to irk his wife, who disliked the trumpet's sound. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato; he was reported to have slapped Davis' knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato. Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. He once remarked on its importance to him, saying, "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything."Clark Terry was another important early influence.^{[citation needed]}

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Miley Cyrus
Miley Ray Cyrus (born Destiny Hope Cyrus; November 23, 1992) is an American actress and pop singer-songwriter. She achieved wide fame for her role as Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel sitcom Hannah Montana.
Cyrus recorded music for the soundtracks, Hannah Montana (2006) and Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus (2007), released by Walt Disney Records. With the success of the Hannah Montana franchise she established herself as a teen idol. In 2007, Cyrus signed to Hollywood Records to pursue a solo career. She embarked upon the Best of Both Worlds Tour the same year, in which she performed as both herself and in character as Hannah Montana. The tour was eventually turned into a high-grossing concert film titled Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (2008). In July 2008, Cyrus released her first solo album, Breakout (2008), which was commercially successful.
She began her foray into film by providing the voice of "Penny" in the animated film Bolt (2008). Cyrus earned a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for her performance of Bolt's theme song, "I Thought I Lost You". She also reprised her role as Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana in Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009). The Hannah Montana: The Movie' soundtrack introduced her to new audiences within country and adult contemporary markets.

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Min Kwon
Min Kwon (born Kwon, Min-Kyung) is a Korean-American pianist and Professor of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University in New Jersey. Previously, she also taught piano minor and chamber music at The Juilliard School in New York.

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Moby
Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.
Moby gained attention in the early 1990s with his electronic dance music work, which dabbled in the techno and breakbeat hardcore (also known as "rave") genres. With his fifth studio album, the electronica and house-influenced Play, he gained international success. Originally released in mid-1999 to an unflattering response, it re-entered the charts in early 2000 and slowly became an unexpected hit, producing eight singles and eventually selling over 10 million copies worldwide.
Moby followed the album in 2002 with 18, which was also successful, selling over 5 million copies worldwide and receiving mostly positive reviews, though some criticizing it for being too similar to Play. His next offer, 2005's mostly upbeat Hotel was a stylistic departure, incorporating more alternative rock elements than previous albums, and received mixed reviews. However, it still sold around 2 million copies worldwide. After 2008's dance-influenced Last Night (2008), he returned to the downtempo electronica of Play and 18 with 2009's mostly-ambient Wait for Me, finding higher critical acclaim and moderate sales. Moby's latest album, Destroyed., was released on May 13, 2011.

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Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Моде́ст Петро́вич Мýсoргский; IPA: [mɐˈdʲest ˈmusərkskʲɪj]; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.
Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have recently come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.
The spelling and pronunciation of the composer's name has been a matter of some controversy.

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Nas
Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones (

/nɑːˈsɪər/; born September 14, 1973), better known by his stage name Nas (

/ˈnɑːz/), is an American rapper and actor. He is also the son of jazz musician Olu Dara. Nas has released eight consecutive platinum and multi-platinum albums since 1994, four of which topped the Billboard charts upon release and has sold over thirteen-million records in the United States alone. Nas was also part of the hip hop supergroup The Firm, which released one album under Dr. Dre's record label Aftermath. Aside from rapping, Nas is also an occasional actor and has appeared in feature films such as Hype Williams' directorial debut Belly, Ticker and In Too Deep and the television show Hawaii Five-0.
His rise to fame began in 1991 with his feature on hip hop group Main Source's debut album on the track "Live at the Barbeque". In the years that followed, Nas garnered attention from music industry A & R's and record labels with more impressive features and a solo single "Halftime". His debut album Illmatic, released in 1994 by Columbia Records, received universal acclaim from both critics and the hip hop community and would go on to be widely hailed as a musical landmark and a classic in the genre and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest LP's of all time. His follow up album It Was Written debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Charts, stayed on top for four consecutive weeks and went platinum twice in only two months, propelling Nas to worldwide notoriety.

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Natalie Cole
Natalie Maria Cole (born February 6, 1950) is an American singer, songwriter and performer. The daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, Cole rode to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)", "Inseparable" and "Our Love". After a period of failing sales and performances due to a heavy drug addiction, Cole reemerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album, Everlasting, and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac". In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable... with Love, which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole numerous Grammy Awards.
Natalie Cole was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of crooner Nat King Cole and former Duke Ellington Orchestra singer Maria Cole. Raised in the affluent Hancock Park district of Los Angeles; regarding her childhood, Cole has referred to her family as "the black Kennedys" and was exposed to many great singers of jazz, soul, and blues. At the age of six Natalie sang on her father's Christmas album and later began performing at age 11.

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Neil Diamond
Neil Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter with a career spanning over five decades from the 1960s until the present.
As of 2001, Diamond had sold over 115 million records worldwide including 48 million in the United States alone. He is considered to be the third most successful adult contemporary artist ever on the Billboard chart behind Barbra Streisand and Elton John. His songs have been covered internationally by many performers from various musical genres.
Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Additionally, he received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and in 2011 was an honoree at the Kennedy Center Honors. He has eight number one hit singles with "Cracklin Rosie", "Song Sung Blue", "Desiree", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "Love on the Rocks", "America", "Yesterday's Songs", and "Heartlight".
Diamond continues to record and release new material and maintains an extensive touring schedule as well.

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Neil Young
Neil Percival Young,OC,OM (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation.
Young began performing as a solo artist in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield along with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, and later joined Crosby, Stills & Nash as a fourth member in 1969. He forged a successful and acclaimed solo career, releasing his first album in 1968; his career has since spanned over 40 years and 34 studio albums, with a continual and uncompromising exploration of musical styles. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website describes Young as "one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers". He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame twice: first as a solo artist in 1995, and second as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997.
Young's work is characterized by his distinctive guitar work, deeply personal lyrics and signature alto or high tenor singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments, including piano and harmonica, his idiosyncratic electric and clawhammer acoustic guitar playing are the defining characteristics of a varyingly ragged and melodic sound. While Young has experimented with differing music styles, including swing and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into two primary styles: acoustic (folk and country rock) and electric (amplified hard rock, very often in collaboration with the band Crazy Horse). Young has also adopted elements from newer styles such as alternative rock and grunge. His influence on the latter caused some to dub him the "Godfather of Grunge".

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Norah Jones
Norah Jones (born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar; March 30, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress. She is the daughter of Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. She is also the paternal half-sister of Anoushka Shankar.
In 2002, she launched her solo music career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album Come Away With Me, a fusion of jazz, pop, and country music, which was certified a diamond album in 2002, selling over 20 million copies. The record earned Jones five Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist. Her subsequent studio albums, Feels Like Home, released in 2004, Not Too Late, released in 2007, the same year she made her film debut in My Blueberry Nights, and her 2009 release The Fall all gained Platinum status after selling over a million copies and were generally well received by critics. Jones' fifth studio album, Little Broken Hearts was released on April 27, 2012.
Jones has won nine Grammy Awards and was Billboard magazine's 60th-best-selling music artist of the 2000–2009 decade. Throughout her career, Jones has won numerous awards and has sold over 40 million albums worldwide.Billboard named her the top jazz artist of the 2000–2009 decade, establishing herself as one of the best-selling artists of her time.

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Norma Winstone
Norma Ann Winstone MBE (born 23 September 1941, Bow, East London) is a British jazz singer and lyricist. In a career spanning over forty years she is best known for her wordless improvisations.
Winstone began singing in bands around Dagenham in the early 1960s, before joining Michael Garrick's band in 1968. Her first recording came the following year, with Joe Harriott. In 1971 she was voted top singer in the Melody Maker Jazz Poll. She recorded the album, Edge of Time, under her own name in 1972. Winstone contributed vocals to Ian Carr's Nucleus on that band's 1973 release Labyrinth, a jazz-rock concept album based on the Greek myth about the Minotaur.
Winstone has worked with many major European musicians and visiting Americans, as well as with most of her peers in British jazz including Garrick, John Surman, Michael Gibbs, Mike Westbrook and her former husband, the pianist John Taylor. With Taylor and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler she has performed and recorded three albums for ECM as a member of the trio Azimuth between 1977 and 1980; their CD How It Was Then… Never Again was given four stars by Down Beat magazine. In addition she made an album with the American pianist Jimmy Rowles (Well Kept Secret, 1993).

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Nostradamus
Michel de Nostredame (14 or 21 December 1503 – 2 July 1566), usually Latinised to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties (The Prophecies), the first edition of which appeared in 1555. Since the publication of this book, which has rarely been out of print since his death, Nostradamus has attracted a following that, along with the popular press, credits him with predicting many major world events.
Most academic sources maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render them useless as evidence of any genuine predictive power. Nevertheless, occasional commentators have successfully used a process of free interpretation and determined 'twisting' of their words to predict an apparently imminent event. In 1867, three years before it happened, for example, Le Pelletier did so to anticipate either the triumph or the defeat of Napoleon III in a war that, in the event, begged to be identified as the Franco-Prussian war, while admitting that he could not specify either which or when.

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Ottmar Liebert
Ottmar Liebert (born February 1, 1959) is a German-born guitarist and composer best known for his distinct New Flamenco sound. A five-time Grammy Award nominee, Liebert has received 38 Gold and Platinum certifications in the United States, as well as certifications in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. His debut album Nouveau Flamenco (1990) sold double-platinum in the United States and has become one of the best-selling guitar albums of all time.
Ottmar Liebert was born February 1, 1959 in Cologne, Germany to a Chinese-German father and a Hungarian mother. As a child, he spent most of his time traveling throughout Europe and Asia with his family. He began playing guitar at 11. After performing rock music in his native Germany, he moved to the United States and settled in Boston for a few years, performing in various rock clubs. In 1986 Liebert settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he began looking to create a new musical sound.
In 1989 Liebert founded the first incarnation of his band Luna Negra (black moon). That year he recorded a self-produced album titled Marita: Shadows and Storms. The initial thousand copies were were sold in the gallery of Santa Fe artist Frank Howell. When the record found its way to radio stations and began generating a response among listeners, Higher Octave Music picked it up and released a remastered version titled Nouveau Flamenco (1990). The album eventually sold double-platinum in the United States and has become one of the best-selling guitar albums of all time.

