title: Miles Davis

text: In January 1966, Davis spent three months in the hospital with a liver infection. When he resumed touring, he performed more at colleges because he had grown tired of the typical jazz venues. Columbia president Clive Davis reported in 1966 his sales had declined to around 40,000–50,000 per album, compared to as many as 100,000 per release a few years before. Matters were not helped by the press reporting his apparent financial troubles and imminent demise. After his appearance at the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival, he returned to the studio with his quintet for a series of sessions. He started a relationship with actress Cicely Tyson, who helped him reduce his alcohol consumption.


title: Miles Davis

text: Material from the 1966–1968 sessions was released on "Miles Smiles" (1966), "Sorcerer" (1967), "Nefertiti" (1967), "Miles in the Sky" (1968), and "Filles de Kilimanjaro" (1968). The quintet's approach to the new music became known as "time no changes"—which referred to Davis's decision to depart from chordal sequences and adopt a more open approach, with the rhythm section responding to the soloists' melodies. Through "Nefertiti" the studio recordings consisted primarily of originals composed by Shorter, with occasional compositions by the other sidemen. In 1967, the group began to play their concerts in continuous sets, each tune flowing into the next, with only the melody indicating any sort of change. His bands performed this way until his hiatus in 1975.


title: Miles Davis

text: "Miles in the Sky" and "Filles de Kilimanjaro"—which tentatively introduced electric bass, electric piano, and electric guitar on some tracks—pointed the way to the fusion phase of Davis's career. He also began experimenting with more rock-oriented rhythms on these records. By the time the second half of "Filles de Kilimanjaro" was recorded, bassist Dave Holland and pianist Chick Corea had replaced Carter and Hancock. Davis soon took over the compositional duties of his sidemen.


title: Miles Davis

text: "In a Silent Way" was recorded in a single studio session in February 1969, with Shorter, Hancock, Holland, and Williams alongside keyboardists Chick Corea and Josef Zawinul and guitarist John McLaughlin. The album contains two side-long tracks that Macero pieced together from different takes recorded at the session. When the album was released later that year, some critics accused him of "selling out" to the rock and roll audience. Nevertheless, it reached number 134 on the US "Billboard" Top LPs chart, his first album since "My Funny Valentine" to reach the chart. "In a Silent Way" was his entry into jazz fusion. The touring band of 1969–1970—with Shorter, Corea, Holland, and DeJohnette—never completed a studio recording together, and became known as Davis's "lost quintet", though radio broadcasts from the band's European tour have been extensively bootlegged.


title: Miles Davis

text: For the double album "Bitches Brew" (1970), he hired Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, and Bennie Maupin. The album contained long compositions, some over twenty minutes, that were never played in the studio but were constructed from several takes by Macero and Davis via splicing and tape loops amid epochal advances in multitrack recording technologies. "Bitches Brew" peaked at No. 35 on the "Billboard" Album chart. In 1976, it was certified gold for selling over 500,000 records. By 2003, it had sold one million copies.


title: Miles Davis

text: In March 1970, Davis began to perform as the opening act for rock bands, allowing Columbia to market "Bitches Brew" to a larger audience. He shared a Fillmore East bill with the Steve Miller Band and Neil Young with Crazy Horse on March 6 and 7. Biographer Paul Tingen wrote, "Miles' newcomer status in this environment" led to "mixed audience reactions, often having to play for dramatically reduced fees, and enduring the 'sell-out' accusations from the jazz world", as well as being "attacked by sections of the black press for supposedly genuflecting to white culture". The 1970 tours included the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival on August 29 when he performed to an estimated 600,000 people, the largest of his career. Plans to record with Hendrix ended after the guitarist's death; his funeral was the last one that Davis attended. Several live albums with a transitional sextet/septet including Corea, DeJohnette, Holland, Moreira, saxophonist Steve Grossman, and keyboardist Keith Jarrett were recorded during this period, including "Miles Davis at Fillmore" (1970) and "" (1973).


