Pengwern was a Brythonic settlement of sub-Roman Britain situated in what is now the English county of Shropshire, adjoining the modern Welsh border. It is regarded as possibly being the early seat of the kings of Powys before its establishment at Mathrafal, further west, but the theory that it was an early kingdom (or a sub-kingdom of Powys itself) has also been postulated. Its precise location is uncertain.

History and legend
Nothing is known about the foundation of Pengwern, although according to Welsh tradition it was part of the Welsh kingdom of Powys in the early Middle Ages. Early Powys, much larger in extent than the later medieval kingdom, seems to have roughly coincided with the territory of the Celtic Cornovii tribe, whose civitas under Roman rule (capital or administrative centre) was Viroconium Cornoviorum (now Wroxeter), replacing a fort located on the Wrekin, which was abandoned. Once the Roman legions left the area, Viroconium Cornoviorum had taken control of governing. However, the surrounding pagus (possibly multiple) may have revolted against the rule of Viroconium Cornoviorum, establishing a separate centre of power, which would become Powys. Between 530 and 550, Viroconium Cornoviorum, like many other Roman urban sites and villas in Britain at the time, was abandoned, possibly eventually developing into part of the royal court of Llys Pengwern.

The exploits of Cynddylan, as imagined around the 9th century, are told in the Old Welsh Canu Heledd (a cycle of poems named after Cynddylan's sister), possibly dating from the 9th century but not recorded until later, and this material situates Cynddylan's seat at Pengwern. These relate to a further cycle of heroic and elegiac poetry concerning early Powys and the Hen Ogledd known as Canu Llywarch Hen.

Possible locations
A number of places still identifiable in the Shropshire landscape today are mentioned alongside Pengwern in this poetry. The exact location of Llys Pengwern — the Court of Pengwern — is not known, and the problem is compounded by the fact that several other Pengwerns exist in Wales (e.g. near Denbigh in north Wales). A tradition, recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis in the late 12th century, associates it with the site of modern Shrewsbury (although that town has been known as Amwythig in Welsh since the Middle Ages). A number of alternative locations have been proposed. A more recent suggestion is the Berth, a dramatic hillfort at Baschurch, but the archaeological evidence shows only the Iron Age fort with possible Roman reuse. Wroxeter, the former Roman town of Viroconium Cornoviorum, is near these places. Archaeological evidence suggests that the settlement at Wroxeter continued after the Roman withdrawal, and was only finally abandoned in about 520, when it had become indefensible as the last vestiges of Romano-British central government broke down. A fort on the Wrekin, near Wroxeter, has also been suggested for this reason. Another theory is that the earthworks under Whittington Castle may be Pengwern.

Conflict with Northumbria
Cynddylan apparently joined forces with king Penda of Mercia to protect his realm, possibly also for personal reasons, as his brother Gwion had been killed defending during the Battle of Chester. (Fellow ally Selyf ap Cynan of Powys died as well, and it is unclear what happened to Powys afterwards, as mentions of their rulers became scarce for nearly a century.) Together they fought against the increasingly powerful Anglian kingdom of Northumbria at the Battle of Maes Cogwy (Oswestry) in 642. It was here that their mutual enemy, king Oswald, was slain. Regardless, this seems to have bought a period of peace until Penda's death, when a Northumbrian raiding party led by Oswald's brother Oswiu of Northumbria overran northern Mercia and, a bit later, Cynddylan's palace at Llys Pengwern in a surprise attack. Caught completely off guard and without defence, the royal family, including the king, were slaughtered, according to the poetry commemorating the tragedy, with the palace being burned to the ground, likely along with records. Princess Heledd was the only survivor and fled to western Powys. After this the region associated with Pengwern seems to have been shared between Mercia and Powys; part of it remained in Welsh hands until the reign of Offa of Mercia and the construction of his dyke. Part of it consisted of the Anglian sub-kingdom of the Magonsæte.

Later usage
In Shrewsbury there is the Pengwern Boat Club on the banks of the River Severn, opposite The Quarry park, as well as other shops and businesses that use the name.

References

Clancy, Joseph (1970), The Earliest Welsh Poetry
Remfry, P. M. Whittington Castle and the families of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, Peverel, Maminot, Powys and Fitz Warin ()
Williams, Ifor (1935) Canu Llywarch Hen

External links
 The Medieval Kingdom that was Erased from History

Kingdoms of Wales
History of Shropshire
History of Wales
History of Powys
Sub-Roman Britain

Pengwern


Jan Gerard Kemmerling (February 4, 1776 in Gulpen – January 15, 1818 in Heerlen) was mayor of Heerlen and Nieuwenhagen.

When the French arrived in Heerlen in 1795, Kemmerling sympathized with their ideas of Enlightenment and revolution. He became secretary at age 23 for the newly established French Canton Heerlen. In 1801 he also started to work as a notary, and in the same year became a member of the municipality. In 1805 he was made maire (French name for mayoral) of Heerlen, he was also the maire of Nieuwenhagen (till his death).

When the Prussians occupied Heerlen on July 13, 1814, he was successful in befriending them.  After Heerlen became a part of the new Kingdom of the Netherlands (May 12, 1815) he remained as mayor.

King Williem I rather had civil servants who were trained in modern administratorial duties under Napoleon then once not used to this.

Sources
www.heerlen.nl

1776 births
1818 deaths
Mayors of Heerlen
Mayors in Limburg (Netherlands)
People from Gulpen-Wittem

Jan Gerard Kemmerling


The Mississippi Valley is a place in North America.  It is part of the Mississippi River watershed, meaning that the rain that falls in the Mississippi Valley flows to the Mississippi River.  It is in the middle of what is today the mainland United States.

Geology

During the last glacial era, large walls of ice dropped sediment, which is rocks and dirt, onto the land.  This became sedimentary rock.  This rock is softer than the other two main types of rock.  Sedimentary rock forms in layers.  When the Mississippi River began to flow, it washed away parts of the rock.  So there are places in the northern valley with tall bluffs, places where the river water cut some of the rock away.  People can see the layers in the bluffs.  Some of them are 400 feet tall.  In the places where the ground was made of harder sedimentary rock, for example limestone and dolomite, the cliffs are steep.  In the places where the ground was made of softer sedimentary rock, for example shale and sandstone, the cliffs are gentle.

Other parts of the Mississippi Valley are flood plain.

People

Many Native Americans lived in the Mississippi Valley, including the Mississippian culture, which is named after the valley.  Many of these Native Americans practiced agriculture, meaning that they built farms and grew food.  Some of these Native Americans built large towns with earthworks and wooden fences and buildings.  But many of them caught European diseases and died.  By the time historians came to the towns, many of the buildings were gone.

The first Europeans to write about the Mississippi Valley was Hernando De Soto in 1541.

The Mississippi Valley became part of the United States in 1803.  This was the Louisiana Purchase.

References

Valleys
Geography of the United States

Mississippi Valley


The Lee style of tai chi (李氏太極拳) is closely related to a range of disciplines of Taoist Arts taught within the Lee style including Qigong, Daoyin, Ch'ang Ming, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Taoist alchemy, Feng Shou kung fu, and weapons practice. According to practitioners, it was first brought to the West in the 1930s by Chan Kam Lee and was subsequently popularized by Chee Soo who was the President of the International Taoist Society from 1958 until his death in 1994.
The Lee style of tai chi comprises two forms known as 'the dance' () and 'the form'. Other exercises include Yifu Shou or 'sticky hands', Whirling Hands, Whirling Arms, and various qi and Li development exercises.
Lee style t'ai chi is related to Martial Arts training, and there are five distinct areas of development that comprise the whole Art:
Physical
Mental
Breathing
Sheng Qi (生气; Internal energy)
Ching Sheng Li (精生力; External energy).

History
According to Chee Soo the Lee style is the only true Taoist art and the oldest form of tai chi in existence. It is derived from an original set of eight movements created by Ho-Hsieh Lee from Beijing at the beginning of the Western Zhou dynasty around 1000 BC. His family moved to a fishing village called Weihaiwei on the East coast of China in Shandong Province and settled there and practised a range of Taoist Arts. The techniques were passed on from one generation to the next and kept within the family until the last in their line, Chan Kam Lee, fled the war torn China of the 1930s and emigrated to London to establish a business in the jewel trade. Here he met and adopted a young orphan named Chee Soo, and he passed the techniques on to him as he had no children of his own.

In 1977 Chee Soo was interviewed by Brian Hayes on LBC radio and talked about Lee-style tai chi, and meeting his teacher Chan Kam Lee:
Chee Soo: It's rather curious, by a very strange coincidence, probably another Chinese fairy tale really. When I left Doctor Barnardo homes at fourteen years of age I became a page boy in Earl's Court in a nursing home, and I used to go over to Hyde Park and have a kick around on my day off on Sundays, and I happened to be playing with my ball when my ball actually hit the back of the head of a gentleman sitting on a park bench.

Interviewer: Who was doing these gentle movements.

Chee Soo: No he was sitting there, just sitting there very quietly, and I went over to retrieve my ball, and I came up to the front of him to apologise, and I saw he was Chinese, and we got talking and he was an importer/exporter, very much alone he had no family, and I was of course actually an orphan and having no family of my own, and the friendship gradually grew and grew, and till eventually in actual fact after many meetings he invited me to his club in Holborn, Red Lion Square, which he had a little club meeting three or four times a week, and from then on I practised under him almost continuously.

According to a British Movietone News documentary filmed on 21 May 1970 at Guildford in Surrey - UK, Chee Soo had over 2000 students studying Wu Shu in Britain as part of the British Wu Shu Association.

In 1976 a book about Lee-style tai chi written by Chee Soo was published entitled The Chinese Art of T'ai Chi Ch'uan which describes the history and philosophy of the style in detail including descriptions of each aspect of the Art with photographs and descriptions of the Lee-style tai chi form. Chee Soo  wrote several books about the various aspects of the Lee style Taoist Arts published by HarperCollins which became best-sellers and were subsequently licensed by HarperCollins to other major international publishers and translated into various languages including French (distributed in Canada, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal), German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Polish, and Indonesian.

According to an interview with Marilyn Soo - Chee Soo's widow and the President of the International Taoist Society - Chee Soo moved to Coventry in the 1980s and trained a group of teachers to continue his work teaching the Lee style Taoist Arts.

