Ansel Adams
On February 20, 1902 Ansel Easton Adams was born in San Francisco, California. He was the only child of Charles and Olive Adams. Ansel, originally trained as a classic pianist, would later abandon his first love, music, for photography. Ansel Adams became America's most talented and beloved landscape photographer.
In 1908, Ansel started school. He was a poor student and hated going to school. In 1915, Charles Adams took his son out of school and had him privately tutored. Charles also bought Ansel a year pass to the Panama Pacific International Exposition. The Exposition included exhibits on painters, science, machinery, and photography. "It was also the first time that he encountered photography as an art form in three prints exhibited by photographer Edward Weston, with whom he was much later to collaborate in the f/64 Group project and who became a great friend"(1).
During his unconventional education, Ansel became interested in music, particularly, the piano. He began to
teach himself how to play. He was very serious about his music. Later, recognizing his son's talent, Charles hired Marie Butler, who was piano tutor, for his son. She tutored Ansel for three years. Ansel seriously considered becoming a concert pianist.
Then, in 1916, Ansel took his first trip to Yosemite while on vacation with his family. Ansel became interested in photography on this trip and took his first photos on his first camera. "With his first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie, Ansel's life as a photographer began an interest which was to endure for the rest of his life. With his first attempts at committing the magic of Yosemite to film, he demonstrated the beginnings of an immense talent which was to make him a world-class photographer". (2)
Ansel was persuaded by his parents to attend school again and he went to Mrs. Kate Wilkins' private school. In 1917, he graduated from the eighth grade at Mrs. Wilkins' school. His graduation marked the end of Ansel's Academic Career. Ansel continued to pursue his first loves, the piano and music, as well as his new found interest in photography after his graduation.
Ansel began teaching himself the basic principles of photography. He got a job working part-time for a photo
finisher, Fred Dittman, in San Francisco. This is where Ansel had his first dark room experience.
Joplin's talent was revealed at an early age. Encouraged by his parent's, he became extremely proficient on the banjo and gained an interest for playing the piano. After Joplin's parents purchased a piano for the family, he taught himself how to play the instrument so well that his piano playing became remarkable. Joplin soon began playing for church and local social events. By age eleven, while under the teachings of a German music teacher named Juliuss Weiss, Joplin was learning the finer points of harmony and style. As a teenager, he played well enough to be employed as a dance musician.
John Adams was born in Braintree, what is now Quincy, Massachusetts, on October 30, 1735. His father was a farmer, a deacon of the First Parish of Braintree, and a militia officer. John's mother came from a leading family of Brookline and Boston merchants and physicians. John studied hard in the village school. He was twenty three years old when he graduated from Harvard in the class of 1755. He began to practice law in Braintree in 1758. John and Abigail first met in 1759.
Anderson had a very strong musical education. At age eleven he began piano lessons and music studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Cambridge. At his high school graduation from the Cambridge High and Latin School, Anderson composed, orchestrated, and conducted his class song. In 1925 he entered Harvard College. While at Harvard he studied musical harmony with Walter Spalding, counterpoint with Edward Ballantine, canon and fugue with William C. Heilman, and orchestration with Edward B. Hill and Walter Piston. Between 1926 and 1929 he played trombone for the Harvard University Band. He eventually became the director of the Harvard University Band for four years. In 1929 Anderson received a B.A. magna cum laude in Music from Harvard. The magna cum laude is the next-to-highest of three special honors for grades above the average. He was also elected into Phi Beta Kappa. Anderson continued into graduate school at Harvard. In 1930, he earned an M.A. with a major in music. He began studying composition with Walter Piston and Georges Enesco; organ with Henry Gideon and double bass with Gaston Dufresne of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As well as his studies in music, he continued for his PhD in German and Scandinavian languages. He ultimately mastered Danish, Norwegian, Icel...
... previous jobs to convey a welcoming and educational message in his work. He makes his art clear, educational, and unconventional to express his individuality and help children in their development. Had it not been for his first couple of jobs, the teacher that showed him the banned painting, and his love for children he probably would not be the memorable artist that he is today.
The second child of Jarvis W. Rockwell and his wife Nancy, Norman Perceval Rockwell was born in the famous New York City. In his summers he enjoyed life on the countryside, which made a profound impact on his art.
piano. Sometimes he put this knowledge to use and played at a few of the
He did well when it came to playing different instruments. His favorite musician was Beethoven. He played a violin that he found with two strings at Pershing Square in Los Angeles. He was a man of many talents when it came to playing instruments. He was diagnosed with Schizophrenia when he was in college and he started to hear voices and it took over his life as evidence by him dropping out of college and becoming homeless. Nathaniel played any instrument that he could find. He found instruments such as the violin, trumpet, and cello and transported them in his shopping cart.
Most of Gershwin's early childhood was spent playing sports, which he was good at, and it interested him. It wasn't until Gershwin was 12 years old when he first felt his calling as a musician. It all started when his family purchased an upright piano and Gershwin quickly learned to play it. Uninterested in his regular academic studies, Gershwin focused primarily on studying the theory of music and harmony. Gershwin never even completed high school. Continuing his musical studies with a composer named Henry Conwell and music theorist Joseph Schillinger, Gershwin's ability to play and compose music rose remarkably.
The son of Jewish immigrants and the youngest of five children, Aaron, grew up above his parent’s successful Brooklyn, New York department store. He credited his business abilities to his experience helping to run his parents store. His sister, Laurine, introduced young Aaron to ragtime, opera and was his first piano teacher. At the age of seven, he was making up tunes at the piano and was notating short pieces at twelve years old. Aaron’s first formal piano lessons were under the instruction of Leopold Wolfsohn (1913-17) and later he studied under Victor Wittgenstein (1917-19) and Clarence Adler (1919-21) (Pollack, 1:Life). However, lessons in composition and music theory were under the tutelage of Rubin Goldmark, “an old-fashioned teacher...against whom Copland rebelled” (naxos.com). During this time, Aaron was enamored with Scriabin, Debussy and Ives (which Goldmark called “dangerous”) and he scoured New York’s public libraries for the latest American and European scores. Finally, Aaron’s dream of studying in Paris came to fruition (1921-4) taking piano instruction from Ricardo Vines and studying composi...
Franz began to compose at the age of eight. When only nine he made his first public appearance as a concert pianist. His playing so impressed the local Hungarian magnates that they put up the money to pay for his musical education for the next six years. Liszt’s father obtained leave of absence from his post and took Franz to Vienna. He gave several concerts in Vienna, with great success.
As a young boy, Gershwin learned all of his early music education from friend Maxie Rosenzweig. When Gershwin was twelve years old, his parents purchased a piano for his brother Ira, but, soon enough, Gershwin became the primary user of the family piano. After learning basic piano from a local instructor, Gershwin began lessons with Charles Hambitzer for regular piano and Edward Kilenyi for music theory. All of his teachers noticed his uncanny ability to play piano with amazing skill as well as sight reading with apparent ease.
For the rest of his life, Cage created music. He took piano lessons again for a few years from several different composers, but gave up after awhile because he had no sense of harmony. It was at this point in his career that he was drawn to percussion instrumen...
Like many famous composers from the time, Franz was raised as a child prodigy. His father who was an amateur composer taught him at first. When he was nine, he appeared in several concerts, which in wealthy people would often want to sponsor Franz. Even though he went to these concerts, he had been composing dance he was only eight years old, and he had been playing the piano since he was seven!
My little brother is an excellent musician. He quickly learned to play complicated pieces on the piano within a very short time of starting classes in high school. He has been in choir
by his aunt Mimi after his parents divorced. He attended an art school after doing very poorly in all