Matthew James Bellamy (born 9 June 1978) is an English musician and composer, who is best known as the lead vocalist, guitarist, pianist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Muse.
Rihanna (born Robyn Rihanna Fenty; February 20, 1988) is a Barbadian singer, model and fashion designer. She is the second artist, and first female, from Barbados to have received a Grammy Award (the first being Jimmy Senya Haynes). Rihanna is currently signed to the Def Jam Recordings label. She has attained four Billboard Hot 100 number ones thus far (“SOS”, “Umbrella”, “Take a Bow”, and “Disturbia”), tying her with Mariah Carey and Beyoncé as the female solo artist with the most number ones this decade.
Rihanna came to fame in 2005 with the release of her debut album Music of the Sun, which featured her breakthrough single “Pon de Replay”. Less than a year later, Rihanna released A Girl Like Me and gave her first number one single, “SOS”. In 2007, Rihanna released her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad. The album has yielded six hit singles including five worldwide number one singles “Umbrella”, “Don’t Stop the Music” and “Take A Bow”. Since the release of her debut album, Rihanna has amassed eleven top 40 hit singles in the U.S.
Philip David Charles Collins, LVO (born 30 January 1951 Chiswick, London) is an English singer-songwriter, drummer and actor best known as the lead singer and drummer of English progressive rock group Genesis and as a Grammy and Academy Award-winning solo artist. He has also appeared in several films.
Collins sang the lead vocals on eight American chart-toppers between 1984 and 1989; seven as a solo artist and one with Genesis. His singles, often dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy “In the Air Tonight”, to the dance pop of “Sussudio”, to the political statements of his most successful song, “Another Day In Paradise”. His international popularity transformed Genesis from a progressive rock group to a regular on the pop charts and an early MTV mainstay. Collins’ professional career began as a drummer, first with obscure rock group Flaming Youth and then more famously with Genesis. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: “For Absent Friends” from 1971′s Nursery Cryme album and “More Fool Me” from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. On Gabriel’s departure in 1975, Collins became the group’s lead singer. As the decade closed, Genesis’s first international hit, “Follow You,
Follow Me”, demonstrated a drastic change from the band’s early years. His concurrent solo career, heavily influenced by his personal life, brought both him and Genesis commercial success. According to Atlantic Records, Collins’ total worldwide sales as a solo artist, as of 2002, were 150 million.
Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945 in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American pianist and composer.
His career started with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in both classical music and jazz, as a group leader and a solo performer. His improvisation technique combines not only jazz, but also other forms of music, especially classical, gospel, blues and ethnic folk music.
In 2003 he received the Polar Music Prize, being the first (and to this day only) recipient not sharing the prize with anyone else.
Guillaume Yann Tiersen (born 23 June 1970) is a French musician and composer known internationally for composing the score to the Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie Amélie. His music is recognized by its use of a large variety of instruments in relatively minimalist compositions, often with a touch of either European classical music or French folk music, using primarily the piano, accordion or violin together with instruments like the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, ondes martenot, harpsichord and typewriter. His musical style is reminiscent of Frédéric Chopin, Erik Satie, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman.
Avril Lavigne Whibley (born September 27, 1984), better known by her birth name of Avril Lavigne, is a Canadian Grammy award-nominated rock singer, musician, fashion designer and actress. In 2006, Canadian Business Magazine ranked her the seventh most powerful Canadian in Hollywood.
Lavigne’s debut album, Let Go, was released in 2002. Over 16 million copies were sold worldwide and it was certified six times platinum in the United States. Her second and third albums, Under My Skin (2004) sold over 8 million copies and The Best Damn Thing (2007) currently over 6 million copies sold respectively, reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. Lavigne has scored six number one songs worldwide to date and a total of eleven top ten hits, including “Complicated”, “Sk8er Boi”, “I’m With You”, “My Happy Ending”, and “Girlfriend” which became #1 hits in the ARC Top 40. In December 2007, Lavigne was ranked at #7 in the Forbes “Top 20 Earners Under 25″, with an annual earnings of $12 million. Currently, Avril Lavigne has sold about 30 million albums worldwide.
