Emma Abbott was an American operatic soprano and impresario known for her pure, clear voice of great flexibility and volume.
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Among his best-known works are the oratorio A Child of Our Time, the orchestral Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, and the opera The Midsummer Marriage.
Stephen Collins Foster, known as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour and minstrel music during the Romantic period. He wrote more than 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer", and many of his compositions remain popular today.
Rufus C. Thomas, Jr. was an American rhythm-and-blues, funk, soul and blues singer, songwriter, dancer, DJ and comic entertainer from Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded for several labels, including Chess Records and Sun Records in the 1950s, before becoming established in the 1960s and 1970s at Stax Records. His dance records, including "Walking the Dog" (1963), "Do the Funky Chicken" (1969), and "(Do the) Push and Pull" (1970), were some of his most successful songs. According to the Mississippi Blues Commission, "Rufus Thomas embodied the spirit of Memphis music perhaps more than any other artist, and from the early 1940s until his death . . . occupied many important roles in the local scene."
Soghomon Soghomonian, ordained and commonly known as Komitas, was an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster, who is considered the founder of the Armenian national school of music. He is recognized as one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology.
Madelaine Edith Prior MBE is an English folk rock singer, best known as the lead vocalist of Steeleye Span. She was born in Blackpool and moved to St Albans in her teens. Her father, Allan Prior, was co-creator of the police drama Z-Cars. She was married to Steeleye bass guitarist Rick Kemp, and their daughter, Rose Kemp, is also a singer. Their son, Alex Kemp, is, like his father, a guitarist and has deputised for his father playing bass guitar for Steeleye Span. She was part of the singing duo 'Mac & Maddy', with Mac MacLeod. She then performed with Tim Hart and recorded two albums with him, before they helped to found the group Steeleye Span, in 1969. She left Steeleye Span in 1997, but returned in 2002, and has toured with them since. With June Tabor she was the singing duo Silly Sisters. She toured with the Carnival Band, in 2007, and with Giles Lewin and Hannah James, in 2012 and 2013. She has released singles and albums as a solo artist, with these bands and in several collaborations. She runs an Arts Centre called Stones Barn, in Bewcastle, in Cumbria, which offers residential courses.
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, dubbed "The Black Swan", was an American singer considered the best-known Black concert artist of her time. She was lauded by James M. Trotter for her "remarkably sweet tones and wide vocal compass". Trotter described her as the first African American concert singer, which has been repeated through many biographies.
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones was an American soprano. She sometimes was called "The Black Patti" in reference to Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Jones' repertoire included grand opera, light opera, and popular music. Trained at the Providence Academy of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, Jones made her New York City debut in 1888 at Steinway Hall, and four years later she performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison. She sang for four consecutive presidents and the British royal family, and was met with international success. Besides the United States and the West Indies, Jones toured in South America, Australia, India, southern Africa, and Europe.
The Catalonia College of Music is a music school in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
Arieh Lieb "Arik" Einstein was an Israeli singer, actor, comedian and screenwriter. He was a pioneer of Israeli rock music and was named "the voice of Israel." Through both high public and critical acclaim, Einstein is regarded as one of the greatest, most popular, and most influential Israeli artists of all time.
Astra Desmond was a British contralto of the early and middle twentieth century.
The Kemp Place and Barn form a historic farmstead in Reading, Massachusetts. The main house is a 2+1⁄2-story Italianate wood-frame structure, with an L-shaped cross-gable footprint and clapboard siding. Its roofline is studded with paired brackets, its windows have "eared" or shouldered hoods, and there is a round-arch window in the front gable end. The porch wraps around the front to the side, supported by Gothic style pierced-panel posts. The square cupola has banks of three round-arch windows on each side. It is one of Reading's more elaborate Italianate houses, and is one of the few of the period whose cupola has survived.
Ben Steinberg was a Canadian composer, conductor, organist, and music educator. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, he is known for his contributions to Jewish music. He has presented many programs of Jewish music for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and has presented similar programs in lecture-recitals throughout Canada, the United States, Australia, and Japan. He has also contributed articles on Jewish music to a number of publications. Several of his original manuscripts and papers are held in the collection at the library of the University of Calgary.
Beattie Casely-Hayford was a Ghanaian engineer. He was the first director of the Ghana Arts Council, a co-founder of the Ghana National Dance Ensemble, and a director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC).
Métis fiddle is the style that the Métis of Canada and Métis in the northern United States have developed to play the violin, solo and in folk ensembles. It is marked by the percussive use of the bow and percussive accompaniment. The Metis people are a poly-ethnic post-contact Indigenous peoples. Fiddles were "introduced in this area by Scottish and French-Canadian fur traders in the early 1800s", where the Metis community adopted the instrument into their culture.
Shiyani Ngcobo was a Maskandi guitarist and teacher from South Africa. He toured Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom during the early 2000s in support of his album Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo becoming a major influence in taking Maskanda music to international audiences. In addition, he taught maskandi guitar at the School of Music of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He died near Durban on 18 February 2011.
Jane Elizabeth Kempton was an American contralto opera solo singer who had an active career spanning over fifty years starting in 1850. She sang in hundreds of performances across the United States and Europe during her long career.
Elizabeth Randles, also known as "Little Cambrian Prodigy", was a Welsh harpist and pianist. A child prodigy, she started playing the piano at the age of sixteen months, and performed in public for the first time before she was two years old. Randles was taught by her blind father who was organist at the Holywell parish church. She performed for local aristocracy, leading to a performance for King George III and his royal family when she was three and a half. Caroline, Princess of Wales, hoped to adopt her but her father did not allow it. She did, however, spend a few days at the Princess of Wales' summer home, often playing with Princess Charlotte of Wales. Randles went on to tour the country as a child, performing with John Parry. In 1808, she returned home and learned the harp. She went on to take lessons from Friedrich Kalkbrenner before moving to Liverpool and becoming a teacher.
Allan Taylor is an English singer-songwriter who has written and performed music around the world for over 50 years.
Gilmore High School, also called Cincinnati High School, was established by Rev. Hiram S. Gilmore in 1844 to provide secondary education for African-American students. Students at the school in Cincinnati, Ohio, came from across the country, including the children of white Southern planters and the African Americans they enslaved.
