Garth Fagan
Born	Gawain Garth Fagan (1940-05-03) 3 May 1940 (age 72) Kingston, Jamaica
Occupation	Theatre director, dancer, choreographer
Years active	1950s-present
Website
http://www.garthfagandance.org

Gawain Garth Fagan, CD (born 3 May 1940) is a Jamaican modern dance choreographer. He is the founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance, a modern dance company based in Rochester, New York.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Fagan was born in Kingston, Jamaica to Oxford educated S.W. Fagan, former Chief Education Officer of Jamaica, and Louise I. Walker.^[1] It was a gymnastics class that initially drew his attention to dance early on. While attending Excelsior High school, he studied with Ivy Baxter at the Jamaica National Dance Company and performed at the inauguration of Cuban President Fidel Castro in 1959. Fagan was educated at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with sights on becoming a psychologist.^[2]

Career[link]

Fagan worked at several dance companies in Detroit, and moved to Rochester New York in 1970, and there established his dance company originally named the "Bottom of the Bucket BUT ... Dance Theatre" in 1973.^[2] He has been a Professor, at State University of New York, Brockport since 1972. Fagan choreographed for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Limón Dance Company in the 1970s. He has studied the works of Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, Alvin Ailey, José Limón, and Katherine Dunham. He is also influenced by Caribbean and West African dances.^[1]

Fagan's choreography incorporates elements of modern dance, ballet, Afro-Caribbean dance, and social dance. Many of his works are autobiographical or include themes of personal relevance. His untitled 1977 work chronicles the dissolution of his marriage, showing a couple beginning a relationship with affection and passion but eventually drifting apart due to inevitable obstacles. Griot New York, which premiered in 1991 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is about the experiences of the underprivileged living in New York City. The piece juxtaposes linear balletic movement with sharp angular gestures, twitching, and erotic partnering to represent the diversity and contrast found in big cities as well as conflict in his own life. In Moth Dreams, choreographed in 1992, Fagan celebrates his childhood, adolescence, and relationship with his mother.

Personal life[link]

Fagan resides in Rochester, New York, is now divorced, and has two children.^[1]

Stage productions[link]

Honours and awards[link]

Fagan is a Distinguished University Professor at the State University of New York at Brockport. He has a Bachelor of Arts from Wayne State University, and earned a Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Rochester in 1986, and holds honoris causa Doctors degrees from Juilliard School, Hobart College, William Smith College, and Nazareth College.^[1]

Fagan received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, and a three-year Choreography Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.^[3][4] He was made Commander in the Order of Distinction of Jamaica in August 2001, and was presented the Prime Minister's Award by Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson .^[5]

In 2005 he received the Artist of the Year Award from the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester.^[6]

Awards

• 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography – The Lion King
• 1998 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Choreography – The Lion King
• 1998 Tony Award for Best Choreography – The Lion King
• 2000 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer – The Lion King
• 2001 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award – Lifetime Achievement ^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Garth Fagan

Dance portal

• Garth Fagan Dance official website
• Garth Fagan at the Internet Broadway Database
• Garth Fagan at the Internet Movie Database
• Archival footage of Garth Fagan choreography Scene Seen performed by Judith Jamison in 1988 at Jacob's Pillow

Wynton Marsalis
Marsalis at the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center (OSPAC) Seventh Annual Jazz Festival in West Orange, New Jersey
Background information
Birth name	Wynton Learson Marsalis
Born	(1961-10-18) October 18, 1961 (age 50) New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Genres	Jazz, post-bop, jazz poetry, Classical
Occupations	Composer, trumpeter, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Opera
Instruments	Trumpet
Years active	1980–present
Labels	Columbia, Sony, Blue Note
Associated acts	English Chamber Orchestra
Website	www.wyntonmarsalis.com

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and a jazz recording of his was the first of its kind to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), Mboya, and Jason (drummer).