title: Miles Davis

text: By 1971, Davis had signed a contract with Columbia that paid him $100,000 a year () for three years in addition to royalties. He recorded a soundtrack album ("Jack Johnson") for the 1970 documentary film about heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson, containing two long pieces of 25 and 26 minutes in length with Hancock, McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock, and Billy Cobham. He was committed to making music for African-Americans who liked more commercial, pop, groove-oriented music. By November 1971, DeJohnette and Moreira had been replaced in the touring ensemble by drummer Leon "Ndugu" Chancler and percussionists James Mtume and Don Alias. "Live-Evil" was released in the same month. Showcasing bassist Michael Henderson, who had replaced Holland in 1970, the album demonstrated that Davis's ensemble had transformed into a funk-oriented group while retaining the exploratory imperative of "Bitches Brew".


title: Miles Davis

text: In 1972, composer-arranger Paul Buckmaster introduced Davis to the music of avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, leading to a period of creative exploration. Biographer J. K. Chambers wrote, "The effect of Davis' study of Stockhausen could not be repressed for long ... Davis' own 'space music' shows Stockhausen's influence compositionally." His recordings and performances during this period were described as "space music" by fans, Feather, and Buckmaster, who described it as "a lot of mood changes—heavy, dark, intense—definitely space music". The studio album "On the Corner" (1972) blended the influence of Stockhausen and Buckmaster with funk elements. Davis invited Buckmaster to New York City to oversee the writing and recording of the album with Macero. The album reached No. 1 on the "Billboard" jazz chart but peaked at No. 156 on the more heterogeneous Top 200 Albums chart. Davis felt that Columbia marketed it to the wrong audience. "The music was meant to be heard by young black people, but they just treated it like any other jazz album and advertised it that way, pushed it on the jazz radio stations. Young black kids don't listen to those stations; they listen to R&B stations and some rock stations." In October 1972, he broke his ankles in a car crash. He took painkillers and cocaine to cope with the pain. Looking back at his career after the incident, he wrote, "Everything started to blur."


title: Miles Davis

text: After recording "On the Corner", he assembled a group with Henderson, Mtume, Carlos Garnett, guitarist Reggie Lucas, organist Lonnie Liston Smith, tabla player Badal Roy, sitarist Khalil Balakrishna, and drummer Al Foster. Only Smith was a jazz instrumentalist; consequently, the music emphasized rhythmic density and shifting textures instead of solos. This group was recorded live in 1972 for "In Concert", but Davis found it unsatisfactory, leading him to drop the tabla and sitar and play keyboards. He also added guitarist Pete Cosey. The compilation studio album "Big Fun" contains four long improvisations recorded between 1969 and 1972.


title: Miles Davis

text: Studio sessions throughout 1973 and 1974 led to "Get Up with It", an album which included four long pieces alongside four shorter recordings from 1970 and 1972. The track "He Loved Him Madly", a thirty-minute tribute to the recently deceased Duke Ellington, influenced Brian Eno's ambient music. In the United States, it performed comparably to "On the Corner", reaching number 8 on the jazz chart and number 141 on the pop chart. He then concentrated on live performance with a series of concerts that Columbia released on the double live albums "Agharta" (1975), "Pangaea" (1976), and "Dark Magus" (1977). The first two are recordings of two sets from February 1, 1975, in Osaka, by which time Davis was troubled by several physical ailments; he relied on alcohol, codeine, and morphine to get through the engagements. His shows were routinely panned by critics who mentioned his habit of performing with his back to the audience. Cosey later asserted that "the band really advanced after the Japanese tour", but Davis was again hospitalized, for his ulcers and a hernia, during a tour of the US while opening for Herbie Hancock.


title: Miles Davis

text: After appearances at the 1975 Newport Jazz Festival in July and the Schaefer Music Festival in New York in September, Davis dropped out of music.


title: Miles Davis

text: In his autobiography, Davis wrote frankly about his life during his hiatus from music. He called his Upper West Side brownstone a wreck and chronicled his heavy use of alcohol and cocaine, in addition to sexual encounters with many women. He also stated that "Sex and drugs took the place music had occupied in my life." Drummer Tony Williams recalled that by noon (on average) Davis would be sick from the previous night's intake.