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Paavo Järvi
Paavo Järvi (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈpɑːʋo ˈjærʋi]) (born December 30, 1962) is an Estonian-American conductor, and current Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris.
Järvi was born in Tallinn, Estonia, to conductor Neeme Järvi and Liilia Järvi. His siblings, Kristjan Järvi and Maarika Järvi, are also musicians. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Max Rudolf and Otto-Werner Mueller, and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute with Leonard Bernstein.
From 1994-97 Järvi was principal conductor of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra. He was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony in January 2000, and assumed the post with the 2001-2002 season. In April 2007, the orchestra announced Järvi's contract with the CSO would be extended through 2011, at which point the contract would become an "evergreen" agreement. In addition to his American position, since 2004, he has been the artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Bremen and an Artistic Advisor to Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. In January 2010, however, it was announced that Järvi, who will by then hold three directorships on top of his Cincinnati position, would terminate his tenure with the expiration of his current contract in 2011. In May 2011 he was named Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati Symphony.

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Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (/məˈθiːni/mə-THEE-nee; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, latin jazz and jazz fusion. Pat Metheny has three gold albums and 19 Grammy Awards. He is the brother of jazz flugelhornist and journalist Mike Metheny.
Metheny was born and raised in Lee's Summit, Missouri, a suburb southeast of Kansas City. Following his graduation from Lee's Summit High School, he briefly attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida in 1972, where he was quickly offered a teaching position. He then moved to Boston to take a teaching assistantship at the Berklee College of Music with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton. He first made his name as a teenage prodigy under the wing of Burton. In 1974 he made his recording debut on two sessions for pianist Paul Bley's and Carol Goss' Improvising Artists label, along with fretless electric bassist Jaco Pastorius.

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Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone (born April 21, 1949) is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performance as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les Misérables.
LuPone was born in Northport, New York, on Long Island, the daughter of Angela Louise (née Patti), a college library administrator, and Orlando Joseph LuPone, a school administrator. Her great-grand-aunt was the celebrated nineteenth-century opera singer Adelina Patti. Her brother Robert LuPone is an actor, dancer, and director who originated the role of Zach the choreographer in A Chorus Line. Her other brother William LuPone is a teacher. When they were young, they performed on Long Island as the LuPone Trio. She is of Italian/Abruzzese descent and a graduate of Northport High School, where she studied under the musical direction of voice coach Esther Scott.
LuPone was part of the first graduating class of Juilliard's Drama Division (1968-1972: Group 1), which also included actors Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers. She graduated from Juilliard in 1972 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

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Patty Loveless
Patty Loveless (born Patty Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957), is an American country music singer.
Since her emergence on the country music scene in late 1986 with her first (self-titled) album, Loveless has been one of the most popular female singers of the Neotraditional country movement, although she has also recorded albums in the Country pop and Bluegrass genres.
Loveless was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, and was raised in Elkhorn City, Kentucky and Louisville, Kentucky and rose to stardom thanks to her blend of honky tonk and country-rock, not to mention a plaintive, emotional ballad style. Her late-1980s records were generally quite popular, earning her comparisons to Patsy Cline, but most critics agreed that she truly came into her own as an artist in the early 1990s.
To date, Loveless has charted more than forty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five Number Ones. In addition, she has recorded fourteen studio albums (not counting compilations); in the United States, four of these albums have been certified platinum, while two have been certified gold.

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Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of the Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), he has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles. With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After leaving the Beatles, he began a solo career and later formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.
According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song. Wings' 1977 release, "Mull of Kintyre", became one of the best-selling singles ever in the UK, and he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK chart history, according to Guinness. As a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one titles on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.

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Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th-century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.
As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".

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Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (Serbian: Петар Богдановић, Petar Bogdanović, born July 30, 1939) is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola. His most critically acclaimed film is The Last Picture Show (1971).
Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe and born in Kingston, New York in America, the son of Herma (née Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His Austrian-born mother was Jewish and his father was Serbian and an Eastern Orthodox Christian. He was an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with acting teacher Stella Adler, and appeared on television and in summer stock. In the early 1960s, Bogdanovich was known as a film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich showcased the work of American directors such as Orson Welles and John Ford, whom he later wrote a book about based on the notes he had produced for the MoMA retrospective of the director, and Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.

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Peter Erskine
Peter Erskine (born June 5, 1954) is an American jazz drummer and composer. He has enjoyed a long and successful career as a session drummer, recording and touring with many famous jazz and rock artists, including Steely Dan and Weather Report. Erskine also produces teaching materials, such as books, videos, and online content.
Peter Erskine was born in Somers Point, New Jersey, U.S.. He began playing the drums at the age of four. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then studied percussion at Indiana University.
His professional career started in 1972 when he joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra. After three years with Kenton he joined Maynard Ferguson for two years. In 1978 he joined Weather Report, joining the legendary Jaco Pastorius to form a formidable rhythm section. After four years and five albums with Weather Report and the Jaco Pastorius big band Word of Mouth, he joined Steps Ahead. His big band recordings with the Bob Mintzer Big Band are excellent modern big band jazz/funk performances studied by many students of drums and drumming.

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Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career. His 1986 album, So, is his most commercially successful, and the album's biggest hit, "Sledgehammer", won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, and the song is the most played music video in the history of the station.
More recently, Gabriel has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering digital distribution methods for music. He has also been involved in various humanitarian efforts. Gabriel has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, and in 2007 he was honoured as a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his “influence on generations of music makers.” Gabriel was also awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2009, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.

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Peter Kater
Peter Kater is an American composer, songwriter-singer and pianist who has several times nominated for Grammy awards.
He is of German ancestry.

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Raekwon
Corey Woods (born January 12, 1970), better known by the stage name Raekwon, is an American rapper and a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. He released his solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... in 1995, and has since recorded numerous solo albums, as well as work with Wu-Tang and an extensive amount of guest contributions with other hip hop artists.
Raekwon is often cited as one of the pioneers of the Mafioso rap sub-genre. In 2007, The editors of About.com placed him on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007). The Miami New Times described Raekwon's music as being "street epics" that are "straightforward yet linguistically rich universes not unlike a gangsta Iliad."
Corey Woods joined the Wu-Tang Clan, a nine-member hip hop group based in the Staten Island borough of New York City, in 1992. He went under the stage name Raekwon the Chef and aliases Raekwon, Shallah Raekwon, and Lex Diamonds. Wu-Tang Clan debuted one year later with Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. Singles from the album included "Protect Ya Neck" and "C.R.E.A.M.", the latter of which reached #8 on the Billboard rap chart.Wu-Tang Forever followed in 1997 and was certified four times platinum by the RIAA, quadruple the certification given Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Alongside other solo albums by its members, Wu-Tang continued recording as a group, releasing The W in 2000, Iron Flag in 2001, and 8 Diagrams in 2007.

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Raheem DeVaughn
Raheem DeVaughn (born May 5, 1975) is an American singer and songwriter. His debut album, The Love Experience (2005), reached No. 46 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It featured the singles "Guess Who Loves You More" and "You". His second album Love Behind the Melody was released in January 2008. It features the singles "Woman", and "Customer".
DeVaughn was nominated for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance at the 2008 Grammy Awards for the single "Woman".
DeVaughn was born in Newark, New Jersey on May 5, 1975, the son of jazz cellist Abdul Wadud. He was raised in Maryland (Montgomery and Prince George's counties) by his mother, Imani Smith, a now retired federal worker. He is a cousin of singer Chrisette Michele. His mother states that her son first expressed an affinity towards music in preschool, recalling how whenever the class had musical events, he would conduct them. DeVaughn's love for music solidified during his early teens, when he began to envision his career path. One of his favorite artists was Babyface, and Smith recalls that her son once begged her to visit the Waxie Maxie's record store in the District to buy a promotional picture of the singer. DeVaughn visited his father during the summer, mainly in New Jersey. With his father, DeVaughn attended gigs and experienced his first taste of the life of a working musician.

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Ramin Djawadi
Ramin Djawadi (born July 19, 1974) is a German-Iranian composer of orchestral music for film and television. Djawadi may be best known for his Grammy-nominated, guitar-driven score for Iron Man and for the TV series Prison Break, Game of Thrones and Person of Interest.
He was born in Duisburg, Germany to an Iranian father and German mother. After graduating summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music in 1998, Djawadi garnered the attention of Hans Zimmer, who recruited him to Remote Control Productions. Djawadi moved to Los Angeles and worked as an assistant to Klaus Badelt, writing additional music on The Time Machine, Basic, The Recruit, and the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He then collaborated with Zimmer, co-composing and producing the score for Thunderbirds and collaborating on Something's Gotta Give and Batman Begins.
He then went out on his own with Blade: Trinity, collaborating with The RZA for director David Goyer. This was the beginning of his relationship with Goyer for both film and television. Djawadi wrote the score for Goyer's horror thriller The Unborn, which was produced by Michael Bay. Further collaboration with Goyer was the hit television show FlashForward, earning him his second Emmy nomination. Djawadi also composed the Emmy-nominated main title theme music for Prison Break and the title theme for the related show Breakout Kings. Djawadi's ethereal score for the film Mr. Brooks earned him a World Soundtrack Awards “Discovery of the Year” nomination. His other scores include Deception, starring Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, and Robert Towne's Ask the Dust.

