Jeanne Moreau (from Wikipedia)
Jeanne Moreau (January 23, 1928 – July 31, 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director. She won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Seven Days… Seven Nights (1960), the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for Viva Maria! (1965), and the César Award for Best Actress for The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1992). She was also the recipient of several lifetime awards, including a BAFTA Fellowship in 1996.
Moreau made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. She began playing small roles in films in 1949, with impressive performances in the Fernandel vehicle Meurtres (Three Sinners, 1950) and alongside Jean Gabin as a showgirl/gangster’s moll in the film Touchez pas au grisbi (1954). She achieved prominence as the star of Elevator to the Gallows (1958), directed by Louis Malle, and Jules et Jim (1962), directed by François Truffaut. Most prolific during the 1960s, Moreau continued to appear in films into her eighties.
Moreau was born in Paris, the daughter of Katherine (née Buckley), a dancer who performed at the Folies Bergère (d.1990), and Anatole-Désiré Moreau, a restaurateur (d.1975). Moreau’s father was French; her mother was English, a native of Oldham, Lancashire, England and of part Irish descent. … During the war, the family was split and Moreau lived with her mother in Paris. …
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Moreau was also a vocalist. She released several albums and once performed with Frank Sinatra at Carnegie Hall. In addition to acting, Moreau worked behind the camera, as a writer, director and producer. Her blended accomplishments were the subject of a film profile, Calling the Shots (1988), by Janis Cole and Holly Dale.
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She was formerly married to Jean-Louis Richard (1949–1964) and then to American film director William Friedkin (1977–1979). … She also had affairs with directors Louis Malle and François Truffaut, fashion designer Pierre Cardin, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and Theodoros Roubanis, the Greek actor/playboy.
Moreau was a close friend of Sharon Stone, who presented a 1998 American Academy of Motion Pictures life tribute to Moreau. Orson Welles called her “the greatest actress in the world”, and she remained one of France’s most accomplished actresses.
Moreau died on July 31, 2017, at the age of 89.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Moreau
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths… August 2017
1: Alfie Lorenzo, 78, Filipino talent manager, heart failure.
July 2017
31: Chuck Loeb, 61, American jazz guitarist (Fourplay), cancer; Jeanne Moreau, 89, French actress (Elevator to the Gallows, The Lovers, Jules and Jim).
30: Tato Cifuentes, 91, Chilean comedian, actor, ventriloquist and singer, pneumonia; H. Sayeeduddin Dagar, 78, Indian Dhrupad* singer.
29: Charley Marouani, 90, Tunisian impresario and talent agent.
27: Rob Anker, 27, English dancer (**Diversity), winner of Britain’s Got Talent (2009), traffic collision; D. L. Menard, 85, American Cajun musician; Gilles Tremblay, 84, Canadian composer, professor at Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal (since 1962).
26: Paul Angerer, 90, Austrian conductor, violist, composer and radio presenter.
25: Michael Johnson, 72, American singer (“Bluer Than Blue”, “Give Me Wings”, “The Moon Is Still Over Her Shoulder”), songwriter and guitarist; Ivana Loudová, 76, Czech composer; Billy Joe Walker Jr., 65, American guitarist, record producer and songwriter (“I Wanna Dance with You”, “That’s Why I Fell in Love with You”, “B-B-B-Burnin’ Up with Love”); Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, 46, Australian Indigenous musician.
* Dhrupad is a genre in Hindustani classical music. It is one of the oldest forms of compositions in the classical Indian music and a form that is also found in its Carnatic tradition. It is a Sanskrit name, derived from the words dhruva (immovable, permanent) and pad (verse), a combination that means “pillar”. The roots of Dhrupad are ancient, and it is discussed in the Hindu Sanskrit text Natyashastra (~200 BCE – 200 CE). It is also described in other ancient and medieval Sanskrit texts, such as chapter 33 of Book 10 in the Bhagavata Purana (~800–1000 CE), where the theories of music and devotional songs for Krishna are summarized.
The term denotes both the verse form of the poetry and the style in which it is sung. It is spiritual, heroic, thoughtful, virtuous, embedding moral wisdom or solemn form of song-music combination. Thematic matter ranges from the religious and spiritual (mostly in praise of Hindu deities) to royal panegyrics, musicology and romance.
A Dhrupada has at least four stanzas, called Sthayi (or Asthayi), Antara, Sancari and Abhoga. The Sthayi part is a melody that uses the middle octave’s first tetrachord and the lower octave notes. The Antara part uses the middle octave’s second tetrachord and the higher octave notes. The Samcari part is the development phase, which holistically builds using parts of Sthayi and Antara already played, and it uses melodic material built with all the three octave notes. The Abhoga is the concluding section, that brings the listener back to the familiar starting point of Sthayi, albeit with rhythmic variations, with diminished notes like a gentle goodbye, that are ideally mathematical fractions such as dagun (half), tigun (third) or caugun (fourth). Sometimes a fifth stanza called Bhoga is included. Though usually related to philosophical or Bhakti (emotional devotion to a god or goddess) themes, some Dhrupadas were composed to praise kings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhrupad
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** Diversity are a British street dance troupe formed in 2007 and based in London. They are best known for winning the 3rd series of Britain’s Got Talent in 2009, beating ‘runner-up’ singer Susan Boyle in the live final. On 28 July 2017, it was announced that former member Robert Anker had died following a car accident in Canada.
In 2009, Diversity auditioned in London for the third series of Britain’s Got Talent. Judge Amanda Holden said: “Just when I think I’ve seen it all, you came on.” … Later, they were in the top 3 with singers Natalie Okri and Susan Boyle. Boyle was revealed to have received the most votes and went straight through to the live final, meaning that the judges would choose between Okri and Diversity for the second spot in the final. Morgan and Cowell both voted in favour of Diversity – Morgan believed that Diversity had a better chance of winning the show and Cowell admitted that he had been “a huge fan” of Diversity from their first audition.
Following their performance in the final, Holden said she thought Diversity had “blown Flawless out of the water”, while Cowell said that “If I had to give marks on that, this would be the only performance tonight I would give a 10 to.” However, Morgan thought Flawless “just edged [Diversity].” They finished in the top 3 again, as did Boyle, along with saxophonist Julian Smith. In a shock result, in front of a record audience of 17.3 million viewers, Diversity were announced as the winners, despite Boyle being the clear favorite to win.