title: Miles Davis

text: In December 1975, he had regained enough strength to undergo a much needed hip replacement operation. In December 1976, Columbia was reluctant to renew his contract and pay his usual large advances. But after his lawyer started negotiating with United Artists, Columbia matched their offer, establishing the Miles Davis Fund to pay him regularly. Pianist Vladimir Horowitz was the only other musician with Columbia who had a similar status.


title: Miles Davis

text: In 1978, Davis asked fusion guitarist Larry Coryell to participate in sessions with keyboardists Masabumi Kikuchi and George Pavlis, bassist T. M. Stevens, and drummer Al Foster. Davis played the arranged piece uptempo, abandoned his trumpet for the organ, and had Macero record the session without the band's knowledge. After Coryell declined a spot in a band that Davis was beginning to put together, Davis returned to his reclusive lifestyle in New York City. Soon after, Marguerite Eskridge had Davis jailed for failing to pay child support for their son Erin, which cost him $10,000 () for release on bail. A recording session that involved Buckmaster and Gil Evans was halted, with Evans leaving after failing to receive the payment he was promised. In August 1978, Davis hired a new manager, Mark Rothbaum, who had worked with him since 1972.


title: Miles Davis

text: Having played the trumpet little throughout the previous three years, Davis found it difficult to reclaim his embouchure. His first post-hiatus studio appearance took place in May 1980. A day later, Davis was hospitalized due to a leg infection. He recorded "The Man with the Horn" from June 1980 to May 1981 with Macero producing. A large band was abandoned in favor of a combo with saxophonist Bill Evans and bassist Marcus Miller. Both would collaborate with him during the next decade.


title: Miles Davis

text: "The Man with the Horn" received a poor critical reception despite selling well. In June 1981, Davis returned to the stage for the first time since 1975 in a ten-minute guest solo as part of Mel Lewis's band at the Village Vanguard. This was followed by appearances with a new band. Recordings from a mixture of dates from 1981, including from the Kix in Boston and Avery Fisher Hall, were released on "We Want Miles", which earned him a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist.


title: Miles Davis

text: In January 1982, while Tyson was working in Africa, Davis "went a little wild" with alcohol, and suffered a stroke that temporarily paralyzed his right hand. Tyson returned home and cared for him. After three months of treatment with a Chinese acupuncturist, he was able to play the trumpet again. He listened to his doctor's warnings and gave up alcohol and drugs. He credited Tyson with helping his recovery, which involved exercise, piano playing, and visits to spas. She encouraged him to draw, which he pursued for the rest of his life.


title: Miles Davis

text: Davis resumed touring in May 1982 with a line-up that included percussionist Mino Cinelu and guitarist John Scofield, with whom he worked closely on the album "Star People" (1983). In mid-1983, he worked on the tracks for "Decoy", an album mixing soul music and electronica that was released in 1984. He brought in producer, composer, and keyboardist Robert Irving III, who had collaborated with him on "The Man with the Horn". With a seven-piece band that included Scofield, Evans, Irving, Foster, and Darryl Jones, he played a series of European performances that were positively received. In December 1984, while in Denmark, he was awarded the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. Trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg had written "Aura", a contemporary classical piece, for the event which impressed Davis to the point of returning to Denmark in early 1985 to record his next studio album, "Aura". Columbia was dissatisfied with the recording and delayed its release.


title: Miles Davis

text: In May 1985, one month into a tour, Davis signed a contract with Warner Bros. that required him to give up his publishing rights. "You're Under Arrest", his final album for Columbia, was released in September. It included cover versions of two pop songs: "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson's "Human Nature". He considered releasing an album of pop songs, and he recorded dozens of them, but the idea was rejected. He said that many of today's jazz standards had been pop songs in Broadway theater and that he was simply updating the standards repertoire.


title: Miles Davis

text: Davis collaborated with a number of figures from the British post-punk and new wave movements during this period, including Scritti Politti. This period also saw Davis move from his funk inspired sound of the early 1970s to a more melodic style.


