Number 56 Squadron is one of the oldest and most successful squadrons of the Royal Air Force, with battle honours from many of the significant air campaigns of both World War I and World War II. As 56 (Reserve) Squadron it is now an operational evaluation unit.

The squadron was formed on 8 June 1916 and was posted to France in April 1917 as part of the Royal Flying Corps. The squadron was equipped with the then brand new SE5 fighter. Its arrival at the front with the latest fighter, combined with the unusually high proportion of experienced pilots in its ranks, led to rumours among its German opponents the squadron was specifically the 'Anti-Richthofen Squadron', dedicated to the removal of the Red Baron. Although there was no truth in these rumours, the squadron did shoot down and kill Richthofen's nearest 1917 rival Leutnant Werner Voss in an epic dogfight.

By the end of the war 56 Squadron had scored 402 victories (as 'destroyed', 'out of control' or 'driven down'), and many famous fighter aces served with the unit, such as James McCudden, Reginald Hoidge, Gerald Constable Maxwell, Arthur Rhys Davids, Geoffrey Hilton Bowman, Richard Maybery, Leonard Monteagle Barlow, Henry Burden, Cyril Crowe, Maurice Mealing, Albert Ball, William Roy Irwin, Edric Broadberry, Kenneth William Junor, Cecil Lewis, Keith Muspratt, Harold Walkerdine, William Spurrett Fielding-Johnson, William Otway Boger, Charles Jeffs, Harold Molyneux, and Duncan Grinnell-Milne, the latter of whom became the unit's last Commanding Officer before the Squadron was disbanded. During the course of the war, forty of the squadron's pilots were killed in action, twenty wounded and thirty-one taken prisoner.

David Lubega (born 13 April 1975), also known as Lou Bega, is a German musician of Italian and Ugandan descent, and is famous for his song "Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit of...)". This song is a remake of the Perez Prado instrumental from 1949. Bega added his own words to the song and sampled the original version extensively.

Bega's mother is from Calabria in (Southern Italy) and his father is Ugandan. His father went to Germany in 1972 to study biology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Until age six, Bega spent the most time with his mother in Italy. Then they lived permanently in Munich, where Bega attended German primary school. At age 15 he lived in Miami for one-and-a-half years. Bega also lived in Uganda for half a year. Currently he lives in Berlin, Germany.

Bega started his musical career as a rapper. At age of 13, he founded a hip hop group with two other boys. It would be two years before Bega and his friends' first CD would be released in 1990. When Bega lived in Miami he discovered Latin music. After returning to Munich he met his former manager, Goar Biesenkamp, as well as the music producers, "Frank Lio" (Achim Kleist) and "D.Fact" (Wolfgang von Webenau) (Syndicate Musicproduction) with whom he developed the concept for the song "Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit of...)". Bega signed a recording contract to the label Lautstark. Lou Bega’s musical signature consists of combining musical elements of the 40’s and 50’s with modern beats and grooves.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure in 2010.

In 1891 Charles Norman Fay, a Chicago businessman, invited Theodore Thomas to establish an orchestra in Chicago. Conducted by Theodore Thomas under the name "Chicago Orchestra", the Orchestra played its first concert on October 16, 1891 at the Auditorium Theatre. It is one of the oldest orchestras in the United States, along with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Orchestra Hall, now a component of the Symphony Center complex, was designed by Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham and completed in 1904. Maestro Thomas served as music director for thirteen years until his death shortly after the orchestra's newly built residence was dedicated on December 14, 1904. The orchestra was renamed "Theodore Thomas Orchestra" in 1905 and today, Orchestra Hall still has "Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall" inscribed in its façade.

Philippe Jordan (born 18 October 1974, Zürich) is a Swiss conductor, and the son of conductor Armin Jordan. He began to study piano at age 6. At age 8, he joined the Zürich Sängerknaben. His violin studies began at age 11.

At 16, he entered the Zürich Conservatory where he obtained his diploma in piano instruction, with honors. He studied theory and composition with the Swiss composer Hans Ulrich Lehmann and continued his piano studies with Karl Engel. At the same time, he worked as an assistant to Jeffrey Tate on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Châtelet in Paris.

In the 1994/95 season, Jordan was appointed First Kapellmeister of the Ulm Stadttheater. The following year, he made his debut at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. He has since conducted at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Châtelet in Paris, the Semperoper in Dresden and the Aix-en-Provence International Festival.

From September 1998 to June 2001, Jordan was Kapellmeister and assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper unter den Linden). He now holds the title of Principal Guest Conductor at the Staatsoper unter den Linden. Jordan held the position of Chief Conductor of the Graz Opera and Graz Philharmonic Orchestra from September 2001 to June 2004.

Gustav Mahler (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up.

As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.