March 31 Dateline

Birthdays

1596 - René Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. A native of the Kingdom of France, he spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic after serving for a while in the Dutch States Army of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces. His famous quote: "Cogito ergo sum." (I think; therefore I am.) Philosophy - Rene Descartes. Uploaded by The School of Life. Accessed October 28, 2015.

1732 - Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio. His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet". Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Wolfgang A. Mozart, a tutor of Ludwig van Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

1872 -  Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev), Russian art promoter, art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise. He revitalised ballet by integrating the ideas of other art forms - music, painting, and drama - with those of the dance. From 1906 he lived in Paris, where in 1909 he founded the Ballets Russes. Then he toured Europe and the Americas with his ballet company; he produced three ballet masterpieces by Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). He collaborated with other composers, including: Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Falla and Prokofiev; and a close relationship with such artists as Picasso, Rouault and Bakst, and choreographers Fokine, Nizhinsky, Massin and Balanchine. (Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes. Uploaded by National Gallery of Art. Accessed March 31, 2015. Please note: Read the comment of John Borstlap (Great comment! Couldn't agree more with him! And a book suggested by Dennis Chiapello.) 30 Interesting Facts about Diaghilev. Uploaded by Study Guides. Accessed March 31, 2018)

1914 - Octavio Paz, Mexican poet, diplomat, and critic, best known for The Other Mexico and The Bow and the Lyre. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

1922 - Richard Paul Kiley, American stage, film and television actor and singer, best known for his "sonorous baritone" voice and distinguished theatrical career winning twice the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He created the role of Don Quixote in the original 1965 production of the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha and was the first to sing and record "The Impossible Dream". In the 1953 hit musical Kismet, he played the Caliph in the original Broadway cast and was one of the quartet who sang "And This Is My Beloved". Kiley won four Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards during his 50-year career.

  

1934 - Shirley Mae Jones, American actress and singer. In her six decades in show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of musical films, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Music Man. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry. She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970–1974), which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy. (Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel - 1956 - If I loved you duet. Beautiful Duet with Gordon MacRae and Shirely Jones. YouTube, uploaded by Anjaxo. Accessed March 30, 2021.)

1943 - Christopher Walken, (born Ronald Walken), American actor, who has appeared in more than 100 films and television programs, including Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, A View to a Kill, Batman Returns, True Romance, Catch Me If You Can, Hairspray, and Irreplaceable You, among many others. He has received a number of awards and nominations, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Deer Hunter. He was nominated for the same award and won BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Awards for Catch Me If You Can. Walken has also played the lead in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. Walken debuted as a film director and screenwriter with the 2001 short film Popcorn Shrimp. He also wrote and played the lead role in the 1995 play Him about his idol Elvis Presley.

1971 - Ewan Gordon McGregor, Scottish actor who has starred in various film and musical roles. Among many others, he has portrayed character roles in drama films, poet Christian in the musical film Moulin Rouge!, young Edward Bloom in Big Fish, "the ghost" in The Ghost Writer, Lumière in the live-action adaptation of the musical romantic fantasy Beauty and the Beast, the adult version in the fantasy comedy-drama Christopher Robin, and Black Mask in the superhero film Birds of Prey. McGregor won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or TV Film for his performance in the third season of FX anthology series Fargo, and received Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy for both Moulin Rouge! and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. McGregor has served as an ambassador for UNICEF UK since 2004. In 2013 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to drama and charity. In 2016 he received the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award.

Lefties:
Actress Shirley Jones

More birthdays and historical events, March 31 - On This Day
 

 

Listen to Haydn's Hob III:49 - String Quartet Op. 50. 50 No. 6 in D major. YouTube, uploaded by ComposersbyNumbers. (Accessed March 31, 2017). Although famous for his orchestral works, Haydn was also the first master of the string quartet, a teacher of both Mozart (his young friend) and Beethoven, for a brief period.

Historical Events

1814 - Paris surrenders to Russian and Prussian forces, the first time the city ha been taken by foreign forces in 4 centuries. Deserted by most of his generals, Napoleon Bonaparte is forced to abdicate on April 6 and is taken into exile on Elba on April 20.

1889 - The Eiffel Tower is officially opened. Gustave Eiffel, its designer, climbs the 1710 stairs to unfurl the French flag from the third level.

March 30 Dateline

Birthdays

1746 - Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era. (Francisco Goya Documentary. Uploaded by ArchivTV 00. Accessed March 30, 2019.)

1853 - Vincent Willem van Gogh, Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. A lot have been written about him. In over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His paintings include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful, and his suicide at 37 came after years of mental illness and poverty.   (Famous Vincent van Gogh Paintings. Uploaded by Arts Heavaen. Accessed March 30, 2015. Don McLean's "Vincent" - Starry, Starry Night. wysty67. Accessed March 30, 2019. Young Vincent. Thanks to Van Gogh Museum, Netherlands. Accessed April 23, 2020)

1872 - Sergei Nikiforovich Vasilenko was a Russian and Soviet composer, conductor, and music teacher whose compositions showed a strong tendency towards mysticism. (Sergei Vasilenko (1872-1956) : Symphony No. 3 "Italian" (1934). Orchestra of Balalaïka and Wind Orchestra (1934) Conductor: Nikolai Nekrason. Uploaded by collection CB2. Accessed March 30, 2019.)

1880 - Sean O'Casey, Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes. From the early 1890s, O'Casey and his elder brother, Archie, put on performances of plays by Dion Boucicault and William Shakespeare in the family home. He also got a small part in Boucicault's The Shaughraun in the Mechanics' Theatre, which stood on what was to be the site of the Abbey Theatre.

1937 - Henry Warren Beatty (né Beaty), American actor and filmmaker. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, three for Original Screenplay, and one for Adapted Screenplay – winning Best Director for Reds (1981). Beatty is one of only two people (Orson Welles being the other) to have been nominated for acting in, directing, writing, and producing the same film, and he did so twice: first for Heaven Can Wait (with Buck Henry as co-director), and again with Reds. Eight of the films he has produced have earned 53 Academy nominations, and in 1999, he was awarded the Academy's highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. Beatty has been nominated for 18 Golden Globe Awards, winning six, including the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he was honoured with in 2007. Among his Golden Globe-nominated films are Splendor in the Grass, his screen debut, and Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Dick Tracy, Bugsy, Bulworth and Rules Don't Apply, all of which he also produced.

