In February 2007 Bilan started to record his first international album in English in Los Angeles, Miami and in Philadelphia in collaboration with producer Jim Beanz and Ryan Tedder. One of the new tracks will be a duet with one of Timbaland's most successful artists, Nelly Furtado.
Thankerton
Thankerton is a village in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, close to Biggar and Lanark. It is at the bottom of Tinto, a hill.
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh. It was first published in 1945. The novel deals with subjects such as religion, especially Catholicism, and the love of God. It tells the story of a family called Flyte. They are an aristocratic family. The story is told by a narrator called Charles Ryder.
"Brideshead Revisited" was made into a television serial for ITV, produced by Granada Television, in 1981. A movie of the book was made in 2008. The movie makes several changes to the story of the book. The movie is mostly about the relationship between Charles and Julia.
Charles Ryder, who tells the story, is a student at the University of Oxford. He makes friends with Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of an aristocratic family. Sebastian, who comes from a very rich family, takes Charles to his family's home, Brideshead Castle. Charles meets his family, including Sebastian's sister, Julia.
During the holiday Charles goes back to his home, where he lives with his father. During the holiday Sebastian has a small injury and Charles goes back to him. Sebastian and Charles spend the rest of the summer together.
Sebastian's family is Catholic. His father, Lord Marchmain, had been an Anglican, but he had converted to Roman Catholicism, his wife's religion. The family talk a lot about religion which surprises Charles, who had always thought that Christianity was not an important subject. Lady Marchmain, Sebastian's mother, is a very strict Catholic. She tries to control others by making them feel guilty. Sebastian finds comfort by drinking alcohol. He often gets drunk, and over a period of two years he has less and less to do with the Flyte family.
However, Charles is fated to meet the Flyte family again, and he falls in love with Julia, who by that time is married to a rich Canadian, Rex Mottram.
Charles's own wife has been unfaithful, so he plans to divorce her so that he and Julia can marry. However, Julia decides for religious reasons that it would not be right for her to marry Charles. As Lord Marchmain lay dying, he had received the sacrament of Extreme Unction. This act had also influenced Charles, who had been "in search of love in those days" when he first met Sebastian, "that low door in the wall...which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden,", an important metaphor in the book.
Charles became an architect. During the Second World War becomes an army officer. By chance he is billeted at Brideshead. It seems to him that builders do a useful job, even if there are problems sometimes.
Wilt Chamberlain
Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain (August 21 1936–October 12 1999) was an American basketball player. Chamberlain played in the NBA during the 1960s, and many people think he is one of the best players in basketball history. At 7 feet 1 inch, he was the tallest and heaviest player in the league for most of his career, and he was one of the most famous people in the game for many years. He is the first and only basketball player to score 100 points in an NBA game. Chamberlain led the league several times in points, accuracy, rebounds and minutes. He also won 4 NBA Most Valuable Player awards and was placed in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
He won two NBA championships: the first in 1967, with the Philadelphia 76ers, and the second in 1972, with the Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain also played for several seasons with the Philadelphia Warriors and toured with the Harlem Globetrotters. In 1999, he died from congestive heart failure.
Kirkfieldbank
Kirkfieldbank is a village in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is close to Lanark. They, along with New Lanark, participate in the Lanark Lanimers. They have one primary school, Kirkfieldbank primary.
Jacqueline du Pré
Jacqueline du Pré (26 January 1945 - 19 October 1987) was an English cellist. Today she is thought of as one of the greatest cellists of all time. She is particularly remembered for her performances of the Elgar "Cello Concerto". She was still quite young when she became ill with multiple sclerosis and had to give up playing her cello.
Jacqueline du Pré was born in Oxford, England. Her father came from Jersey. His mother was a talented pianist who taught at the Royal Academy of Music. When she was four Jacqueline heard the sound of a cello on the radio and she told her mother she wanted "one of those." She started with lessons from her mother, who composed little pieces with little drawings. Then, when she was five, she went to the London Violoncello School . Her first teacher was Alison Dalrymple.
Soon she and her sister, who played the flute, were winning local music competitions. Du Pré’s main teacher, from 1955 to 1961, both privately and at the Guildhall School of Music in London, was the famous cellist William Pleeth. She took part in a masterclass with Pablo Casals in Zermatt, Switzerland in 1960, and had some lessons with Paul Tortelier in Paris in 1962, and with Mstislav Rostropovich in Russia in 1966. Rostropovich said that she was the only young cellist who could play better than he could.
In March 1961, when she was 16, du Pré gave her first concert at the Wigmore Hall, London, and she played the Elgar Cello Concerto in 1962 in the Royal Festival Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Schwarz. She performed at the BBC Proms in 1963 playing the Elgar concerto again, with Sir Malcolm Sargent. People liked it so much that she was asked to play it every year for three years. Du Pré performed at the Proms every year until 1969.
In 1965, when she was 20, she recorded the Elgar concerto for EMI with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir John Barbirolli. This made her internationally famous. People still judge every cellist’s performance of this work by this recording by du Pré.
She played with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, New Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. She regularly performed with conductors such as Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Daniel Barenboim (her husband), Zubin Mehta, and Leonard Bernstein.
There were two cellos that Du Pré usually played. One was a Stradivari cellos, the Stradivarius made in 1673, and the other was made in 1712 and was called the Davydov Stradivarius. Both instruments were gifts from her godmother. She performed with the 1673 Stradivarius from 1961 until 1964 when she got the Davydov. Many of her most famous recordings were made on this instrument, including the Elgar Concerto with Barbirolli, the Robert Schumann Cello Concerto with Barenboim and the two Brahms cello sonatas. From 1969 to 1970 du Pré played a Francesco Goffriller cello, and in 1970 she got a modern instrument from the Philadelphia violin maker Sergio Peresson. It was the Peresson cello that du Pré played for the rest of her career until 1973, including a second, live recording of the Elgar Concerto, and her last studio recording in 1971 of the sonatas by Frederic Chopin and César Franck.
She often played chamber music with her husband Daniel Barenboim and her friends Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman. In 1969 a film was made when they played Schubert’s "Piano Quintet ("Trout")". There were also other films made of her playing.