title: Miles Davis

text: After taking part in the recording of the 1985 protest song "Sun City" as a member of Artists United Against Apartheid, Davis appeared on the instrumental "Don't Stop Me Now" by Toto for their album "Fahrenheit" (1986). Davis collaborated with Prince on a song titled "Can I Play With U," which went unreleased until 2020. Davis also collaborated with Zane Giles and Randy Hall on the "Rubberband" sessions in 1985 but those would remain unreleased until 2019. Instead, he worked with Marcus Miller, and "Tutu" (1986) became the first time he used modern studio tools such as programmed synthesizers, sampling, and drum loops. Released in September 1986, its front cover is a photographic portrait of Davis by Irving Penn. In 1987, he won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist. Also in 1987, Davis contacted American journalist Quincy Troupe to work with him on his autobiography. The two men had met the previous year when Troupe conducted a two-day-long interview, which was published by "Spin" as a 45-page article.


title: Miles Davis

text: In 1988, Davis had a small part as a street musician in the Christmas comedy film "Scrooged" starring Bill Murray. He also collaborated with Zucchero Fornaciari in a version of "Dune Mosse" ("Blue's"), published in 2004 in "Zu & Co." of the Italian bluesman. In November 1988 he was inducted into the Knights of Malta at a ceremony at the Alhambra Palace in Spain (this was part of the reasoning for his daughter's decision to include the honorific "Sir" on his headstone). Later that month, Davis cut his European tour short after he collapsed and fainted after a two-hour show in Madrid and flew home. There were rumors of more poor health reported by the American magazine "Star" in its February 21, 1989, edition, which published a claim that Davis had contracted AIDS, prompting his manager Peter Shukat to issue a statement the following day. Shukat said Davis had been in the hospital for a mild case of pneumonia and the removal of a benign polyp on his vocal cords and was resting comfortably in preparation for his 1989 tours. Davis later blamed one of his former wives or girlfriends for starting the rumor and decided against taking legal action. He was interviewed on "60 Minutes" by Harry Reasoner. In October 1989, he received a Grande Medaille de Vermeil from Paris mayor Jacques Chirac. In 1990, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In early 1991, he appeared in the Rolf de Heer film "Dingo" as a jazz musician.


title: Miles Davis

text: Davis followed "Tutu" with "Amandla" (1989) and soundtracks to four films: "Street Smart", "Siesta", "The Hot Spot", and "Dingo." His last albums were released posthumously: the hip hop-influenced "Doo-Bop" (1992) and "Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux" (1993), a collaboration with Quincy Jones from the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival where, for the first time in three decades, he performed songs from "Miles Ahead", "Porgy and Bess", and "Sketches of Spain".


title: Miles Davis

text: On July 8, 1991, Davis returned to performing material from his past at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival with a band and orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones. The set consisted of arrangements from his albums recorded with Gil Evans. The show was followed by a concert billed as "Miles and Friends" at the Grande halle de la Villette in Paris two days later, with guest performances by musicians from throughout his career, including John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul. In Paris he was awarded a knighthood, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by French Culture Minister, Jack Lang who called him "the Picasso of Jazz". After returning to America, he stopped in New York City to record material for "Doo-Bop", then returned to California to play at the Hollywood Bowl on August 25, his final live performance.


title: Miles Davis

text: Davis began a relationship with Taylor, a dancer he had met in 1953 at Ciro's in Los Angeles. They married in December 1959 in Toledo, Ohio. The relationship was marred by numerous incidents of domestic violence against Taylor. He later wrote, "Every time I hit her, I felt bad because a lot of it really wasn't her fault but had to do with me being temperamental and jealous." One theory for his behavior was that in 1963 he had increased his use of alcohol and cocaine to alleviate joint pain caused by sickle cell anemia. He hallucinated, "looking for this imaginary person" in his house while wielding a kitchen knife. Soon after the photograph for the album "E.S.P." (1965) was taken, Taylor left him for the final time. She filed for divorce in 1966; it was finalized in February 1968.


