Pierre Henry

Pierre Henry (born 9 December 1927) is a French composer, considered a pioneer of the musique concrète genre of electronic music.

Biography

Pierre Henry was born in Paris, France, and began experimenting at the age of 15 with sounds produced by various objects. He became fascinated with the integration of noise into music. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone at the Paris Conservatoire from 1938 to 1948 (Dhomont 2001).

Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF, which had been founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1943 (Dhomont 2001). During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece Symphonie pour un homme seul, in cooperation with Schaeffer; he also composed the first musique concrète to appear in a commercial film, the 1952 short film Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie. Henry has scored numerous additional films and ballets.

Two years after leaving the RTF, he founded with Jean Baronnet the first private electronic studio in France, the Apsone-Cabasse Studio (Dhomont 2001).

Henry Laurens

Henry Laurens (March 6, 1724 [O.S. February 24, 1723] – December 8, 1792) was an American merchant and rice planter from South Carolina who became a political leader during the Revolutionary War. A delegate to the Second Continental Congress, Laurens succeeded John Hancock as President of the Congress. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation and President of the Continental Congress when the Articles were passed on November 15, 1777.

Laurens had earned great wealth as a partner in the largest slave-trading house in North America (Austin and Laurens). In the 1750s alone, this Charleston firm oversaw the sale of more than 8,000 enslaved Africans. He was for a time Vice-President of South Carolina and a diplomat to the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War. He was captured at sea and imprisoned for some time by the British in the Tower of London.

His son John Laurens, a colonel in the Continental Army and officer on Washington's staff, believed that Americans could not fight for their own freedom while holding slaves. In 1779, he persuaded the Continental Congress to authorize the recruitment of a brigade (3000 men) of slaves, who would be given their freedom after the war. However, when he presented it to them, the South Carolina Provincial Congress overwhelmingly rejected the proposal, and instead voted to use confiscated slaves as payment to recruit more white soldiers. John Laurens was killed in a skirmish in South Carolina in 1782.

Fort Worth, Texas

Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. The city is located in North Central Texas and covers nearly 350 square miles (910 km²) in Tarrant, Denton, Parker, and Wise counties—serving as the seat for Tarrant County. According to the 2014 census estimates, Fort Worth has a population of 812,238. The city is the second-largest in the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area (the "DFW Metroplex").

The city was established in 1849 as an Army outpost on a bluff overlooking the Trinity River. Today Fort Worth still embraces its Western heritage and traditional architecture and design.USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) is the first ship of the United States Navy named after the city.

Fort Worth is home to the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and several world-class museums. The Kimbell Art Museum, considered to have one of the best collections in Texas, is housed in what is widely regarded as one of Texas' foremost works of modern architecture designed by Louis Kahn and Renzo Piano. Also of note are the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, designed by Tadao Ando, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, which houses one of the most extensive collections of American art in the world in a building designed by Philip Johnson. The city is also home to Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University, University of North Texas Health Science Center, Texas A&M University School of Law, and many multinational corporations including Bell Helicopter, Lockheed Martin, American Airlines, Pier 1 Imports, Radio Shack, and others.