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Randy Brecker
Randal "Randy" Brecker (b. Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, November 27, 1945) is an American trumpeter and flugelhornist. He is a highly sought after performer in the genres of jazz, rock, and R&B, and has performed or recorded with Stanley Turrentine, Billy Cobham, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Sandip Burman, Charles Mingus, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Horace Silver, Frank Zappa, Parliament-Funkadelic, Chris Parker, Jaco Pastorius, Dire Straits, Todd Rundgren, Blue Öyster Cult, Richard Barone, Spyro Gyra, Barbara Dennerlein and many others. In his formative years, Brecker studied trumpet with Bill Adam at Indiana University.
He played on the first Blood Sweat & Tears album, Child Is Father to the Man, but left the band when founder Al Kooper and trumpeter Jerry Weiss left. Lew Soloff replaced him for the second and subsequent albums. He was a charter member of Larry Coryell's seminal jazz fusion band The Eleventh House in 1973.
He is the older brother of the late jazz saxophonist Michael Brecker (1949–2007). Together they led Dreams and the Brecker Brothers, a popular funk and fusion band which recorded several albums from the 1970s through the 1990s. After the Brecker Brothers disbanded in 1982, Randy recorded and toured as a member of Jaco Pastorius' Word of Mouth big band. It was soon thereafter that he met and later married Brazilian jazz pianist Eliane Elias. Eliane and Randy formed their own band, touring the world several times and recording one album together, Amanda on Passport Records.

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Randy Travis
Randy Travis (Born May 4, 1959) is an American country music singer and actor. Since 1985, he has recorded 20 studio albums and charted more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, and 22 of these were number one hits. Considered a pivotal figure in the history of country music, Travis broke through in the mid-1980s with the release of his album Storms of Life, which sold more than three million copies. The album established him as a major force in the Neotraditional country movement. Travis followed up his successful debut with a string of platinum and multi-platinum albums.
By the mid-1990s, Travis saw a decline in his chart success. In 1997, he left Warner Bros. Records for DreamWorks Records and changed his musical focus to gospel music. Although the career shift produced only one more number one country hit "Three Wooden Crosses", Travis went on to earn several Dove awards, including Album of the Year three times. In addition to his singing career, Travis pursued an acting career, appearing in numerous films and television series, including The Rainmaker (1997) with Matt Damon, Texas Rangers (2001) with James Van Der Beek, and seven episodes of the Touched by an Angel television series. Travis has sold over 25 million records, and has earned 22 number one hits, 6 number one albums, 6 Grammy awards, 6 CMA awards, 9 ACM awards, 10 AMA awards, 7 Dove awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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Raphael Saadiq
Raphael Saadiq (born Charles Ray Wiggins, May 14, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist, and record producer. Saadiq has been a standard bearer for "old school" R&B since his early days as a member of the multiplatinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! He also produced songs of such artists as TLC, Joss Stone, D'Angelo, Mary J. Blige, and John Legend.
He and D'Angelo were occasional members of The Ummah, a music production collective, composed of members Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, and J Dilla of the Detroit-based group Slum Village.
Saadiq's critically acclaimed album, The Way I See It, released on September 16, 2008, featuring artists Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, and Jay-Z, received three Grammy Award Nominations and was voted Best Album on iTunes of 2008. His fourth studio album, Stone Rollin', was released on March 25, 2011. For the album, Saadiq worked with steel guitarist Robert Randolph; former Earth, Wind & Fire keyboardist Larry Dunn; Swedish/Japanese indie rock songstress Yukimi Nagano (of Little Dragon fame); Funk legend Larry Graham (on the bonus cut Perfect Storm) plus soul newcomer Taura 'Aura Jackson' Stinson.

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Redd Volkaert
Redd Volkaert (born 1958) was a successor to Roy Nichols in Merle Haggard's backing band, and is "among the country’s top Telecaster guitar slingers.". Volkaert won a 2009 Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

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Rick Rubin
Frederick Jay "Rick" Rubin (born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer and the co-president of Columbia Records. Along with Russell Simmons, Rubin is the founder of Def Jam Records and also established American Recordings. With the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J and Run–D.M.C., Rubin helped popularize hip hop music.
Rubin has worked with artists as varied as Tom Petty, Black Sabbath, Trouble, Slipknot, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Mars Volta, Danzig, Dixie Chicks, Metallica, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Weezer, Linkin Park, The Cult, Neil Diamond, Mick Jagger, System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys, Audioslave, The Avett Brothers, Adele and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In the 1990s and 2000s, he produced the "American Recordings" albums with Johnny Cash. MTV called him "the most important producer of the last 20 years." In 2007, Rubin was listed among Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Rubin was born in Long Beach, New York and grew up in Lido Beach, New York, in a Jewish family. His father was a shoe wholesaler and his mother a housewife. While a student at Long Beach High School he befriended the school's AV Director Steve Freeman who gave him a few lessons in guitar playing and songwriting and helped him create a punk band called "The Pricks". Their biggest claim to fame was being thrown off the stage at CBGB after two songs for brawling with the heckling audience. These hecklers were friends of the band instructed to instigate a confrontation so as to get the show shut down and create a buzz. Although he had no authority in New York City, Rubin's father traveled all the way from Nassau county to Manhattan wearing his Lido Beach auxiliary police uniform as he attempted to "shut down" the show.

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Rihanna
Robyn Rihanna Fenty (

/riˈɑːnə/ ree-AH-nə or /riˈænə/ ree-AN-ə; born February 20, 1988), known mononymously as Rihanna, is a Barbadian recording artist and actress. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados, Rihanna moved to the United States at age 16 to pursue a recording career under the guidance of record producer Evan Rogers. She subsequently signed a contract with Def Jam Recordings.
In 2005, Rihanna released her debut studio album, Music of the Sun, which peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200 chart and features the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit single "Pon de Replay". In less than a year, she released her second studio album, A Girl Like Me (2006), which peaked within the top-five in the United States, and produced her first Hot 100 number one single, "SOS". Rihanna's third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad released in May 2007, spawned the international hit singles "Umbrella", "Don't Stop the Music", "Take a Bow" and "Disturbia", with an additional four singles being released. The album was nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Umbrella". Her fourth studio album Rated R (2009), produced the top-ten singles "Russian Roulette", "Hard" and "Rude Boy", with the latter achieving the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Loud (2010), Rihanna's fifth studio album, spawned the number-one hits "Only Girl (In the World)", "What's My Name?" and "S&M". "We Found Love" served as the lead single from Rihanna's sixth studio album, Talk That Talk (2011). The song was an international success, topping the charts in more than twenty countries.

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Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie (born Robert Bartleh Cummings; January 12, 1965) is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. Zombie's lyrics are noted for their horror and sci-fi themes, and his live shows for their elaborate shock rock theatricality.
Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the movies House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, the 2007 remake of Halloween, its sequel, and The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. His next film will be the upcoming The Lords of Salem which is scheduled to premiere in theaters sometime in 2012.
Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, he was the first of two brothers. His younger brother Michael David Cummings was born on August 25, 1968 and is better known as Spider One, the frontman of alternative metal group Powerman 5000.
Based in New York, White Zombie was originally a noise rock band in the vein of fellow New York band Sonic Youth and Texas experimental punk band Butthole Surfers. White Zombie was known for combining heavy-metal music with driving guitar riffs (as on "Super-Charger Heaven"), overlayed with lyrics heavily influenced by horror films and pseudo-Satanic imagery.

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Robert Plant
Robert Anthony Plant, CBE (born 20 August 1948) is an English singer and songwriter best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the iconic rock band Led Zeppelin. He has also had a successful solo career. In 2007, Plant released Raising Sand, an album produced by T-Bone Burnett with American bluegrass soprano Alison Krauss, which won the 2009 Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 51st Grammy Awards.
With a career spanning more than 40 years, Plant is regarded as one of the most significant singers in the history of rock music, and has influenced contemporaries and later singers such as Freddie Mercury and Axl Rose. In 2006, heavy metal magazine Hit Parader named Plant the "Greatest Metal Vocalist of All-Time". In 2009, Plant was voted "the greatest voice in rock" in a poll conducted by Planet Rock. In 2011, a Rolling Stone readers' pick placed Plant in first place of the magazine's "Best Lead Singers of All Time".
Plant was born in the Black Country town of West Bromwich (then in Staffordshire now in West Midlands) to parents Robert C. who worked as a civil engineer and Annie C. (Cain) Plant, but grew up in Kidderminster, in Worcestershire. Plant gained an interest in singing and rock and roll music at an early age.

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Robin Thicke
Robin Charles Thicke (

/ˈθɪk/; born March 10, 1977) is an American R&B singer-songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. Thicke's albums, which he previously released under the name Thicke, are noted for their feature of a predominantly R&B sound. Thicke has written hits for popular artists such as Jennifer Hudson, Usher, Mary J. Blige and Raven-Symoné. Thicke has also been acknowledged for his work in popular albums such as Confessions and Tha Carter III.
Thicke is a judge on the ABC show Duets.
Before his days as a singer-songwriter, Thicke had written "Love Is On My Side" on Brandy's self-titled album and a number of songs for 3T's "Sexual Attention" and collaborated with Jordan Knight, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on several songs in Knight's 1999 album Jordan Knight. He also co-wrote the songs "When You Put Your Hands On Me" for Christina Aguilera's debut album and "No Tears on My Pillow" for Mýa's sophomore release, Fear of Flying. As an artist, he recorded and performed solely under his surname, Thicke. He would continue to do so until 2005.