title: Miles Davis

text: In September 1968, Davis married 23-year-old model and songwriter Betty Mabry. In his autobiography, Davis described her as a "high-class groupie, who was very talented but who didn't believe in her own talent". Mabry, a familiar face in the New York City counterculture, introduced Davis to popular rock, soul, and funk musicians. Jazz critic Leonard Feather visited Davis's apartment and was shocked to find him listening to albums by The Byrds, Aretha Franklin, and Dionne Warwick. He also liked James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix, whose group Band of Gypsys particularly impressed Davis. Davis filed for divorce from Mabry in 1969, after accusing her of having an affair with Hendrix.


title: Miles Davis

text: In October 1969, Davis was shot at five times while in his car with one of his two lovers, Marguerite Eskridge. The incident left him with a graze and Eskridge unharmed. In 1970, Marguerite gave birth to their son Erin.


title: Miles Davis

text: By 1979, Davis rekindled his relationship with actress Cicely Tyson, who helped him to overcome his cocaine addiction and regain his enthusiasm for music. The two married in November 1981, but their tumultuous marriage ended with Tyson filing for divorce in 1988, which was finalized in 1989.


title: Miles Davis

text: In 1984, Davis met 34-year-old sculptor Jo Gelbard. Gelbard would teach Davis how to paint; the two were frequent collaborators and were soon romantically involved. By 1985, Davis was diabetic and required daily injections of insulin. Davis became increasingly aggressive in his final year due in part to the medication he was taking. His aggression manifested as violence towards his partner Jo Gelbard.


title: Miles Davis

text: In early September 1991, Davis checked into St. John's Hospital near his home in Santa Monica, California, for routine tests. Doctors suggested he have a tracheal tube implanted to relieve his breathing after repeated bouts of bronchial pneumonia. The suggestion provoked an outburst from Davis that led to an intracerebral hemorrhage followed by a coma. According to Jo Gelbard, on September 26, Davis painted his final painting, composed of dark, ghostly figures, dripping blood and "his imminent demise." After several days on life support, his machine was turned off and he died on September 28, 1991, in the arms of Gelbard. He was 65 years old. His death was attributed to the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia, and respiratory failure. According to Troupe, Davis was taking azidothymidine (AZT), a type of antiretroviral drug used for the treatment of HIV and AIDS, during his treatments in the hospital. A funeral service was held on October 5, 1991, at St. Peter's Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue in New York City that was attended by around 500 friends, family members, and musical acquaintances, with many fans standing in the rain. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City, with one of his trumpets, near the site of Duke Ellington's grave.


title: Miles Davis

text: At the time of his death, Davis's estate was valued at more than $1 million (equivalent to roughly $ million in ). In his will, Davis left 20 percent to his daughter Cheryl Davis; 40 percent to his son Erin Davis; 10 percent to his nephew Vincent Wilburn Jr. and 15 percent each to his brother Vernon Davis and his sister Dorothy Wilburn. He excluded his two sons Gregory and Miles IV.


title: Miles Davis

text: Late in his life, from the "electric period" onwards, Davis repeatedly explained his reasons for not wishing to perform his earlier works, such as "Birth of the Cool" or "Kind of Blue". In his view, remaining stylistically static was the wrong option. He commented: So What' or "Kind of Blue", they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It's over ... What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore, it's more like warmed-over turkey." When Shirley Horn insisted in 1990 that Miles reconsider playing the ballads and modal tunes of his "Kind of Blue" period, he said: "Nah, it hurts my lip." Bill Evans, who played piano on "Kind of Blue", said: "I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master, but I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on his material. The rock and pop thing certainly draws a wider audience." Throughout his later career, Davis declined offers to reinstate his 1960s quintet.


title: Miles Davis

text: Many books and documentaries focus on his work before 1975. According to an article by "The Independent", from 1975 onwards a decline in critical praise for Davis's output began to form, with many viewing the era as "worthless": "There is a surprisingly widespread view that, in terms of the merits of his musical output, Davis might as well have died in 1975." In a 1982 interview in "DownBeat", Wynton Marsalis said: "They call Miles's stuff jazz. That stuff is not jazz, man. Just because somebody played jazz at one time, that doesn't mean they're still playing it." Despite his contempt for Davis' later work, Marsalis' work is "laden with ironic references to Davis' music of the '60s". Davis did not necessarily disagree; lambasting what he saw as Marsalis's stylistic conservatism, Davis said "Jazz is dead ... it's finito! It's over and there's no point apeing the shit." Writer Stanley Crouch criticized Davis's work from "In a Silent Way" onwards.