Since his death in August 1994 there are now several schools teaching the Lee-style tai chi based in the British Isles each of which emphasise different aspects of the Lee style Taoist Arts.

The emblem of the Lee family is the Seahorse which represents Yin within Yang as it is the only creature where the male incubates and gives birth to the offspring.

Qigong
Chee Soo's tai chi classes invariably included Qigong or energy cultivation, and Daoyin or breathing exercises. The Lee style qigong exercises are called K'ai Men (开门) or 'Open Door'. Chee Soo wrote a book in 1983 under the title Chinese Yoga (later re-titled "Taoist Yoga"), which was devoted entirely to this aspect of the Arts. This book contains details of Taoist alchemy energy cultivation methods involving deep breathing into the dantian or "Golden Stove" or "Lower Cauldron" in order to stimulate the flow of qi or internal energy, circulating it through various energy centres located along the meridians and vessels which are usually associated with acupuncture and known as the Microcosmic orbit. Various types of breathing exercises are described and categorized in terms of Yin and Yang breathing  and recommendations are given in terms of regulating the body in accordance with the peak of energy flowing through each organ and its corresponding line of meridian depending on the time of day and season of the year. There are also various recommendations for constant good health regarding the Chang Ming diet or Chinese food therapy based on the underlying principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
An important aspect of this style of qigong is that it not only deals with qi or internal energy but also teaches the practitioner to supplement their personal store of ch'i with energy drawn from the energy field of the Universe itself which Chee Soo called external energy or 'Ching Sheng Li' (jīng shēng lì 精生力).

Forms

The Lee style includes a number of forms comprising set sequences of movements.  These movements are based upon fourteen basic stances which are named after animal movements. These stances are also grouped into sequences with names like "Drive the Tiger Away" and "The Fair Lady Weaving". The movements can be performed at various speeds and may be timed with breathing. There are two forms, one known as the tai chi dance that is about 400 years old, and the tai chi form itself, known as 'The Form'. The etymology of the Chinese character wu (Wu 舞) suggests that the Lee-style tai chi dance may have its origins in Wu shamanism. The dance is 185 stances or steps long whereas the form is 140 stances split into 42 sequences.

Sticky Hands
The Lee style also includes various partner exercises for two or three people, the most important of which is called "sticky hands" (Yīfù shǒu 依附手). Two people stand opposite each other making contact on the back of the wrist and move in circles gently testing each other's balance. The emphasis is on sensitivity and yielding to force.
I Fu Shou is an exercise in which two people participate. Each person tries to upset the balance of the other whilst maintaining their own stability. Contact is through the arms and hands throughout the exercise. No matter what stance is adopted, there may always be a weakness in the balance of the body whether one moves left or right, backward or forward, upward or downward, and it is by taking advantage of these six directional weaknesses that the participants in I Fu Shou try to 'uproot' each other - to cause the other to lose their footing. The most difficult way to do this is to lift the other off the ground, but even this may be achieved provided that one has practiced diligently and developed a faultless technique.
A full description is available to read online on Chee Soo's publisher's website.

Self-defence
Whirling Arms and Whirling Hands are the two exercises in the Lee style of tai chi which are used to teach basic principles of self-defence.
Like I fou shou, Whirling Arms (Lun Pei) and Whirling Hands (Lun Shou) encourage the development of quick mental and physical reactions and a high level of sensitivity. Both are characterized, as their names suggest, by circular movements of the arms and hands.
The two arts include techniques to ward off, parry and deflect thrusts which may be made towards your body, and with constant practise you can develop the ability to recognize your partner's intentions before they are carried out. You will learn how to feel and exploit the weaknesses in their movements and postures, and in so doing you will come to understand your own weaknesses and develop greater concentration and awareness. You will build the foundations for a stronger balance, learn how to synchronize your body movements, and become much more sensitive and perceptive. In addition to all these, the control and utilization of your Ch'i energy plays a very big part in your practise.

Weapons

Taijijian
According to Master Chee Soo in his book about the Lee-style tai chi:
T'ai Chi sword makes full use of the combined techniques of Whirling Hands and Whirling Arms, but these are made more difficult by the weight and length of the sword. Greater mental concentration is required to retain complete control of the arms, wrists and hands, while maintaining perfect balance, especially in a few sequences where the body makes a complete whirl to demonstrate the 'order of the universe'....the 'Sword' form, which comprises 216 movements, has no straight lines

Tai Chi stick
Lee style tai chi stick comprises a form of 270 movements. The tai chi stick is a staff approximately six feet long.

References

Further reading
Chee Soo wrote six books about the Lee Style Taoist Arts

External links
 Tai Chi section on Chee Soo's publisher's Wiki

Tai chi styles
Neijia

Lee-style tai chi


Chapters is a double album compilation by Swedish progressive rock band Anekdoten, released in May 2009. The first disc contains the band's favourite tracks from their 3 latest albums, From Within, Gravity and A Time of Day. It also features the newly recorded track "When I Turn", a track originally written for the From Within album. The second disc focuses on the band's earlier years, including the very first Anekdoten track "Sad Rain", which previously only was available as bonus track on the Japanese version of Vemod, and demo versions of songs from Nucleus and A Time of Day.

Track listing
Disc 1
 "Ricochet" – 5:45 (from Gravity)
 "The Great Unknown" – 6:22 (from A Time Of Day)
 "From Within" - 7:24 (from From Within)
 "In For A Ride" - 6:47 (from A Time Of Day)
 "The War Is Over" - 4:38 (from Gravity)
 "Monolith" - 6:07 (from Gravity)
 "A Sky About To Rain" - 6:29 (from A Time Of Day)
 "Every Step I Take" - 3:07 (from A Time Of Day)
 "Groundbound" - 5:22 (from From Within)
 "Gravity" - 8:22 (from Gravity)
 "When I Turn" - 3:42 (Previously unreleased)

Disc 2
 "Sad Rain" - 10:17 (Bonus track on the Japanese edition of Vemod)
 "Wheel" - 7:54 (from Vemod)
 "The Old Man & The Sea" - 7:50 (from Vemod)
 "Nucleus" - 5:46 (Demo version from Nucleus)
 "Book Of Hours" - 9:36 (Demo version from Nucleus)
 "This Far From The Sky" - 9:17 (Demo version from Nucleus)
 "30 Pieces" - 6:58 (Demo version from A Time Of Day)
 "Prince Of The Ocean" - 5:40 (Demo version from A Time Of Day)

References

Anekdoten albums
2009 compilation albums
Kscope albums

Chapters (Anekdoten album)


Windham Hill Records was an independent record label that specialized in instrumental acoustic music. It was founded by guitarist William Ackerman and Anne Robinson (née McGilvray) in 1976 and was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

The label was purchased by BMG through a series of buyouts from 1992 through 1996. It is now a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment, following Sony's acquisition of BMG Music in 2007. Private Music, also a subsidiary of BMG, has issued some back-catalog releases under the Windham Hill Records imprint. Since the Sony merger in 2007, Windham Hill has released no new material but reissues albums and compilations as part of Sony's Legacy Recordings brand.

Origin
In 1975, William Ackerman was a college dropout who played acoustic guitar on the Stanford University campus. Friends asked him to record his instrumental music for them on cassette. They chipped in so that he could make an album titled The Search for the Turtle's Navel (later renamed In Search of the Turtle's Navel). He gave copies to radio stations, which attracted an audience as well as California record store owners, and his albums began to sell. He founded the label with his girlfriend Anne Robinson in 1976. Ackerman invited like-minded musicians to the label, including Alex De Grassi, his cousin and an acoustic guitarist who became one of Windham Hill's best sellers. Ackerman began recording friends and fellow Bay Area musicians, and Robinson would market and design the albums.

Ackerman and co-founder Robinson started selling the label's albums themselves, loading their Volvo station wagon with the label's catalog and selling to bookstores and health food stores across the California coast.

Defining the brand
Windham Hill produced music that was difficult to define, with elements of classical, folk, and jazz, nearly all of it instrumental, acoustic, and mellow. California-based Tower Records stores gave Windham Hill its own section. Billboard magazine called the music soft jazz in 1983, but later listed the label as new age. The roster included acoustic guitarists Michael Hedges, David Cullen, John Doan, and Andrew York. The label's albums topped the New Age and Contemporary Jazz charts in Billboard magazine. Albums of solo piano by George Winston crossed over into the Pop and Folk charts. Seven albums by Winston have been certified Gold and Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

By 1982, the label had grown over 300% and was bringing in revenues in the millions. Ackerman and Robinson expanded Windham Hill's presence from Palo Alto, opening offices in Seattle, Los Angeles, and later New York City. They hired a staff of talented friends who they respected in the music industry, including Jeff Heiman, Steve Backer, and Sam Sutherland to run the other offices. Thanks in large part to the success of George Winston's albums Autumn and later December, Jerry Moss offered to Windham Hill a lucrative distribution arrangement with A&M Records to partially finance and distribute all of Windham Hill's vinyl, cassette and newly-created Compact Disc catalog. Ackerman booked music studios primarily in the Bay Area that prioritized high fidelity and later digital audio recording and mastering to record the label's artists and albums. He also championed utilizing catalog "Samplers" which featured his personal favorite tracks on recently-released albums of the label's artists. These proved to be the most successful-selling albums on the label and inspired a multitude of themed compilation albums for the record label. Partially inspired by his love of Gregorian Chant, and the success of December, Ackerman asked music producer Dawn Atkinson to start the Windham Hill Winter Solstice series of albums, a multi-platinum selling series of Holiday-themed music that ran from 1985 to 2007, and featured tracks composed and performed by the label's then-current roster of artists.

Anne Robinson, a student of design, was the primary designer of the majority of the album's cover art. She produced covers that were minimal, with a centered photograph of nature surrounded by a large area, usually white, with the artist and album name in Avant Garde Gothic. The albums were packaged in loose plastic rather than tight cellophane, and distributed in health-food stores and book stores. Robinson later brought in Candace Upman to act as Chief Album Designer, supervising all of the album cover art through 1996.