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Robyn
Robin Miriam Carlsson (born 12 June 1979), better known by her stage name Robyn, is a Swedish recording artist. Robyn became known in the late nineties for her worldwide dance-pop hit "Do You Know (What It Takes)" from her debut album Robyn Is Here (1997). The popularity of her number-one hit "With Every Heartbeat" and subsequent album release Robyn (2005) brought her mainstream success worldwide. In January 2009 Robyn won a Swedish Grammis award for Best Live Act 2008.
Robyn released the first of a trilogy of albums to be released over the course of 2010 titled Body Talk Pt. 1, in June of that year, peaking at number one. It was her first album since Robyn. The album's lead single "Dancing on My Own" was released a few weeks prior to the album's release; it became a hit single worldwide and brought her a Grammy Award nomination for the category of Best Dance Recording in 2011. A follow-up album, Body Talk Pt. 2, was released on 6 September, entering straight at number one on the Swedish chart, and the final album of the trilogy, Body Talk, was released on 22 November 2010 with lead single "Indestructible". "Call Your Girlfriend" was the second single to be released from Body Talk. Robyn possesses the vocal range of a soprano.

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Rufus Wainwright
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright (born July 22, 1973) is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer. He has recorded seven albums of original music and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also written a classical opera and set Shakespeare sonnets to music for a theater piece by Robert Wilson.
Wainwright was born in Rhinebeck, New York, to folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III. His parents divorced when he was three, and he lived with his mother in Montreal for most of his youth. Wainwright has dual US and Canadian citizenship. He attended high school at the Millbrook School in New York (which would later inspire his song "Millbrook"), and later briefly studied piano at McGill in Montreal. He began playing the piano at age six, and started touring at 13 with "The McGarrigle Sisters and Family", a folk group featuring Rufus, his sister Martha, his mother Kate, and aunt Anna. His song "I'm a-Runnin'", which he performed in the film Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller at the age of 14, earned him a nomination for a 1989 Genie Award for Best Original Song. He was nominated for a 1990 Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year.

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Sam Sparro
Sam Sparro (born Samuel Frankland Falson on 8 November 1982) is an Australian singer-songwriter, music producer, and former child actor. His stage name was derived from a family nickname, which in turn was inspired by the Dagenham radio mascot Sammy Sparrow. He is signed to the British record label Island Records.
Sam Sparro was born as Samuel Frankland Falson on 8 November 1982 and raised in Sydney, Australia. Sparro's father, Chris Falson, is a gospel minister and recording artist of Maltese descent who has written music for Star Trek and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. His brother plays guitar professionally while his mother plays organ at a Baptist church. The family relocated to Los Angeles when Sparro was ten years old. His father had signed a deal there and was recording a soul album, he took Sparro to a church in Tujunga to hear some of the genre's singers. Fellow church goers, were the McCrary family. Chaka Khan became one of his early admirers after hearing Sparro's singing through knowing the McCrarys. His first role as a child actor was in a McDonald's commercial.

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Sara Bareilles
Sara Beth Bareilles (

/bəˈrɛlɪs/ bə-REL-is; born December 7, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She achieved mainstream success in 2007 with the hit single "Love Song", which brought her into the number one spot on the Billboard Pop 100 chart. She has sold over 1 million records in the United States alone and has been nominated for a Grammy Award three times. In the third season of NBC's The Sing-Off, Bareilles was a celebrity judge alongside Ben Folds and Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men. In February of 2012, VH1 placed Bareilles in the #80 spot of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.
Bareilles was born and raised in Eureka, California, the youngest of three daughters of Bonnie Halvorsen (née Capellas), a funeral home worker, and Paul Bareilles, an insurance adjuster. She is of Italian, German, Portuguese, and French descent (she speaks Italian and lived in Italy for a year). Bareilles was raised Catholic and participated in the high school choir, Limited Edition, and local community theater musical productions, including her high school's production of Little Shop of Horrors as Audrey.

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Sheryl Crow
Sheryl Suzanne Crow (born February 11, 1962) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, folk, hip hop, country and pop. She has won nine Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
She has performed with The Rolling Stones and has sung duets with Mick Jagger,Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Luciano Pavarotti, John Mellencamp, Kid Rock, Michelle Branch, and Sting among others. She has performed backing vocals for Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Don Henley and Belinda Carlisle. She also sang as part of the back up vocals for the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary celebrating Dylan's 30 years as a recording artist. Crow has released seven studio albums, two compilations, and a live album, and has contributed to film soundtracks. She has sold 16 million albums in the United States and 35 million albums worldwide and her newest album, 100 Miles from Memphis, was released on July 20, 2010. Recently she appeared on NBC's 30 Rock, ABC's GCB and Cougar Town, Disney Channel's Hannah Montana Forever, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

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Sikiru Adepoju
Sikiru Adepoju is a percussionist and recording artist from Nigeria, primarily in the genres of traditional African music and world music. He plays a variety of instruments and styles.
A master of the talking drum, Adepoju comes from a musical family from Eruwa in western Nigeria. He and his brothers Saminu and Lasisi were taught drumming very early by their father, Chief Ayanleke Adepoju, whose very name, Ayan, means "descended from drummers." While still in his teens, Sikiru toured with and recorded several albums with the Inter-Reformers Band, the band of one of the pioneers of Afro-beat, Nigerian Juju artist Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey.
In 1985, Adepoju came to America to play with O.J. Ekemode's Nigerian All-Stars, and three months later met Babatunde Olatunji.
He became an integral part of Olatunji's Drums of Passion, and through Olatunji met Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. Since then he has frequently been a guest percussionist during Hart and Bill Kreutzmann's "Rhythm Devils" segments of Grateful Dead concerts, and played talking drum with Mickey Hart's group Bembe Orishas, which toured in 2002. He has been a part of most of Micky Hart's projects since they first met, including the albums (and associated tours) Mickey Hart's Mystery Box, At the Edge, and Supralingua, and was a Grammy Award contributor to Mickey Hart's Planet Drum and Global Drum Project albums. Sikiru is a member of the Mickey Heart Band and has recorded on the CD Mysterium Tremendum and is featured on vocals on the song "Who Stole the Show?".

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Simon Halsey
Simon Halsey (born 1958) is an English choral conductor.
Born in London, Halsey sang in the choirs of both New College, Oxford and King's College, Cambridge. He studied conducting at the Royal College of Music in London.
Since 1983, Halsey has been the Chorus Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus. He founded the City of Birmingham Youth Chorus in 1995. His position with the CBSC brings him into regular contact with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, including as conductor of the annual Christmas Concerts. In 1987, he founded the City of Birmingham Touring Opera (since 2001 the Birmingham Opera Company) with leading international opera director Graham Vick. In addition, he is Artistic Director and founder of the professional choir European Voices, and Principal Conductor, Choral Programme for the Northern Sinfonia.
Halsey served as Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir (Groot Omroepkoor) since 1997, and relinquished this position in 2008. Since 2001, he has also served as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Berlin Radio Choir (Rundfunkchor Berlin). From August 2012, he will serve as Chorus Master for the London Symphony Chorus.

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Simon Rattle
Sir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE (born 19 January 1955) is an English conductor. He rose to international prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and since 2002 has been principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic (BPO).
Rattle was born in Liverpool, the son of Pauline Lila Violet (Greening) and Denis Guttridge Rattle, a Commander in the Royal Navy. He was educated at Liverpool College. Although Rattle studied piano and violin, his early work with orchestras was as a percussionist. He entered the Royal Academy of Music, University of London in 1971. There, his teachers included John Carewe. In 1974, his graduation year, Rattle won the John Player Conductor Competition. After organising and conducting a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony whilst still at the Academy, he was talent-spotted by the music agent Martin Campbell-White, of Harold Holt Ltd. (now Askonas Holt Ltd.), who has since managed Rattle's career. He spent the academic year 1980/81 at St Anne's College, Oxford studying English Language and Literature. He had been attracted to the college by the reputation of Dorothy Bednarowska, Fellow and Tutor in English. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Anne's in 1991. He was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Music honoris causa of the University of Oxford in 1999.

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Smokey Robinson
William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is most notable for being the founder and front man of the popular Motown vocal group, The Miracles, for which he also served as the group's chief songwriter and producer. Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as The Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the stage to focus on his role as Motown's vice president.
However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year, later having solo hits such as "Baby That's Backatcha", "Quiet Storm", "The Agony and the Ecstasy", "Cruisin'", "Being With You" and "Just to See Her". Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left Motown in 1990. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Robinson was born in Detroit and raised in the city's North End section. At one point, he and Diana Ross were next-door neighbors; he said he has known Ross since she was eight. Robinson later told reporters when he was a child, his uncle christened him "Smokey Joe", which Robinson assumed was a "cowboy name for me" until he was later told that smokey was a pejorative term for dark-skinned Blacks. Robinson, who is mainly of African American descent and is light-skinned, remembers his uncle saying to him, "I'm doing this so you won't ever forget that you're black." Robinson grew up as a fan of Western films.

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Smokie Norful
Rev. W.R. "Smokie" Norful, Jr. is an American gospel singer and pianist, best known for his 2002 album, I Need You Now and his 2004 release, Nothing Without You, which won a Grammy at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album in 2004.
Norful, a minister who is also the son of an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas but grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, deeply involved in his father's church. He was interested in music from a very young age, reportedly picking out one-finger piano melodies from the age of four. His parents supported him with music lessons, and, unusual for his background, allowed him to experiment with and listen to the current R&B and soul music of the day as well as gospel music. Norful attended Pine Bluff High School, where he occasionally performed in school assemblies and programs. Norful graduated from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff as a History major and spent four years teaching high school at Jack Robey in Pine Bluff,AR . In 1998 he felt a calling to the ministry of the gospel, and pursued a Master of Divinity degree at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. While working toward ordination in the A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church, he took a position as assistant pastor at a church in Chicago. He currently pastors Victory Cathedral Worship Center in Romeoville, IL, which he founded on September 20, 2005.

