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.
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.
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.
...sion of more city-like features like highways and billboards that are not needed. Although he constantly fought for the preservation of nature, he treated people who disagreed with him with “respect and courtesy” (Turnage). He was a man that fought for what he believed in and made a huge difference in the photography field by playing a role in establishing the first photography department in a museum, more specifically the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Turnage). Ansel Adams has changed the vision of landscape photography and will always be known and admired for the work he did.
Carle had a happy childhood in America. However, he moved to Germany with his parents when he was six years old and attended the prestigious art school Akademie der Bildenden Künste. In 1952 he moved back to New York to return to the happy place where he grew up. He was then recruited as a graphic designer by The New York Times before he was enrolled as a mail clerk in the Korean War. Once he returned, he worked as the art director for an advertising agency (“Eric Carle”).
In 1911, Rockwell illustrated his first book, “Tell Me Why Stories”. Two Years later he contributed to “Boys Life”, He soon became art director of the magazine. Commissions for other children’s magazines, among them “St. Nicholas”, “Youths Companion” and “American Boys”, soon followed. In 1915, Rockwell moved to New Rochelle, New York, home to many of America’s finest Illustrators. He studied the work of older illustrators while painting crisply, painted renditions of fresh-faced kids and dogs.
As duke’s piano lessons faded into the past, Duke began to show an interest for the artistic. Duke went to Armstrong Manual Tra...
piano. Sometimes he put this knowledge to use and played at a few of the
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...
Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany on March 8, 1945. In later years he became one of the most prominent figures in the Neo-Expressionist art movement. He studied law at the University of Freiburg until 1966. In 1966 he became an artist and was a student of Joseph Beuys who is another German artist (Safra pg.139).
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...
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!
by his aunt Mimi after his parents divorced. He attended an art school after doing very poorly in all
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