 CECILIA BEAUX (May 1, 1855 - September 7, 1942) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American society portraitist, in the nature of John Singer Sargent. She was a near contemporary of better-known American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France. Her sympathetic renderings of American ruling class made her one of the most successful portrait painters of her era.
 CHRISTIAN de PORTZAMPARC (born May 5, 1944 - ) in Casablanca, Morocco; French architect and urbanist. He graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1970 and has since been noted for his bold designs and artistic touch; his projects reflect a sensibility to their environment and the town is a founding principal of his work. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1994.Some of Monsieur de Portzamparc's works were featured in The Update, July 2009:
http://www.ggu.edu/university_library/the_update/the_update_july_2009
    
 JOHANNES BRAHMS (May 7, 1833 - April 3, 1897) in Hamburg, Germany; German composer and pianist, one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as the third "B".
- VIDEO: Symphony No.3, 1st mov. - Allegro con brio, Herbert von Karajan, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic
- VIDEO: Symphony No.3, 3rd mov. - Poco Allegretto
- VIDEO: 16 Waltzes, Op. 39 - Waltzes 1-5, Soheil Nasseri, piano
- VIDEO: Clarinet Sonata No. 2 Mov 1 Wenzel Fuchs, clarinet and E. Bashkirova, piano
- VIDEO: Waltz in A flat & Hungarian Dance #6 Attila Pertis and Monika Egri, piano
 PETER ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY (May 7, 1840 - November 6, 1893) in Votkinsk, Russia; one of the most popular Russian composers of all time. His music has always had great appeal for the general public in virtue of its tuneful, open-hearted melodies, impressive harmonies, and colourful, picturesque orchestration, all of which evoke a profound emotional response. His oeuvre includes 7 symphonies, 11 operas, 3 ballets, 5 suites, 3 piano concertos, a violin concerto, 11 overtures. (Wikipedia)
- VIDEO: Serenade for Strings in C major, Op.8
- VIDEO: Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1, Evgeny Kissin, piano; Herbert von Karajan, conducting
- VIDEO: Sleeping Beauty Waltz
- VIDEO: None but the Lonely Heart, Joshua Bell, violin; Michael Stern conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke's
- VIDEO: Violin Concerto, 1st mov, pt 1, Sarah Chang, violin; Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal conducted by Charles Dutoit
 JOSÉ ORTEGA y GASSET (May 9, 1883 - October 18, 1955) in Madrid, Spain; Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist, working at the beginning of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship.
Ortega y Gasset's writings range over history, politics, aesthetics and art criticism, as well as the history of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. In 1929 Ortega published one of his best known works, The Revolt of the Masses, where he characterized the 20th-century society as dominated by masses of mediocre and indistinguishable individuals. Ortega's ideas converged those of other 'mass society' theorists such as Karl Mannheim, Erich Fromm and Hannah Arendt.
 EDWARD LEAR (May 12, 1812 - January 29, 1888) Holoway, London, England; English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularized.
back to top |  SIR ARTHUR SEYMOUR SULLIVAN, MVO (May 13, 1842 - November 22, 1900) in Lambeth, London; English composer, best known for his operatic collaborations with librettist W. S. Gilbert, including such continually popular works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.
 ÉRIC SATIE (May 17, 1866 - July 1, 1925) Honfleur, Calvados, France; French composer and pianist. Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning "someone who measures sounds") preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.
Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American Vanity Fair. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.
- VIDEO: Gymnopedie No. 1, Aldo Ciccolini, piano
- VIDEO: Première Gnossienne from Luc Jacquet's documentary, March of the Penguins; music transcribed for bassoon and piano; Catherine Marchese, bassoon, and Emile Naoumoff, piano
- VIDEO: Gnossienne No.5 Pascal Rogé, piano
 GEORGES PROSPER REMI (May 22, 1907 - March 3, 1983), Etterbeek, Belgium; better known by the pen name "Hergé", was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is The Adventures of Tintin, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, which left the twenty-fourth Tintin adventure Tintin and Alph-Art unfinished. His work remains a strong influence on comics, particularly in Europe. He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003.The notable qualities of the Tintin stories include their vivid humanism, a realistic feel produced by meticulous and wide ranging research, and Hergé's ligne claire drawing style. Adult readers enjoy the many satirical references to the history and politics of the 20th century.The long-awaited Louvain-la-Neuvé, Belgium was opened in Louvain-La-Neuve on June 2, 2009, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Christian de Portzamparc (elsewhere in this issue), the museum reflects Hergé's huge corpus of work which has, until now, been sitting in studios and bank vaults.
 DOROTHEA LANGE (May 26, 1895 - October 11, 1965) Hoboken, New Jersey; influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.In 1941, Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, she gave up the prestigious award to record the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans to relocation camps, on assignment for the War Relocation Authority (WRA). She covered the rounding up of Japanese Americans and their internment in relocation camps, highlighting Manzanar, the first of the permanent internment camps. To many observers, her photograph of Japanese-American children pledging allegiance to the flag shortly before they were sent to internment camps is a haunting reminder of this policy of detaining people without charging them with any crime or affording them any appeal.Her images were so obviously critical that the Army impounded them. Today her photographs of the internment are available in the National Archives on the website of the Still Photographs Division, and at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
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Celebrating the Return of the Peregrine Falcon
JAPANESE CHILDREN'S DAY - MAY 5th
Old St. Mary's Cathedral NOONTIME CONCERTS
SFPL THURSDAYS @ NOON FILMS
MOTHER'S DAY, MAY 9th
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PICTURES ON TOP: Aerial view of the San Francisco Financial District, Yerba Buena and Treasure Island; Jackson Square Park; Justin Herman Plaza; the Ferry Building; and Pier 7 at the Embarcadero. Picture on left is of the Financial District overlooking the Embarcadero piers.