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Snoop Dogg
Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. (born October 20, 1971), better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg (formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg), is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. Snoop is best known as a rapper in the West Coast hip hop scene, and for being one of Dr. Dre's most notable protégés. Snoop Dogg was a Crip gang member while in high school. Shortly after graduation, he was arrested for cocaine possession and spent six months in Wayside County Jail. His music career began in 1992 after his release when he was discovered by Dr. Dre. He collaborated on several tracks on Dre's solo debut, The Chronic and on the titular theme song to the film Deep Cover.
Snoop's debut album Doggystyle, was released in 1993 under Death Row Records making a debut at No.1 on both the Billboard 200 and R&B charts. Selling almost a million copies in the first week of its release, Doggystyle quickly became certified 4× platinum in 1994 and spawned several hit singles, including "What's My Name" and "Gin & Juice". In 1994, Snoop released a soundtrack on Death Row Records for the short film Murder Was The Case, starring himself. In early 1996, Snoop Dogg was cleared of charges over his bodyguard's 1993 murder of Philip Woldemariam. His second album, late 1996's Tha Doggfather, also debuted at No.1 on both charts with "Snoop's Upside Ya Head" as the lead single. The album sold only half as well, being certified double platinum in 1997.

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Stacey Kent
Stacey Kent (born March 27, 1968) is a Grammy nominated American jazz singer.
Kent attended Newark Academy in Livingston, New Jersey. Her paternal grandfather was Russian. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and moved to England after her graduation. While studying at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she met the tenor saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married on August 9, 1991.
In the early 1990s, Kent began her professional career singing regularly at Café Boheme in London's Soho. After two or three years, Kent began opening for established jazz acts across the road at the Ronnie Scott's nightclub in London.
Her first CD, Close Your Eyes, was released in 1997. She has released nine CDs as of 2011, and has been also featured on Tomlinson's albums, most recently The Lyric (2006), which won "Album of the Year" at the 2006 BBC Jazz Awards and was re-released on Blue Note in 2011.
Kent's music has been championed by critic and jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, and she won the 2001 British Jazz Award and the 2002 BBC Jazz Award for Best Vocalist. She has also presented jazz programmes on BBC Radio 2 and 3.

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Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan (July 31, 1959) is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and pianist.
He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and he received a BA in digital music composition from Princeton University in 1981, studying under computer-music composers Paul Lansky and Milton Babbitt. Stanley Jordan began his music career at age six, studying piano, then shifted his focus to guitar at age eleven. He later began playing in rock and soul bands. In 1976, Jordan won an award at the Reno, Nevada, Jazz Festival. While earning a degree from Princeton in 1981 he played with Benny Carter and Dizzy Gillespie.
Jordan has performed at many jazz festivals, including: Kool Jazz Festival (1984), Concord Jazz Festival (1985), and the Montreux International Jazz Festival (1985). During the 1980s Jordan played with Quincy Jones, Michal Urbaniak, and Richie Cole. Since working at Birdland in New York in 1989–1990, Jordan has maintained a lower profile. Stanley Jordan has four Grammy Nominations.
Normally, a guitarist must use two hands to play each note. One hand presses down a guitar string behind a chosen fret to prepare the note, and the other hand either plucks or strums the string to play that note. Jordan's touch technique is an advanced form of two-handed tapping. The guitarist produces a note using only one finger by quickly tapping (or hammering) his finger down behind the appropriate fret. The force of impact causes the string to vibrate enough to immediately sound the note, and Jordan executes tapping with both hands, and with more legato than is normally associated with guitar tapping. The note's volume can be controlled by varying the force of impact: tapping with greater force produces a louder note.

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Static Major
Stephen Ellis Garrett (November 11, 1974 – February 25, 2008) also known as Static Major, was a Grammy Award-Winning American rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer from Louisville, Kentucky. He was a member of the R&B trio Playa. Static Major gained posthumous fame for appearing on Lil Wayne's 2008 album Tha Carter III on the song "Lollipop". Static Major was a producer of songs from several artists, including Aaliyah, Ginuwine, and Pretty Ricky. Static Major died suddenly on the operating table before Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III album was released.

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Steve Cropper
Steve Cropper (born Steven Lee Cropper, October 21, 1941, Dora, Missouri), also known as Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and has backed artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla, Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor, also acting as producer on many of these records. He later gained fame as a member of the Blues Brothers band.Rolling Stone lists him 36th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.Mojo ranks Cropper as the second-best guitarist ever.
When he was nine years old, Cropper moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee. At the age of ten, he strummed his brother-in-law's Gibson guitar for the first time^{[citation needed]}. Cropper received his first guitar by mail order at 14 and started playing with local musicians. His guitar heroes at the time included Lowman Pauling of the "5" Royales, as well as Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Reed, and the guitarist of the Bill Doggett band, Billy Butler.

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Steve Vai
Steven Siro Vai (born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, songwriter and producer who has sold over 15 million albums. After starting his career as a music transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, Vai recorded and toured in Zappa's band for two years, from 1980 to 1982. He began a solo career in 1983, has released eight solo albums and won three Grammy Awards. He has also recorded and toured with Public Image Ltd., Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake. Vai has been a regular touring member of the G3 Concert Tour which began in 1996. In 1999 Vai started his own record label Favored Nations, intending to showcase as he describes, "...artists that have attained the highest performance level on their chosen instruments."
Vai began playing guitar in 1973, at the age of 13. In 1974, he took guitar lessons from guitarist Joe Satriani and played in local bands, one of which was called "The Steve Vais". He was influenced by guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Brian May, Jimmy Page, Glen Buxton, and jazz fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth. Vai attended the Berklee College of Music, afterwards recording a promotional piece for them in which he spoke about auditioning for Frank Zappa at age 20.

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Steve Wariner
Steven Noel "Steve" Wariner (born December 25, 1954) is an American country music singer, songwriter and guitarist. He has released eighteen studio albums, including six on MCA Records, and three each on RCA Records, Arista Records and Capitol Records. He has also charted more than fifty singles on the Billboard country singles charts, including ten Number One hits: "All Roads Lead to You", "Some Fools Never Learn", "You Can Dream of Me", "Life's Highway", "Small Town Girl", "The Weekend", "Lynda", "Where Did I Go Wrong", and "I Got Dreams", and "What If I Said", a duet with Anita Cochran from her album Back to You. Three of his studio albums have been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipping 500,000 copies in the United States.
In addition to writing or co-writing most of his own songs, Wariner holds several writing credits for other artists, including Number One hits for Clint Black and Garth Brooks, as well as singles for Bryan White and Keith Urban. Other artists with whom he has worked include Nicolette Larson, Glen Campbell, Mark O'Connor, Asleep at the Wheel and Brad Paisley. Wariner has also won four Grammy Awards: one for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, and three for Best Country Instrumental, the most recent in 2010 for "Producer's Medley" from the album Steve Wariner, c.g.p., My Tribute to Chet Atkins. Steve Wariner was one of only four guitar players in the world to be given the "Certified Guitar Player" (CGP) award by Chet Atkins (five including Atkins himself).

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Steven Stucky
Steven Stucky (

/ˈstʌki/; born November 7, 1949) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the public schools and, privately, viola with Herbert Preston, conducting with Leo Scheer, and composition with Macon Sumerlin. He attended Baylor University and Cornell. Stucky's principal composition teachers were Richard Willis, Robert Palmer, and Karel Husa; his principal conducting teacher was Daniel Sternberg.
Stucky has written commissioned works for many of the major American orchestras, including Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. He was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was resident composer 1988-2009 (the longest such affiliation in American orchestral history); he was host of the New York Philharmonic's Hear & Now series 2005-09; and he was Pittsburgh Symphony Composer of the Year for the 2011-12 season. For Pittsburgh, he composed Silent Spring, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson's epochal book of the same title. He has also taught at Eastman and Berkeley, the latter as Ernest Bloch Professor in 2003. At Cornell, he founded Ensemble X and led it for nine seasons, 1997-2006, while he also was the guiding force behind the celebrated Green Umbrella series in Los Angeles.

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Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (born May 13, 1950 as Stevland Hardaway Judkins), known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, a child prodigy who developed into one of the most creative musical figures of the late 20th century. Blind since shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
Among Wonder's best known works are singles such as "Superstition", "Sir Duke", "I Wish" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Well known albums also include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five.

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Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of fourteen to pursue a career in country music. She signed to the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift's self-titled debut album in 2006 established her as a country music star. "Our Song", her third single, made her the youngest sole writer and singer of a number one song on the country chart. She received a Best New Artist nomination at the 50th Grammy Awards.
Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in late 2008. Buoyed by the chart success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", Fearless attracted a crossover audience and became the top-selling album of 2009. The record won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest ever Album of the Year winner. Fearless also received Album of the Year plaudits at the American Music Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards and Country Music Association Awards, making it the most awarded album in country music history. In 2010, Swift released her third album, Speak Now, which sold over one million copies in its first week. She then embarked on the 111-date Speak Now World Tour, which was attended by over 1.6 million fans and has become one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time. The album's third single, "Mean", won two Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. Swift is currently recording her fourth studio album, due for release in the fall of 2012.

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Terence Blanchard
Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and film score composer. Since he emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blanchard has been a leading artist in jazz. He was an integral figure in the 1980s jazz resurgence having recorded several award-winning albums and having performed with the jazz elite.
He is known as a straight-ahead artist in the hard bop tradition but has recently utilized an African-fusion style of playing that makes him unique from other trumpeters on the performance circuit. However, it is as a film composer that Blanchard reaches his widest audience. His trumpet can be heard on nearly fifty film scores; more than forty bear his unmistakable compositional style. Since 2000, Blanchard has served as Artistic Director at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and as of August 2011 he was named the Artistic Director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami Frost School of Music. He lives in the Garden District of New Orleans with his wife and four children.

