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The Spizzwinks
The Spizzwinks, stylized as The Spizzwinks(?), are an a cappella singing group of undergraduates from Yale University. Founded in late 1913, the Spizzwinks(?) are the oldest underclassman a cappella group in the United States, dating back to a first performance in early 1914. Composed of roughly sixteen people, with exact numbers depending on the year, the Spizzwinks perform concerts and teach masterclasses through extensive international and domestic touring schedules. Through four principal tours each year, during Yale College's fall, winter, spring and summer recesses respectively, the Spizzwink Promise guarantees each member that he will tour on six continents and in his hometown during his three years in the group. The group is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization organization. History In 1913, four young men met at Mory's Temple Bar, Yale's historic tavern, to create a light-hearted alternative to the more serious Whiffenpoofs (composed solely of Yale College seniors). The ...
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A Cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for ''alla breve''. Early history A cappella could be as old as humanity itself. Research suggests that singing and vocables may have been what early humans used to communicate before the invention of language. The earliest piece of sheet music is thought to have originated from times as early as 2000 B.C. while the earliest that has survived in its entirety is from the first century A.D.: a piece from Greece called the ...
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White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. The term "White House" is often used as a metonym for the president and his advisers. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style. Hoban modelled the building on Leinster House in Dublin, a building which today houses the Oireachtas, the Irish legislature. Construction took place between 1792 and 1800, using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by British forces in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began ...
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Portal (video Game)
''Portal'' is a 2007 Puzzle video game, puzzle-platform game developed and published by Valve Corporation, Valve. It was released in a Product bundling, bundle, ''The Orange Box,'' for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and has been since ported to other systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Android (operating system), Android (via Nvidia Shield), and Nintendo Switch. ''Portal'' consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using "the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device", often referred to as the "portal gun", a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell (Portal), Chell, is challenged and taunted by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The game' ...
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Jonathan Coulton
Jonathan William Coulton (born December 1, 1970), often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American folk/comedy singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are " Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", " Still Alive" and "Want You Gone" (the last three being featured in games developed by Valve: ''Left 4 Dead 2'', ''Portal'', and ''Portal 2'' respectively). He was the house musician for NPR weekly puzzle quiz show '' Ask Me Another'' from 2012 until its end in 2021. His album ''Artificial Heart'' was the first to chart, eventually reaching No. 1 on ''Billboard''s Top Heatseekers and No. 125 in the ''Billboard'' 200. Career Coulton's music tends to fit a folk rock style, with elements of pop and indie rock. Early career and geek culture (1990s–2005) Coulton graduated in 1993 from Yale, where he was a member of The Spizzwinks and the Yale Whiffenpoofs. In the 1990s, Coulton was in a short-lived band, ...
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Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in Midtown Manhattan. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theatre. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. The awards were founded by theatre producer and director Brock Pemberton and are named after Antoinette "Tony" Perry, an actress, producer and theatre director who was co-founder and secretary of the American Theatre Wing. The trophy consists of a spinnable medallion, with faces portraying an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks, mounted on a black base with a pewter swivel. The rules for the Tony Awards are set forth in the off ...
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Let It Go (Disney Song)
"Let It Go" is a song from Disney's 2013 computer-animated feature film '' Frozen'', whose music and lyrics were composed by husband-and-wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. The song was performed in its original show-tune version in the film by American actress and singer Idina Menzel in her vocal role as Queen Elsa. It was later released as a single, being promoted to adult contemporary radio by Walt Disney Records in January 2014. Anderson-Lopez and Lopez also composed a simplified pop version (with shorter lyrics and background chorus) which was performed by actress and singer Demi Lovato over the start of the film's closing credits. Disney's music division planned to release Lovato's version of the song before Menzel's, as they did not consider Menzel's version a traditional pop song. A music video was released separately for Lovato's version. The song was a commercial success, becoming the first song from a Disney animated musical to reach the t ...
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Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment industry worldwide. Given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the awards are an international recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements, as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette as a trophy, officially called the "Academy Award of Merit", although more commonly referred to by its nickname, the "Oscar". The statuette, depicting a knight rendered in the Art Deco style, was originally sculpted by Los Angeles artist George Stanley from a design sketch by art director Cedric Gibbons. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929 at a private dinner hosted by Douglas Fairbanks in The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The Academy Awards cerem ...
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Frozen (2013 Film)
''Frozen'' is a 2013 American computer-animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 53rd Disney animated feature film, it is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fairy tale ''The Snow Queen''. The film was directed by Chris Buck and  Jennifer Lee and produced by Peter Del Vecho, from a screenplay written by Lee, and a story by Buck, Lee, and Shane Morris. It stars the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad,  Jonathan Groff and  Santino Fontana. ''Frozen'' tells the story of Princess Anna as she teams up with  an iceman,  his reindeer, and  a snowman to find her estranged sister  Elsa, whose icy powers have inadvertently trapped their kingdom in eternal winter. ''Frozen'' underwent several story treatments before being commissioned in 2011 as a screenplay by Lee. ''Frozen'' had its general theatrical release on November 27, 2013. It was praised for its visuals, screenplay, ...
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The Book Of Mormon (musical)
''The Book of Mormon'' is a musical comedy with music, lyrics, and book by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone. First staged in 2011, the play is a satirical examination of the beliefs and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The musical ultimately endorses the positive power of love and service, according to David Brooks of ''The New York Times''. Parker and Stone were best known for creating the animated comedy ''South Park;'' Lopez had co-written the music for the musical ''Avenue Q.'' ''The Book of Mormon'' follows two Latter-day Saints missionaries as they attempt to preach the faith of the Church to the inhabitants of a remote Ugandan village. The earnest young men are challenged by the lack of interest from the locals, who are distracted by more pressing issues such as HIV/AIDS, famine, female genital mutilation, child molestation, and oppression by the local warlord. In 2003, after Parker and Stone saw ''Avenue Q'', they joined forces wi ...
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Avenue Q
''Avenue Q'' is a musical comedy featuring puppets and human actors with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards. The show's format is a parody of PBS's ''Sesame Street'', but its content involves adult-oriented themes. It has been praised for its approach to themes of racism, homosexuality and internet pornography. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at the Vineyard Theatre, co-produced by the Vineyard Theatre and The New Group. In July of that same year the show moved to the John Golden Theatre on Broadway, where it ran until 2009, playing for over 2,500 performances. It then transferred to the off-Broadway New World Stages, where it played until 2019. Major productions have been staged in Las Vegas and the West End, and the musical has been staged and toured in several countries around the world. A school-friendly script has been produced. The principal cast includes four pup ...
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Broadway Musicals
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End theatre, West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (nam ...
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Robert Lopez
Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American songwriter for musicals, best known for co-creating ''The Book of Mormon'' and '' Avenue Q'', and for co-writing the songs featured in the Disney computer-animated films '' Frozen'', its sequel, ''Frozen II'', and '' Coco'', with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. He is one of only seventeen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, nicknamed by Philip Michael Thomas in 1984 as the " EGOT". He additionally holds the distinctions of being the youngest person to win an EGOT, and winning the awards across the shortest period of time: he won all four in the span of ten years and completed the set at the age of 39. He is also the only person to have won all four awards more than once, having won three Emmys, Grammys, and Tonys, and two Oscars. Early life Robert Lopez was born in Manhattan, to Katherine (Lowe) and Frank Lopez. He is partly of Filipino descent through his father (who was born on a ship in the m ...
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