Louis Zamperini

Count Basie, an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer, was born on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey as William Basie. He is considered one of the best bandleaders of all time and changed the entire jazz landscape. He also shaped the mid 20th century pop music and earned the title “King of Swing”. Both of his parents, Harvey and Lillian Basie, were musicians. He started piano at a very early age with his mother giving him his first lessons and played the drums in his…

Have you ever thought about living with mountain gorillas for eighteen years? I would never have thought to do that, but a lady named Dian Fossey did. She was a zoologist and an amazing woman who studied mountain gorillas and even lived with them for a long time. She studied how they acted towards humans and each other. Her main goal was to protect them. Dian Fossey was born on January 16,1932 in San Francisco, California. Her parents divorced when she was three years old due to her father's…

The music of John Scofield, a technically skilled and emotionally consistent guitarist, doesn’t confine itself to just one style. His salutary versatility and originality have been noticeable throughout a successful career that spans more than 40 years, addressing styles such as jazz, funk, rock, M-base, post-bop, and fusion with the same unquestionable quality. After last year’s “Past Present”, a Grammy-winning masterpiece of original works, Scofield releases “Country for Old Men”, an album…

Shiyao Anna Luo MUS Z315 Music for Film The Graduate Viewing Assignment Part I: Generally, the uses of non-diegetic popular songs make up the majority part of film music in this film. I think those pop songs serve more like foreground music and instrumental ones is more likely to be background music. There are fewer time that non-diegetic instrumental music can be found in this film; however, there are some diegetic instrumental music which occurs at the time when Ben is at the bar of the…

Acknowledged as original and creative, the experimental vocalist/composer/dancer, Jen Shyu, meritoriously earned the trust of groundbreaking jazz luminaries such as Steve Coleman and Anthony Braxton. Born in Illinois to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, the New-York based singer brings her musical heritage and other multi-cultural influences into nine original compositions, which she calls doors (to other worlds). Although heavily steeped in the world music genre, her work also…

What a Wonderful World On August 4th, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana; one of the most influential jazz artist was born, not only was he a musician, he was a trumpeter, bandleader, singer, soloist, film star, and a comedian. Louis Armstrong, known for many of his popular songs such as What a Wonderful World. Being born and raised in such a bad area of New Orleans its’ nickname was “The Battlefield”, as well as an rough childhood. His father left soon after he was born, his mother was a…

According to Comolli and Narboni, the notion of category e films refers to an ideology that is firmly established at a starting point; the spectator must know that the film is sending the signal that a particular prevailing ideology is considered the “norm” or the order of things. The spectator has to literally disregard a sector of films in which consciousness of the ideology is elicited in a way that renders it in a straightforward fashion. Then, as the film progresses, the spectator notices…

When choosing a film to write about, I selected the movie Holes since it was a movie very familiar to me and something I used to enjoy watching as a child. Holes, released in April 18, 2003, is a film written about a young boy, Stanley Yelnats IV, who was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, due to his bad luck and 100-year-old family curse. Having been falsely accused of stealing a famous baseball player’s cleats, Stanley was forced to go to court and instead of being sentenced to…

In the late 19th century, another famous American architect — Franck Lloyd Wright, who was an employee of Sullivan’s studio, inherited Sullivan’s idea about relationship between form and function. Wright thinks that architecture should be loyal to not only structure and purpose of itself, but also time, site, and the environment. Based on the idea of organic architecture, combining his practice in “Prairie Style,” Wright had further developed Sullivan’s idea forward it to a more throughout…

Jazz is known as one of the most influential forms of music in the history of the United States. Jazz began when one of the most historical wars, World War I, had just ended. It has many origins, from New Orleans to Kansas City to Memphis. New Orleans is the main center from where many of the influential pieces and origins were located. A big part of the development of jazz came from a lot of people who went to many bars and warehouses. What had made jazz be seen as a different perspective of…