1968 - Céline Marie Claudette Dion CC OQ, Quebecois Canadian singer. She is renowned for her powerful, technically skilled vocals, and remains the best-selling Canadian recording artist and one of the best-selling artists of all time with record sales of over 200 million worldwide. Born into a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec, she emerged as a teen star in her home country with a series of French-language albums during the 1980s. She first gained international recognition by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, where she represented Switzerland. After learning to speak English, she signed on to Epic Records in the United States. In 1990, Dion released her debut English-language album, Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.

Leftie:
Celine Dion

More birthdays and historical events, March 30 - On This Day

Listening Pleasure:

GOYA Complete Album - Placido Domingo Musical. Uploaded by Tozmusictv. Accessed March 30, 2017.  

Historical Events

1842 - Dr. Crawford W. Long uses ether as an anaesthetic for the first time when he removes a tumor from a patient's neck.

1856 - The Paris Treaty is signed, bringing the Crimean War to an end.

March 29 Dateline

Birthdays

1902 - Sir William Walton, OM (born William Turner Walton), English composer. During a 60-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include Façade, cantata Belshazzar's Feast, Viola Concerto, First Symphony, and the British coronation anthems Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre. Walton was painstakingly perfectionist, and his complete body of work across his long career is not large. His most popular compositions continue to be frequently performed in the 21st century, and by 2010 almost all his works had been released on CD.

1916 - Eugene Joseph McCarthy, American politician and poet. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971. McCarthy sought the Democratic nomination in the 1968 presidential election, challenging incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. McCarthy sought the presidency five times, but never won.

1940 - Astrud Gilberto (born Astrud Evangelina Weinert), Brazilian samba and bossa nova singer and songwriter. Known for her unique mellow timbre tone, she gained international attention in the 1960s following her recording of the song "The Girl from Ipanema". Her original recording of "Fly Me to the Moon" was edited as a duet using a recording of the same song by Frank Sinatra. Her recording "Who Can I Turn To?" was sampled by The Black Eyed Peas in the song "Like That" from the 2005 album Monkey Business. Her vocals on "Berimbau" were sampled by Cut Chemist in his song "The Garden". Her recording of "Once I Loved" was featured in the 2007 film Juno. The "Astrud" track on Basia Trzetrzelewska's 1987 album, Time and Tide, is a tribute to Astrud Gilberto. A Legendary Singer Suddenly Passed Away | RIP Girl From Ipanema Singer | Good Bye Astrud Gilberto. YouTube, uploaded by AllinAll. Accessed June 5, 2023. A Gilberto - A Certain Sadness. YouTube, uploade by BasiaDanny. Accessed June 7, 2023.) 

 

1964 - Elle MacPherson (born Eleanor Nancy Macpherson; née Gow), Australian model, TV host and actress, businesswoman. She is known for her record five cover appearances for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue beginning in the 1980s, leading to her nickname "The Body", coined by Time in 1989. She is the founder, primary model, and creative director for a series of business ventures, including Elle Macpherson Intimates, a lingerie line, and The Body, a line of skin care products. She has been the host and executive producer of Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model from 2010 to 2013. She is an executive producer of NBC's Fashion Star and was the host for the first season. As an actress, Macpherson appeared in supporting roles in The Mirror Has Two Faces and as Julie Madison in Batman and Robin, also lead roles in The Edge and South Kensington.

Lefties:
None known
 

More birthdays and historical events, March 29 - On This Day



Feature:

Pyotr Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. PR Production. New Year's Music Festival 2014. (24.XII.2014'-1.I.2015').  Accessed March 29, 2017.

Historical Events

1461 - The Battle of Towton takes place, part of the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York, represented by a red and white rose respectively. Towton is a victory for the Yorkists. 

1795 - Ludwig van Beethoven performs his Piano Concerto No. 2 in Bb at a concert in Burgtheater, Vienna.

March 28 Dateline

Birthdays

1483 - Santi Raphael, Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance (birthday is not certain, could be March 28 or April 6). The works of Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.

1868 - Maxim Gorky (born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov), Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1871 - Willem Mengelberg,  Dutch conductor famous especially for his performances of Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.  (Mengelberg conducts Mahler's Symphony No. 4. Live recording, Amsterdam, XI.1939. Accessed March 28, 2017. So engaging, can't help but listen intently. Brilliant conducting from Mengelberg!) 

1943 - Sir Richard Henry Simpson Stilgoe OBE DL, is a British songwriter, lyricist and musician, and broadcaster who is best known for his humorous songs and frequent television appearances. His output includes collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Peter Skellern. He is also a keen puzzler who has hosted several quiz shows and written several books on the subject.  Stilgoe is also notable for his charity work and fundraising.

1921 - Dirk Bogarde (Sir Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde), English actor and writer. Initially a matinée idol in films such as Doctor in the House for the Rank Organisation, Bogarde later acted in art-house films. In a second career, he wrote seven best-selling volumes of memoirs, six novels and a volume of collected journalism, mainly from articles in The Daily Telegraph. Bogarde came to prominence in films including The Blue Lamp in the early 1950s, before starring in the successful Doctor film series. He twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, for The Servant and Darling. His other notable film roles included Victim, Accident, The Damned, Death in Venice, The Night Porter, A Bridge Too Far and Despair. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1990 and a Knight Bachelor in 1992. (Haunting scenes from Death in Venice/Muerte en Venecia, starring Dirk Bogarde, (uploaded by Nick Tsormas), and more scenes (uploaded by Morrissot), with a poignant theme from Mahler's Symphony No. 5, "Adagietto" in Movement 4. Directed by Luchino Visconti, based on the great novel by Thomas Mann. Uploaded by Nick Tsormas. Accessed  March 28, 2018.