Buyouts
Windham Hill's music was distributed by A&M Records until PolyGram purchased A&M in 1989. When A&M was purchased, Ackerman and Robinson began considering selling Windham Hill to a media conglomerate. When BMG took over distribution from A&M in 1989, they began negotiations to purchase Windham Hill from its two principal shareholders. Ackerman sold his half of the company to BMG in 1992 and Anne Robinson sold her half in 1996. BMG relocated the Windham Hill office to Los Angeles and began distributing Windham Hill through RCA Records. BMG merged other music labels that they purchased (such as Peter Baumann's Private Music) into Windham Hill, forming the Windham Hill Group. In doing so, artists such as Yanni and Vangelis joined the label, though they were not original Windham Hill artists.

Jim Brickman was the last major artist signed to the label pre-buyout and he was the last artist to leave Windham Hill in 2006, joining Savoy Records. George Winston, who founded his own Dancing Cat Records in the early 1980s, continued working with Windham Hill as a distribution partner until the label was closed in 2007. BMG negotiated a distribution arrangement with Dancing Cat and Winston moved to RCA Victor until 2009, Sony Classical until 2015, and then moved back to RCA Records. Until his passing in June of 2023, Winston was the only original Windham Hill artist actively working as an artist under Windham Hill's parent company.

Legacy
Today a majority of Windham's releases are distributed through Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. For Windham Hill's 30th Anniversary in 2006, Sony BMG released a special collection kit, with an article from Will Ackerman.

For the first time in over 15 years, many of the early Windham Hill artists who recorded under Ackerman performed together on August 27, 2006 at the Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California near San Jose. Artists included: Barbara Higbie, Jim Brickman, Tuck & Patti, Andrew Robert Nelson, Alex de Grassi, Liz Story, Philip Aaberg, Michael Manring, Samite, David Cullen, Tracy Silverman, Lisa Lynne, George Tortorelli, Sean Harkness (who also planned and invited the musicians), and Will Ackerman.

In 2008 Sony absorbed all of the BMG assets including Windham Hill. The next year, Valley Entertainment began reissuing titles from the Windham Hill catalog. Other acoustic music record labels have also signed licensing deals with Legacy Recordings, including Adventure Music, Gnome Life Records, Grass-Tops Recording and Dancing Cat.

The label was mentioned on the cult TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, as well as its spiritual successor RiffTrax.

Associated labels
 Dancing Cat Records: A label founded by George Winston that began with Winston's albums and migrated to Hawaiian music, received distribution through Windham Hill. Dancing Cat remains an independent label under Sony Classical.
 High Street Records: A singer-songwriter-oriented sub-label started by Will Ackerman and managed by Dawn Atkinson and Bob Duskis.
 Hip Pocket: A jazz-oriented label started by Andy Narell and Steven Miller in 1981, folded into the Windham Hill Jazz label with Magenta in 1987.
 Magenta: A jazz-oriented label, started by Steve Backer in 1985, folded into the Windham Hill Jazz label with Hip Pocket in 1987.
 Living Music: A new age label started by Paul Winter in 1980, distributed by Windham Hill from 1986 to 1988.
 Lost Lake Arts: An imprint that reissued out-of-print albums. A total of 13 albums were released on the label between 1981 and 1988.
 Open Air: A vocal label that released seven albums between 1985 and 1989.
 Rabbit Ears: A children's entertainment company whose music was developed with and distributed by Windham Hill from 1984 to 1990.
 Pioneer Artists: A music video label that reissued Windham Hill titles on DVD and VHS beginning in January 2000.

Roster

See also
Music West Records
Private Music

References

External links
 Windham Hill Records Discography Includes reviews, samples, track listings, and liner notes.
 Windham Hill Records Windham Hill history, artists, discographies, awards, formats and prices, music charts, employees and bibliography.
 A Winter's Solstice Discography Includes reviews and samples of the Windham Hill Winter's Solstice and holiday music catalog.
 Legacy Recordings Reissues much of Windham Hill's catalog

American record labels
New-age music record labels
Record labels established in 1976
Sony Music
Vanity record labels
Folk record labels
World music record labels
Jazz record labels

1976 establishments in the United States

Windham Hill Records


BMC Switzerland AG (abbreviation of "Bicycle Manufacturing Company") is a Swiss bicycle and cycling product manufacturer based in Grenchen.  BMC designs, builds and distributes road bikes, mountain bikes, and commuter bikes primarily for sale to dealers in North America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, East Asia and the United Arab Emirates.

History

1986-2001 founding and early years
In 1986, American Bob Bigelow founded BMC as an assembler and wholesale distributor of Raleigh bicycles (then owned by Derby Cycle). After losing his distributor's license, Bigelow began building bikes under a new BMC label, but it remained a niche brand. In 2001, the company shifted their strategy, turning to greater investment in engineering and design.

2001 - present

BMC's relationship to performance cycling began when BMC began supplying the Swiss professional road racing team Phonak with bikes. The team's patron was Andy Rihs, owner of the world-leading hearing-aid company of the same name. Andy Rihs took over BMC in 2000 with the vision of building a carbon production facility in Grenchen, Switzerland to produce the 'Porsche of race bikes' and the Impec road bike was created. Having a carbon production facility at its disposal has heavily influenced how BMC approaches bike manufacturing. The facility is now called the Impec Advanced R&D Lab, and it is primarily used for research and development by the company's design and engineering teams.

Professional cycling teams and athletes riding BMC's bikes have won the Tour de France, the Tour de Romandie,  the Tirreno–Adriatico, the Tour de Wallonie,  the Paris–Tours, Critérium International, Paris–Roubaix, and many other high-profile events. In 2014 and 2015 the BMC Racing Team won the UCI Team Time Trial World Championships. In 2015, Australian rider Rohan Dennis broke the hour record on a BMC.

Sponsorship

At the end of the 2018 season, BMC withdrew support of the BMC Racing Team, whose former leader, Cadel Evans won the 2011 Tour de France, the BMC Mountain Bike Racing Team as well as the BMC Factory Trailcrew. From 2019, BMC is a bicycle supplier for Team Dimension Data. Beside that, BMC is also co-sponsoring the Uplace-BMC Pro Triathlon Team as well as many other athletes.

References

External links

Cycle manufacturers of Switzerland
Cycle parts manufacturers
Mountain bike manufacturers
Swiss brands
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1986
Swiss companies established in 1986
Manufacturing companies of Switzerland
Companies based in the canton of Solothurn
Grenchen

BMC Switzerland


Leroy Anderson ( ) (June 29, 1908 – May 18, 1975) was an American  composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams described him as "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music."

Early life
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Swedish parents, Anderson was given his first piano lessons by his mother, who was a church organist. He continued studying piano at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1925, Anderson entered Harvard College, where he studied musical harmony with Walter Spalding, counterpoint with Edward Ballantine, canon and fugue with William C. Heilman, orchestration with Edward B. Hill and Walter Piston, composition, also with Piston, and double bass with Gaston Dufresne. He also studied organ with Henry Gideon. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude in 1929 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. At Harvard University Graduate School, he studied composition with Walter Piston and George Enescu and received a Master of Arts in Music in 1930.  He and his brother played in dance orchestras on Scandinavian cruise ships in the summers of 1930 and 1931.

Career
Anderson continued studying at Harvard, working towards a PhD in German and Scandinavian languages; Anderson spoke English and Swedish during his youth, and eventually became fluent in Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

At the time, he was working as organist and choir director at the East Milton Congregational Church, leading the Harvard University Band, and conducting and arranging for dance bands around Boston. In 1936 his arrangements came to the attention of Arthur Fiedler, who asked to see any original compositions that he could use in his concerts as the 18th conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra at Symphony Hall. Anderson's first work was the 1938 "Jazz Pizzicato", but at just over ninety seconds, the piece was too short for a three-minute 78 rpm single of the period. Fiedler suggested writing a companion piece, and Anderson wrote '"Jazz Legato" later that same year. The combined recording went on to become one of Anderson's signature compositions.

In 1942, Anderson joined the United States Army, and was assigned in Iceland with the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps as a translator and interpreter, writing as well as monitoring local news media; in 1945 he was reassigned to the Pentagon as Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence. His duties did not, however, prevent him from composing, and in 1945 he wrote "The Syncopated Clock" and "Promenade". Anderson became a reserve officer and was recalled to active duty for the Korean War. He wrote his first hit, "Blue Tango", in 1951, earning a Golden Disc and the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts.

His pieces and his recordings during the 1950s conducting a studio orchestra were immense commercial successes. "Blue Tango" was the first instrumental recording ever to sell one million copies. His most famous pieces are probably "Sleigh Ride" and "The Syncopated Clock". In February 1951, WCBS-TV in New York City selected "The Syncopated Clock" as the theme song for The Late Show, the WCBS late-night movie, using Percy Faith's recording. Mitchell Parish added words to "The Syncopated Clock", and later wrote lyrics for other Anderson tunes, including "Sleigh Ride", which was not written as a Christmas piece, but as a work that describes a winter event. Anderson started the work during a heat wave in August 1946. The Boston Pops' recording of it was the first pure orchestral piece to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Pop Music chart. From 1952 to 1961, Anderson's composition "Plink, Plank, Plunk!" was used as the theme for the CBS panel show I've Got a Secret.

Anderson's musical style employs creative instrumental effects and occasionally makes use of sound-generating items such as typewriters and sandpaper.

Anderson wrote his Piano Concerto in C in 1953 but withdrew it, feeling that it had weak spots. The Anderson family decided to publish the work in 1988. Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra released the first recording of this work; four other recordings, including one for piano and organ, have since been released.

In 1958, Anderson composed the music for the Broadway show Goldilocks with orchestrations by Philip J. Lang. Even though it earned two Tony awards, Goldilocks did not achieve commercial success. Anderson never wrote another musical, preferring instead to continue writing orchestral miniatures. His pieces, including "The Typewriter", "Bugler's Holiday", and "A Trumpeter's Lullaby" are performed by orchestras and bands ranging from school groups to professional organizations.

Anderson appeared with the Boston Pops on May 18, 1972, which was broadcast by PBS. He conducted "The Typewriter" as an encore, and Arthur Fiedler played the carriage return percussive part. The Boston Pops used the audio of that performance along with some video in a tribute film to Fiedler.

Anderson was initiated as an honorary member of the Gamma Omega chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at Indiana State University in 1969.

Personal life
Anderson married Eleanor Jane Firke in 1942. They raised two sons and a daughter, while living in a custom-designed house in Woodbury, Connecticut.

Death
In 1975, Anderson died of cancer in Woodbury, Connecticut and was buried there. He was 66.