Life and career[link]

Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, the second of six sons of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor.^[1] At an early age, he exhibited an aptitude for music. At age eight, Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school, Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with a local funk band, the Creators.

He graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School with a 3.98 GPA.^[2] At age 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center, where he won the school's Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979, and picked up gigs around town. During this period, Wynton received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to spend time and study with trumpet innovator Woody Shaw, one of Wynton's major influences at the time. In 1980, Wynton joined the Jazz Messengers led by Art Blakey. In the years that followed, Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

In 1995, PBS premiered Marsalis On Music, an educational television series on jazz and classical music hosted and written by Marsalis. Also, in 1995, National Public Radio aired the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series, entitled Making the Music. Wynton's radio and television series were awarded the George Foster Peabody Award. Marsalis has also written five books: Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road, Jazz ABZ (an A to Z collection of poems celebrating jazz greats), and his most recent release Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world's first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.^{[citation needed]} One of his most recent releases was a 2011 collaboration with blues-rock guitarist Eric Clapton, a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert that produced the live album Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues.

In December 2011, Marsalis was named cultural correspondent for the new CBS This Morning.^[3]

Awards and recognition[link]

Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 and 1984, he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records, and he is the only artist to win Grammy Awards for five consecutive years (1983–1987).

Honorary degrees Marsalis has received include those conferred by New York University,^[4] Columbia, Harvard, Howard, the State University of New York, Princeton and Yale. Marsalis was honored with the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the I Have a Dream Foundation. The New York Urban League awarded Marsalis with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership and the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award.

Time magazine list of promising Americans under the age 40 selected Maralis in 1995, and in 1996, Time celebrated Marsalis as one of America's 25 most influential people. In November 2005, Marsalis received the National Medal of Arts. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill for the United States by appointing him a UN Messenger of Peace (2001).

In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio, Blood On The Fields. In a personal note to Marsalis, Zarin Mehta wrote, "I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood On The Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all ... I’m sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you."^{[citation needed]}

Marsalis won the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Grand Prix du Disque of France. The Mayor of Vitoria, Spain, awarded Wynton with the city's Gold Medal – its most coveted distinction. In 1996, Britain's senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, made Marsalis an honorary member, the Academy's highest decoration for a non-British citizen. The city of Marciac, France, erected a bronze statue in his honor. The French Ministry of Culture appointed Wynton the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature, and in the fall of 2009, Marsalis received France's highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, an honor that was first awarded by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Statue dedicated to W. Marsalis in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

Marsalis, with his father and brothers, are group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.^[5]

Marsalis has toured 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica, and nearly five million copies of his recordings have been sold worldwide.

Music awards[link]

Pulitzer Prize for Music

• 1997 Blood on the Fields, oratorio

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

• 1986 Black Codes (From the Underground)
• 1987 J Mood
• 1988 Marsalis Standard Time - Volume I

Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)

• 1983 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat/L. Mozart: Trumpet Concerto In D/Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat
• 1984 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the English Chamber Orchestra for Wynton Marsalis, Edita Gruberova: Handel, Purcell, Torelli, Fasch, Molter

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo

• 1983 Think of One
• 1984 Hot House Flowers
• 1985 Black Codes (From the Underground)

Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children

• 2000 Listen to the Storyteller

Criticisms[link]