1924 - Freddie Bartholomew (born Frederick Cecil Bartholomew), English-American child actor. One of the most famous child actors of all time, he became very popular in 1930s Hollywood films. His most famous starring roles are in Captains Courageous (1937) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936). Freddie Bartholomew was born in London, and for the title role of MGM's David Copperfield (1935) he emigrated to the United States at the age of 10, living there the rest of his life. He became an American citizen in 1943 following World War II military service. Despite his great success and acclaim following David Copperfield, his childhood film stardom was marred by nearly constant legal battles and payouts which eventually took a huge toll on both his finances and his career. After World War II service, his film career dwindled, and he switched from performing to directing and producing in the medium of television.(Lord Fauntleroy (1936) - Full Movie. Described and Captioned Media Program. Accessed March 28, 2018.) 

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events, March 28 - On This Day

Historical Events

1854 - The Crimean War begins when France and Britain declare war on Russia to stop the Russians from controlling sections of the crumbling Ottoman empire.  

1930 - The Turkish Post Office officially changes Constantinople's name to Istanbul, a name used by Arabs since the thirteenth century that derives from the Greek phrase eis ten polin, "in the city." The city was originally named for the Roman emperor Constantine, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Constantine converted to Christianity when he saw a vast cross in the sky. It is said that his vision may have coincided with a meteor strike reported that same time, great enough to create a cloud that looked like a cross. He wanted Christian relics of similar stature to St peter, so had the bones of St Andrew, another apostle, brought to Constantinople. Some of them were later taken by a monk shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland, which somehow got its link to St. Andrew.

March 27 Dateline

Birthdays

1785 - Louis XVII of France ((born Louis Charles, Duke of Normandy), the younger son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette. His older brother, Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France, died in June 1789, a little over a month before the start of the French Revolution. At his brother's death he became the new Dauphin (heir apparent to the throne), a title he held until 1791, when the new constitution accorded the heir apparent the style of Prince Royal. When his father was executed on 21 January 1793, the middle period of the French Revolution, he succeeded as the king of France, Louis XVII. France was by then a republic, so he never actually ruled. But in 1814 after the Bourbon Restoration, his uncle acceded to the throne and was proclaimed Louis XVIII.

1851 - Vincent d'Indy, French composer and teacher. Few of his works are performed regularly today. His best known pieces are probably the Symphony on a French Mountain Air (Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français, also known as Symphonie cévenole) for piano and orchestra (1886), and Istar (1896), a symphonic poem in the form of a set of variations in which the theme appears only at the end. Vincent d'Indy's works show the influence of Franck, Berlioz and especially of Wagner. D'Indy helped revive a number of then largely forgotten early works, for example, making his own edition of Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea. His musical writings include the studies of Franck and Beethoven. (Vincent d'Indy Souvenirs, Poeme for Orchestra, Op. 62. Uploaded by Gunnar Frederikson. Accessed March 27, 2020.)

1863 - Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet, OBE, English engineer famous for his designs of car and aeroplane engines with a reputation for reliability and longevity. With Charles Rolls (1877 – 1910) and Claude Johnson, he founded Rolls-Royce. He initially focused on large 40-50 horsepower motor cars, the Silver Ghost and its successors. Royce produced his first aero engine shortly after the outbreak of the First World War and aircraft engines became Rolls-Royce's principal product. His health broke down in 1911 and he was persuaded to leave his factory in the Midlands at Derby and, taking a team of designers, move to the south of England spending winters in the south of France.

1868 -  Patty Smith Hill, American songwriter and teacher who created our endeared "Happy Birthday" song.  She co-wrote the tune which was "Happy Birthday to You" later, simply "Happy Birthday". She was an American nursery school, kindergarten teacher, and key founder of the National Association for Nursery Education (NANE) which now exists as the National Association For the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

1924 - Sarah Lois Vaughan, American jazz singer, Nicknamed "Sassy" and "The Divine One", she won four Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Vaughan had numerous accolades and awards. Among other awards were: the album Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown and the single "If You Could See Me Now" were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and have "qualitative or historical significance." In 1985 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 1988 she was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame. She was given the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at the UCLA Spring Sing. San Francisco and Berkeley, California, made March 27 Sarah Lois Vaughan Day.

1927 - Mstislav Leopoldovich "Slava" Rostropovich, Soviet and Russian Cellist and Conductor. He is considered to be one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century. (Here's an absolute favourite, Rostropovitch and Britten interpreting Schubert's Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A. Uploaded by RDZ Nagano. Accessed March 27, 2016.)

1942 - Michael Hugh York,  English actor. A two-time Emmy Award nominee, for the ABC Afterschool Special: Are You My Mother? (1986) and the AMC series The Lot (2001), he has appeared in more than 70 films, including Romeo and Juliet, Cabaret, The Three Musketeers, Logan's Run, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, and the Austin Powers film series (1997–2002).

1952 - Maria-Hélène Schneider, known professionally as Maria Schneider, was a French actress. In 1972 at the age of nineteen she starred opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, but was traumatized by a rape scene and hounded by unsavoury publicity she subsequently declined to appear nude in roles for even the most prestigious directors. Although Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger showcased her abilities, a reputation for walking out of films mid-production resulted in her becoming unwelcome in the industry. An incautious attitude to drugs and their toll on her mental health made what should have been banner years for her increasingly chaotic. She re-established stability in her personal and professional life in the early 1980s, and became an advocate for equality and improving the conditions actresses worked under.

1963 - Quentin Jerome Tarantino, American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, dark humor, aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films, eclectic soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s. His film, Pulp Fiction, a crime comedy, was a major success and won him numerous awards, including the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has received many industry awards, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and the Palme d'Or, and has been nominated for an Emmy and five Grammys. In 2005, he was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In December 2015, Tarantino received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.

Leftie:
Prince Louis XVII of France
 

More birthdays and historical events, March 27 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1306 - Robert the Bruce is crowned king of Scotland and begins to fight for Scottish independence. England recognizes Scotland as a separate nation in 1328, one year before his death. 

1625 - James I, King of England and Scotland, dies and Charles I becomes King. He also claims the throne of France, though the French ignore him. His reign is fraught with religious and political conflict, resulting in civil war.  He believed that he had a "divine right" to rule, that his power is granted by God. He lost the English Civil War.