In popular culture
For his contribution to the recording industry, Leroy Anderson has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988, and his music continues to be a staple of "pops" orchestra repertoire. In 1995 the new headquarters of the Harvard University Band was named the Anderson Band Center in honor of Leroy Anderson. The Leroy Anderson House in Woodbury, Connecticut has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2006, one of his piano works, "Forgotten Dreams", written in 1954, became the background for a British TV advertisement for mobile phone company 3. Previously, Los Angeles station KABC-TV used the song as its sign-off theme at the end of broadcast days in the 1980s, and Mantovani's recording of the song had been the closing theme for WABC-TV's Eyewitness News for much of the 1970s. "Forgotten Dreams" was used as a recurring theme in the French film Populaire (2012).

"The Typewriter" was used as the theme song for Esto no tiene nombre, a Puerto Rican television comedy program – loosely based on the TV series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In – produced by Tommy Muñiz between the late 1960s and late 1970s. It is also the signature tune for the BBC Radio 4 series The News Quiz, which has been running since 1977.

American comedian Jerry Lewis, dressed in formal wear as "Pietro Del Canto," performed "The Typewriter" as the typist in a sketch in an early television program. He reprised his performance in the 1963 motion picture Who's Minding the Store?, "typing" on an imaginary typewriter.

Works

Orchestral compositions
 Alma Mater (1954)
 Chapel Bells
 Freshman on Main Street
 Library Reading Room
 Class Reunion
Arietta (1962)
Balladette (1962)
Belle of the Ball (1951)
Blue Tango (1951)
Brunoniana: Songs of Brown (1947), a medley of Brown University songs
Bugler's Holiday (1954)
The Captains and the Kings (1962)
Concerto in C Major for Piano and Orchestra (1953) (withdrawn by the composer, and released posthumously)
China Doll (1951)
Clarinet Candy (1962)
Fiddle-Faddle (1947)
The First Day of Spring (1954)
Forgotten Dreams (1954)
The Girl in Satin (1953)
The Golden Years (1962)
Governor Bradford March (1948) (published posthumously)
 Harvard Sketches (1938) (later renamed Alma Mater)
 Lowell House Bells
 Freshman in Harvard Square
 Widener Reading Room
 Class Day Confetti Battle
Home Stretch (1962)
Horse and Buggy (1951)
Jazz Legato (1938)
Jazz Pizzicato (1938)
Lullaby of the Drums (1970) (published posthumously)
March of the Two Left Feet (1970)
Mother's Whistler (1940) (published posthumously)
The Penny Whistle Song (1951)
The Phantom Regiment (1951)
Pirate Dance (1962) (optional SATB chorus)
Plink, Plank, Plunk! (1951)
Promenade (1945)
The Pussy Foot Ballet Music (1962)
Pyramid Dance (1962) (optional SATB chorus)
Sandpaper Ballet (1954)
Saraband (1948)
Serenata (1947)
Sleigh Ride (1948)
Song of the Bells (1953)
Summer Skies (1953)
The Syncopated Clock (1945)
Ticonderoga March (1939) (Anderson's only work written for concert band)
A Trumpeter's Lullaby (1949)
The Typewriter (1950)
Waltz Around the Scale (1970)
The Waltzing Cat (1950)

Orchestral arrangements
Birthday Party (1970)
Chicken Reel (1946)
A Christmas Festival (1950) (original version was 9:00, later shortened in 1952 to 5:45)
Classical Jukebox (1950)
Harvard Fantasy (1936)
A Harvard Festival (1969)
 Irish Suite (1947 and 1949)
 The Irish Washerwoman (1947)
 The Minstrel Boy (1947)
 The Rakes of Mallow (1947)
 The Wearing of the Green (1949)
 The Last Rose of Summer (1947)
 The Girl I Left Behind Me (1949)
 Scottish Suite (1954)
 Bonnie Dundee (published posthumously)
 Turn Ye to Me
 The Bluebells of Scotland
 The Campbells Are Coming (published posthumously)
Second Regiment Connecticut National Guard March (1973)
Song of Jupiter (1951)
Suite of Carols for Brass Choir (1955) (seven carols)
Suite of Carols for String Orchestra (1955) (six carols)
Suite of Carols for Woodwind Ensemble (1955) (six carols)
To a Wild Rose (1970) (arranged from the song by Edward MacDowell) (published posthumously)
Old MacDonald Had a Farm
Seventy-Six Trombones

Musical theater compositions
My Sister Eileen (1952) (the music is lost)
 Goldilocks (musical) (1958)
 Overture (1958)
 Bad Companions (1958)
 Come to Me (1958)
 Give the Little Lady (1958)
 Guess Who (1958)
 Heart of Stone (Pyramid Dance) (1958)
 He'll Never Stray (1958)
 Hello (1958)
 I Can't Be in Love (1958)
 I Never Know When to Say When (1958)
 If I Can't Take it With Me (1958)
 Lady in Waiting (1958)
 Lazy Moon (1958)
 Little Girls (1958)
 My Last Spring (1958)
 No One Will Ever Love You (1958)
 Save a Kiss (1958)
 Shall I Take My Heart and Go? (1958)
 Tag-a-long Kid (1958)
 The Beast in You (1958)
 The Pussy Foot (1958)
 There Never Was a Woman (1958)
 Town House Maxixe (1958)
 Two Years in the Making (1958)
 Who's Been Sitting in My Chair? (1958)
 Gone With the Wind (1961)
 I'm Too Young to Be a Widow
 Fiddle-Dee-Dee
 This Lovely World

Vocal compositions
Do You Think That Love Is Here to Stay? (1935)
Love May Come and Love May Go (1935)
The Music in My Heart (1935)
You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man (1962)
What's the Use of Love? (1935)

Organ compositions
Cambridge Centennial March of Industry (1946)
Easter Song (194-)
Wedding March for Jane and Peter (1972)

Other compositions
Hens and Chickens (1966) (for beginning piano)
Chatterbox (1966) (for beginning piano)
Melody on Two Notes (~1965) (for beginning orchestra)
An Old Fashioned Song (196-) (for beginning piano)
Piece for Rolf (1961) (for two cellos)
The Cowboy and His Horse (1966) (for beginning piano)
The Whistling Kettle (~1965) (for beginning orchestra)
Woodbury Fanfare (1959) (for four trumpets)

Discography
The following is a selected discography of original recordings by Leroy Anderson. They were released from 1958 to 1962 on 33 rpm discs, and later, on digitally remastered compact discs released posthumously. 78 rpm and 45 rpm discs from 1945 to 1962, and releases of identical recordings on different labels in U.K., Germany, New Zealand and elsewhere, are not listed.
Recordings by Leroy Anderson
 Leroy Anderson Conducts His Own Compositions (Decca DL 7509; 1950)
 Leroy Anderson Conducts His Own Compositions Vol. 2 (Decca DL 7519; 1951)
 Leroy Anderson's Irish Suite (Decca DL 4050; 1952)
 Christmas Carols (Decca DL-8193; 1955)
 Leroy Anderson conducts Blue Tango and Other Favorites (Decca DL 8121; 1958)
 A Christmas Festival (Decca DL 78925 (s); 1959)
 Leroy Anderson Conducts Leroy Anderson (Decca DL 78865 (s); 1959)
 Leroy Anderson Conducts His Music (Decca DL 78954 (s); 1960)
 The New Music of Leroy Anderson (Decca DL 74335 (s); 1962)
 The Leroy Anderson Collection (Digitally remastered from original Decca analog recordings) (MCA Classics MCAD2-9815-A & B; 1988)
 The Best of Leroy Anderson: Sleigh Ride (Digitally remastered from original Decca analog master recordings) (MCA Classics MCAD −11710; 1997)
 Blue Tango and Other Favourites (Digitally remastered original recordings 1950-1952) (ASV Living Era AJA-5481 (U.K.) 2003)

Honors and awards
 Phi Beta Kappa, elected June 17, 1929.
 Music Director, Harvard University Band 1929, 1931–1935
 Gold Record, Blue Tango, 1952
 Member, Board of Directors, ASCAP, New York, New York 1960–1964
 Member, Music Department Committee, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1962–1968
 Goldman Citation, American Bandmasters Association, March 10, 1966
 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Gamma Omega Chapter (honorary member), Indiana State University, 1969
 Member of Board of Directors of symphony orchestras:
 New Haven, Connecticut 1969–1975
 Hartford, Connecticut 1971–1975
 Honorary Doctorate (Ph.D), Portia Law School, Boston, Massachusetts June 1971
 Honorary Doctorate (Ph.D), Western New England College, Springfield, Massachusetts May 1974
 Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1976
 Named to Songwriters Hall of Fame, April 18, 1988
 Anderson Band Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, dedicated October 26, 1995
 Leroy Anderson Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, dedicated May 31, 2003

Bibliography
English
Books
 Burgess Speed, Eleanor Anderson, Steve Metcalf: Leroy Anderson: A Bio-Bibliography (Praeger, 2004)
 Howard Pollack, Harvard Composers – Walter Piston and his Students (The Scarecrow Press, 1992)
 Edward Jablonski, The Encyclopedia of American Music (Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1981)
 George McCue, Music in American Society 1776–1976 (Transaction Books., 1977)
 Christopher Pavlakis, The American Music Handbook (MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974)
 David Ewen, Popular American Composers – from Revolutionary Times to the Present (H.W. Wilson Co., 1962)
 Jan-Erik Ander & Jeremy Lamb (translator): New Sweden 1638–1988 (Swedish National Committee for New Sweden '88, 1992)
 Steven Ledbetter: 100 Years of the Boston Pops (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc., 1985)

Periodicals
 Joseph Smith: Leroy Anderson – Scandinavian Review (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 2009)
 Eliot Spalding: Vita: Leroy Anderson (Harvard Review, 1993)
 Janet Frank: Syncopated Clock, Indeed! (The American Scholar – Phi Beta Kappa Society, 2008)
 Jane Anderson Vercelli: Composer Leroy Anderson: Cambridge Born and Bred (The Newetowne Chronicle – Cambridge Historical Society, 2008)
 Joanne Kaufmann: Leroy Anderson: Tuneful Blade Runner (Wall Street Journal, 1995)
 Anthony Tommasini: Tuneful Gems from a Master: Leroy Anderson (New York Times, 1996)
 Frederick Fennell: Music by Leroy Anderson (The Instrumentalist, 1990)
 Anders Neumueller, editor: Leroy Anderson (Swedish Press Society, 1994)
 Andrew & Martha Sherman, editors: Annual Report dedication to Leroy Anderson (Town of Woodbury, 2008)
 Anthony Tommasini: Not Bach or Beethoven, but Leroy Anderson Is the Composer for Now (New York Times, April 22, 2020)

Swedish
 Svea: Svenskättling Berömd Amerikansk Kompositör; Worcester, Massachusetts USA; (Svea Publishing Company, weekly Swedish American newspaper, November 10, 1949)
 Norra Strö Hembygdsförening: Norra Strö: Bygden och Folket (Norra Strö Hembygdsförening, 2009)  – documentation of Leroy Anderson's parents birthplaces in Sweden
 Carin Dohlman: Leroy Andersons Julmusik; Wellesley, Massachusetts USA; (Gult och Blatt i Boston-New England, 2009)

German
 Hans-Walter Berg: Leroy Anderson: ein Meister der Miniatur; Buchloe, Germany; (Neue Blasmusik, 1992)

References

External links

 Leroy Anderson Foundation
 Leroy Anderson Centennial Tribute
 Once Upon a Sleigh Ride — PBS Web site devoted to a 1999 documentary about Anderson; biographical sketches, photographs, etc.
 Leroy Anderson Papers at Yale University Music Library
 Eleanor Anderson Interview at NAMM Oral History Collection (2007)
 Kurt Anderson Interview at NAMM Oral History Collection (2007)

1908 births
1975 deaths
20th-century American composers
20th-century classical composers
20th-century American male musicians
American classical composers
American classical musicians
American male classical composers
American music arrangers
American people of Swedish descent
Classical musicians from Massachusetts
Decca Records artists
Deaths from cancer in Connecticut
Easy listening musicians
Harvard College alumni
Light music composers
Military personnel from Massachusetts
Musicians from Cambridge, Massachusetts
People from Woodbury, Connecticut
Pupils of Walter Piston
Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts

Leroy Anderson


Paul C. Fisher (October 10, 1913 – October 20, 2006) was an American inventor and politician. He invented the Fisher Space Pen.

Fisher was born in Lebanon, Kansas, the son of Alice (Bales) and Carey Albert Fisher, a Methodist minister.

Fisher Space Pen

The Fisher Space Pen is a ballpoint pen which works with thixotropic ink and a pressurized ink cartridge. It can write on almost any substance ranging from butter to steel. It also can survive a wide array of temperatures, ranging from -50 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fisher submitted his invention to NASA. After vigorous testing, NASA approved Fisher's Space Pen. They purchased four hundred units at a reported price of $6.00 per unit ($2,400). NASA purchased three different models: the 204, 207 and 208. The 204 had blue ink and a retraction button on the end. It was used on Skylab and the Apollo missions. It was later replaced by the 207. The 207 model was similar to the 204, except the retraction button had been moved to the side. The 208 model was the same as the 207, except it wrote in black ink. NASA modified these pens for use in the space program. Velcro patches were added along with a standard metal clip to facilitate the storage and attachment of the pen.

Political activities
Fisher unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1960 and in 1968. In 1960, he was the only candidate besides John F. Kennedy on the New Hampshire primary ballot,  although other candidates were also in the race and on the ballot in other states.

He also made two unsuccessful bids for the United States House of Representatives, first in 1954 and then in 1986.

Fisher proposed the replacement of all existing sales and income taxes with a single graduated asset tax on those with assets of at least $100,000. His 1988 book, The Plan: To Restore the Constitution and Help Us All Get Out Of Debt (), promoted this idea.

Death
Fisher died at his home on October 20, 2006, in Boulder City, Nevada.

References

1913 births
2006 deaths
American manufacturing businesspeople
American political writers
American male non-fiction writers
People from Boulder City, Nevada
Candidates in the 1960 United States presidential election
Candidates in the 1968 United States presidential election
20th-century American politicians
People from Smith County, Kansas
20th-century American inventors
20th-century American male writers
Kansas Democrats
Nevada Democrats
Inventors from Kansas

Paul C. Fisher


Bingguo () is a traditional dessert dish of Beijing cuisine. The main ingredients of this dish include lotus root, almonds, walnuts, lotus seed, sugar and lotus leaf. The lotus root, lotus seeds, almonds and walnuts are chopped into small pieces and steamed. The sugar is mixed with water and then boiled to become syrup. The lotus leaf is cut into small pieces and soaked in boiling water. The steamed ingredients are placed on the lotus leaf with syrup poured on top and then cooled by ice (or nowadays in a refrigerator) and served cold. As the dessert is served in a bowl, the dish is also called bingwan (冰碗, lit. "ice bowl").

Beijing cuisine

Bing wan


Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder and board chairman. The musical colloquialism exotica means tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers.

History

Les Baxter's album Ritual of the Savage (Le Sacre du Sauvage) was released in 1952 and would become a cornerstone of exotica. This album featured lush orchestral arrangements along with tribal rhythms and offered such classics as "Quiet Village", "Jungle River Boat", "Love Dance", and "Stone God." Ritual is the seminal exotica record, influencing all that came after it. As the 1950s progressed, Baxter carved out a niche in this area, producing a number of titles in this style including Tamboo! (1956), Caribbean Moonlight (1956), Ports of Pleasure (1957), The Sacred Idol (1960) and Jewels of the Sea (1961).  Baxter claimed Ravel and Stravinsky as influences on his work.

In 1957, Martin Denny covered Les Baxter's "Quiet Village", with exotic bird calls and a vibraphone instead of strings, which established the sound of the Polynesian styled music. The song reached #2 on Billboard's charts in 1959 with Denny's Exotica album reaching #1. Soon the new technology of stereo further opened up the musical palettes of Denny and other prominent exotica artists such as Arthur Lyman and Juan García Esquivel.

The distinctive sound of exotica relies on a variety of instruments: conga, bongos, vibes, Indonesian and Burmese gongs, boo bams (bamboo sticks), Tahitian log, Chinese bell tree, and Japanese kotos. Additionally intrinsic to the sound of exotica are bird calls, big-cat roars, and even primate shrieks, which invoke the dangers of the jungle. Though there are some standards which contain lyrics, singing is rare. Abstract, siren-like ululations, chants, vocalized animal calls, and guttural growls are common.

The music of American composer Raymond Scott is sometimes recognized as a precursor to exotica, as several of his songs were written with the intent of transporting the listener to exotic locations via novelty instruments and sound effects.

As a result of the popularity of exotica during the late 1950s, a large number of records were released that featured covers of recently released exotica songs (mainly by Les Baxter) and Hawaiian and easy-listening standards. These recordings include "Exotica" by Ted Auletta, "Exotic Percussion" by Stanley Black and his Orchestra, "Orienta" by Gerald Fried, "Taboo" and "Taboo 2" by Arthur Lyman and "The Sounds of Exotic Island" by The Surfmen.  Some composers pushed the bounds of the genre by producing albums of original content, often with unusual instrumentation. These recordings include Voodoo by Robert Drasnin, Africana by Chaino, Pagan Festival by Dominic Frontiere And His Orchestra, and White Goddess by Frank Hunter.  By 1959, the majority of American record labels had released at least one exotica-themed album, usually utilizing composers and musicians that produced jazz, classical or easy listening recordings.

After several years of rising excitement leading up to Hawaii becoming a state in 1959, the Hawaiiana fad waned in the United States and so did exotica's commercial appeal. CD re-issues ignited a revival in the early 1990s.

Revival
In 1971 Roger Roger and Nino Nardini released the album Jungle Obsession on the French Neuilly record label. Intended as a sound library recording, it soon took on a life of its own. Although clearly influenced by the exotica arrangements of Baxter, Martin Denny, Frank Hunter and Dick Hyman, it went beyond the simpler themes used by those composers to employ "a series of motifs, leitmotifs, and modes that were out of the musical sphere at the time: they took rock and classical and bossa and jazz and easy listening, wove them together with polyrhythmic invention and a boatload of sound effects".

In the 1990s exotica resurfaced more generally, along with a new category in which to place the genre: lounge. Dozens of long out-of-print LPs were reissued on CD. The revival accompanied a related swing revival and general appreciation for tiki culture. A new crop of bands, such as Pink Martini, were influenced by the classic albums, and Combustible Edison for one featured songs like "Breakfast at Denny's", a tongue-in-cheek title for a song styled on the music of Martin Denny.

The early 2000s saw additional exotica revival efforts, such as Hawaii-based Don Tiki, the comeback of 1960s composer Robert Drasnin, Waitiki, The Martini Kings, Kava Kon, and Hawaii Music Award winning Tiki Joe's Ocean, formed by multi-instrumentalist/composer Andy Nazzal. Several podcasts broadcast classic and new exotica and tiki revival music.

See also
World music
Worldbeat

References

Tiki culture
World music genres
North American music

Exotica


Alexander Gelman (born December 21, 1960), born: Aleksandr Simonovich Gelman () is an American theater director and the current Producing Artistic Director of Organic Theater Company in Chicago, Illinois.

Early life
Alexander Gelman was born in Leningrad, USSR to Maria Gelman, a musician, and Simon Gelman, a physician.  Both of his maternal grandparents worked at the Mikhaylovsky Theatre and young Alexander (Sasha) literally took his first steps there. In 1973 the family emigrated to Israel and in 1976 to the USA.  In 1978 he graduated from Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio.

Training
Gelman received his BFA in theatre from Birmingham-Southern College (1982) and his MFA in Directing from Boston University (1985) He also spends a month at the University of Illinois at a Directing Colloquium conducted by Edwin Sherin, Arvin Brown, John Reich, Garland Wright, Clifford Williams, Vinnette Carroll, and Gerald Freedman.

Career
After moving to New York City in 1985, Gelman began to work as translator and director, after a period of working for NYANA, a refugee resettlement agency (his co-workers there included painter Roman Turovsky, film director Todd Solondz and novelist Gary Shteyngart).

One of his early directing engagements was Carmen at Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, which was his first collaboration with Vakhtang Jordania.  At this time, he also began his work as assistant and interpreter to Russian directors working in the US.  The first one was Yuri Lyubimov at Arena Stage, on a production of Crime and Punishment. The two later worked on Master and Margarita at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge and Lulu at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  He also directed the film Infinity, starring Megan Blake.

