Category: people

As Little Richard himself described his effect on body and spirit, “My music made your liver quiver, your bladder splatter, your knees freeze—and your big toe shoot right up in your boot!”

Wright, whose first hit came when she was 17 and who produced and mentored scores of other performers as she aged, had 20 singles in the Billboard R&B Top 40 and a voice that blew other singers out of the water. She was “one of the first pop vocalists to sing in the stratospheric ‘whistle register,’ a technique also used by Minnie Riperton, Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande.” – The New York Times

Linda Boström Knausgard has some pretty good ideas about that. The writer, ex-wife of Karl Ove Knausgard, has published two of her own novels in quick succession. “It’s a fresh start. Most of all I would like to be seen as a person and an author in my own right.” – The Observer (UK)

Robertson loved classical lines, but “there was no inconsistency between his love of grand classical architecture and his passionate belief in cities: It was all about finding ways to turn time-tested ideas to the benefit of modern life, and he would spend much of the rest of his career promoting better urban design.” – The New York Times

Gujral studied with Diego Rivera and David Siquieros, recorded the pain of 1947’s Partition, and designed the Belgian Embassy in New Delhi – among his many, many, many other accomplishments. – The New York Times

The innovative music executive founded Uptown Records and changed the sound of R&B and rap in the 1980 and 1990s. – The New York Times

Little Richard, the pianist and singer behind “Long Tall Sally,” “Tutti Frutti,” and many more, was the epitome of early rock and roll. His musical influence was massive, but his “stage persona – his pompadours, androgynous makeup, and glass-bead shirts — also set the standard for rock & roll showmanship.” – Rolling Stone

“A former principal dancer for Martha Graham, Ms. Erdman first came to wide notice as a choreographer in the 1940s, and she remained in the vanguard of the field for decades. She later created performance pieces for the Theater of the Open Eye, an avant-garde New York stage she founded in 1972 with her husband, Joseph Campbell, the scholar of literature and myth.” – The New York Times

“Although [Steve] Paxton is credited with inventing, or initiating CI, it was Stark Smith who became the chief educator and organizer. … Whether springing up out of the floor or boomeranging off another person, she made the pleasure of touch visible. She had a wondrous way of talking/writing about the sensations of momentum that drew people in.” – Dance Magazine

“Formed in 1970 by Mr. Schneider and Ralf Hütter, Kraftwerk was credited with bringing synthesizers, drum machines, preprogrammed tapes and sequences to the fore, developing a sonic template that was used in genres as varied as rock, pop, hip-hop and disco. Kraftwerk’s music, techno pioneer Juan Atkins once said, ‘sounded like the future.'” – The Washington Post