March 26 Dateline

Birthdays

 

1850 - Edward Bellamy, American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of numerous "Nationalist Clubs" dedicated to the propagation of Bellamy's political ideas. Looking Backward was one of the most commercially successful books published in the United States in the 19th century, and it especially appealed to a generation of intellectuals alienated from the dark side of Gilded Age. In the early 1890s, Bellamy established a newspaper known as The New Nation and began to promote united action between the various Nationalist Clubs and the emerging Populist Party. He published Equality, a sequel to Looking Backward.

1859 - A.E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman), English Classical scholar and poet, best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside. Their beauty, simplicity and distinctive imagery appealed strongly to Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th-century English composers both before and after the First World War. Housman was one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are considered authoritative.

1874 - Robert Lee Frost, American poet laureate. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime and is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution." He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont. (Robert Frost - American Poet & Four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner | Mini Bio. YouTube, uploaded by Biography. The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost (Powerful Life Poetry). Worth a Watch. Uploaded by Worth a Watch. Accessed March 26, 2017.)

1911 - Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. He became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Night of the Iguana. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

1925 - Pierre Boulez, CBE, French conductor and composer. He was one of the dominant figures of the post-war classical music world. (Boulez Conducts Boulez. Uploaded by Polyphonie X. Accessed March 26, 2019. Boulez's  "Le marteau sans maître" (English: "The Hammer without a Master"). Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano. Pierre Boulez, conductor. Ensemble InterContemporain. Performed live at Salzburg, Austria, August 1982.

1940 - James Edmund Caan, American actor. After early role in The Glory Guys (1965), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He came to prominence in the 1970s with significant roles in films such as Brian's Song, Cinderella Liberty, The Gambler, Funny Lady and A Bridge Too Far. For his signature role in The Godfather (1972), that of hot-tempered Sonny Corleone, Caan was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe. Caan's subsequent notable performances include roles in Thief, Misery, For the Boys, Bottle Rocket and Elf, as well as the role of "Big Ed" Deline in the television series Las Vegas. He prominently lent his voice to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Caan was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1978 with a motion pictures star located at 6648 Hollywood Boulevard.

1944 - Diana Ross, American singer, actress, and record producer. She rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group The Supremes, who during the 1960s became Motown's most successful act, and are the best-charting female group in US history. Following her departure from the Supremes in 1970, Ross released her eponymous debut solo album that same year, featuring the No. 1 Pop hit "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". She later released the album Touch Me in the Morning in 1973; its title track was her second solo No. 1 hit. She continued a successful solo career through the 1970s, which included hit albums like Mahogany and Diana Ross and their No. 1 hit singles, "Theme from Mahogany" and "Love Hangover", respectively.  Her final single with Motown during her initial run with the company achieved her sixth and final US number one Pop hit, the duet "Endless Love" featuring Lionel Richie, whose solo career was launched with its success.(Diana Ross sings "Theme from Mahogany", uploaded by Shooofly. Accessed March 26, 2016.) 

1947 - John Edward Rowles, KNZM OBE (born 26 March 1947) is a New Zealand singer. He was most popular in the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, and he was best known in New Zealand for his song from 1970, "Cheryl Moana Marie", which he had written about his younger sister.(John Rowles' "If I Only Had Only Time". Uploaded by C. R. Waetford. Accessed December 1, 2016.)

1985 - Keira Knightly, English actress. She is the recipient of an Empire Award and has been nominated for two BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards. Her breakthrough came with the film Bend It Like Beckham. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice; subsequently became known for starring in period dramas, including Atonement, The Duchess, A Dangerous Method, Anna Karenina, and Colette. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress portraying Joan Clarke in the historical drama The Imitation Game. On stage, Knightly has appeared on the West End in production of The Misanthrope, which earned her a nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award. She starred as the eponymous heroine in the 2015 Broadway production of Thérèse Raquin. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to drama and charity.


Leftie:
Actor James Caan

Death:
1827 - Composer Ludwig van Beethoven  (In remembrance: Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 61 - Larghetto. Uploaded by Radial by the Orchard. Accessed March 26, 2023.)

 

More birthdays and historical events, March 26 - On This Day
 

 

Historical Events

1723 - Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion is first performed on Good Friday services at St. Thomas-Kirche, in Leipzig. 

1827 - Ludwig van Beethoven dies in Vienna, aged 56.

Sydney Philharmonia Choirs - Mendelssohn's Oratorio Elijah (2024)

Choral Singing / Oratorio

 

Mendelssohn's Elijah

 

Date:  Saturday 18 May 2024 at 7pm
Venue: Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House 

 

Finally, Mendelssohn's Elijah is happening, presented by the Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus. SPC's supporters and followers will remember that due to COVID-19, this concert has had its share of cancellations: first, for its May 9, 2020 at 3pm, for September 11, 2021 at 3pm, and then again, for December 16, 2021 at 7pm.

"The tone and beguiling quality of Rhodes' voice remains untouched. There is a velvet like richness... great resonance... a touching sense of fragility..." 

~ Limelight, 2021~

In Elijah, Mendelssohn combines the majestic tradition of Handel and the worshipful spirit of Bach with his own Romantic style.  

Elijah, Op. 70, MWV A 25, is an oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn depicting events in the life of the Prophet Elijah as told in the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings of the Old Testament. It premiered in 1846 at the Birmingham Festival. When Mendelssohn’s Elijah received its triumphant premiere at this festival there were more than a hundred musicians in the orchestra and several hundred singers in the choir. This is choral music on a grand scale, and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs will do it justice with the imposing sound of the 400-voice Festival Chorus and the perfect ambience of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. 

Mendelssohn’s Elijah is a ‘bigger than Ben Hur’ Biblical drama with a cast of hundreds. And Sydney Philharmonia Choirs is thrilled to bring it with operatic baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes in the title role and the 400-voice Festival Chorus filling the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.

If you’re a fan of Handel oratorios, you’re in good company – so was Felix Mendelssohn. Elijah was his response to the English oratorio tradition, with its Old Testament story (earthquake! fire! and the ‘still small voice’) imagined for the concert hall. In its more reflective moments you can hear the worshipful influence of Bach. The result is a thrilling Romantic picture of a ‘grand and mighty prophet…borne on the wings of angels’, but it also conveys a very human drama with tremendous sympathy.