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Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones (born 1 February 1942) is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, author, political commentator, and TV host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team.
Jones was born in Colwyn Bay, Wales. The family home was named "Bodchwil". His father was stationed with the RAF in India. When Jones was four-and-a-half, the family moved to Surrey.
Jones was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, where he was head boy in the 1960-61 academic year. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, but "strayed into history". He graduated with a 2:1. While there, he performed comedy with future Monty Python castmate Michael Palin in The Oxford Revue.
Jones appeared in Twice a Fortnight with Palin, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Jonathan Lynn, as well as the television series The Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969). He appeared in Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967–69) with Palin, Eric Idle and David Jason. He wrote for The Frost Report and several other David Frost programmes on British television. Along with Palin, he wrote lyrics for the 1968 Barry Booth album "Diversions".

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The Raconteurs
The Raconteurs /ˌrækɒnˈtɜrz/ (also known as The Saboteurs in Australia) is an American rock band that was formed in Detroit, Michigan, featuring four members known for other musical projects: Jack White (of The White Stripes and The Dead Weather), Brendan Benson (solo), Jack Lawrence (of The Greenhornes, Blanche and The Dead Weather), and Patrick Keeler (also of The Greenhornes).
The band is based in Nashville, Tennessee. According to the band's official website, "The seed was sown in an attic in the middle of a hot summer when friends Jack White and Brendan Benson got together and wrote a song that truly inspired them. This song was 'Steady, As She Goes' and the inspiration led to the creation of a full band with the addition of Lawrence and Keeler." The band came together in Detroit during 2005 and recorded when time allowed for the remainder of the year. Due to the various members' success in other bands, they were quickly dubbed a supergroup. The band, however, asserted they were not, saying that the term implies something pre-planned or temporary, whereas they are actually "a new band made up of old friends."

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Thomas Newman
Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955) is an American composer and conductor, best known for his many film scores.
Newman has received a total of ten Academy Award nominations, although as of 2011, he has yet to win the award. He has however won a BAFTA, two Grammys and an Emmy, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe. Newman was honored with the Richard Kirk award at the 2000 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music.
Born in Los Angeles, California, he was the youngest son of Mississippi-born Martha Louise (née Montgomery) and composer Alfred Newman. He is a member of a film-scoring dynasty in Hollywood that includes his father, brother David Newman, sister Maria Newman, uncles Lionel Newman and Emil Newman, cousin Randy Newman (who is also known as a singer and songwriter) and his nephew Joey Newman. Newman was educated at Yale University before starting his career in music.
His first major score was for the 1984 film Reckless. In 1999, Newman composed the score to Sam Mendes' first feature film American Beauty, created using mainly percussion instruments. Newman believed the score helped move the film along without disturbing the "moral ambiguity" of the script, saying "It was a real delicate balancing act in terms of what music worked to preserve that." This was his first collaboration with Mendes, and he would go on to score all of the director's subsequent films except for Away We Go. He received a fourth Oscar nomination for this score, and although he lost again (to John Corigliano for The Red Violin), he did receive a Grammy and a BAFTA.

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Tia Carrere
Tia Carrere (born Althea Rae Janairo on January 2, 1967) is an American actress, model, voice artist, and singer who obtained her first big break being a regular on the daytime soap opera General Hospital.
She is most widely known for her roles as Cassandra Wong in the feature films Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2, Nani in Lilo & Stitch its sequel films and Lilo & Stitch: The Series, Queen Tyr'ahnee in Duck Dodgers, as Sydney Fox in the syndicated television series Relic Hunter, and her participation as a contestant in the second season of the United States version of Dancing with the Stars and the fifth season of The Celebrity Apprentice.
Carrere was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the daughter of Filipino parents, Audrey Duhinio Janairo, a computer supervisor, and Alexander Janairo, a banker. Carrere identifies herself as being of "Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese descent ... raised on Hawaii." Carrere attended Sacred Hearts Academy, an all-girls school. Carrere longed to be a singer as a child. Although she was eliminated during the first round of her 1985 Star Search appearance at the age of 17, she was spotted by a local producer while shopping at a Waikiki grocery store and was cast in the movie Aloha Summer, which he produced and had a cameo in..

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Till Brönner
Till Brönner (b. 6 May, 1971 in Viersen, Germany is a jazz musician, trumpet player, singer, composer, arranger and producer. He has a unique jazz approach influenced by bebop and fusion jazz, but also modern pop music, movie soundtracks (especially old German movies), country music and even German pop songs. His trumpet playing is primarily inspired by the listening experiences of Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie and Chet Baker. His most influential teachers were Bobby Shew and Malte Burba.
Till was raised in Rome and received classical trumpet education at the Jesuit boarding school Aloisiuskolleg in Bonn followed by a study of the jazz trumpet at the music academy in Cologne under professors Jiggs Whigham and Jon Eardley.
Brönner also wrote the movie soundtrack for Pepe Danquart's "Höllentour" (English title: "Hell On Wheels"; a movie about the "Tour de France" bicycle race). The soundtrack was nominated for a German Movie Award in the category "Best Music Score".

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Timbaland
Timothy Zachery Mosley (born March 10, 1972) better known by his stage name Timbaland, is an American record producer, songwriter and rapper. Timbaland's first full credit production work was in 1996 on Ginuwine...the Bachelor for R&B singer Ginuwine. After further work on Aaliyah's 1996 album One in a Million and Missy Elliott's 1997 album Supa Dupa Fly, Timbaland became a prominent producer for R&B and hip-hop artists. As a rapper he initially released several albums with fellow rapper Magoo, but later released his debut solo album Tim's Bio in 1998. In 2007, Timbaland released the first album in his Shock Value series, Timbaland Presents: Shock Value. Then In 2009 Timbaland Presents: Shock Value II. It is expected that Timbaland will release Timbaland Presents: Shock Value III in June 2012.
Timothy Zachery Mosley was born on March 10, 1972 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he was raised. He graduated from Salem High School. During his time as a DJ, he was known as "DJ Tim" or "DJ Timmy Tim". His brother, Sebastian, is nine years younger. Timbaland began making hip hop backing tracks on a Casio keyboard. While attending high school, he began a long-term collaboration with rapper Melvin Barcliff, who performed under the name of Magoo. The teenaged Mosley also joined the production ensemble S.B.I. (which stood for surrounded by idiots) which also featured Neptunes producer Pharrell. Mosley was also high school friends with Terrence and Gene Thorton, who would go on to be known as Pusha T and Malice of the rap group Clipse. In 1986, when Timbaland was 15 years old, he was shot while working a part time job at his local Red Lobster and was partially paralyzed for nine months. During this time, he began to learn how to DJ using his left hand.

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TobyMac
Toby McKeehan (born Kevin Michael McKeehan; October 22, 1964), better known by his stage name TobyMac (styled tobyMac), is a Christian recording artist, music producer, hip-hop/pop artist, singer-songwriter, and author.
TobyMac was one of the first Christian rappers.^{[citation needed]} He was first known for being a member of the Christian singing trio DC Talk, staying with them from 1987 until their announced hiatus in 2000. He has since continued a successful solo career with the release of four studio albums: Momentum (2001), Welcome to Diverse City (2004), Portable Sounds (2007), Tonight (2010), as well as two remixed albums of the first two albums titled Re:Mix Momentum and Renovating Diverse City and one remix album for the last two albums titled Dubbed and Freq'd: A Remix Project (2012), respectively. He also has a full-length Christmas album Christmas in Diverse City (2011).
Between DC talk and his own solo career, he has sold more than 10 million albums. TobyMac has had six No. 1 hit CHR singles including "Gone", "Made to Love" and "Lose My Soul." His live concert CD+DVD combo album, Alive and Transported, was released in 2008 and received the Grammy Award for Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album at the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009. His fourth studio album, Tonight, was released on February 9, 2010.

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Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard "Tom" Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer and singer-songwriter who has been writing, performing and recording music for fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Paxton's songs have demonstrated enduring appeal, including modern standards such as "The Last Thing on My Mind", "Bottle of Wine", "Whose Garden Was This", "The Marvelous Toy", and "Ramblin' Boy". Paxton's songs have been recorded by Pete Seeger and The Weavers, Judy Collins, Sandy Denny, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, Marianne Faithfull, The Kingston Trio, The Chad Mitchell Trio, John Denver, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, Flatt & Scruggs, The Move, The Fireballs, and many others (see covers). He has performed thousands of concerts around the world in such places as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Scandinavia, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and all over the United States; and his songs have been translated into various languages. Paxton enjoys a strong relationship with fans throughout the world.

wn.com/Tom_Paxton

Trace Adkins
Tracy Darrell "Trace" Adkins (born January 13, 1962) is an American country music artist and actor. He made his debut in 1996 with the album Dreamin' Out Loud, released on Capitol Records Nashville. Since then, Adkins has released seven more studio albums and two Greatest Hits compilations. In addition, he has charted more than 20 singles on the Billboard country music charts, including the Number One hits "(This Ain't) No Thinkin' Thing", "Ladies Love Country Boys", and "You're Gonna Miss This", which peaked in 1997, 2007, and 2008, respectively. "I Left Something Turned on at Home" went to #1 on Canada's country chart. All but one of his studio albums have received gold or platinum certification in the United States; his highest-selling to date is 2005's Songs About Me, which has been certified 2× Multi-Platinum for shipping two million copies.
He has also made several appearances on television, including as a panelist on the game shows Hollywood Squares and Pyramid, as a finalist on The Celebrity Apprentice, as the voice for recurring character Elvin on King of the Hill, and in television commercial voice-overs for the KFC fast food restaurant chain. In addition, Adkins has written an autobiography entitled A Personal Stand: Observations and Opinions from a Free-Thinking Roughneck, which was released in late 2007. He has appeared in numerous films, including The Lincoln Lawyer.

