- published: 25 Oct 2009
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Heather Headley (born October 5, 1974) is a Trinidadian-American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She has won one Tony Award and one Grammy Award.
Headley was born in Barataria, Trinidad and Tobago, the daughter of Hannah and Eric Headley. At age four, Headley began playing the music of her native Trinidad, including calypso, and soca.[citation needed] In 1989 she moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana in the United States at the age of fifteen with her mother and brother Junior, when her father was offered a job as pastor of McKee Street Church of God with headquarters in Anderson, Indiana.
Headley attended Northrop High School, and was a member of their resident show choir, Charisma, and starred as Fanny Brice in the school's production of Funny Girl. After graduating from Northrop High School, Headley attended Northwestern University to study communications and musical theatre until the last day of her junior year, when she made the difficult decision to become a part of the musical Ragtime and drop out of school.
Andrea Bocelli, OMRI, OMDSM (Italian pronunciation: [anˈdrɛːa boˈtʃɛlli]; born 22 September 1958) is an Italian tenor, multi-instrumentalist and classical crossover artist. Born with poor eyesight, he became blind at the age of twelve following a football accident.
Since winning the Newcomers section of the Sanremo Music Festival in 1994, Bocelli has recorded thirteen solo studio albums, of both pop and classical music, two greatest hits albums, and eight complete operas, selling over 75 million records worldwide. Thus, he is the biggest-selling solo artist in the history of classical music and has caused core classical repertoire to "cross over" to the top of international pop charts and into previously uncharted territory in popular culture.
In 1998, he was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. In 1999, his nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards marked the first, and so far only time a classical artist had been nominated in the category, since Leontyne Price, in 1961.The Prayer, his duet with Celine Dion for the animated film The Quest for Camelot, won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category. With the release of his classical album, Sacred Arias, Bocelli captured a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records, as he simultaneously held the top 3 positions on the US classical albums charts. Six of his albums have since reached the Top 10 on the Billboard 200, and a record-setting 8, have topped the classical albums charts in the United States.
Andrew Lloyd (born 14 February 1959) is best known for coming from behind in the last lap to take the 5000m gold medal in the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games.
Lloyd was born in Colchester, Essex, England. He represented Australia at the 1988 Summer Olympics and 1985 and 1989 IAAF World Cross Country Championships. He won many prestigious Australian road races in the 1980s and 1990s including the 1983, 1984, 1986 and 1993 City to Surfs, the 1979, 1980 and 1981 Melbourne Marathons (2:26:44, 2:17:37 and 2:19:03 respectively) and the 1980 Gold Coast Marathon (2:23:02).
He also won in cross country races such as the Chiba International Cross Country in 1988.