National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

The Recording Academy, also known as The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), is a U.S. organization of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for music and its makers. The Recording Academy is headquartered in Santa Monica. Neil Portnow is the current president of The Academy.

The Recording Academy, which began in 1957, is known for its Grammy Awards. In 1997, the Recording Academy launched The Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., which produces the Latin GRAMMY Awards. Michael Greene was the founder and the first President of the Latin Grammys.

History

The origin of the Academy dates back to the beginning of the 1950s Hollywood Walk of Fame project. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce asked the help of major recording industry executives in compiling a list of people in the music business who should be honored by Walk of Fame stars. The music committee, made up of these executives, compiled a list, but as they worked, they realized there were many more talented industry people who would not qualify to be recognized with a Hollywood Boulevard bronze star. The founding committee members included Jesse Kaye, MGM Records; Lloyd Dunn and Richard Jones, Capitol Records; Sonny Burke and Milt Gabler, Decca Records; Dennis Farnon, RCA Records; and Axel Stordahl, Paul Weston, and Doris Day from Columbia Records. This was the start of the Academy and also of the GRAMMY Awards.

List of lifetime achievement awards

Lifetime achievement awards are awarded by various organizations, to recognize contributions over the whole of a career, rather than or in addition to single contributions.

Such awards, and organizations presenting them, include:

A

B

C

Ray Santos

Ray Santos is a Grammy Award-winning Latin musician. He was born December 28, 1928 in New York City to Puerto Rican parents. He attended the Juilliard School of Music where he studied saxophone. Santos has played and arranged for such artists as Noro Morales, Machito, Tito Rodriguez, and Tito Puente among many others.

Santos served as music consultant and arranger for the soundtrack of the motion picture The Mambo Kings. He arranged and directed the orchestra for Linda Ronstadt's Frenesí album.

Ray Santos taught at the City College of New York for over 20 years, directing the Latin Band. He retired in December of 2013 at the age of 84.

External links

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American information technology entrepreneur and inventor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc.; CEO and largest shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios; a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT Inc. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Shortly after his death, Jobs's official biographer, Walter Isaacson, described him as the "creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing."

Adopted at birth in San Francisco, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s, Jobs's countercultural lifestyle was a product of his time. As a senior at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, his two closest friends were the older engineering student (and Homestead High alumnus) Wozniak and his countercultural girlfriend, the artistically inclined Homestead High junior Chrisann Brennan. Jobs briefly attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out, deciding to travel through India in 1974 and study Buddhism.

Award

An award is something given to a person, a group of people, or an organization to recognize their excellence in a certain field; a certificate of excellence. Awards are often signified by trophies, titles, certificates, commemorative plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons. An award may carry a monetary prize given to the recipient; for example, the Nobel Prize for contributions to society or the Pulitzer Prize for literary achievements. An award may also simply be a public acknowledgment of excellence, without any tangible token or prize.

Overview

Awards can be given by any person or institution, although the prestige of an award usually depends on the status of the awarder. Usually, awards are given by an organization of some sort, or by the office of an official within an organization or government. For instance, a special presidential citation (as given by the President of the United States) is a public announcement giving an official place of honor (e.g., President Ronald Reagan gave a special presidential citation in 1984 to the Disney Channel for its excellent children's television programming.)