Coordinates: 52°17′N 0°50′W / 52.283°N 0.833°W / 52.283; -0.833
Northamptonshire ( /nɔrˈθæmptənʃər/ or /nɔrθˈhæmptənʃɪər/; archaically, the County of Northampton; abbreviated Northants. or N/hants) is a landlocked ceremonial county in the East Midlands region of England. Its population is 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with eight other ceremonial counties: Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east, Buckinghamshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the south-west and Lincolnshire to the north-east – England's shortest county boundary at 19 metres (21 yd). The county seat is Northampton. Other large population centres include Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Rushden and Daventry.
Northamptonshire's county flower is the cowslip[citation needed].
Much of Northamptonshire’s countryside appears to have remained somewhat intractable with regards to early human occupation, resulting in an apparently sparse population and relatively few finds from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. In about 500 BC the Iron Age was introduced into the area by a continental people in the form of the Hallstatt culture, and over the next century a series of hill-forts were constructed at Arbury Camp, Rainsborough camp, Borough Hill, Castle Dykes, Guilsborough, Irthlingborough, and most notably of all, Hunsbury Hill. There are two more possible hill-forts at Arbury Hill (Badby) and Thenford.
Steven Paul Crook (born 28 May 1983 in Adelaide) is an Australian cricketer who plays for Middlesex in English county cricket. He is an all-rounder, bowling right-arm fast medium pace.
Crook played for Lancashire from 2001 before moving to Northamptonshire in 2005. As he holds a United Kingdom passport, he is not classified as an overseas player for the purposes of county cricket's overseas player restrictions. His career has been riddled by injury he spent the latter part of the last 5 seasons out with injury. Due to this, he was released at the end of the 2009 season. In 2011, he signed for Middlesex.
as of 7 July 2011
Crook also fronts a band, Juliet the Sun, as lead vocalist.
Frank Ticheli (born January 21, 1958 in Monroe, Louisiana) is an American composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and concert band works. He lives in Los Angeles, California, where he is a Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California. A number of his works are particularly notable, as they have become standards in concert band repertoire.
He graduated from L.V. Berkner High School in Richardson, Texas and earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition from Southern Methodist University, where he studied with Donald Erb and Jack Waldenmaier. He went on to receive his master's and doctoral degrees in composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied with William Albright, Leslie Bassett, George Wilson, and William Bolcom.
Subsequently, Ticheli was an Assistant Professor of Music at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. There, he served on the board of directors of the Texas Composers Forum and was a member of the advisory committee for the San Antonio Symphony's "Music of the Americas" project. From 1991 to 1998, Ticheli was composer-in-residence with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in Orange County, California. Since 1991, he has been a Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. In 2011, he endowed the "Frank Ticheli Composition Scholarship" to be awarded each year to an incoming graduate student in composition.