Several jazz notables have unfavorable views of Marsalis' musicianship. Jazz critic Scott Yanow viewed Marsalis as talented but criticized his "selective knowledge of jazz history" and his regard for "post-1965 avant-garde playing to be outside of jazz and 1970s fusion to be barren" as the unfortunate result of the "somewhat eccentric beliefs of Stanley Crouch.^[6] Trumpeter Lester Bowie said of Marsalis, "If you retread what's gone before, even if it sounds like jazz, it could be anathema to the spirit of jazz."^[7] In his 1997 book Blue: The Murder of Jazz, Eric Nisenson argues that Marsalis's focus on a narrow portion of jazz's past stifled growth and innovation.^[8] In 1997, pianist Keith Jarrett criticized Marsalis saying "I've never heard anything Wynton played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me."^[9] Pierre Sprey, president of jazz record company Mapleshade Records, said in 2001 that "When Marsalis was nineteen, he was a fine jazz trumpeter...But he was getting his tail beat off every night in Art Blakey's band. I don't think he could keep up. And finally he retreated to safe waters. He's a good classical trumpeter and thus he sees jazz as being a classical music. He has no clue what's going on now."^[10] Bassist Stanley Clarke said "All the guys that are criticizing—like Wynton Marsalis and those guys—I would hate to be around to hear those guys playing on top of a groove!"^[11] In his autobiography, Miles Davis – who Marsalis said had left jazz and "went into rock"^[12] – hedged his praise of Marsalis by suggesting that he was unoriginal. He also found him too competitive, saying "Wynton thinks playing music is about blowing people up on stage." In 1986, in Vancouver, Davis stopped his band to eject an uninvited Marsalis from the stage. Davis said "Wynton can't play the kind of shit we were playing", and twice told Marsalis "Get the fuck off."^[13]

Some critical exchanges have included insults. Besides insinuating that Davis had pandered to audiences, Marsalis said Davis dressed like a "buffoon." Trumpeter Lester Bowie called Marsalis "brain dead", "mentally-ill" and "trapped in some opinions that he had at age 21... because he's been paid to."^[7][12] Marsalis in reply said Bowie was "another guy who never really could play."^[12]

Marsalis was criticized for pressing his neo-classicist opinions of jazz as producer and on-screen commentator in the Ken Burns documentary Jazz (2001). The documentary focused primarily on Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong among others, while ignoring other jazz artists. David Adler said that "Wynton's coronation in the film is not merely biased. It is not just aesthetically grating. It is unethical, given his integral role in the making of the very film that is praising him to the heavens."^[14]

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wynton Marsalis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wynton Marsalis

• Official website
• Profile at Jazz at the Lincoln Center (click 'more')
• Wynton Marsalis at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Wynton Marsalis in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Wynton Marsalis at the Notable Names Database
• Wynton Marsalis collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Wynton Marsalis on The Tavis Smiley Show, March 15, 2011 (23:31 video)
• Post-Katrina Tulane University Speech
• USA Today Q&A, January 14, 2007
• Wynton Marsalis: Reader's guide

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012)

Lebohang “Lebo M.” Morake (born 20 May 1964)^[1] is a South African composer most famous for arranging and performing music for the Lion King movies and stage productions. He was recommended to Disney by Hans Zimmer, the score composer of The Lion King, and was later hired to form and conduct the African choir that sang for the movies. His voice is the first voice heard in the beginning of the film, singing the now famous chant (often considered synonymous with the film's image in popular culture) over the opening sequence. He also contributed to the sequel to the film's soundtrack, Rhythm of the Pride Lands, and the film's direct-to-video sequel The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.

Early life[link]

Lebo M was born on 20 May 1964 on the Apartheid-ridden Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa and was inspired by Nelson Mandela, he spent years working hard in the slums and then in Los Angeles in a variety of jobs, including begging and serving at McDonald's. He was exiled from South Africa in 1979, but returned 20 years later. He lives with his family in Johannesburg and Los Angeles. He founded the Lebo M Foundation and Till Dawn Entertainment. The shortened version of his name is a homonym for La bohème, Puccini's famous opera.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography[link]

Lebo M has composed, arranged, performed and produced music for the following films:

• The Lion King (soundtrack)
• The Lion King II: Simba's Pride
• The Lion King 1½
• The Lion King (musical) - singer at One by One
• The Power of One
• Dinosaur
• Disney's Animal Kingdom: The First Adventure
• Tears of the Sun
• Back on the Block
• The Color Purple
• Listen Up: The Life of Quincy Jones
• Outbreak
• Made In America
• Congo
• Born to Be Wild
• Long Night's Journey Into Day

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site
• Biography at Walt Disney Records