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678 â July 28, 1741), nicknamed il Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”), was a Venetian priest and Baroque music composer, as well as a famous virtuoso violinist; he was born and raised in the Republic of Venice. The Four Seasons, a series of four violin concerti, is his best-known work and a highly popular Baroque piece.
Many of Vivaldi’s compositions reflect a flamboyant, almost playful, exuberance. Most of Vivaldi’s repertoire was rediscovered only in the first half of the 20th century in Turin and Genoa and was published in the second half. Vivaldi’s music is innovative, breaking a consolidated tradition in schemes; he gave brightness to the formal and the rhythmic structure of the concerto, repeatedly looking for harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes. Moreover, Vivaldi was able to compose nonacademic music, particularly meant to be appreciated by the wide public and not only by an intellectual minority. The joyful appearance of his music reveals in this regard a transmissible joy of composing; these are among the causes of the vast popularity of his music. This popularity soon made him famous in other countries such as France which was, at the time, very independent concerning its musical taste.
Vivaldi is considered one of the composers who brought Baroque music (with its typical contrast among heavy sonorities) to evolve into a classical style. Johann Sebastian Bach was deeply influenced by Vivaldi’s concertos and arias (recalled in his Johannes Passion, Matthäuspassion, and cantatas). Bach transcribed a number of Vivaldi’s concerti for solo keyboard, along with a number for orchestra, including the famous Concerto for Four Violins and Violoncello, Strings and Continuo (RV 580).
Nightwish is a Finnish rock quintet, formed in 1996 in the town of Kitee, Finland. Nightwish is considered one of the bands responsible for the development and rise in popularity of symphonic metal at the end of the 1990s, as well as the creation of the subgenre symphonic power metal.
Although they have been prominent in their home country since the release of their first single, âThe Carpenterâ (1997) and debut album Angels Fall First, they did not achieve worldwide fame until the release of the albums Oceanborn, Wishmaster and Century Child, which were released in 1998, 2000 and 2002 respectively. Their 2004 album, Once, which was sold over than 4 million copies, led to Nightwish video clips being shown on MTV in the United States and inclusion of their music in U.S. movie soundtracks. Their biggest U.S. hit single, âWish I Had an Angelâ (2004), made it onto three U.S. film soundtracks as a means to promote their North American tour. The band produced three more singles and two music videos for the album, as well as âSleeping Sunâ, from the 2005 âbest ofâ compilation album, Highest Hopes, prior to vocalist Tarja Turunenâs dismissal.
In May 2007, former Alyson Avenue frontwoman, Swede Anette Olzon, was revealed as Turunenâs replacement, and in the autumn, the band released a new album Dark Passion Play, which was sold over 2 million copies. A tour supporting the album is currently in progress.
Jason Thomas Mraz (born June 23, 1977) is a singer-songwriter, born and raised in Mechanicsville, Hanover County, Virginia, a suburb of Richmond.
Mraz is an eclectic artist with multiple and varied stylistic influences, including pop, rock, folk, jazz, and hip hop. He has played with various artists, including The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews Band, James Blunt, Gavin DeGraw, Paula Cole, John Popper, Alanis Morissette, The Ohio Players, Rachael Yamagata, James Morrison, Jewel and Colbie Caillat.
Damien Rice (born December 7, 1973) is an Irish folk singer. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, to George and Maureen Rice and was raised in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. He is also a distant relative of the famous Dubliner Katharine Rice.
He has released five albums: O, B-Sides, 9, Live At Fingerprints Warts & All, and Live from the Union Chapel.
Thanks to David Arnold, his second cousin, Rice was able to record O, which was released in 2003. O was dedicated to fellow Irish musician Mic Christopher. The album was a strong commercial success and won the Shortlist Music Prize.
Three years later, following extensive promotion of O in Ireland and further commercial success worldwide, Rice released his second studio album 9 in 2006. The album was recorded in 2004 and 2005, and released on November 3 in Ireland, on November 6 in Europe and the rest of the world and lastly on November 14 in North America.
