Vienne (French pronunciation: [vjɛn]) is the northernmost département of the Poitou-Charentes region of France, named after the river Vienne.

Vienne is one of the original 83 departments, established on March 4, 1790 during the French Revolution. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Poitou, Touraine, and Berry. The original Acadians who settled in Nova Scotia and what is today other maritime provinces of Canada, left Vienne for North America after 1604.

Goat cheese making is an important industry of Vienne.

The most famous tourist sites include the Futuroscope theme park, Poitiers (city of Art and History), the Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, a UNESCO world heritage site, the animal parks of Monkey's Valley in Romagne & the Crocodile Planet in Civaux.

Bertrand Lucien Bruno Cantat (born 5 March 1964) is a French singer and songwriter. He was the frontman for the rock band Noir Désir.

Cantat was born in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The son of a Navy officer, he spent his childhood in Le Havre. His family moved when he was an adolescent to Bordeaux and at the lycée Saint-Genès he met Denis Barthe, Serge Teyssot-Gay, and Frédéric Vidalenc, who would soon become members of his band. At the end of Cantat's first performance in March 1981, when he was still 16, he threw himself into the crowd and suffered cranial trauma. In 1991 he suffered a black out, and in 1993 he had to undergo an operation on his vocal cords and then follow a series of vocal classes. Self destructive behaviour, cigarettes and alcohol, had taken a toll.

At the height of Noir Désir's success in the 1990s, he was one of the most prominent figures of French music. His left-wing political views caused him to take a position against globalisation, fascism, desertification of urban areas in Bordeaux and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, among other topics.

William Sheller (born 9 July 1946) is a French classical composer and singer.

William Sheller was born William Hand in Paris.

He left school at 16 to study composition with teacher Yves Margat (himself a student of Gabriel Fauré) and later harmony, fugue and counterpoint at the Paris conservatoire. He turned to pop music after hearing the Beatles. Since then, he has had a successful career both as a classical composer and as a pop singer. His works often mix both genres. For example, some of his songs include carefully crafted orchestral passages (the Baroque introduction to Le nouveau monde) as well as instruments that are seldom found in pop music (such as a horn in Les miroirs dans la boue and a clarinet in Fier et fou de vous). On the other hand, his Lux æterna is written for orchestra, choir and rock band. He has toured several times with transcriptions of his songs for voice and orchestra as well as for voice and piano quintet. Additionally, he has also written film music and songs or arrangements for other artists (Dalida, Barbara... etc.).

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is particularly recognized as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.

In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song "The Eyes of Love" from the Universal Pictures film Banning. That same year, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971, Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first African American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.