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Category: Birthdays

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

“Loudly applauded”: Composer Louise Angélique Bertin

Posted by: Melissa Wertheimer

January 15, 2021 is the 216th birthday of Louise Angélique Bertin. She was a French composer, poet, librettist, and painter. She was the only composer to work directly with Victor Hugo, the first French composer to set Goethe’s Faust as an opera, and the first woman of the 19th century to have an opera performed at the Opéra de Paris. The Music Division has wonderful resources about Louise Angélique Bertin.

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Happy Birthday Chris Potter

Posted by: Larry Appelbaum

Every generation has its saxophone heroes in jazz: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane all continue to inspire players in every style on just about every instrument. One of the great saxophonists and multi-instrumentalists of this generation is the Chicago-born, Columbia, South Carolina-raised Chris Potter. For the past three decades he’s been drawing …