#1751
Eileen Cheng-yin Chow
Eileen Chengyin Chow is a sinologist, Chinese translator and University Teacher. She works for the Duke University and for the Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan. She graduated in Literature from Harvard University and studied her Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Together with Carlos Rojas, in 2009 she translated to English Brothers, the longest novel written by the Chinese novelist Yu Hua. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and was awarded France's Prix Courrier International in 2008.
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Adele Marcus
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Adele Marcus was an American pianist and instructor whose career was based at the Juilliard School in New York City. Life and career Marcus was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest of 13 children of a rabbi and his wife, who were of Russian descent. When the family moved to Los Angeles, Marcus and her sister Rosamund formed a piano duo, locally known as the Two Prodigies, and were the students of Desider Josef Vecsei and Alexis Kall. She later studied under Josef Lhévinne and Artur Schnabel in New York City. After winning the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation Award in 1928, she made a series of solo recital debuts in Chicago, San Francisco and New York City.
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Ingeborg Hallstein
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ingeborg Hallstein is a German coloratura soprano, known for the purity and range of her voice. She had an international career as a guest singer on the opera houses of Europe and was a member of the Bavarian State Opera from 1961 to 1973. Her signature roles were the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. She created roles including Scolatella in Henze's König Hirsch.
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Kate Walsh
1983 - Present (43 years)
Kate Walsh is an English singer from Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, England. A graduate of the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, she released her first album, Clocktower Park , in 2003 by Kitchenware Records. The album was named for a meeting place in her home town. In 2007, she released her second album, Tim's House. It quickly became the No. 1 album on the UK iTunes Store. The album also features her most popular song, "Your Song". She gained iTunes customers' attention when her song Talk of the Town became the iTunes Free Single of the Week from the week beginning 20 March 2007.
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Ineke Crezee
1950 - Present (76 years)
Hendrika Martine Crezee , known as Ineke Crezee, is a New Zealand linguist. She is a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology, specialising in healthcare interpreting and in the education of interpreters and translators.
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Lubka Kolessa
1902 - 1997 (95 years)
Lubka Oleksandrivna Kolessa was a classical pianist and professor of piano. Biography Education The Kolessa family was a prominent Ukrainian intellectual family living in Lemburg, Austro-Hungarian Empire, which treated music very seriously. The family included a number of professional composers and performers. Her uncle Filaret Kolessa was a noted ethnomusicologist devoted to the research of Ukrainian folk music. Her cousin Mykola Kolessa was a prominent Ukrainian composer and conductor. Chrystia Kolessa, Lubka's sister, was an illustrious cellist.
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Emma Lou Diemer
1927 - Present (99 years)
Emma Lou Diemer is an American composer. Diemer has written many works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, keyboard, voice, chorus, and electronic media. Diemer is a keyboard performer and over the years has given concerts of her own organ works at Washington National Cathedral, The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, Grace Cathedral and St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, and others.
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Chinyere Stella Okunna
Chinyere Stella Okunna is the first female professor in Mass communication in Nigeria. She has served in various capacities as an administrator and educationist in the academia and in the public/political arena. Chinyere Stella Okunna research interest is in the area of communication for development, particularly women’s development from the perspective of women and the media. She has done considerable work on the role of the media in the effort to empower Nigerian women and improve their condition and status in the patriarchal male-dominated Nigerian society.
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Ana Chumachenco
1945 - Present (81 years)
Ana Chumachenco is an Italian born violinist of Argentinian, Ukrainian, and German descent. Biography Ana Chumachenco was born in Padova, Italy, on 23 June 1945. From the age of four, Chumachenco practiced violin under the guidance of her father, a former student of Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer. She completed her studies in Buenos Aires under Ljerko Spiller and, until the age of 17, lived in South America. In 1963 at the age of 18, Ana moved to Europe where she would continue her violin studies and, in the same year, won the gold medal of the Carl Flesch Competition in London. Chumachenco ...
Go to ProfileRobin M. Gee is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. She serves on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as a professor of dance in the UNCG College of Visual and Performing Arts and was the founding faculty advisor for Delta Chi Xi Honorary Dance Fraternity, Inc.
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Delores Ziegler
1951 - Present (75 years)
Delores Ziegler is an American mezzo-soprano who has had an active international performance career since the late 1970s. A former resident artist at the Cologne Opera, she has performed leading roles with many of the world's best opera houses, including La Scala, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. She is currently a professor of voice at the University of Maryland. While she has performed a broad repertoire, she is widely admired for her performances in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss; particularly Ch...
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Maria Stader
1911 - 1999 (88 years)
Maria Stader was a Hungarian-born Swiss lyric soprano, known particularly for her Mozart interpretations. Biography Stader was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, on November 5, 1911, as Maria Molnár. During and after World War I, the price of food in Budapest was so high that it was difficult for her parents to support their five children. Maria and her younger sister, Elisabeth, were taken to Switzerland by The Salvation Army to recuperate for three months after being diagnosed with malnutrition. There, Maria's foster parents requested she stay for a full nine months. However, once in Budape...
Go to ProfileKaren Dreyfus is a violist who currently teaches at the USC Thornton School of Music. Ms. Dreyfus has distinguished herself as a recipient of many prizes, including the Naumburg Viola Competition , the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition , the Washington International Competition , and the Hudson Valley Competition . Ms. Dreyfus has concertized extensively in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America.
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Midori Suzuki
1941 - 2006 (65 years)
Midori Suzuki was a Japanese media educator, feminist and media researcher. She was professor of Media Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto from 1994 until her death.
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Dorothy DeBorba
1925 - 2010 (85 years)
Dorothy Adele DeBorba was an American child actress of Portuguese descent who was a regular in the Our Gang series of short subjects as the leading lady from 1930 to 1933. Early life Dorothy Adelle DeBorba was raised in Livermore, California. Of Portuguese Azorean ancestry, she came from a show business background. Her mother was a singer-dancer-actress, and her father was a drummer in Paul Whiteman's band.
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Ursula Mamlok
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Ursula Mamlok was a German-born American composer and teacher. Education and influences Mamlok was born as Ursula Meyer in Berlin, Germany, into a Jewish family, and studied piano and composition with Professor Gustav Ernest and Emily Weissgerber until her family fled Nazi Germany following the nationwide pogrom in 1938.
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Violet Archer
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Violet Louise Archer was a Canadian composer, teacher, pianist, organist, and percussionist. Born Violet Balestreri in Montreal, Quebec, in 1913, her family changed their name to Archer in 1940. She died in Ottawa on 21 February 2000.
Go to ProfileElaine Chew is an operations researcher and pianist focused on the study of musical structures as they apply to musical performance, composition and cognition, the analysis of electrocardiographic traces of arrhythmia, and digital therapeutics. She is currently Professor of Engineering at King's College London, where she is jointly appointed in the Department of Engineering and the Department of Cardiovascular Imaging in the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences .
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Kate Williams
1941 - Present (85 years)
Kate Williams is an English actress best known for playing Joan Booth in Love Thy Neighbour and Liz Turner in EastEnders . She has also played Dorothy Burgess in May to December , Myra Costello in Family Affairs and Auntie Vera in Birds of a Feather as well as roles in the films Holiday on the Buses and Quadrophenia .
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Renee Tajima-Peña
1958 - Present (68 years)
Renee Tajima-Peña is an American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, Labor Women and the 5-part docuseries Asian Americans.
Go to ProfileRita Reed is an American photojournalist and professor. She is currently a University of Missouri journalism professor, where has held the O.O. McIntyre Professorship in 2014. She is also known as the author of Growing Up Gay: The Sorrows and Joys of Gay and Lesbian Adolescence.
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Mignon Dunn
1931 - Present (95 years)
Mignon Dunn is an American dramatic mezzo-soprano and voice teacher. Life and career Born in Memphis, Dunn grew up in Tyronza, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee. She studied voice with Karin Branzell and Beverley Peck Johnson. She made her official debut, in the title role of Carmen, on September 8, 1955.
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Susan Starr
1942 - Present (84 years)
Susan Starr is an American pianist. Career Susan began her studies with Eleanor Sokoloff at age four. Starr began her studies at the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of seven where she studied with Rudolf Serkin from the age of thirteen until her graduation in 1961, and was one of the youngest pianists to have studied at the institute. She was a Silver Medalist at the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition.
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Yaba Badoe
1955 - Present (71 years)
Yaba Badoe is a Ghanaian-British documentary filmmaker, journalist and author. Career Yaba Badoe was born in Tamale, northern Ghana. She left Ghana to be educated in Britain at a very young age. A graduate of King's College, Cambridge, Badoe worked as a civil servant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ghana, before beginning her career in journalism as a trainee at the BBC. She also was a researcher at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and has worked as a producer and director making documentaries for the main television channels in Britain.
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Shirley Scott
1934 - 2002 (68 years)
Shirley Scott was an American jazz organist. Her music was noted for its mixture of bebop, blues and gospel elements. She was known by the nickname "Queen of the Organ". Life and career Scott was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father operated a jazz club in the basement of the family home and her brother played Saxophone. At the age of eight, Scott began piano lessons. After enrolling at Philadelphia High School for Girls, where she was awarded a scholarship, Scott switched to trumpet and played in the all-city schools band.
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Sharon Isbin
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sharon Isbin is a classical guitarist and the founding director of the guitar department at the Juilliard School. Personal life and education Sharon Isbin was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attorney Katherine Brudnoy and Herbert S. Isbin, a nuclear scientist and professor at the University of Minnesota. She began her guitar studies at age nine with Aldo Minella in Varese, Italy. She later studied with Jeffrey Van, Sophocles Papas, Andrés Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Díaz and for ten years with the noted keyboard artist and Bach scholar Rosalyn Tureck. Isbin collaborated with Tureck in p...
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Vanessa Williams
1963 - Present (63 years)
Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American singer, actress, model, producer, and dancer. She gained recognition as the first African-American woman to receive the Miss America title when she was crowned Miss America 1984, but resigned her title amid a media controversy surrounding nude photographs of her being published in Penthouse magazine. Thirty-two years later, Williams was offered a public apology during the Miss America 2016 pageant for the events.
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Mireya Cueto
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Mireya Cueto was a Mexican puppeteer, writer and dramaturg. She was also co-founder of the national marionette museum Museo Nacional de Títeres in Huamantla, Tlaxcala. Biography Cueto, born on February 3, 1922, in Mexico City, is one of two daughters of artists Lola and Gérman, who were also well-known puppeteers.
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Mandana Seyfeddinipur
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mandana Seyfeddinipur is a linguist, author, and educator. She is also the Head of the Endangered Languages Archive. Early life and education Seyfeddinipur grew up in Germany. She studied linguistics and Persian studies at the Free University of Berlin and graduated with a Master's degree. She received her doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen from 2000 to 2005. Her dissertation was entitled Disfluency: Interrupting speech and gesture. She then worked as a Marie Curie postdoctoral work Stanford University from 2006 to 2009.
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Edda Moser
1938 - Present (88 years)
Edda Moser is a German operatic soprano. She was particularly well known for her interpretations of music by Mozart. Her 1973 recital LP received the Grand Prix du Disque. Life and career Moser was born in Berlin, the daughter of the musicologist Hans Joachim Moser. She is aunt to cellist Johannes Moser and pianist Benjamin Moser. She studied at the Stern Conservatory with Hermann Weißenborn and Gerty König and made her debut as Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1962. After singing in the Würzburg Opera Chorus from 1962 until 1963, she sang at the opera houses in Hagen, Bielefeld, Hamburg and Frankfurt, before joining the Vienna State Opera in 1971.
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Malvina Major
1943 - Present (83 years)
Dame Malvina Lorraine Major is a New Zealand opera soprano. Early life and family Major was born in Hamilton on 28 January 1943, the daughter of Vincent and Eva Major. She grew up in a large musical family, and as a child she performed at various concerts, singing mainly country and western pop and music from the shows. She received her first classical training in 1955, from Sister Mary Magdalen at Ngāruawāhia, north of Hamilton. Sister Febronie continued with her voice training and Sister Liguori gave her piano tuition. As her potential blossomed, Major began travelling weekly to Ponsonby in Auckland, where she received further tuition from Dame Sister Mary Leo at St Mary's College.
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Catherine O. Ringen
1943 - Present (83 years)
Catherine Ringen is an American phonologist and professor emerita of linguistics at the University of Iowa. She is best known for her research on vowel harmony, especially in Finno-Ugric languages, and on laryngeal contrasts in obstruents, in particular in Germanic languages.
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Mylène Farmer
1961 - Present (65 years)
Mylène Jeanne Gautier , known professionally as Mylène Farmer , is a French singer, lyricist, writer, and entrepreneur. Having sold more than 30 million records worldwide, she is among the most successful recording artists of all time in France, where she holds the record for the most number one hit singles, with twenty-one – eight of which were consecutive.
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Carla Kihlstedt
1971 - Present (55 years)
Carla Kihlstedt is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod. She is a founding member of Tin Hat Trio , Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Book of Knots, Causing a Tiger, and Rabbit Rabbit. Other musical projects include 2 Foot Yard, Charming Hostess and Minamo . She is a recognized classical composer who has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble , has worked occasionally on projects with Tom Waits, John Zorn, and Fred Frith, and recorded numerous albums as a guest or session musician.
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Elizabeth Gilels
1919 - 2008 (89 years)
Elizabeth Gilels was a Soviet violinist and professor. Biography Elizabeth Gilels was born on the 30th of September 1919 in Odessa into a Jewish family. Her father, Grigory Gilels, was a clerk at a sugar refinery, and her mother, Gesya Gilels, was a housewife. Gilels had multiple siblings, including children from previous marriages, by both of her parents. Despite not being directly connected to the music scene, the family would include two musicians: Emil Gilels and Elizabeth.
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Urmi Desai
1938 - Present (88 years)
Urmi Ghanshyam Desai is a Gujarati writer and linguist from Gujarat, India. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017 for her critical work Gujarati Vyakaran Na Baso Varsh . She was born on 5 April 1938 in Mumbai to her mother, Rambhabahen, and her father, Kameshwar Vyas. Her family originates from Chorvad. After matriculation in 1955, she completed her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees on Gujarati and Sanskrit subjects. She received her PhD in 1967 under the supervision of Harivallabh Bhayani for her research work Gujarati Bhashana Angasadhak Pratyayo. In 1969, she completed her Diploma in Linguistics.
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Vikki Carr
1941 - Present (85 years)
Florencia Vicenta de Casillas-Martínez Cardona , known by her stage name Vikki Carr, is an American vocalist. She has a singing career that spans more than five decades. Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican parents, she has performed in a variety of musical genres, including pop, jazz and country, while her greatest success has come from singing in Spanish. She established the Vikki Carr Scholarship Foundation in 1971. Vikki Carr has won three Grammys and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 at the 9th Annual Latin Grammy Awards.
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Harolyn Blackwell
1955 - Present (71 years)
Harolyn Blackwell is an American lyric coloratura soprano who has performed in many of the world's finest opera houses, concert halls, and theaters in operas, oratorios, recitals, and Broadway musicals. Initially known for her work within musical theater during the early 1980s, Blackwell moved into the field of opera and by 1987 had established herself as an artist within the soubrette repertoire in many major opera houses both in the United States and in Europe. Feeling that she was being "type cast" into one particular kind of role, Blackwell strove to establish herself within the lyric coloratura repertoire beginning in the mid-1990s.
