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José van Dam
Biography
oseph, Baron Van Damme (born 25 August 1940 in Brussels), known as José van Dam, is a Belgian bass-baritone, described as having "a magnificent resonant and expressive voice" and being "an excellent actor".
At the age of 17, he entered the Brussels Royal Conservatory and studied with Frederic Anspach. A year later, he graduated with diplomas and first prizes in voice and opera performance. He made his opera début as the music teacher Don Basilio in Gioacchino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera in 1961, and remained in the company until 1965, when he sang his first major role, Escamillo from Bizet's Carmen. He then sang for two seasons at Geneva, La Scala, Covent Garden, and in Paris. At Geneva, Van Dam sang in the première of Milhaud's La mère coupable in 1966. Lorin Maazel heard van Dam and invited him to record Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with him for Deutsche Grammophon. In 1967, Maazel asked him to join the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.
Van Dam has performed at L’Opéra de Paris, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Salzburg Festival, and festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Orange, France.
Van Dam has become the Master in Residence of the singing section at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in his home country, Belgium, since 2011.
Van Dam is also a concert, oratorio, and Lieder singer and has won international awards for his performances on stage and in recordings. Berlin conferred on him the title of Kammersänger in 1974, and the same year he received the German Music Critics’ Prize. Other awards include the Gold Medal of the Belgian Press (1976), Grand Prix de l’Académie française du Disque (1979), Orphée d’Or de l’Académie Lyrique Française (1980), the European Critics’ Prize, (1985), Diapason d’Or and Prix de la Nouvelle Académie du Disque (1993), and the Orphée d’Or de l’Académie du Disque Lyrique (1994).
In August 1998, His Majesty King Albert II of Belgium made van Dam a baron, recognizing him as one of the finest classical singers. On 4 December 1999 van Dam was one of the performers at the marriage of Belgium's Crown Prince Philippe and Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz.
Van Dam is featured as one of the three interviewees in 'Doucement les Basses', with Gabriel Bacquier and Claudio Desderi discussing their approach to roles in the bass-baritone repertoire.
Van Dam appears in the films The Music Teacher (1988) as Joachim Dallayrac, and in Don Giovanni (1979) as Leporello, directed by Joseph Losey, and conducted by Maazel. Also featured in that film are Ruggero Raimondi, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Teresa Berganza, Edda Moser, Malcolm King, Kenneth Riegel and John Macurdy. Van Dam also appears as Hans Sachs in the DVD of the 2003 Zürich Opera production of Die Meistersinger conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. ...
Source: Article "José van Dam" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Erin Moran
Biography
Moran's first acting role was at the age of five, in a television commercial for First Federal Bank. At the age of six, she was cast as Jenny Jones in the television series Daktari, which ran from 1966 to 1969. She made her feature-film debut in How Sweet It Is! (1968) with Debbie Reynolds, and made regular appearances on The Don Rickles Show in 1972, and guest appearances in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, My Three Sons, Bearcats!, and Family Affair. As a young child, she also appeared in the television series Gunsmoke.
In 1974, at the age of 13, Moran was cast to play her best known role, Joanie Cunningham on the sitcom Happy Days, the feisty younger sister of Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard). Moran continued the role in 1982, in the short-lived spin-off series Joanie Loves Chachi, alongside Scott Baio, although she later stated that she had only reluctantly agreed to star in the series; she would have preferred to remain with Happy Days. She won the Young Artist Award for Best Young Actress in a New Television Series for her role. After Joanie Loves Chachi's cancellation in 1983, she returned to Happy Days for its final season.
In 1983, Moran said in an interview that the Happy Days producers had pressured her to change from about the age of 15: they had "suddenly wanted me to lose weight and become this sexy thing."
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David Longstreth
Biography
David Longstreth (born December 17, 1981) is an American singer and songwriter. He is the lead singer and guitarist for the band Dirty Projectors.
Longstreth was born in Southbury, Connecticut. Longstreth attended Yale University and majored in music shortly before dropping out halfway through his second year. He stated that "he rarely ventured out of his dorm room. He found himself completely absorbed in making his own music, though there wasn’t really anyone to play it for." After dropping out, he moved in with his brother in Portland, Oregon, and worked on his first album, The Graceful Fallen Mango, which he released in 2002. Shortly after completing the album, Longstreth returned to Yale to finish his degree and began making music under the Dirty Projectors title. He proceeded to record multiple records under the name during his time at Yale.
In 2015, he contributed to "FourFiveSeconds," a collaborative song by Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney. That same year, he composed a classical composition called "Michael Jordan." It was composed for the New York group Ensemble LPR. He also contributed to the orchestral arrangement for the song "Time, As a Symptom" on the album Divers by American musician Joanna Newsom. In 2016, he produced the album Azel by Nigerien musician Bombino and collaborated on the Solange release, A Seat at the Table.
In January 2025, he released a David Berman covers EP.
Longstreth is the younger brother of American painter, musician, and internet radio personality Jake Longstreth.
Description above from the Wikipedia article David Longstreth, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Andrey Smolyakov
Biography
Andrey Smolyakov was born in Podolsk, Moscow Oblast, in 1958. He studied for three years at the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute before graduating in 1980 from the State Institute of Theatre Arts and beginning his acting career on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre. Between 1984 and 1986, he worked with the Satyricon Theatre, and in 1987 joined the Oleg Tabakov Studio Theatre in Moscow.
