[Q]: I have a test where I am given the following article, what is an answer for the question: What was the full name of the person who was disappointed in see Shostakovich wasting his talents? ? Born at Podolskaya Street in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. Shostakovich's paternal grandfather, originally surnamed Szostakowicz, was of Polish Roman Catholic descent (his family roots trace to the region of the town of Vileyka in today's Belarus), but his immediate forebears came from Siberia. A Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 18634, Bolesaw Szostakowicz would be exiled to Narym (near Tomsk) in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitri Karakozov's assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II. When his term of exile ended, Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and studied physics and mathematics in Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899. He then went to work as an engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. In 1903 he married another Siberian transplant to the capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one of six children born to a Russian Siberian native.Their son, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, displayed significant musical talent after he began piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. On several occasions he displayed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would get "caught in the act" of playing the previous lesson's music while pretending to read different music placed in front of him. In 1918 he wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, murdered by Bolshevik sailors.In 1919, at the age of 13, he was admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov, who monitored Shostakovich's progress closely and promoted him. Shostakovich studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev after a year in the class of Elena Rozanova, composition with Maximilian...
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[A]: Maximilian Steinberg

[Q]: I have a test where I am given the following article, what is an answer for the question: What is the name of the album that was the first to reach 30x platinum, with 33 million shipped album-equivalent units certified in the US? ? Thriller is the sixth studio album by American singer Michael Jackson, released on November 30, 1982, in the United States by Epic Records and internationally by CBS Records. It explores genres similar to Jackson's previous album, Off the Wall (1979), including pop, post-disco, rock and funk. Recording took place from April to November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, with a production budget of $750,000. In just over a year, Thriller became the world's best-selling album, having sold an estimated 66 million copies. It is the second-best-selling album in the United States, behind the Eagles' album Their Greatest Hits (19711975), and was the first to reach 30x platinum, with 33 million shipped album-equivalent units certified in the US. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including Album of the Year. It produced seven singles"The Girl Is Mine", "Billie Jean", "Beat It", "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", "Human Nature", "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", and "Thriller"all of which reached the top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Thriller broke racial barriers in pop music, enabling Jackson's appearances on MTV and meeting with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The album was one of the first to use music videos as successful promotional tools, and the videos for the songs "Thriller", "Billie Jean", and "Beat It" all received regular rotation on MTV. In 2001, a special edition reissue was released, which contains additional audio interviews, demo recordings and the song "Someone in the Dark", a Grammy-winning track from the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook. In 2008, Thriller was reissued again as Thriller 25, containing remixes with contemporary artists, previously unreleased songs, and a DVD with three music videos and Jackson's performance of "Billie Jean" from the 1983 television special Motown 25. In the same year, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame along with Off the Wall. In 2012, Slant Magazine named Thriller the best album of the...
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[A]: Thriller

[Q]: I have a test where I am given the following article, what is an answer for the question: Which group opened 1965 with their first tour of Australia and New Zealand, with Manfred Mann and the Honeycombs? ? The group opened 1965 with their first tour of Australia and New Zealand, with Manfred Mann and the Honeycombs. An intensive performing schedule saw them headline other package tours throughout the year with acts such as the Yardbirds and Mickey Finn. Tensions began to emerge within the band, expressed in incidents such as the on-stage fight between Avory and Dave Davies at The Capitol Theatre, Cardiff, Wales, on 19 May. After finishing the first song, "You Really Got Me", Davies insulted Avory and kicked over his drum set. Avory responded by hitting Davies with his hi-hat stand, rendering him unconscious, before fleeing from the scene, fearing that he had killed his bandmate. Davies was taken to Cardiff Royal Infirmary, where he received 16 stitches to his head. To placate the police, Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at each other.Following a mid-year tour of the United States, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the group to appear in concerts there for the next four years, effectively cutting off the Kinks from the main market for rock music at the height of the British Invasion. Although neither the Kinks nor the union gave a specific reason for the ban, at the time it was widely attributed to their rowdy on-stage behaviour. It has been reported that an incident when the band were taping Dick Clark's TV show Where The Action Is in 1965 led to the ban. Ray Davies recalls in his autobiography, "Some guy who said he worked for the TV company walked up and accused us of being late. Then he started making anti-British comments. Things like "Just because the Beatles did it, every mop-topped, spotty-faced limey juvenile thinks he can come over here and make a career for himself." following which a punch was thrown and the AFM banned them.A stopover in Bombay, India, during the band's Australian and Asian tour had led Davies to write the song "See My Friends", released as a single in July 1965. This was an early example...
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[A]:
the Kinks