wn.com/Trace_Adkins

Trey Songz
Tremaine "Trey" Aldon Neverson (born November 28, 1984), better known by his stage name Trey Songz, is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor. His debut album, I Gotta Make It, was released in 2005, while his second album, Trey Day, was released in 2007. His third album, Ready, was released in 2009 while his fourth studio album, Passion, Pain & Pleasure, was released on September 14, 2010.
Songz was born Tremaine Aldon Neverson on November 28, 1984, in Petersburg, Virginia. Raised as a military brat, Songz did not have aspirations to have a musical career as a child due to his shyness, saying "Singing wasn't a reality for me, until other people started noticing I sounded good." He recognized his vocal abilities at the age of 14. Reluctant to sing, he began performing with encouragement by friends and family in high school. Record producer Troy Taylor discovered Songz during a talent show in 2000, which led him to signing a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 2002. After graduating from high school in 2002, Songz moved to New Jersey to begin recording his debut album, though recording didn't actually begin until 2003.

wn.com/Trey_Songz

Trisha Yearwood
Patricia Lynn Yearwood, professionally known as Trisha Yearwood (born September 19, 1964), is an American country music artist. She is best known for her ballads about vulnerable young women from a female perspective that have been described by some music critics as "strong" and "confident."
Trisha Yearwood signed with MCA Records in 1990. She came to prominence with her debut single, "She's in Love with the Boy" which became a number 1 on the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in 1991. Her second album release, Hearts in Armor (1992) reflected Yearwood's own personal issues, which won her widespread critical acclaim among music critics and further success in country music. Her later album releases such as The Song Remembers When (1993), Thinkin' About You (1995) and Everybody Knows (1996) also demonstrated her creative control, featuring collaborations from Rodney Crowell, Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks.
Yearwood also found major success in country radio during much of the 1990s, including with the 1997 song "How Do I Live." Initially released on the soundtrack of the film, Con Air, the song was also issued on her "greatest hits" compilation entitled (Songbook) A Collection of Hits (1997) and would eventually win Best Female Country Vocal Performance from the Grammy Awards. In addition she would also win accolades from the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Awards in 1997 and 1998. Aside from her success in country music, she has also donated her time as a philanthropist, working with Habitat for Humanity and the Make a Wish Foundation. In addition she also set aside a project to release her first cookbook in April 2008 titled Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen, which consisted of southern cooking recipes from Yearwood, her mother and sister.

wn.com/Trisha_Yearwood

Vince Gill
Vincent Grant "Vince" Gill (born April 12, 1957) is an American country singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He has achieved commercial success and fame both as frontman to the country rock band Pure Prairie League in the 1970s, and as a solo artist beginning in 1983, where his talents as a vocalist and musician have placed him in high demand as a guest vocalist, and a duet partner. Gill has recorded more than twenty studio albums, charted over forty singles on the U.S. Billboard charts as Hot Country Songs, and has sold more than 22 million albums. He has been honored by the Country Music Association with 18 CMA Awards, including two Entertainer of the Year awards and five Male Vocalist Awards. Gill has also earned 27 Grammy Awards, more than any other male Country music artist. In 2007, Gill was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Vincent Grant "Vince" Gill was born in Norman, Oklahoma. His father, J. Stanley Gill, was a lawyer and administrative law judge who played in a country music band part time and encouraged Gill to pursue a music career. At the encouragement of his father, Gill learned to play several instruments, including the banjo and guitar, before he started high school at Oklahoma City's Northwest Classen High School. He first played with a teenage band called Bluegrass Revues in the late 1970s. The other members were: Billy Perry on the banjo, Bobby Clark on the triangle and Mike Perry on the bass.

wn.com/Vince_Gill

Wayna
Wayna (real name Woyneab Miraf Wondwossen) is an Ethiopian-born American R&B singer.
Her single "My Love" reached the Billboard R&B charts in 2008, peaking at #99. Wayna was nominated for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for the song "Lovin You (Music)" at the 2009 Grammy Awards.
She was arrested on March 26, 2009 and charged with possession of a prohibited weapon at Bush Intercontinental Airport when she attempted to board a flight with a 24-inch collapsible police baton that she uses in her performances. A judge dismissed the charges the next day.

wn.com/Wayna

Wayne Brady
Wayne Alphonso Brady (born June 2, 1972) is an American actor, singer, comedian and television personality, known for his work as a regular on the American version of the improvisational comedy television series Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and as the host of the daytime talk show The Wayne Brady Show. He was the original host of Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics!, and currently hosts the 2009 revival of Let's Make a Deal.
Brady was born in Columbus, Georgia to West Indian parents, and moved to Orlando, Florida as a young child to live with his grandmother and aunt. When Brady talks about his "Mom," he is referring to his grandmother, Valerie Petersen, who raised him. At 16, he started performing in community theater and at the Orlando improv troupe SAK Comedy Lab where he first started developing his improv skills. He attended Dr. Phillips High School, in Orlando, Florida, where he graduated in 1989. In 1990, he enrolled at the University of Miami. In 1996, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he continued developing his acting skills.

wn.com/Wayne_Brady

William Ackerman
William Ackerman (born 1949) is an American guitarist and composer of acoustic-based instrumental music. He founded and ran for many years the influential New Age record label Windham Hill Records.
William Ackerman was born in West Germany but was adopted by a couple who lived in Palo Alto, California. A self-professed poet and musician who briefly studied guitar with Robbie Basho, Ackerman grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended the Northfield Mount Hermon School and Stanford University. Before finishing his studies at Stanford, Ackerman dropped out to become a carpenter. Ackerman had composed some pieces of music for a performance of Romeo and Juliet at Stanford. In 1975, without having played a "paying gig"
Initially William Ackerman kept up his job as a builder but recording music took up more of his time until he was working on music full time. Ackerman ran his music label Windham Hill Records for years. He did just about everything from picking cover art to producing the records. Early albums featured himself (It Takes a Year) and his cousin, fellow guitarist Alex de Grassi Turning: Turning Back (1978). Although in later years critics would single out Ackerman's records (especially Childhood and Memory) and De Grassi's first record, the album that gained Windham Hill Records notice was the 1980 recording by George Winston Autumn. This record was well reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine and, as a result of this national exposure the record began selling in large numbers. For many years it was the best selling album in the Windham Hill Catalog.

wn.com/William_Ackerman

Witold Lutosławski
Witold Lutosławski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈvitɔld lutɔsˈwafski]; January 25, 1913 – February 7, 1994) was one of the major European composers of the 20th century, and one of the preeminent Polish musicians during his last three decades. He earned many international awards and prizes, including the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour.
During his youth, Lutosławski studied piano and composition in Warsaw. His early works were influenced by Polish folk music. His style demonstrates a wide range of rich atmospheric textures. He began to develop his own characteristic composition techniques in the late 1950s. His music from this period onwards incorporates his own methods of building harmonies from small groups of musical intervals. It also uses aleatoric processes, in which the rhythmic coordination of parts is subject to an element of chance. His compositions (of which he was a notable conductor) include four symphonies, a Concerto for Orchestra, a string quartet, several instrumental concertos and orchestral song cycles.

wn.com/Witold_Lutosławski

Wu Man
Wu Man (Chinese: 吴蛮; pinyin: Wú Mán; born 1963 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang) is a Chinese pipa and ruan player and composer. She is an exponent of the Pudong School of pipa playing.
Wu received a Master's degree at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where her instructors included Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai. She became the first recipient of a master's degree in pipa and won the first prize in the 1989 National Music Performance Competition.
Wu came to the United States in 1990 at the age of 25, ostensibly to study English. She lived in Boston, and began playing with an ensemble called Music from China. In 1992, she first played with the Kronos Quartet, the beginning of an ongoing relationship whose first full-length album was Tan Dun: Ghost Opera (1997), containing music written by Tan Dun for quartet and pipa.
Wu performs with Chinese traditional music groups but is also known for her interpretation of contemporary compositions, as well as her work in jazz and cross-cultural music. Many composers (including Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bun-Ching Lam, Evan Ziporyn, and others) have composed new works for her.

wn.com/Wu_Man

Young Jeezy
Jay Wayne Jenkins (born October 12, 1977), better known by his stage name Young Jeezy, is an American rapper. He is a member of the hip hop group United Streets Dopeboyz of America (USDA) and a former member of BMF (Black Mafia Family). He began his career in 2001 under an independent label and joined Boyz 'N Da Hood in 2005, the same year his solo major label debut Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 was released. Its single "Soul Survivor", which featured Akon, became a top-ten hit in the US.
The Inspiration followed in 2006, and The Recession followed in 2008; both albums yielded chart-topping singles. Jeezy has also appeared on numerous other rap and R&B singles such as "Say I" by Christina Milian, "I'm So Paid" by Akon, "Hard" by Rihanna, and "Love in This Club" by Usher, the latter being a number one single on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 2008.
Jay Wayne Jenkins was born in Columbia, South Carolina and relocated to Atlanta, Georgia when he was a toddler. Because his parents were separated, custody of him transferred between family members frequently. In an interview with XXL magazine, he described his childhood as "empty". In 1994, he spent nine months in YCA (Youth Challenge Academy), a boot camp in Fort Stewart, Georgia, for narcotics possession.