Whether you come for the sheer magnificence of the performance or for the powerful and moving drama, you’ll experience first-hand the triumphant choral masterpiece that inspired a generation.

Sydney Philharmonia has no recorded video of this oratorio. Instead, below, I'm sharing this superb performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, Op.70, MWV A25 / Part 1 - "Thanks be to God" excerpt performed by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus · Stephen Doughty · Orchestra of The Age of Enlightenment · Paul Daniel. Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group. Accessed April 22, 2024. 



"Thanks be to God!"

Thanks be to God, He laveth the thirsty land. 
The waters gather, they rush along! 
They are lifting their voices! 
The stormy billows are high; their fury is mighty. 
But the Lord is above them, and Almighty!

March 25 Dateline

Birthdays

1867 - Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor, one of the most acclaimed musicians conductor of the late 18th and 19th century and renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory. He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the New York Philharmonic. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.

1881 - Bela Bartok, Hungarian composer and pianist. With Zoltan Kodaly, Bartok collected folksongs extensively. (Enjoy a recording of his Concerto for Orchestra (here) or Pinchas Zukerman playing Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 2, First Movement, Allegro non troppo  [Part 1/4], with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta conducting - here.)

1928 - James Lovell (James Arthur Lovell Jr.), retired American astronaut, naval aviator, and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became one of the first three humans to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission which, after a critical failure en route, circled around the Moon and returned safely to Earth through the efforts of the crew and mission control. He was the first person to fly into space four times, and the also the first to fly to it twice. He is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (in 1970, as one of 17 recipients in the Space Exploration group), and co-author of the 1994 book Lost Moon, on which the 1995 film Apollo 13 was based.

1934 - Gloria Marie Steinem, American feminist journalist and social political activist. Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, and a co-founder of Ms. magazine. In 1969, Steinem published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation", which brought her to national fame as a feminist leader. In 1971, she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus which provides training and support for women who seek elected and appointed offices in government. Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that "works to make women visible and powerful in the media".

1942 - Aretha Louise Franklin, American singer, songwriter, actress, pianist, and civil rights activist. Franklin began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father C. L. Franklin was a minister. At the age of 18, she embarked on a secular-music career as a recording artist for Columbia Records. Hit songs such as "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Chain of Fools", "Think", and "I Say a Little Prayer" propelled her past her musical peers. By the end of the 1960s, she had come to be known as the "Queen of Soul". Franklin recorded numerous singles on Billboard, R&B entries, etc. She received numerous honours in her career. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2019 awarded Franklin a posthumous special citation "for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades". In 2020, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

1943 - Paul Michael Glaser, American actor and director best known for his role as Detective Dave Starsky on the 1970's television series, Starsky & Hutch. Glaser also played Captain Jack Steeper on the NBC series Third Watch.

1965 - Sarah Jessica Parker, American actress and producer. She is known for her role as Carrie Bradshaw on the HBO television series Sex and the City, for which she won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. She later reprised the role in films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010). Parker made her Broadway debut at the age of 11 in the 1976 revival of The Innocents, before going on to star in the title role of the Broadway musical Annie in 1979. She made her first major film appearances in the 1984 dramas Footloose and Firstborn. Her other film roles include L.A. Story, Honeymoon in Vegas, The First Wives Club, among others. She starred as Frances Dufresne in the HBO series Divorce, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Since 2005, she has run her own production company, Pretty Matches, which has been creating content for HBO and other channels.

1947 - Sir Elton Hercules John CH Kt CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight), English singer, songwriter, pianist, and composer. Collaborating with lyricist Bernie Taupin since 1967 on more than 30 albums, John has sold over 300 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has more than fifty Top 40 hits in the UK Singles Chart and US Billboard Hot 100, including seven number ones in the UK and nine in the US, as well as seven consecutive number-one albums in the US. His tribute single "Candle in the Wind 1997", rewritten in dedication to Diana, Princess of Wales, sold over 33 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling single in the history of the UK and US singles charts. He has also produced records and occasionally acted in films.

Lefties:
Astronaut James Lovell
Actor Paul Michael Glaser
Actress Sarah Jessica Parker

More birthdays and historical events, March 25 - On This Day
 

 

Historical Events

1807 - The British Parliament passes the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, banning the trade of human beings throughout the empire. 

1957 - France, West Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg sign the Treaty of Rome to form the European Economic Community. 

1969 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono begin their first "bed-in for peace" in Amsterdam.

March 24 Dateline

Birthdays

1693 - John Harrison, (3 April [O.S. 24 March]), English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. His solution revolutionized navigation and greatly increased the safety of long-distance sea travel. The problem he solved was considered so important following the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 that the British Parliament offered financial rewards of up to £20,000 (equivalent to £3.17 million in 2020) under the 1714 Longitude Act. Toward the end of his life, he received recognition and a reward from Parliament. Harrison came 39th in the BBC's 2002 public poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

1808 - Maria Felicia Malibran, nee Garcia, Spanish opera singer,  who commonly sang both contralto and soprano parts, and was one of the best-known opera singers of the 19th century. Malibran was known for her stormy personality and dramatic intensity, becoming a legendary figure after her death, Sept 1836, Manchester, UK, at the age of 28. She was the sister of Pauline Viardot, a leading 19th century French mezzo-soprano, pedagogue, and composer. She lived with composer Charles Auguste de Bériot and had a child (Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, a piano professor). They were married in 1836 when Malibran obtained an annulment of her previous marriage.
 
1874 - Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss), Hungarian-born American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the United States and then as "Harry 'Handcuff' Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can with water in it.

1930 - Steve McQueen (born Stephen Terrence McQueen), American actor. McQueen was nicknamed "The King of Cool", and his antihero persona developed at the height of the counterculture of the 1960s made him a top box-office draw during the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Sand Pebbles. His other popular films include The Cincinnati Kid, Love With the Proper Stranger, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Getaway, and Papillon, as well as the all-star ensemble films The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and The Towering Inferno. In 1974, he became the highest-paid movie star in the world, although he did not act in films again for four years. McQueen was combative with directors and producers, but his popularity placed him in high demand and enabled him to command large salaries.