After a number of years freelancing as director and translator, he accepted a position of Head of Directing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1991), where he stayed until 1994.  At that time he moved to Salt Lake City, where he took over the directing program at the University of Utah.  This began a long and fruitful relationship with Utah Opera and Anne Ewers, its General Director.  Among the productions there, he directed Eugene Onegin, L'incoronazione di Poppea, The Turn of the Screw and many others.  During this time he also directed in New Zealand at Canterbury Opera, where he collaborated with Dame Malvina Major.  Gelman had additional engagements at Idaho Opera, Ashland-Highland Music Festival and others.

In 2001 he was appointed Director of the School of Theatre and Dance at Northern Illinois University. In 2006 he became Producing Artistic Director of the Organic Theater Company of Chicago.  At the Organic, he has directed his own adaptations of The $30,000 Bequest by Mark Twain, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville, and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent.  He also directed Eugène Ionesco's Man with Bags, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Play Strindberg, and Shimizu Kunio's The Dressing Room.

References

External links

1960 births
Living people
Soviet emigrants to Israel
Russian Jews
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American theatre directors
Artists from Chicago
American opera directors
Birmingham–Southern College alumni
Boston University College of Fine Arts alumni

Alexander Gelman


Multigenre Fan Convention Pyrkon (pol. Festiwal Fantastyki Pyrkon) (commonly known as Pyrkon) is a Polish fan convention held annually in Poznań on the first weekend after the spring equinox and dedicated to an integration of Science fiction fandom and a promotion of science-fiction/fantasy literature, comics, film, television, video games, RPG, LARP, board games, collectible card games and miniature wargaming. Pyrkon is the biggest event of this type in Poland and one of the biggest in Europe (over 55,000 people in 2022).

History
Pyrkon has been held by the Second Age Science Fiction Club (Klub Fantastyki "Druga Era") every year since 2000, except 2005 when they held Polcon. (In 2011 they organised both Pyrkon and Polcon.) Pyrkon has been a non-profit convention from its beginning, and all organizers, lecturers and gofers are volunteers.

Initially Pyrkon was held at the Dębiec district of Poznań in the following places
Elementary School nr 21 in Poznań [2000–2010]
Gymnasium nr 42 in Poznań [2008–2010]
Cezamet Hotel [2008–2010]
High and Technical Schools Complex nr 19 in Poznań [2010]
Due to the increasing number of visitors, in 2011 the convention moved to the present location, the Poznań International Fair and the Liceum ogólnokształcące nr 2 in Poznań (Liceum Ogólnokształcące nr 2 w Poznaniu).

On 6 March 1999, Second Age organised "Science Fiction Day" in the "Sun" District House of Culture in the Przyjaźni (Polish for friendship) district in Poznań. It was the direct predecessor of Pyrkon.

The tradition of holding Pyrkon on the first weekend after the spring equinox started in 2006. Usually it is also the weekend when Daylight saving time begins – participants are informed in a convention guide book and on posters of the need to adjust their timepieces.

Etymology
According to one theory, the name "Pyrkon" comes from the 10th Book of Pausanias' "Guide to Ancient Greece", where he quotes "Eumolpia", a hexameter poem attributed to Musaios, a son of Antiophemos, which states that Delphic Sibyl belonged to Poseidon and Gaia (Earth) in common, and that Gaia gave her oracles herself, but Poseidon used Pyrkon as his mouthpiece in giving responses.

According to the other theory, the name "Pyrkon" is derived from pyra ("potato" in Poznań's dialect) and the suffix -kon, which is added to names of all Polish fan conventions.

Program

Main Attractions
Pyrkon's goals are realized in
 meetings and discussion panels with science fiction and fantasy authors
 meetings with books and games publishers
 thematic lectures related to all spheres of science fiction
 popular science lectures, especially about physics, history, linguistics and cultural studies
 RPG sessions and LARP-s
 lending board games (Games Room)
 lending old video games
 board games, collectible card games and miniature wargaming tournaments
 demonstrations and premieres of board games, collectible card games, miniature wargaming and video games
 thematic competitions with prizes
 cosplay contest with prizes - The Masquerade

Other Attractions
The following also take place on Pyrkon:
 concerts
 fighting shows
 fireshows
 dancing shows and lessons
 karaoke and DDR contests
 Pyrkon Dance

Program Sections
Attractions (lectures, discussion panels, meetings with guests, contests, concerts etc.) on Pyrkon are divided into thematic sections. Most attractions are held in Polish.

Pyrkon 2019 had 19 program sections, which are listed below:
 Integration Section – integration section is a zone to meet new friends and participate in integration games. There, you can strengthen ties with already known people, but also meet other participants with similar passions
 Film Section – lectures about films and film-making, amateur film shows, lessons of creating YouTube content
 Computer Games Section – computer games contests and tournaments, lectures about game design, creating Let's Play
 Literature Section – lectures and discussion panels about science-fiction and fantasy literature and meetings with authors
 Science Section – popular science lectures
 RPG Section – lessons on making good role-play sessions, presentations of new RPG systems, meetings with role-playing games creators
 LARP Section – LARP games, contest for best LARP on Pyrkon, presentations of LARP systems, lectures about making LARP costumes, improving larping skills
 Comics Section – lessons of comics drawing, meetings with comic book artists, lectures about comics
 Manga & Anime Section – lessons of manga style drawing, lectures about Japanese comics, animation and culture in general
 Contest Section – competitions about every part of pop culture
 Board Games Section – Games Room – presentations of new board games, games' rules lessons, lending board games
 Beginners' Section – short introductory lectures about every aspect of Fandom for beginners who have never visited any convention, played a board game, seen science-fiction film etc.
 Kids' Section – science-fiction and fantasy related attractions for children younger than 10 years old
 Exhibitions, Shows, Workshops – dance lessons and shows, concerts, Lego exhibitions etc.
 Fantasium Suburbium - The zone in which villages created by participants are related to the world of fantasy. There are, among others, handicraft workshops or fight and dance shows. From the groups exhibiting there, participants can hear a bit about reconstruction, as well as learn a bit of the armor creation, sewing or jewelry making
 Fantasium Creatium - A place where artists from all over the Poland exhibit their fantasy-related works. Both professional artists and beginners can submit their exhibitions. Inside the Fantasium Creatium there are, among others, science-fiction, fantasy, post-apocalyptic, handicraft and science zones
 Fantasium Ludicrum - The block, which includes stage performances - concerts and shows - and film screenings. The Fantasium Ludicrum performed, among others, Percival Schuttenbach, actors of the Poznań Musical Theater, there was also a performance of the "Ark" of the Theater of the Eighth Day
 Fantastic Initiatives Zone - The zone is intended for festival organizers and fantasy conventions from all over Poland. It serves as a place to meet, exchange experiences and make contacts with potential members of fantasy organizations. There are also smaller Polish fantasy events advertised there
 The Masquerade - One of the highlights of the program during Pyrkon is The Masquerade cosplay competition. Its participants compete in the categories: Best Cosplay, Best Own Project, Best Group Presentation and Best Solo Presentation. The main prize is the Grand Prix. In addition, the 2019 The Masquerade winner received the right to compete in the Cosplay Champions competition. The condition for joining The Masquerade is to create your own costume. It can depict a character known from the world of fantasy, but it must be made by hand. Each participant presents his disguise first only to the jury, which assesses whether the cosplay was really created from scratch. The Masquerade is traditionally held at the Earth Hall - the largest hall located at the Poznań International Fair. Due to the limited number of seats in the audience and the great interest of the audience, the show is also displayed on a large screen at the Fair, as well as broadcast live on Pyrkon's social media channels.

Foreign guests

Time and place

Awards

 contest of "The Convention Guide-Book" Web Portal (Informator Konwentowy): "The Best Fan Convention of the Season"
 Pyrkon 2006 – 2nd place (Winter 2005/2006 edition)
 Pyrkon 2007 – 1st place (Winter 2006/2007 edition)
 contest of "The Convention Guide-Book" Web Portal: "The Best Fan Convention of the Year"
 Pyrkon 2008 – 1st place
 contest of "The Convention Guide-Book" Web Portal: "Fan's Choice"
 Pyrkon 2006 – 2nd place (Winter 2005/2006 edition)
 Pyrkon 2007 – 1st place (Winter 2006/2007 edition)
 Pyrkon 2008 – 1st place (Year 2008 edition)
 plebiscite of "The Cathedral" Web Portal (Katedra): "Science Fiction" in category "The best fan convention or other SF mass event", in year 2012 simply "Event"
 Pyrkon 2007 – 1st place
 Pyrkon 2008 – 3rd place
 Pyrkon 2009 – 3rd place
 Pyrkon 2010 – 1st place
 Pyrkon 2011 – 1st place
 Pyrkon 2012 – 1st place

External links

 Pyrkon 2013 official website
  Pyrkon 2012 official website
  Pyrkon 2011 official website
  Pyrkon 2010 official website
  Pyrkon 2009 official website
  Pyrkon 2008 official website
  Pyrkon 2007 official website
  Pyrkon 2006 official website
  Pyrkon 2004 official website

References

Festivals in Poland
Science fiction conventions in Europe
Polish science fiction
Recurring events established in 1999
Spring (season) events in Poland
Culture of Greater Poland Voivodeship

Pyrkon


Kedahan Malays (Malay: Melayu Kedah, Jawi: ملايو ﻗﺪﺡ) or commonly known as Orang Utara ('Northerners'), are a sub-group of Malays native to northern Malay Peninsula in areas of both current and historical area of Kedah (which is now divided into the modern states of Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar). They are among the oldest ethnic groups in the Malay peninsula with a history dating back 2,800 years as proven by the discovery of sites in Bujang Valley and historical documents from India, China and Arabia. Kedahan Malays are one of the largest Malay sub-groups in Malaysia, comprising at least 15% of the total Malaysian Malay population including those with Kedahan ancestry.

History

The early history of Kedah can be traced from various sources, from the prehistoric period, archaeological site of Bujang Valley, early maritime trade of India, Persia, and the Arabs to the written works of early Chinese pilgrims and early Chinese records. The Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa (known as Kedah Annals) and Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri Kedah are the most important documents about Kedah history.