Go to ProfileYoon Kwon is a South Korean-born American violinist and member of the first violins section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Life and career Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kwon began her studies at the age of three, initially studying piano under the tutelage of her mother. At the age of six, she began studying violin, was quickly recognized as a Child prodigy and was accepted into Juilliard two years later at the age of 8. There, she studied with Dorothy DeLay. In 1997, she was the youngest winner of the Juilliard School Concerto Competition, which resulted in her Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center debut that year.
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Apo Hsu
2000 - Present (26 years)
Apo Hsu or Hsu Ching-hsin is a conductor born in Taiwan and resident of both Taiwan and the United States. Hsu served as music director of the National Taiwan Normal University Symphony Orchestra and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra in Springfield, Missouri. Her past appointments include serving as artistic director of The Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco, California, and conductor of the Oregon Mozart Players in Eugene, Oregon. She has been a mentor for many young conductors on both sides of the world through her work at NTNU and at The Conductor's Institute at Bard College in New York.
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Stefania Serafin
1973 - Present (53 years)
Stefania Serafin is a professor at the Department of Architecture, Design and Media technology at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. Education Stefania Serafin completed her master's degree in acoustics, computer science and signal processing applied to music, from IRCAM in 1997. Following, she received her PhD in computer-based music theory and acoustics from Stanford University in 2004.
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Melinda Wagner
1957 - Present (69 years)
Melinda Jane Wagner is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduates degrees from University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania. She also served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas and at the 'Bravo!' Vail Valley Music Festival. Some of her teachers included Richard Wernick, George Crumb, Shulamit Ran, and Jay Reise.
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Natalie Hemby
1977 - Present (49 years)
Natalie Nicole Hemby Wrucke is an American country music songwriter and singer. She has written songs for Lee Ann Womack, Eli Young Band, Toby Keith, Miranda Lambert, Sunny Sweeney, Little Big Town, Jon Pardi, Kacey Musgraves, Lauren Daigle, and Lady Gaga. In 2019, she joined the quartet The Highwomen alongside Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires and Maren Morris.
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Jane Powell
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Jane Powell was an American actress, singer, and dancer who first appeared in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals in the 1940s and 50s. With her soprano voice and girl-next-door image, Powell appeared in films, television and on the stage, performing in the musicals A Date with Judy , Royal Wedding , Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , and Hit the Deck .
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Laura Penny
1975 - Present (51 years)
Laura Penny is a Canadian academic and the author of the bestselling Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit, a study of the phenomenon of bullshit and its role in modern society. Penny was featured on 60 Minutes with Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt, author of the similarly themed treatise, On Bullshit. Penny is an occasional contributor to The Globe and Mail. She has also written for the National Post, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, and Toronto Life .
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María Isabel Siewers
1950 - Present (76 years)
María Isabel Siewers is an Argentine classical guitarist. A pupil of María Luisa Anido, her international performance career began after winning the 2nd Prize at the Concours International de Guitarre de Paris in 1974.
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Céline Marie Tabary
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Céline Marie Tabary was an artist and arts professor at Howard University who championed African-American art in 1940s Washington, D.C. She emigrated from France in 1938, teaching and working in Washington, D.C. through the 1950s, before returning to France. Tabary won the Landscape Prize in 1944 from the National Museum, Washington, D.C.
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Karen Tuttle
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Karen Tuttle was an American viola teacher, most famous for developing the Karen Tuttle Coordination Technique, which emphasizes being comfortable while playing the instrument. She began performing on violin at the age of sixteen before switching to viola in 1941. Tuttle actively performed and taught at a number of institutions until her retirement in 2005.
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Donna M. Brinton
1948 - Present (78 years)
Donna Mary Brinton is an American applied linguist, author, and global educational consultant on second language education. She is the daughter of Mary Mies Brinton and Robert K. Brinton and the sister of epidemiologist Louise A. Brinton and linguist Laurel J. Brinton.
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