1936 - David Takayoshi Suzuki CC OBC FRSC, Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist. He earned a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago, and was a professor in the genetics department at the University of British Columbia. Suzuki has been known for his television and radio series, documentaries and books about nature and the environment. He is also best known as host and narrator of the popular and long-running CBC Television science program The Nature of Things, seen worldwide. A longtime activist to reverse global climate change, Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, "to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that does sustain us".

1951 - Tommy Hilfiger (Thomas Jacob Hilfiger), American fashion designer and founder of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. After by co-founding a chain of jeans/fashion stores called People's Place in upstate New York in the 1970s, he began designing preppy clothing for his own eponymous menswear line. The company later expanded into women's clothing and various luxury items such as perfumes. Hilfiger's collections are often influenced by the fashion of music subcultures and marketed in connection with the music industry. In 2006, Hilfiger sold his company for $1.6 billion to Apax Partners, who next sold it to Phillips-Van Heusen for $3 billion. He remains the company's principal designer, leading the design teams and overseeing the entire creative process. In 2012, Hilfiger was awarded the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Lefties:
Actor Steve McQueen
Fashion entrepreneur Tommy Hilfiger
 

More birthdays and historical events, March 24 - On This Day

 

 

Sibelius' Symphony No. 7 with L. Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic 

Historical Events

1603 - On the death of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, King James VI of Scotland succeeds to the English throne, uniting the two countries, and becoming James I. QEI dies after a reign of 44 years, ending the Elizabethan age that saw the Spanish Armada smashed in 1588, prominence of Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake prominent, and a huge period of expansion in English power at sea and on land.   

1882 - Dr. Robert Koch announces in Berlin that he has isolated the bacterium responsible fffor tuberculosis. He receives the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1905.

March 23 Dateline

Birthdays

1878 - Franz Shreker, Austrian late Romantic composer, first won success with his ballet Der Geburstag der Infantin, and still more, with his opera Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound). He was a popular composer in the early decades of the 20th century, until his music was banned by the Nazis because he was of Jewish background. Der ferne Klang, his first major work, is a late Romantic opera of grand passions. Briefly, the opera is about Fritz, a composer, and Grete Graumann, the daughter of a poor retired officer, in love. Fritz wants to marry Grete, but he tells her that before that happens, he has to write a great piece of music and discover the mysterious distant sound ("der ferne Klang") which he hears within him. Grete tries in vain to convince him to stay with her. Fritz leaves his childhood sweetheart and goes in search of the distant sound.(Trailer of  Der ferne Klang, uploaded by theaterbonn. Accessed March 23, 2019.)

1887 - Juan Gris (born José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez), Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France most of his life. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive.

1900 - Erich Fromm, German psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, democratic socialist, a Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the US.  He was one of the Founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. The word biophilia was used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "state of being". For example, in an addendum to his book The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil, Fromm wrote as part of his humanist credo: "I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom." E. Fromm postulated eight basic needs: Transcendence, Rootedness, Sense of Identity, Frame of Orientation, Excitation & Stimulation, Unity, and and Effectiveness. (The Art of Love | Erich Fromm - The art of loving. Uploaded by 5 Minute Concepts. Accessed March 23, 2021.)

1908 - Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur), American film and television actress. She debuted as a chorus girl on Broadway before signing a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925, her career spanning six decades. Her films ranged in genres from contemporary crime, melodramas, film noir, historical costume dramas, romances, mysteries, musicals, suspense, horror, to three westerns and over a dozen comedies. Her greater successes and perhaps most memorable performances were in romantic dramas and melodramas. In 1999, The American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

1910 - Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema.
ore entering the Japanese film industry in 1936, he had a brief stint as a painter. He made his debut as a director during WWII with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role. The two men collaborated on another 15 films. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Ikiru, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. His final two epics, Kagemusha and Ran continued to win awards. In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century.

1944 - Michael Nyman, English composer, librettist, musicologist and pianist, known for numerous film scores / soundtracks, and minimalist music. Many of his film scores were written in collaboration with filmmaker Peter Greenaway. He is also known for his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. (See feature linked below)


Lefties:
None known

More birthdays and historical events, March 23 - On This Day



Features:

Film Soundtrack of the The Piano composed by Michael Nyman. 

Historical Events

1729 -  Johann Sebastian Bach's  St Matthew Passion is first performed, in Leipzig.

1917 - Leonard and Virginia Woolf establish the Hogarth Press.

March 22 Dateline

Birthdays

1599 - Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy. Van Dyck worked in London for some months in 1621, then returned to Flanders briefly, before travelling to Italy, where he stayed until 1627. In the late 1620s he completed his greatly admired Iconography series of portrait etchings. In 1632 he returned to London to be the main court painter, at the request of Charles I of England. With the exception of Holbein, van Dyck and Diego Velázquez were the first painters to work mainly as court portraitists, revolutionising the genre. He is best known for his portraits of the aristocracy, most notably Charles I, his family and associates. Van Dyck became the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. He also painted mythological and biblical subjects, including altarpieces,and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching. The Van Dyke beard is named after him. Charles I granted him a knighthood, and he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

1887 - Chico Marx (born Leonard Joseph Marx),  American Comedian, Musician, Actor and Film star.  He was a member of the Marx Brothers (with Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx). His persona in the act was that of a charming, uneducated but crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat. On screen, Chico is often in alliance with Harpo, usually as partners in crime, and is also frequently seen trying to con or outfox Groucho. He was the oldest of the Marx Brothers to live past early childhood (first-born Manfred Marx died in infancy). Chico Marx playing piano. 10 films. Complete. Uploaded by FairDealDan. Accessed March 22, 2018.

1923 - Marcel Marceau, French actor and mime artist most famous for his stage persona as "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence" and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3,000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August 1944.  Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris. Marceau established his own pantomime school in Paris, and set up the Marceau Foundation to promote the art in the U.S. Among his various awards and honours he was made "Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur" and was awarded the National Order of Merit in France. He won the Emmy Award for his work on television, was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and was declared a "National treasure" in Japan.