By around 788 BCE, a large settlement had been established on the northern banks of the Merbok River which is located near the city of Sungai Petani today. The settlement was one of several in the Bujang Valley which makes it the largest archaeological site in the country. The Merbok settlement was built near the estuary of the tributary river, Sungai Batu. Around 170 CE, Hinduism was introduced to Kedah by traders or migrants from the Indian subcontinent, joining them soon were peoples from nearby islands (mainly Austronesians) and northern regions of the Kra Isthmus (mainly Mon-Khmers) that migrated to Kedah and assimilated with the local population. At the same time traders from China, Persia and Arabia, arrived at the brink of the Malacca Strait to Kedah, using Gunung Jerai as a marking point. Ancient Kedah civilization covered the areas of today's Kuala Kedah, Kuala Bara, Kuala Pila and Merpah.

In the 7th century, Kedah became part of Srivijaya, a thalassocracy which covers the whole of the Malay Peninsula and some parts of Sumatra and Java. Kedah remained an important trading, culture, political and religious centre throughout the Malay archipelago. However in the 11th century, King Rajendra Chola I of the Chola Empire sent an expedition to attack Kedah (Sri Vijaya) on behalf of one of its rulers who sought his assistance to gain the throne. This left Kedah in ruins after the war and became a vassal state for the Cholas Rajendra's overseas expedition against Srivijaya was a unique event in India's history and its otherwise peaceful relations with the states of Southeast Asia. Several places in present-day Indonesia and Malay Peninsula were invaded by Rajendra I of the Chola dynasty.

Even though Old Kedah was founded as a Hindu kingdom, the arrival of Arab Muslim traders in the 7th century introduced Islam to the kingdom. King Phra Ong Mahawangsa became the last Hindu king of Kedah before converting to Islam in 1136, which marks Kedah as the earliest Muslim kingdom in the Malay Peninsula and one of the earliest in Southeast Asia.

Kedah's prestige and influence declined significantly in the 14-15th century after the rise of its southern neighbour, Malacca and Ayutthaya Kingdom in the north. Kedah came under the influence of Ayutthaya until the 1456 Malaccan-Siamese war which led to Kedah becoming a vassal state for Malacca. The influence of Malacca led to the Malayisation of Kedahan people in the mid 15th century. In the early 17th century, the Aceh Sultanate became the new regional power in the region and invaded Kedah in 1629. Many Kedahans were forced to relocate elsewhere or were taken to Aceh as exiles.

The arrival of the British in the late 18th century forced Kedah to lease Penang as a protection from Siamese aggression. However the treaty did not came into fruition as the British did not protect Kedah from Siamese invasion which leads to Kedah invading Penang in 1790. The British managed to conduct a preemptive strike by attacking Kedah's fort and naval post and forced the Sultan of Kedah to sign a ceasefire agreement in 1791. Penang remained a British colony as part of the Straits Settlements alongside Singapore and Malacca until 1948, where it became a sovereign state within Malaya and later Malaysia.

Constant aggression from the Siamese against the strategically important Kedah led to the 1821 Siamese invasion of Kedah. The invasion devastated Kedah's political and economic stability including the exile of Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin Halim Shah II, partition of Kedah into smaller kingdoms (Setul, Perlis and the Kubang Pasu) and direct Siamese rule over Kedah for over 20 years until its independence was restored in 1842. Kubang Pasu were reunited with Kedah in 1859 but Perlis and Setul remained independent until 1909, when the Anglo-Siamese Treaty caused the division of British-influence Perlis and Kedah and Siamese-controlled Setul (which would later become the province of Satun). Kedah, along with 11 other states joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and later as a state within Malaysia in 1963.

Demonym
Nowadays, the term Kedahan Malay only refers to the Malays living in Kedah. Despite being ethnically similar to Kedah Malays, the Malays of Perlis and Penang prefer to identify themselves as Orang Utara or "People of the Northern Region" instead of Kedahan Malay as the term Orang Utara is more politically neutral. This also extends to their language, which is called Pelat Utara or Northern Dialect. However, the Kedahan population in Langkat (Indonesia), Pulau Dua (Myanmar) and Satun (Thailand) still call themselves as Orang Kedah or Kedah people due to their historical ties to Kedah Sultanate prior to the partition.

However, not all Malays living in Kedah call themselves as Melayu Kedah. In the interior parts of Kedah such as in Baling, Sik and Yan they usually call themselves as Orang Pattani as the people there are the descendants of Malay settlers from the historical region of Patani which is now in modern day southern Thailand. They maintain their own unique dialect/language, tradition and identity from Kedahan Malays.

Language

The Kedahan Malays have their own unique variety of Malay known as Kedah Malay or Pelat Utagha (northern dialect) as known by its native speakers. It is related to other varieties of Malay spoken in the peninsula but has its own unique pronunciation and vocabulary which makes it unintelligible to other Malays in the region. Kedahan Malay language can be divided into several sub-dialects, namely Kedah Persisiran (coastal dialect; standard) or Kedah Hulu (interior), Kedah Utara (northern Kedah), Perlis-Langkawi, Penang and some others (sub-dialects spoken in Satun and Southern Myanmar). For instance instead of using kamu to denote as 'you', hang (English pronunciation: hung) is used instead and cek for 'i/me' instead of saya / aku in other Malay varieties in the peninsula. Besides proper Kedah Malay, another variety of Malay spoken in Kedah is Baling Malay, which is an offshoot of Kelantan-Patani Malay but has absorbed influences from Kedah Malay. Kedah Malay is considered distinct enough to have its own ISO code that is meo.

Customs and culture

Due to their long history, Kedahan Malays have their own unique cuisines, customs and traditions compared to the rest of Malaysia.

Cuisine

Nasi Daging Air Asam
Kuih Dangai
Kuih Peneram
Pek Nga
Karas
Pulut Mangga
Pulut Durian
Nasi Lemuni
Kuih Bunga Pundak

Dance theater
 Mek Mulung
 Mak Yong Kedah
 Jikey
 Boria (theatre): The most famous Kedahan culture of Indian origin. It is quite similar to a musical theater. The theater used a fully Kedahan Malay language while the song used a mix of standard Malay and Kedahan accent or sometimes, a fully standard Malay. This theater is said to be created after the hybrid of Malay and Indian culture in Penang.
 Inai dance
 Canggung dance: A dance originating from Perlis but also very popular in Kedah and Penang
 Cinta Sayang dance: a popular opening dance in Kedah.

Art theater
 Wayang Kulit Gedek

Customs
 Berendul (pronunciation: be-ghen-doi): A group of men would sing traditional Kedahan folk songs to a newborn baby in celebration of birth of the child.

Poetry
 Ghazal Kedah

Martial arts
 Silat Kuntau Tekpi: A Silat Melayu style that was founded by Panglima Taib bin Wan Hussain who was a Panglima (Palace Warrior-General) of the empire of Kedah. It is also a 'sister-art' of silat styles that stemmed from Panglima Tok Rashid, including Silat Kalimah and Silat Cekak.
 Silat Cekak: A Silat Melayu style that was founded by Ustaz Hanafi, a Kedahan Malay but is now popular throughout Malaysia and to some extent in Indonesia as well.

In popular culture

Films
 Raja Bersiong
 Rempit V3
 Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa
 Cun (2011)

Television series
 Cinta Anak Kedah
 Makbul
 Dari Kodiang ke Kolumpo.
 Mak Cun
 Kak Marr

Notable Kedahan Malay
 Abdul Rahman Abbas, Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Penang from 2001 to 2021
 Abdul Hamid Omar, last Lord President of the Supreme Court from 1989 to 1992 and Chief Justice of Malaysia from 1989 to 1994
 Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, 5th Prime Minister of Malaysia from 2003 to 2009 (Kedahan Malay of Chinese and Arab descent)
 Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah, former Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, Chief Minister of Kedah from 2016 to 2018
 Anwar Ibrahim, current 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia
 Askora Asbar, Malaysian and International Ping Pong star
 Azizan Abdul Razak, Chief Minister of Kedah from 2008 to 2013
 Azmi Khalid, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment
 Surin Pitsuwan, 12th Secretary General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Thailand Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1997 to 2001
 Farid Kamil, Malaysian actor
 Bront Palarae, Malaysian actor, screenwriter, director and producer
 Janna Nick, Malaysian actress and singer (Kedahan Malay with Chinese, Thai and Indo/Pakistani descent)
 Ahmad Fairuz Abdul Halim, Chief Justice of Malaysia from 2003 to 2006
 Hani Mohsin, Malaysian actor and TV host
 Johari Abdul, Malaysian Government Backbencher Leader from 2018 to 2020
 Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah, Chief Justice of Malaysia from 2000 to 2003
 House of Jamalullail (Perlis), the ruling royal family of the state of Perlis (Kedahan Malay with Arab descent)
 Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysian 4th and 7th Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003 and from 2018 to 2020 (Kedahan Malay with Indian descent)
 Mahdzir Khalid, former Minister of Education, Chief Minister of Kedah from 2005 to 2008
 Zaki Azmi, Chief Justice of Malaysia from 2008 to 2011
 Mazlan Ahmad, famous Malaysian comedian
 Mohamed Azmi Mohamed, Lord President of the Supreme Court from 1968 to 1974
 Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor, current Chief Minister of Kedah
 Mukhriz Mahathir, former Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Chief Minister of Kedah from 2013 to 2016 and from 2018 to 2020
 Osman Aroff, Chief Minister of Kedah from 1985 to 1996
 P. Ramlee, Malay film actor (Kedahan Malay maternal ancestry, Acehnese father)
 Rozita Che Wan, Malaysian actress and personality
 Sanusi Junid, former Minister of Agriculture, Chief Minister of Kedah from 1996 to 1999
 Sharifah Rodziah Syed Alwi Barakbah, Spouse of the 1st Prime Minister of Malaysia
 Syed Ahmad Syed Mahmud Shahabuddin, Chief Minister of Kedah from 1967 to 1978 and Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Malacca from 1984 to 2004
 Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, the 7th richest corporate figure in Malaysia (Kedahan Malay with Arab descent)
 Syed Razak Syed Zain Barakbah, Chief Minister of Kedah from 1999 to 2005
 Syed Sheh Hassan Barakbah, Lord President of the Supreme Court from 1966 to 1968, 3rd Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Penang from 1969 to 1975 and President of the Dewan Negara from 1959 to 1969
 Syed Sheh Shahabudin, 2nd Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Penang
 Tunku Abdul Rahman, 1st Prime Minister of Malaysia, also regarded as "Father of Independence" and member of the Kedah royal family (Kedahan Malay with Thai descent)
 Zulkifli Ismail, Malaysian actor
 Abdul Hamid Mohamad, Chief Justice of Malaysia from 2006 to 2008
 Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, a political cartoonist famously known as Zunar and a 2016 Cartooning for Peace Prize winner.
 Akhyar Rashid, Malaysian footballer
 Faiz Subri , Penerima Anugerah Puskas award 2016

