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Marriner, Sir Neville

(Encyclopedia)Marriner, Sir Neville, 1924–2016, British conductor, b. Lincoln, England, grad. Royal College of Music, London (1946), studied Paris Conservatory. A violinist, he taught at the Royal College (1949�...

Boyce, William

(Encyclopedia)Boyce, William, c.1710–1779, English composer. After studying in London, he became a composer (1736) and later an organist (1758) of the Chapel Royal and Master of the King's Music in 1755. Although...

Sayles, John

(Encyclopedia)Sayles, John (John Thomas Sayles), 1950–, one of America's most influential independent filmmakers as well as a screenwriter, fiction writer, playwright, and actor, b. Schenectady, N.Y., grad. Willi...

Staples, Mavis

(Encyclopedia) Staples, Mavis, 1939- , African American popular singer, b. Chicago, Il. Staples began performing at age 11 with her father, Roebuck “Pops” St...

Samaroff, Olga

(Encyclopedia)Samaroff, Olga səmäˈrôf [key], 1882–1948, American pianist and educator, whose real name was Hickenlooper, b. San Antonio, Tex.; studied at the Paris Conservatory. Her American debut (1905) was ...

reggae

(Encyclopedia)reggae, Jamaican popular music that developed in the 1960s among Kingston's poor blacks, drawing on American “soul” music and traditional African and Jamaican folk music and ska (a Jamaican and Br...

Fétis, François Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Fétis, François Joseph fräNswäˈ zhôzĕfˈ fātēsˈ [key], 1784–1871, Belgian music theorist, historian, and composer. A teacher and librarian at the Paris Conservatory, he became (1833) direc...

Gilman, Lawrence

(Encyclopedia)Gilman, Lawrence, 1878–1939, American music critic and author, b. Flushing, N.Y. He was music critic for Harper's Weekly (1901–13) and the North American Review (1913–23), and in 1923 he succeed...

Ligeti, György

(Encyclopedia)Ligeti, György, 1923–2006, Hungarian composer. He studied music in Romania and Hungary, and was a teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music until he fled to Vienna (1956) after the Soviet invasion o...

basalt

(Encyclopedia)basalt bəsôltˈ, băsˈôlt [key], fine-grained rock of volcanic origin, dark gray, dark green, brown, reddish, or black in color. Basalt is an igneous rock, i.e., one that has congealed from a molt...