1930 - Stephen Sondheim, American songwriter/lyricist and composer, known for his work in musical theater.  He's considered one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater. His best-known works as composer and lyricist include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods. He is also  known for writing the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer, including a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre), eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom, and more.

1931 - William Shatner,  Canadian actor, author, producer, director, screenwriter, and singer. He became a cultural icon for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise. He has written a series of books chronicling his experiences playing Captain Kirk, being a part of Star Trek, and life after Star Trek. Shatner has also co-written several novels set in the Star Trek universe, and a series of science fiction novels called TekWar, that were adapted for television. Shatner also played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker (1982–1986) and hosted the reality-based television series Rescue 911 (1989–1996), which won a People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Dramatic Series. Among others, he starred as attorney Denny Crane both in the final season of the legal drama The Practice and in its spinoff series Boston Legal, a role that earned him two Emmy Awards. Shatner has also pursued a career in music and spoken word recordings since the late 1960s, having released eight albums.
1943 - George Washington Benson, American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing jazz guitar, and soul jazz with Jack McDuff and others. He then launched a successful solo career, alternating between jazz, pop, R&B singing, and scat singing. His album Breezin' was certified triple-platinum, hitting no. 1 on the Billboard album chart in 1976. Benson has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1948 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. Multi-awarded, including a knighthood, several of Andrew Lloyd Webber's songs have been widely recorded and were hits, "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and "Memory" from Cats.

1976 - Laura Jeanne Reece Witherspoon, American actress, producer, and entrepreneur. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award, she is one of the highest-paid actresses in the world as of 2019. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2015, and Forbes listed her among the World's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2019. Her breakthrough came in 1999 with a supporting role in Cruel Intentions, and for her portrayal of Tracy Flick in the black comedy Election. Other wider recognition followed with critical acclaim including her starring role in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama. Her portrayal of June Carter Cash in the biographical musical film Walk the Line, won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Witherspoon has since begun work in television, by producing and starring in the HBO drama series.

Lefties:
None known

More birthdays and historical events, March 22 - On This Day
 

 

Featuring the music of two great composers of musicals:  Stephen Sondheim (1930) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948):

Judi Dench - The Definitive "Send in the Clowns - South Bank Show 1995. The video features Dame Judi Dench on the South Bank Show in 1995, which centers around her appearance in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Its a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. The profile ends with this performance of the ever popular "Send In The Clowns."



Phantom of the Opera Live - 1988 Tony Awards. The Phantom of the Opera musical is composed by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart, with additions from Richard Stilgoe. It is based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux. Its central plot revolves around Christine, a beautiful soprano, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Palais Garnier.

Historical Events

1457 - The Gutenberg Bible, the first printed book, is published. It is named after the inventor of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg.

1834 - Horace Greeley and Jonas Winchester establish a weekly literary and new journal, the New Yorker. 

March 21 Dateline

Birthdays

1685 - Johann Sebastian Bach or JS Bach, (N.S. 31 March [O.S. 21 March]), German composer and Organist of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

1839 - Modest Mussorgsky, (N.S. 21 March [O.S. 9 March]), Russian composer and member of the group known as "The Five" and famous for his work Pictures at an Exhibition. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity (history, folklore, and other national theme), often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. uch works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.

1905 - Phyllis McGinley, American author of children's books and poetry. She was a 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet (Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades). Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life. McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspapers and women's magazines such as the Ladies Home Journal, and literary periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Saturday Review and The Atlantic.

1906 - John D. Rockefeller III, American billionaire philanthropist, the eldest son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He was engaged in a wide range of philanthropic projects, many of which his famous Rockefeller family had launched, as well as supporting organizations related to East Asian affairs. Rockefeller was also a major supporter of the Population Council, and the committee that created the Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

1916 - Harold Robbins, American author of popular novels. One of the best-selling writers of all time, he wrote over 25 best-sellers, selling over 750 million copies in 32 languages. His first book was Never Love a Stranger. Usually, Robbins blended his own life experiences with history, melodrama, sex, and glossy high society into a fast-moving story. His 1952 novel, A Stone for Danny Fisher, was adapted into a 1958 motion picture King Creole, which starred Elvis Presley. Among his best-known books is The Carpetbaggers – featuring a protagonist who was a loose composite of Howard Hughes, Bill Lear, Harry Cohn, and Louis B. Mayer. The Carpetbaggers takes the reader from New York to California, from the prosperity of the aeronautical industry to the glamor of Hollywood. A sequel, The Raiders, was released in 1995.
 

1921 - Arthur Grumiaux, Belgian violinist. He had a long-standing relationship with Philips Records, and recordings are available from them of him performing works by famous composers including Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Michael Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, and more. A recording of Grumiaux;s performance of one movement from Bach's Sonatas & Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin, the "Gavotte en rondeaux" from the Partita No. 3, is included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft, as a sample of the culture of Earth. (Here's a beautiful recording of Grumiaux with Clara Haskill: Mozart's Sonatas for Piano & Violin. Uploaded by Classical Music/Reference Recording. Accessed April 5, 2020.)

1958 - Gary Leonard Oldman (born Gary Leonard Oldman), English actor and filmmaker who has performed in theatre, film, and television. Known for his versatility and expressive acting style, Oldman is regarded as one of the greatest actors of his generation. He has received several accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and three British Academy Film Awards. His films have grossed over $11 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors. Oldman made his film debut in Remembrance. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, and was also nominated for his portrayals of George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Herman J. Mankiewicz in Mank. Oldman has served as executive producer of various films; wrote and directed. He has also featured in television shows. He provided the voice of Viktor Reznov in the Call of Duty video games and appeared in music videos for artists such as David Bowie, Guns N' Roses and Annie Lennox.

