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Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. Details recorded here should be sourced; unknown information is left blank.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Maud Powell | |
|---|---|
 Powell circa 1919 | |
| Born | Minnie Powell August 22, 1867 |
| Died | January 8, 1920 (aged 52) |
| Parent(s) | William Bramwell Powell and Wilhelmina Bengelstraeter |
| Relatives | John Wesley Powell, uncle |
| Signature | |
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Minnie "Maud" Powell (August 22, 1867 – January 8, 1920) was an American violinist who gained international acclaim for her skill and virtuosity.[1]
Powell was born in Peru, Illinois. Her mother was Wilhelmina "Minnie"[2] Bengelstraeter Powell, and her father was William Bramwell Powell. W. B. Powell wrote numerous books[3] such as The Normal Course of Reading[4] and served as superintendent of Peru Elementary School District 124 from 1862 to 1870. She was the niece of John Wesley Powell, an American Civil War hero and famed explorer of the Grand Canyon. He made his first scientific exploration of the Colorado River in 1869, when Maud was two years old.[2]
Around the age of 7, she began violin and piano lessons in Aurora, located in Kane County, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago.[5] She was soon recognized as a prodigy and at age 9 began four years of being taken to Chicago for piano study with Agnes Ingersoll and violin study with William Lewis.[6] When she was 13, her parents sold the family home to raise funds to continue her musical education. With her father remaining behind in rented rooms, she traveled with her mother and younger brother William to Europe.[5][6] There she studied under Henry Schradieck at the Leipzig Conservatoire, Charles Dancla at the Paris Conservatoire (after placing first in the entrance exam), and Joseph Joachim at the Berlin Hochschule, among others.[5][7] In 1885 she played Bruch's G minor concerto in her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Joachim's baton,[5] and again with the New York Philharmonic under Theodore Thomas after she returned to the United States.[2][6]
Powell was soloist in the first American performances of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius violin concertos and performed Dvořák's Violin Concerto on April 7, 1894, with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Anton Seidl in Carnegie Hall under the supervision of the composer. Powell was a powerful advocate for music by Americans, women, and black composers, including the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, from whom she commissioned a violin concerto. Powell was a committed champion of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and was largely responsible for its addition to the repertoire. Max Liebling's Fantasia on Sousa Themes for violin and piano was dedicated to her.[8]
In January 1894, Powell was initiated honorably into musical women's fraternity Alpha Chi Omega.[9]
On October 31, 1916, Powell performed in Ottawa, Illinois, on the occasion of the dedication of the Ottawa High School building.
On November 27, 1919, Powell suffered a heart attack on stage in St. Louis, Missouri.[10][11] On January 8, 1920, Powell died following another heart attack in Uniontown, Pennsylvania while on tour.[6]
Powell was the first American violinist to achieve international rank. She was among the first instrumentalists to make Red Seal records for the Victor Talking Machine Company, starting in 1904 until 1919. With these recordings she set an enduring standard for violin performance.[7]
In 1986, Powell's biographer Karen A. Shaffer founded the Maud Powell Society for Music and Education to further knowledge of Powell and her significant role in music both in the United States and abroad.
In 1995, her home town of Peru dedicated an 8-foot bronze statue of Powell, sculpted by Joseph Heyd.[12]
In 2007, American violinist Rachel Barton Pine released a CD of music transcribed by, commissioned by or dedicated to Maud Powell.[11]
In 2009, Maud Powell Favorites, a 4-volume set of Powell's transcriptions and works commissioned by her or dedicated to her was published by the Maud Powell Society for Music and Education. The music was compiled by Karen A. Shaffer who wrote the extensive historical introduction and annotations while Rachel Barton Pine served as the music editor.[13][14]
Maud Powell was posthumously granted the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on January 25, 2014, at the Recording Academy's 2014 Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception. The award was accepted on behalf of Powell by biographer Karen A. Shaffer and Rachel Barton Pine.[15]
Maud Powell, the violinist, died in a hotel here today. She suffered a nervous breakdown yesterday and became so ill that her concert last night was canceled. On Thanksgiving night she collapsed on the stage during her concert in St. Louis. For twenty-four hours she was said to be dangerously ill, but she recovered and continued her tour. The illness was reported as acute gastritis at that time. ...