title: Miles Davis

text: Miles Davis is considered one of the most innovative, influential, and respected figures in the history of music. Based on professional rankings of his albums and songs, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists him as the 16th most acclaimed recording artist in history. "The Guardian" described him as "a pioneer of 20th-century music, leading many of the key developments in the world of jazz." He has been called "one of the great innovators in jazz", and had the titles Prince of Darkness and the Picasso of Jazz bestowed upon him. "The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll" said, "Miles Davis played a crucial and inevitably controversial role in every major development in jazz since the mid-'40s, and no other jazz musician has had so profound an effect on rock. Miles Davis was the most widely recognized jazz musician of his era, an outspoken social critic and an arbiter of style—in attitude and fashion—as well as music."


title: Miles Davis

text: William Ruhlmann of AllMusic wrote, "To examine his career is to examine the history of jazz from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s, since he was in the thick of almost every important innovation and stylistic development in the music during that period ... It can even be argued that jazz stopped evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward." Francis Davis of "The Atlantic" noted that Davis's career can be seen as "an ongoing critique of bebop: the origins of 'cool' jazz..., hard bop, or 'funky'..., modal improvisation..., and jazz-rock fusion... can be traced to his efforts to tear bebop down to its essentials."


title: Miles Davis

text: His approach, owing largely to the African-American performance tradition that focused on individual expression, emphatic interaction, and creative response to shifting contents, had a profound impact on generations of jazz musicians. In 2016, digital publication The Pudding, in an article examining Davis's legacy, found that 2,452 Wikipedia pages mention Davis, with over 286 citing him as an influence.


title: Miles Davis

text: On November 5, 2009, U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a measure in the United States House of Representatives to commemorate "Kind of Blue" on its 50th anniversary. The measure also affirms jazz as a national treasure and "encourages the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz music". It passed with a vote of 409–0 on December 15, 2009. The trumpet Davis used on the recording is displayed on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It was donated to the school by Arthur "Buddy" Gist, who met Davis in 1949 and became a close friend. The gift was the reason why the jazz program at UNCG is named the Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program.


title: Miles Davis

text: In 1986, the New England Conservatory awarded Davis an honorary doctorate for his contributions to music. Since 1960 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) honored him with eight Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards.


title: Miles Davis

text: In 2001, "The Miles Davis Story", a two-hour documentary film by Mike Dibb, won an International Emmy Award for arts documentary of the year. Since 2005, the Miles Davis Jazz Committee has held an annual Miles Davis Jazz Festival. Also in 2005, a London exhibition was held of his paintings, "The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis, 1980-1991"' was released detailing his final years and eight of his albums from the 1960s and 1970s were reissued in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his signing to Columbia Records. In 2006, Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued commemorative stamps featuring Davis.


title: Miles Davis

text: "Miles Ahead" was a 2015 American music film directed by Don Cheadle, co-written by Cheadle with Steven Baigelman, Stephen J. Rivele, and Christopher Wilkinson, which interprets the life and compositions of Davis. It premiered at the New York Film Festival in October 2015. The film stars Cheadle, Emayatzy Corinealdi as Frances Taylor, Ewan McGregor, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Lakeith Stanfield. That same year a statue of him was erected in his home city, Alton, Illinois and listeners of BBC Radio and Jazz FM voted Davis the greatest jazz musician. Publications such as "The Guardian" have also ranked Davis amongst the best of all jazz musicians.


title: Miles Davis

text: In 2018, American rapper Q-Tip played Miles Davis in a theatre production, "My Funny Valentine". Q-Tip had previously played Davis in 2010. In 2019, the documentary "", directed by Stanley Nelson, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was later released on PBS' "American Masters" series.