See also
 Kedah Wayang kulit Seri ansun
 Malays (ethnic group), the ethnic group located primarily in the Malay peninsula, and parts of Sumatra and Borneo
 Malay race, a racial category encompassing the people of South East Asia and sometimes the Pacific Islands
 Malaysian Malays, a constitutionally defined group of Muslim Malaysian citizens
 Malay Singaporeans
 Malay Indonesians, ethnic Malays in Indonesia
 Thai Malays, ethnic Malays in Thailand
 Sri Lankan Malays, an ethnic group in Sri Lanka of Indonesian ancestry
 Cape Malays, an ethnic group or community in South Africa
 Cocos Malays, the predominant group ethnic group of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, now part of Australia
 Overseas Malays, people of Malay ancestry living outside Malaysia and neighbouring ethnic Malay home areas
 Burmese Malays

References

Further reading
 Asmah Haji Omar (2008). Susur Galur Bahasa Melayu. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP).
 Dato' James F. Augustin (1996) Bygone Kedah. Alor Setar: Lembaga Muzium Negeri Kedah Darul Aman
 Intisari Kebudayaan Melayu Kedah (1986). Alor Setar: Majlis Kebudayaan Negeri Kedah.

Ethnic groups in Malaysia
Sub-ethnic groups
Malay people
Kedah society

Kedahan Malays


Newcastle United Fitba Club is a Inglis fitba club based in Newcastle upon Tyne. The club haes played in the Premier League, efter promuivin fae the EFL Championship. The club wis foondit in 1892 efter the merger o twa clubs based in the city, Newcastle East End an Newcastle West End. Historically they hae won 4 First Division title an 6 FA Cups, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1969 an the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2006.

Efter the unification o the twa clubs, Newcastle continued playin in East End's reid until 1894 whan thay adoptit the kenspeckle black an white striped shirts, wi black shorts an socks tae avoid frequent colour clashes.

Newcastle haes a lang-staundin rivalry wi neeburin Sunderland wi whom they hae contestit the Tyne-Wear derby syne 1898.

Club honours
For honours at reserve an academy level, see Newcastle Unitit F.C. Reserves an Academy.
Newcastle United's honours include the follaein:

Sport in Newcastle upon Tyne
Fitbaw clubs in Ingland

Companies umwhile leetit on the Lunnon Stock Exchynge
Association fitbaw clubs established in 1892
Umwhile Football League clubs
FA Cup winners
Premier League clubs
Fitbaw clubs in Tyne an Wear
1892 establishments in Ingland

Newcastle United F.C.


William Daniel Hillis (born September 25, 1956) is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and computer scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. He founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and subsequently was Vice President of Research and Disney Fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Hillis was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for advances in parallel computers, parallel software, and parallel storage.

More recently, Hillis co-founded Applied Minds, and Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists, and artists. He is a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab.

Biography

Early life and academic work

Born September 25, 1956, in Baltimore, Maryland, Danny Hillis spent much of his childhood living overseas, in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his bachelor of science in mathematics in 1978. As an undergraduate, he worked at the MIT Logo Laboratory under the tutelage of Seymour Papert, developing computer hardware and software for children. During this time, he also designed computer-oriented toys and games for the Milton Bradley Company. While still in college, he co-founded Terrapin Inc., a producer of computer software, including Logo, for elementary schools.

As a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Hillis designed tendon-controlled robot arms and a touch-sensitive robot "skin".

During his college years, Hillis was part of the team that built a computer composed entirely of Tinkertoys, currently at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

At MIT, Hillis began to study Artificial Intelligence under Marvin Minsky. In 1981, he proposed building a massively parallel computer for Artificial Intelligence, consisting of a million processors, each similar to a modern Graphics Processing Unit. This work culminated in the design of a massively parallel computer with 64,000 processors. He named it the Connection Machine, and it became the topic of his PhD, for which he received the 1985 Association for Computing Machinery Doctoral Dissertation award. Hillis earned his doctorate as a Hertz Foundation Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon and Gerald Sussman, receiving his PhD in 1988. He later served as an adjunct professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he wrote The Pattern on the Stone.

Technology career

Hillis has founded a number of technology companies, including Thinking Machines Corporation, Applied Minds, Metaweb Technologies, Applied Proteomics, and Applied Invention. Hillis has over 300 issued patents in fields including parallel computers, touch interfaces, disk arrays, forgery prevention methods, electronic and mechanical devices, and bio-medical techniques, RAID disk arrays, multicore multiprocessors and for wormhole routing in parallel processing.

Thinking Machines

As a graduate student at MIT, Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation to produce and market parallel computers, developing a series of influential products called the Connection Machine. At the time the company produced many of the fastest computers in the world. The Connection Machine was used in demanding computation and data-intensive applications. It was used by the Stanford Exploration Project for oil exploration and for pioneering data mining applications by American Express, as well as many scientific applications at organizations including Schlumberger, Harvard University, University of Tokyo, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, Sandia National Laboratories, National Center for Supercomputer Applications, Army High Performance Computing Research Center, University of California Berkeley, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Syracuse University.

In addition to designing the company's major products, Hillis worked closely with users of his machine, applying it to problems in astrophysics, aircraft design, financial analysis, genetics, computer graphics, medical imaging, image understanding, neurobiology, materials science, cryptography, and subatomic physics.

At Thinking Machines, he built a team of scientists, designers, and engineers, including people in the field as well as those who later became leaders and innovators in multiple industries. The team included Sydney Brenner, Richard Feynman, Brewster Kahle, and Eric Lander.

Among the users of Thinking Machines computers was Sergey Brin, who went on later to found Google, and Neal Stephenson, who attempted to use a CM-2 to implement a game that he later turned into the novel Snow Crash.

Disney Imagineering

In 1996, Hillis joined The Walt Disney Company in the newly created role of Disney Fellow and as Vice President, Research and Development at Disney Imagineering. He developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney's theme parks, television, motion pictures, and consumer products businesses. He also designed new theme park rides, a full-sized walking dinosaur, and various micro mechanical devices.

Applied Minds

In 2000, Hillis co-founded the R&D think-tank Applied Minds with his Disney colleague Bran Ferren. Minds is a team of engineers, scientists, and designers that provide design and technology services for clients. The creative environment and the diverse projects it undertook gained Applied Minds abundant media attention. "It's as if Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just yawned wide to welcome us. Only here, all the candy plugs in," said an article in Wired magazine.  Work done at the firm covered the range of industries and application domains, including satellites, helicopters, and educational facilities.

While at Applied Minds, Hillis designed and built a large-scale computer data center for Sun Microsystems (the Sun Modular Datacenter) that would fit into a standard 20-foot shipping container, solving, among others, the problems of accommodating processor capacity, cooling, power requirements, and storage within a uniquely portable solution. This type of "datacenter in a box," has now become a common method for building large data centers.

For Herman Miller, Hillis designed an audio privacy solution based on phonetic jumbling—Babble—which was received in the media as a version of the Cone of Silence, and was marketed through a new company, Sonare. Also for Herman Miller, Hillis developed a flexible reconfigurable power and lighting system, which was marketed through another new company, Convia.

As part of an early touchscreen map table interface, Hillis invented and patented the use of multiple touch points to control a zoom interface, which is now called "pinch to zoom.". One of these patents was the basis for the USPTO decision to reject Apple Inc.'s claim on a "pinch-to-zoom" patent in its legal dispute with Samsung, on the grounds that it was described in the Hillis patent.

Metaweb Technologies

In 2005, Hillis and others from Applied Minds founded Metaweb Technologies to develop a semantic data storage infrastructure for the Internet, and Freebase, an open, structured database of the world's knowledge. That company was acquired by Google, and its technology became the basis of the Google Knowledge Graph.

Cancer research and Applied Proteomics

In 2012, Hillis helped to create a research program on cancer and proteomics as Professor of Research Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and the principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute's Physical Sciences in Oncology Laboratory at USC. He co-founded Applied Proteomics (API) with David Agus to make proteomics-based biomarker discovery practical. Hillis and his colleagues at API developed one of the first protein biomarker discovery platforms and a blood test for early stage colon cancer, but they were unable to convince investors to finance taking their proteomic technology to the market.

Hillis has academic appointments as the Judge Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Southern California, Professor of Research Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Research Professor of Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.  He was the first principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute's Physical Sciences in Oncology Laboratory at USC.

Applied Invention

In 2015, Hillis co-founded Applied Invention, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists, and artists. Applied Invention develops technology solutions in partnership with other companies and entrepreneurs.

Applied Invention co-founded Dark Sky, a weather forecasting technology company with consumer web and mobile applications that was eventually sold to Apple.

The Pattern on the Stone

Hillis' 1998 popular science book The Pattern on the Stone attempts to explain concepts from computer science for laymen using simple language, metaphor and analogy. It moves from Boolean algebra through topics such as information theory, parallel computing, cryptography, algorithms, heuristics, Turing machines, and evolving technologies such as quantum computing and emergent systems.

The Long Now Foundation
In 1986, Hillis expressed alarm that society had what he called a "mental barrier" of looking at the year 2000 as the limit of the future. He proposed a project to build a mechanical clock that would last 10,000 years. This project became the initial project of The Long Now Foundation, which he co-founded with Stewart Brand and where he serves as co-chairman. A prototype of the Clock of the Long Now is on display at the London Science Museum. A full-scale mechanical clock is being installed at a site inside a mountain in western Texas.

Awards
Hillis is the recipient of the inaugural Dan David Prize for shaping and enriching society and public life in 2002, the 1991 Spirit of American Creativity Award for his inventions, the 1989 Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to computer science, and the 1988 Ramanujan Award for his work in applied mathematics.

Hillis is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, a fellow of the International Leadership Forum, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

References

External links

1956 births
Living people
Writers from Baltimore
Computer designers
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board members
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
American transhumanists
MIT Media Lab people

Danny Hillis