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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
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

Richard Barrett (born 7 November 1959) is a Welsh composer.
Barrett was born in Swansea, Wales and attended Olchfa School. After completing his first bachelor's degree in genetics and microbiology from University College London in 1980[1], he began to study music, taking private lessons with Peter Wiegold, and soon thereafter participating in the 1984 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik where there were fruitful encounters with Brian Ferneyhough and Hans-Joachim Hespos. In the late 1980s he became associated with the so-called New Complexity group of British composers because of the intricate notation of his scores. He is equally active in free improvisation, most often in the electronic duo FURT with Paul Obermayer, formed in 1986, but also since 2003 as a member of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Since 1990 about half of his compositions have been written for the ELISION Ensemble, most notably the extended works Opening of the Mouth, DARK MATTER, CONSTRUCTION and world-line. Most of his compositions since the 1990s have involved both acoustic and electronic resources, combined in many different ways. In 2005 he and Obermayer formed the electroacoustic octet fORCH.[citation needed]
He taught composition at Middlesex University from 1989 to 1992, and electronic composition at the Institute of Sonology of the Hague Royal Conservatory in 1996, where he worked until 2001. In 2009 he resumed teaching regularly at the institute, and is also Professor of Creative Music Research at Leiden University. Having moved from London to Amsterdam in 1993, he lived in Berlin from 2001 to 2013, initially as a guest of the German Academic Exchange Service's (DAAD) "Berliner Künstlerprogramm", except between 2006 and 2009 when he was a professor of composition at Brunel University London.[2] Barrett has often been politically outspoken,[3] and in 1990 joined the Socialist Workers Party. While no longer an active member he remains aligned with revolutionary socialism.[4]
Barrett won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, in 1986, and was awarded the Gaudeamus Prize in 1989.[1] He also won the Chamber Music category of the 2003 British Composer Awards.[5]
Many of Barrett's works are grouped into series, and have extra-musical associations—particularly with the writers Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan, but also the Chilean painter Roberto Matta, and ideas from physics, mythology, astrology and philosophy (in the texts of DARK MATTER). Barrett's compositional techniques, which derive equally and indistinguishably from serial, stochastic and intuitive methods, have since the mid-1980s made extensive use of computer programs he has developed himself.[1] He regards free improvisation as a method of composition rather than as a different or opposed kind of musical activity.[6]
His codex series of compositions explores diverse ways of using composed frameworks as a point of departure for improvisation, particularly with larger groups, while the fOKT series extrapolates some of FURT's characteristic forms of texture and co-ordination into the octet context of the fORCH ensemble. The results of these more experimental and collaborative projects have exerted an increasing influence on Barrett's other compositional work, which remains mostly fully notated, although several compositions (for example transmission, Blattwerk and adrift) alternate between precise scoring and free improvisation for part or all of their duration. However, these different strategies are used to maximise the musical potential of the whole, rather than drawing attention to the distinction between improvisational and notational methods of composition—as Barrett himself puts it: "As a listener I generally prefer to concentrate on what music is doing rather than how it was done".[7]
Since 2003 he has been working on an eight-part cycle of compositions collectively entitled resistance & vision and with a projected total duration of over six hours, of which the first (NO), third (cell), fifth (Mesopotamia), sixth (IF), seventh (nacht und träume) and eighth (CONSTRUCTION) have so far been completed (July 2016). CONSTRUCTION is itself a conglomerate work lasting over two hours in performance, consisting of 20 components in four interwoven cycles which may also be performed singly or in various combinations. Since the completion of CONSTRUCTION he has completed a number of other projects which continue long-term associations—life-form for cellist Arne Deforce and world-line for ELISION—as well as inaugurating new ones—close-up for the Belgrade-based group Ensemble Studio6 and two three-hour works in progress natural causes (based on a cycle of poems written for him by Simon Howard) for various ensembles including Musikfabrik, soundinitiative, Ensemble du Bout du Monde and Fonema Consort, and PSYCHE for ELISION.[citation needed]
He is currently based in The Hague, Netherlands. In 2019 his book Music of Possibility was published by Vision Edition, followed in 2023 by Transforming Moments from the same publisher.[citation needed]
He is not related to Syd Barrett.
With Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble
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Richard Barrett (born 7 November 1959) is a Welsh composer.
Richard Barrett may refer to:
Richard William Wright (28 July 1943 – 15 September 2008) was an English keyboardist, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd. He appeared on almost every Pink Floyd album and performed on all of their tours. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Pink Floyd. Wright grew up in Hatch End, Middlesex, and met his future Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters and Nick Mason while studying architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London. After being joined by frontman and songwriter Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd achieved commercial success in 1967. Barrett was replaced by David Gilmour in 1968, who, along with Waters and Wright, took over songwriting. Wright initially contributed significantly to the band as a singer-songwriter, writing and providing lead vocals on songs including "Remember a Day" and the single "It Would Be So Nice" (both 1968). Later, Wright acted mainly as an arranger on compositions by Waters and Gilmour. He began to contribute less towards the end of the 1970s and left the band after touring The Wall in 1981. He rejoined as a session player in 1987 for A Momentary Lapse of Reason, becoming a full-time member again for The Division Bell in 1994. Sessions with Wright during this period were later released on the 2014 album The Endless River. Wright's jazz influences and distinctive keyboard playing were an important part of the Pink Floyd sound. As well as playing Farfisa and Hammond organs and Kurzweil synthesisers, he sang regularly in the band and took lead vocals on songs such as "Time" (1973) and "Wearing the Inside Out" (1994). Wright recorded two solo studio albums and was briefly active in the pop duo Zee with Dave Harris of Fashion. Following Pink Floyd's Live 8 appearance in 2005, he became part of Gilmour's touring band. Wright died from lung cancer in London in September 2008, aged 65.
Ruth Barrett (born 1976) is a British film score composer. Her film score credits include Harry Brown, Twenty8k, and City of Tiny Lights. Her television score credits include The Sister, Bloodlands, Bodyguard, The Durrells, Collateral, Legacy, Law & Order: Organized Crime, and Victoria. For her work on Victoria, Barrett was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series.
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.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker