|
Handel Medallion
The Handel Medallion is an American award presented by the City of New York. It is the city's highest award given to individuals for their contribution to the city's intellectual and cultural life. Establishment The award was first issued in 1959 to Virginia Portia Royall Inness-Brown, upon the 200th anniversary of the death of George Handel (1685–1759), the German-British Baroque composer, noted for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. The award was established under New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. Award winners Years unknown: *Ivan Davis *Justino Díaz * Geraldine Fitzgerald *Benny Goodman *Gary Graffman *Kitty Carlisle Hart *Robert Joffrey * Vincent La Selva *Jaime Laredo *Yehudi Menuhin *Renata Tebaldi Renata Tebaldi ( , ; 1 February 1922 – 19 December 2004) was an Italian lirico-spinto soprano popular in the post- war period, and especially prominent as one of the stars of La Scala, San Carlo and, especially, the Metropolita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government Of New York City
The government of New York City, headquartered at New York City Hall in Lower Manhattan, is organized under the New York City Charter and provides for a mayor-council system. The mayor is elected to a four-year term and is responsible for the administration of city government. The New York City Council is a unicameral body consisting of 51 members, each elected from a geographic district, normally for four-year terms. All elected officials are subject to a two consecutive-term limit. The court system consists of two citywide courts and three statewide courts. New York City government employs approximately 330,000 people, more than any other city in the United States and more than any U.S. state but three: California, Texas, and New York. The city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services. New York City consists of five boroughs, each coextensive with one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Schuman
William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. president, William Howard Taft, though his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. He attended Temple Shaaray Tefila as a child. While still in high school, he formed a dance band, "Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra", that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs in which Schuman played string bass. In 1928 he entered New York University's School of Commerce to pursue a business degree, at the same time working for an advertising agency. He also wrote popular songs with E. B. Marks Jr, a friend he had met long before at summer camp. Around that time, Schuman met lyricist Frank Loesser and wrote some forty songs with him. Loesser's first pub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 – January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sustained the company with his organizing ability and fundraising for more than four decades, serving as the company's general director from 1946 to 1989. According to the ''New York Times,'' he was "an expert in many fields", organizing art exhibits and lecture tours in the same years. Early life Kirstein was born in Rochester, New York, to Jewish parents, the son of Rose Stein and Louis E. Kirstein (1867–1942). His brother was George Kirstein, his sister was Mina Kirstein and his paternal grandparents were Jeanette (née Leiter) and Edward Kirstein, a successful Rochester clothing manufacturer who ran E. Kirstein and Sons, Company. He grew up in a wealthy, Jewish, Bostonian family and attended the private Berkshire School, along with Geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melissa Hayden (dancer)
Melissa Hayden (born Mildred Herman, April 25, 1923, Toronto; died August 9, 2006, Winston-Salem, North Carolina) was a Canadian ballerina at the New York City Ballet. Early life Hayden was born in Toronto as the second daughter of Jacob Herman and his wife Kate Weinberg, Jewish immigrants from Russia. The young Mildred was called ''Millie'' at home, a nickname she kept for the rest of her life. Career In the early 1940s, she moved to New York City to join the ballet corps at Radio City Music Hall. From 1945 to 1947, she was a member of the American Ballet Theatre; she joined the New York City Ballet shortly after its founding in 1948. She performed there many times with dancer Jacques d'Amboise. From 1955 until her retirement in 1973, Hayden was a principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. Film and television Hayden appeared frequently on television, especially '' The Kate Smith Show'' and ''The Ed Sullivan Show''. In 1952 she performed as the dance double for Claire B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's " Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, scat singing, bent horn, pouched cheeks, and light-hearted personality provided one of bebop's most prominent symbols. In the 1940s, Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione, and balladeer Johnny Hartman. He pioneered Afro-Cuban jazz and won several Grammy Awards. Scott Yanow wrote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan (; born Elias Kazantzoglou ( el, Ηλίας Καζαντζόγλου); September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Constantinople (now Istanbul), to Cappadocian Greek parents, his family came to the United States in 1913. After attending Williams College and then the Yale School of Drama, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theatre in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford, his actors' studio introduced " Method Acting" under the direction of Lee Strasberg. Kazan acted in a few films, including '' City for Conquest'' (1940). His films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially — he was sent to a workhouse twice before age nine. When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film ''The Wizard of Oz'' (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including " Over the Rainbow", Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow" was voted the 20th century's No. 1 song by the RIAA and the NEA. Life and career Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky; June 22, 1921 – October 31, 1991) was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's '' For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf'', Charles Gordone's '' No Place to Be Somebody'' (the first off-Broadway play to win the Pulitzer Prize), and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical ''A Chorus Line''. Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-Broadway theatres and worked to preserve the historic Broadway Theatre District. Early life Papp was born as Joseph Papirofsky in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the son of Yetta (née Miritch), a seamstress, and Samuel Papirofsky, a trunkmaker. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alice Tully
Alice Bigelow Tully (September 14, 1902 – December 10, 1993) was an American singer of opera and recital, music promoter, patron of the arts and philanthropist from New York. She was a second cousin of the American actress Katharine Hepburn. Life Alice Tully was born in Corning, Steuben County, New York, the daughter of lawyer and State Senator William J. Tully (1870–1930) and Clara Mabel (Houghton) Tully (1870–1958) and had one younger sister Marion Gordon (Tully) Hoover Dimick (died Washington, 1981). She spent her high school years at the Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut. Tully began her career as a mezzo-soprano, then became a soprano. She studied in Paris and made her debut in 1927 with the Pasdeloup Orchestra. In 1933, she appeared in ''Cavalleria rusticana'' in New York City. Upon her mother's death in 1958, Tully inherited the estate of her grandfather, Amory Houghton Jr. (1837-1909), (son of Amory Houghton, Sr., founder of the Corning Glass Works), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets ''Appalachian Spring'', ''Billy the Kid'' and '' Rodeo'', his '' Fanfare for the Common Man'' and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores. After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