Smolyakov made his big screen debut in 1978, and has since appeared in more than 80 films, working with many of Russia’s leading directors. Notable credits include “Daddy” (Vladimir Mashkov, 2004), “Escape” (Egor Konchalovsky, 2005), “Stalingrad” (Fedor Bondarchuk, 2013), and “Viking” (Andrey Kravchuk, 2016).
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Yamin Dib
Biography
Yamin Dib tient plusieurs rôles dans Mozart dont celui du
comte Rosenberg, l’intendant de l’Empereur, un
personnage qu’il décrit comme étant
« un courtisan obséquieux et
machiavélique, délibérément
hostile à Mozart ». Atteint par le virus de la
comédie dans son lycée de Bellegarde, dans
l’Ain, Yamin décide d’en faire son
métier. Troupe de théâtre,
conservatoire, comedia dell arte en Italie, Club Med, multiples
rôles au théâtre… il a appris
à savoir tout faire. Après avoir passé
quatre ans au côté de Karl Zéro
à Canal+, il connaît sa deuxième
expérience en matière de comédie
musicale dans Le Magicien d’Oz, une production Attia/Cohen.
Il fait également partie des comédiens
récurrents de la nouvelle génération
de Caméra Café bientôt sur les
écrans.
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Johnny Mathis
Biography
Johnny Mathis is an American singer of popular music, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status and 73 making the Billboard charts. Guinness world records and music charts historian Paul Gambaccini confirms Mathis record sales have surpassed well over 360 million worldwide. This makes Johnny Mathis the 3rd biggest selling artist of the 20th century after Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra (as for 2018).
Although he is frequently described as a romantic singer, his discography includes traditional pop, Brazilian, Spanish, soul, rhythm and blues, soft rock, show tunes, blues, country, and even a few disco songs for his album Mathis Magic in 1979. Mathis has also recorded six albums of Christmas music.
In 2014, Mathis was inducted into the Great American Songbook Hall Of Fame. In 2017, Mathis' alma mater San Francisco State University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree. Mathis attended San Francisco State for three semesters before withdrawing in 1956 to pursue his music career.
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Sylvie Verheyde
Biography
After studying geography, music and drawing, Sylvie Verheyde stood out with her short films (Entre Chien et Loups, La Maison verte) at the start of the 90s, which won awards at festivals. The young woman then embarked on the writing and directing of A Brother, her first feature film, which was released in cinemas in 1997. Selected at the 50th Cannes Film Festival in the Cinemas section in France, this film which stages the revolts of a sister and her brother is hailed by the critics, winning the Cyril Collard Prize in 1998 and offering the César for Best Female Newcomer to Emma de Caunes.
In 2000, Sylvie Verheyde reunited with Emma de Caunes for Princesses, in which she also directed Jean-Hugues Anglade. She then worked for the small screen, notably signing the television films Un amour de femme and Sang froid, which won an award at the La Rochelle Festival. In 2007, after a parenthesis of seven years, the filmmaker returned to the cinema by signing the screenplay for the action film Scorpion, carried by Clovis Cornillac. In 2008, she directed Stella, her third feature film, which explores the daily life of a young high school student. Guillaume Depardieu appears there in one of his very last roles.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Todd Rundgren
Biography
Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Utopia. He is known for his sophisticated and often unorthodox music, his occasionally lavish stage shows, and his later experiments with interactive entertainment. He also produced music videos and was an early adopter and promoter of various computer technologies, such as using the Internet as a means of music distribution in the late 1990s.
A native of Philadelphia, Rundgren began his professional career in the mid 1960s, forming the psychedelic band Nazz in 1967. Two years later, he left Nazz to pursue a solo career and immediately scored his first US top 40 hit with "We Gotta Get You a Woman" (1970). His best-known songs include "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light" from Something/Anything? (1972), which get frequent air time on classic rock radio stations, and the 1983 single "Bang the Drum All Day", which is featured in many sports arenas, commercials, and movie trailers. Although lesser known, "Couldn't I Just Tell You" (1972) was influential to many artists in the power pop genre. His 1973 album A Wizard, a True Star remains an influence on later generations of bedroom musicians.
Rundgren is considered a pioneer in the fields of electronic music, progressive rock, music videos, computer software, and Internet music delivery. He organized the first interactive television concert in 1978, designed the first color graphics tablet in 1980, and created the first interactive album, No World Order, in 1994.[1][5] Additionally, he was one of the first acts to be prominent as both an artist and producer. His notable production credits include Badfinger's Straight Up (1971), Grand Funk Railroad's We're an American Band (1973), the New York Dolls' New York Dolls (1973), Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell (1977) and XTC's Skylarking (1986).
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Justine Triet
Biography
Justine Triet (French: [ʒystin tʁije]; born 17 July 1978) is a French film director, screenwriter, and editor. She has received several awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Palme d'Or, three César Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Triet started her career making documentary short films about social justice issues and commentary, starting with Sur Place (2007), which explored the 2006 youth protests in France. She made her narrative directorial feature film debut with the comedy-drama Age of Panic (2013), followed by the romantic comedy In Bed with Victoria (2016) and the drama Sibyl (2019).
She gained widespread acclaim for directing Anatomy of a Fall, which debuted at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. There, she won the Palme d'Or, becoming the third female director to win the award. In 2024, Triet became the first female French filmmaker to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Justine Triet, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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