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Minnie "Maud" Powell (August 22, 1867 – January 8, 1920) was an American violinist who gained international acclaim for her skill and virtuosity.
The Maud Powell Signature, Women in Music, also known as Signature, is an American online music periodical. It is published free of charge by The Maud Powell Society for Music and Education, a non-profit charity Section 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1986 and based in Brevard, North Carolina. Signature launched in 1995 as a quarterly print subscription magazine, publishing five editions through 1997. After a nine-year hiatus due to a lack of funding, the editors resurrected the publication with a much lower overhead, distributing issues free online in pdf. The overarching topics relate to women in classical music, historic and current. The contributing editors are music scholars, music critics, and music educators. Submissions and acceptances are neither juried nor solicited nor peer-reviewed by outside scholars; although the managing editor, Pamela J. Blevins and associate editor, Karen A. Shaffer, both music scholars, weigh the veracity and worthiness themselves. The published submissions range from seminal research to dissertation spin-offs to editorials to biography supplements to general articles about forgotten or overlooked women, especially composers, who made, or are now making, important contributions to music.
William Bramwell Powell (December 22, 1836 – February 6, 1904) was an American educator, author and superintendent of schools who co-founded the National Geographic Society.
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pioneered the gritty, rhythmically driven sound that came to define hard rock. Their first stable line-up consisted of vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts, after keyboardist Ian Stewart was sidelined by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham (though Stewart was retained as the band's road manager and session/touring keyboardist until his death in 1985). During their early years, Jones was the primary leader. Oldham encouraged them to write their own songs. The Jagger–Richards partnership soon became the band's primary songwriting and creative force. Rooted in blues and early rock and roll, the Rolling Stones started out playing cover versions and were at the forefront of the British Invasion in 1964, becoming identified with the youthful counterculture of the 1960s. They then found greater success with their own compositions: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Get Off of My Cloud" (both 1965) and "Paint It Black" (1966) became international number-one hits. Aftermath (1966), their first album to be entirely of original material, is often considered to be the most important of their early albums. In 1967, they had the double-sided hit "Ruby Tuesday"/"Let's Spend the Night Together" and experimented with psychedelic rock on Their Satanic Majesties Request. By the end of the 1960s, they had returned to their rhythm and blues-based rock sound, with hit singles "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1968) and "Honky Tonk Women" (1969), and albums Beggars Banquet (1968), featuring "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man", and Let It Bleed (1969), featuring "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Gimme Shelter". Jones left the band a few weeks before his death in 1969, and was replaced by guitarist Mick Taylor. That year saw the first time they were introduced on stage as "the greatest rock and roll band in the world". In 1970, the band formed their own record label Rolling Stones Records, for which their famous tongue and lips logo was created. Their first album on the label was Sticky Fingers (1971), which yielded "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" and was their first of eight consecutive number-one studio albums in the US. It was followed by Exile on Main St. (1972), featuring "Tumbling Dice" and "Happy", and Goats Head Soup (1973), featuring "Angie". Taylor left the band at the end of 1974 and was replaced by Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood. The band released Some Girls in 1978, featuring "Miss You" and "Beast of Burden", and Tattoo You in 1981, featuring "Start Me Up". Steel Wheels (1989) was widely considered a comeback album and was followed by Voodoo Lounge (1994). Both releases were promoted by large stadium and arena tours, as the Stones continued to be a huge concert attraction. By 2007, they had broken the record for the all-time highest-grossing concert tour three times, and they were the highest-earning live act of 2021. Following Wyman's departure in 1993, the band continued as a four-piece core, with Darryl Jones becoming their regular bassist, and then as a three-piece core following Watts' death in 2021, with Steve Jordan becoming their regular drummer. Hackney Diamonds, the band's first new album of original material in 18 years, was released in October 2023, becoming their fourteenth UK number-one album. Their latest album, Foreign Tongues, was released in July 2026, scoring them their fifteenth UK number-one album. The Rolling Stones have estimated album sales of more than 250 million. They have won four Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. Billboard and Rolling Stone have ranked them as one of the greatest artists of all time.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
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