1962 - Matthew Broderick (born Matthew John Broderick), American actor, comedian, and singer. His roles include the Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off , the voice of the adult Simba in Disney's The Lion King, and Leo Bloom in both the Broadway musical The Producers and its 2005 film adaptation. Broderick has won two Tony Awards, one for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Brighton Beach Memoirs, and one for Best Actor in a Musical for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. As of 2020, Broderick remains the youngest winner of the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In 2006, he was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and 11 years later, he earned induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Leftie:
Actor Matthew Broderick

More birthdays and historical events, March 21 - On This Day

 

Featuring: 
JS Bach's Mass in D minor  (Proms 2012)
Performers:  Joélle Harvey soprano, Carolyn Sampson soprano, Iestyn Davies counter-tenor, Ed Lyon tenor, Matthew Rose bass. Choir of the English Concert. The English Concert. Harry Bicket conductor.
Venue & Place: Royal Albert Hall 2 August 2012. (YouTube, uploaded by Manderiens. Accessed March 21, 2018.)

Historical Events

 1556 - The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cramner, is burned at the stake as a heretic. Hundreds more Protestants were executed during the reign of "Bloody Mary," the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII.

1851 - The Yosemite Valley is discovered in California, U.S.

March 20 Dateline

Birthdays 

43 B.C.E. - Ovid, as known in the English-speaking world, was born Publius Ovidius Naso, a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus, Ovid is today best known for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, and for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. (Ovid's Metamorphoses. Uploaded by Gottfried Leibniz. Accessed March 20, 2019.)

1828 - Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. (Henrik Ibsen: The Master Playwright Documentary (1987). Uploaded by Manufacturing Intellect. Accessed March 20, 2019.)

1890 - Beniamino Gigli, Italian tenor. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tenors of his generation. Gigli made many important debuts in quick succession: in Mefistofele: Teatro Massimo in Palermo (31 March 1915), Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (26 December 1915), Teatro Costanzi di Roma (26 December 1916), La Scala, Milan (19 November 1918), Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires (28 June 1919) and finally the Metropolitan Opera, New York City (26 November 1920). Gigli rose to true international prominence after the death of the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso in 1921. Such was his popularity with audiences he was often called "Caruso Secondo", though he much preferred to be known as "Gigli Primo". (Gigli sings Mozart)

1904 - B.F. Skinner (Burrhus Frederic Skinner), American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University until his retirement. Skinner founded the experimental analysis of behavior, a school of experimental research psychology. He also used operant conditioning to strengthen behavior, considering the rate of response to be the most effective measure of response strength. A prolific writer, he published 21 books and 180 articles. Contemporary academia considers Skinner, along with John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, a pioneer of modern behaviorism. Accordingly, a June 2002 survey listed Skinner as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

1908 - Sir Michael Redgrave, CBE, (born  Michael Scudamore Redgrave), English stage and film actor, director, manager, and author. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Mourning Becomes Electra, as well as two BAFTA Award for Best British Actor nominations for his performances in The Night My Number Came Up and Time Without Pity. At the 4th Cannes Film Festival, he won Best Actor for his performance in The Browning Version.

1917 - Dame Vera Margaret Lynn, English singer of traditional popular music whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during the WWII. She is known as "the Forces' Sweetheart" for giving outdoor concerts for the troops. The songs associated with her are "We'll Meet Again", "The White Cliffs of Dover", and "There'll Always Be an England". Her last single, "I Love This Land", was released to mark the end of the Falklands War. In 2009, aged 92, she became the oldest living artist to top the UK Albums Chart, with compilation album We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn.  Lynn scored a number one in 2014, when she was 97, with the collection Vera Lynn: National Treasure, and remains the oldest person to top the album charts. (Dame Vera Lynn - We'll Meet Again. TheDayTheMusicDidDie. I'll Be Seeing You. M. Maminteng. You'll Never Know. RReady555. Accessed March 20, 2020.)

1950 - William McChord Hurt, American actor. He studied at the Juilliard School and made his film debut as a troubled scientist in Ken Russell's science-fiction feature Altered States, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year. In 1981 he played a leading role, as a lawyer in the neo-noir Body Heat. Hurt garnered multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, for Kiss of the Spider Woman. He received another two Academy Award nominations for his lead performances in Children of a Lesser God and Broadcast News. He received his first Tony Award nomination in 1985 for the Broadway production of Hurlyburly. He earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for his supporting performance in a crime thriller A History of Violence.

1957 - Shelton Jackson Spike Lee, American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and professor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films. He made his directorial debut with She's Gotta Have It. He has since written and directed award-winning films. His work has continually explored race relations and colorism in the black community. He has won numerous accolades including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, two Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, and the Cannes Grand Prix. Lee's films Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls and She's Gotta Have It were each selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

1958 - Holly Patricia Hunter, American actress. For her performance as Ada McGrath in the 1993 drama film The Piano, she won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Broadcast News (1987), and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Firm and again for Thirteen. A seven-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee, Hunter won for Roe vs. Wade, and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. She also starred in the TNT drama series Saving Grace (2007–2010). Her film roles among others include Raising Arizona, Always, The Incredibles and its sequel Incredibles 2, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and The Big Sick (2017), which earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

 

2004 - Yunchan Lim, pianist from Siheung, South Korea. In 2018, aged 14, Lim won second prize and the Chopin Special Award in the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. The same year, he was the youngest participant in the Thomas & Evon Cooper International Competition where he won third prize and the audience prize. In 2019, he became the youngest-ever winner of the Isang Yun Competition at 15 years old. In June 2022, he was the youngest to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas where he also took two special prizes. He additionally won US$100,000 and career management for three years. Lim has performed with orchestras such as with the Korea Symphony, Suwon Philharmonic, Busan Philharmonic Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and others.  Lim currently studies at the Korea National University of Arts under Minsoo Sohn.

Leftie:
Filmmaker Spike Lee

More birthdays and historical events, March 20 - On This Day

 

Featured video:  The youngest gold medalist Yunchan Lim plays th famous Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, conducted by Marin Alsop, with Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. (Remastered). The Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Live from Fort Worth, Texas, USA, from June 2 to 18, 2022. Yunchan Lim, 임윤찬 South Korea. A gripping performance by this sensational 18-year old from South Korea.  Youtube, uploaded by The Cliburn. Accessed January 20, 2023. 

 

Historical Events

1792 - The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, is burned at the stake as a heretic. Hundreds more Protestants were executed during the reign of "Bloody Mary," the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII.

1815 - The Yosemite Valley is discovered in California, U.S.