wn.com/Young_Jeezy

Performer(s)	Song(s) Sung
U2	"Get on Your Boots"
Al Green Justin Timberlake Keith Urban Boyz II Men	"Let's Stay Together"
Coldplay Jay-Z	"Lost!"
Coldplay	"Viva La Vida"
Carrie Underwood	"Last Name"
Kid Rock	"Amen" "All Summer Long" "Rock 'n' Roll Jesus"
Taylor Swift Miley Cyrus	"Fifteen (song)"
Jennifer Hudson	"You Pulled Me Through"
Jonas Brothers Stevie Wonder	"Burnin' Up" "Superstition"
Katy Perry	"I Kissed a Girl"
Estelle Kanye West	"American Boy"
Kenny Chesney	"Better as a Memory"
T.I. Jay-Z Lil Wayne Kanye West M.I.A.	"Swagga Like Us"
M.I.A.	"Paper Planes"
Paul McCartney Dave Grohl	"I Saw Her Standing There"
Sugarland	"Stay"
Adele Jennifer Nettles	"Chasing Pavements"
Radiohead Spirit of Troy	"15 Step"
T.I. Justin Timberlake	"Dead and Gone"
Duke Fair Jamie Foxx Ne-Yo Smokey Robinson	A Four Tops Medley
Neil Diamond	"Sweet Caroline"
John Mayer B.B. King Buddy Guy Keith Urban	"Bo Diddley"
Lil Wayne Robin Thicke	"Tie My Hands"
Robert Plant Alison Krauss	"Rich Woman" "Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)"
Stevie Wonder	"All About the Love Again"

Grammy Awards
54th Grammy Awards
The Grammy awards are named for the trophy: a small, gilded gramophone statuette.
Awarded for	Outstanding achievements in the music industry
Presented by	National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
Country	United States
First awarded	1959
Official website	grammy.com
Television coverage
Network	NBC (1959–1970) ABC (1971–1972) CBS (1973–present)

Kid Rock
Kid Rock performs on a United Service Organizations show at Camp Phoenix, January 2006.
Background information
Birth name	Robert James Ritchie
Born	(1971-01-17) January 17, 1971 (age 41) Romeo, Michigan, U.S.
Genres	Rock, hip hop, rap rock, rap metal, heavy metal, southern rock, blues
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, actor, rapper
Instruments	vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, banjo, slide guitar, steel guitar, lap steel guitar, pedal steel guitar, dobro, keyboards, piano, organ, mellotron, synthesizers, turntables, drums, percussion, talkbox
Years active	1988–present
Labels	Atlantic, Jive, Top Dog
Associated acts	Uncle Kracker, Joe C., Champtown, Yelawolf, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Martina McBride, R. Kelly, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Too Short, Ice Cube, Chuck Nice, Run-D.M.C., Aerosmith, Ludacris, Eminem, Methods of Mayhem, LL Cool J, Esham, Hank Williams Jr., The Howling Diablos, T.I., Bob Seger, Zac Brown, Gretchen Wilson, Robert Bradley, Diana Ross, Dope, Monster Magnet, Hed PE, D Nice, Yo-Yo, Limp Bizkit, Staind, Blink-182, Powerman 5000, Professional Murder Music, Metallica, Sevendust, Creed, Korn, System of Down, Buckcherry, Fuel, David Allen Coe, Lit, Tenacious D, Saliva, Puddle of Mudd, Gov't Mule, Jerry Cantrell, Peter Frampton, Whitestarr, Dicky Betts, Peter Wolf, Bon Jovi, Paradime, Allison Moorer, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Omar, Pamela Anderson
Website	KidRock.com

Persondata
Name	Kid Rock
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	January 17, 1971
Place of birth	Romeo, Michigan, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death

Kunal Nayyar
Kunal Nayyar shot in 2008 on a tour with the rest of The Big Bang Theory cast.
Born	(1981-04-30) April 30, 1981 (age 31) London, England, UK
Occupation	Actor, writer
Years active	2004–present
Spouse	Neha Kapur (2011-present)

Rank	1st	2nd	3rd
Artist	Georg Solti	Quincy Jones, Alison Krauss	Pierre Boulez
Total awards	31	27	26

Year	Film	Character	Notes
2004	S.C.I.E.N.C.E	Pizza Man
2012	Ice Age: Continental Drift	Gupta	In post-production

Year	Series	Role	Notes
2007	NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service	Youssef Zidan	Uncredited Episode: "Suspicion"
2007–present	The Big Bang Theory	Rajesh Koothrappali	Lead role
2010	The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson	Rajesh Koothrappali

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	Huck and Holden	Navin	Dahlia Theater, Los Angeles
2006	Loves Labors Lost	Other Parts	Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford upon Avon, England

Year	Award	Category	Result	Title
2006	Garland Award	Best Male Lead in a Play on the West Coast	Won	Huck and Holden
2012	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Nominated	The Big Bang Theory

Persondata
Name	Nayyar, Kunal
Alternative names
Short description	Actor
Date of birth	April 30, 1981
Place of birth	London, England, UK
Date of death
Place of death

John Mayer
Mayer at the Mile High Music Festival on July 20, 2008
Background information
Birth name	John Clayton Mayer
Born	(1977-10-16) October 16, 1977 (age 34) Bridgeport, Connecticut United States
Genres	Pop rock, blues rock, acoustic rock, blue-eyed soul
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, record producer, columnist, graphic designer, photographer, comedian, television host
Instruments	Guitar, vocals, omnichord, piano, vibraphone, harmonica, percussion, clarinet, violin
Years active	1998 (1998)–present
Labels	Arista, Aware, Columbia
Associated acts	John Mayer Trio, Fall Out Boy
Website	johnmayer.com
Notable instruments
Fender Stratocaster Martin Guitars Gibson Guitars

	"City Love" excerpt noicon From the album Room for Squares.
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	"Go!" excerpt noicon From the album Be. In 2004, after the three saw the movie Ray together, Kanye West and Mayer joined Common back in the studio. Mayer came up with the song's concept—fantasies—and his vocals were sampled for the track.^[37]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

	"Who Did You Think I Was?" noicon From the album Try! The first single, "Who Did You Think I Was?," lyrically underscores Mayer's decision to move away from acoustic pop music and towards blues, with lines such as, "Got a brand new blues that I can't explain."^[39] This sample features an extended electric guitar solo.
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Year	Awardee	Category	Result
2003	John Mayer	Best New Artist	Nominated
2003	"Your Body Is a Wonderland"	Best Male Pop Vocal Performance	Won
2005	"Daughters"	Song of the Year	Won
2005	"Daughters"	Best Male Pop Vocal Performance	Won
2007	Continuum	Album of the Year	Nominated
	Continuum	Best Pop Vocal Album	Won
	Try!	Best Rock Album	Nominated
	"Waiting on the World to Change"	Best Male Pop Vocal Performance	Won
	"Route 66"	Best Male Rock Vocal Performance	Nominated
2008	"Belief"	Best Male Pop Vocal Performance	Nominated
2009	"Say"	Best Male Pop Vocal Performance	Won
	"Say"	Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media	Nominated
	"Gravity"	Best Male Rock Vocal Performance	Won
	"Lesson Learned"	Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals	Nominated
	Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles	Best Long Form Music Video	Nominated
2011	Battle Studies	Best Pop Vocal Album	Nominated
	"Half of My Heart"	Best Male Pop Vocal Performance	Nominated
	"Crossroads"	Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance	Nominated

Year	Award	Category
2002	MTV Video Music Awards	Best New Artist in a Video for "No Such Thing" – nominated
	Orville H. Gibson Guitar Awards	Les Paul Horizon Award (Most Promising Up and Coming Guitarist)
	VH1 Big in 2002 Awards	Can't Get You Out of My Head Award for "No Such Thing"
	Pollstar Concert Industry Awards	Best New Artist Tour
2003	20th Annual ASCAP Awards	ASCAP Pop Award – "No Such Thing" (shared with Clay Cook)^[117] ^{Awarded to songwriters and publishers of the most performed songs in the ASCAP repertory for the award period.}
	31st Annual American Music Awards	Favorite Male Artist – Pop or Rock 'n Roll Music
	15th Annual Boston Music Awards	Act of the Year^[118] Male Vocalist of the Year Song of the Year for "Your Body Is a Wonderland"
	MTV Video Music Awards	Best Male Video
	Radio Music Awards	Modern Adult Contemporary Radio Artist of the Year Best Hook-Up Song for "Your Body Is a Wonderland"
	Teen People Awards	Choice Music – Male Artist Choice Music – Album for Any Given Thursday
	Danish Music Awards	Best New Artist
2004	BDS Certified Spin Awards March 2004 recipients	Reached 100,000 spins for "Why Georgia"
2005	33rd annual American Music Awards	Adult Contemporary: Favorite Artist
	World Music Awards	World's Best Selling Rock Act
	People's Choice Awards	Favorite Male Artist
2007	35th Annual American Music Awards	Adult Contemporary Music — nominated
2007	23rd Annual TEC Awards	Tour Sound Production (for the Continuum Tour) Record Production/Single or Track (for production on "Waiting on the World to Change") Record Production/Album (from production on Continuum)

Persondata
Name	Mayer, John Clayton
Alternative names	Mayer, Johnny
Short description	Guitarist and singer/songwriter
Date of birth	October 16, 1977
Place of birth	Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death

Make changes yourself !

Contents

Related pages:

Contents

Related pages:

Contents

[edit] Devil Without a Cause to Cocky (1997–2002)

[edit] Kid Rock to Rock n Roll Jesus (2003–2009)

[edit] Born Free (2009–present)

Related pages:

Contents

Related pages:

Contents

[edit] Continuum

[edit] Battle Studies

[edit] Born and Raised