title: Miles Davis

text: Davis has, however, been subject to criticism. In 1990, writer Stanley Crouch, labelled Davis "the most brilliant sellout in the history of jazz," A 1993 essay by Robert Walser in "The Musical Quarterly" claims that "Davis has long been infamous for missing more notes than any other major trumpet player." Also in the essay is a quote by music critic James Lincoln Collier who states that "if his influence was profound, the ultimate value of his work is another matter," and calls Davis an "adequate instrumentalist" but "not a great one." In 2013, The A.V. Club published an article titled "Miles Davis beat his wives "and" made beautiful music". In the article, writer Sonia Saraiya praises Davis as a musician, but criticizes him as a person, in particular, his abuse of his wives. Others, such as Francis Davis, have criticized his treatment of women, describing it as "contemptible".


title: Miles Davis

text: The following list intends to outline Davis' major works, particularly studio albums. A more comprehensive discography can be found at the main article.


title: Tom Ellis (actor)

text: Thomas John Ellis (born 17 November 1978) is a Welsh actor. He is known for playing Lucifer Morningstar in the Fox urban fantasy series "Lucifer" and its "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover appearance in the Arrowverse franchise, Gary Preston in the BBC One sitcom "Miranda", Hollywood doctor William P. Rush in the USA Network series "Rush", and Mark Etches in the supernatural drama series "The Fades".


title: Tom Ellis (actor)

text: Thomas John Ellis was born in Cardiff on 17 November 1978, the son of Marilyn Jean (née Hooper) and Christopher John Ellis. He has three sisters, one of whom is his twin. His father, uncle, and one of his sisters are all Baptist ministers. After his birth, the family moved to England and he grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. He attended Sheffield's High Storrs School and played the French horn in the City of Sheffield Youth Orchestra. He later earned a BA in Dramatic Studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.


title: Tom Ellis (actor)

text: Ellis' breakout role was that of Gary Preston on the BBC One sitcom "Miranda" (2010–2015); he has also appeared as King Cenred on the BBC fantasy series "Merlin" (2008); Justyn in Channel 4's "No Angels"; and Thomas Milligan in the "Doctor Who" series three finale "Last of the Time Lords". He has appeared in the long-running BBC One soap opera "EastEnders"; the BBC sketch comedy show "The Catherine Tate Show"; and the BBC medical drama "Holby City". In July and August 2009, he starred in the ITV comedy drama "Monday Monday". He was cast as Detective Inspector Bland in "Agatha Christie's Poirot".


title: Tom Ellis (actor)

text: In February 2015, Ellis was cast as Lucifer Morningstar in the Fox series "Lucifer", based on DC Comics' publication and character of the same name, which premiered on 25 January 2016. The show later moved to Netflix. On 23 June 2020, it was announced that Netflix had renewed the show for a sixth and final season. He reprised the role of Lucifer during The CW's "The Flash" episode of the Arrowverse crossover "Crisis on Infinite Earths".


title: Tom Ellis (actor)

text: In 2021, Ellis won the Tell-Tale TV Award for Favorite Actor in a Cable or Streaming Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror Series.


title: Tom Ellis (actor)

text: In 2006, Ellis married actress Tamzin Outhwaite, with whom he has two daughters. He has a third daughter from another relationship. They divorced in April 2014. He married American screenwriter Meaghan Oppenheimer in 2019.


title: Tarot

text: The tarot (, first known as "trionfi" and later as tarocchi or tarocks) is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots, tarot playing cards spread to most of Europe evolving into a family of games that includes German Grosstarok and more recent games such as French Tarot and Austrian Königrufen which are still played today. In the late 18th century, French occultists began to make elaborate, but unsubstantiated, claims about their history and meaning, leading to the emergence of custom decks for use in divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy. Thus there are two distinct types of tarot pack: those used for playing games and those used for divination. However, some older patterns, such as the Tarot de Marseille, originally intended for playing card games, have also been used for cartomancy.


title: Tarot

text: Like the common playing cards, tarot has four suits which vary by region: French suits are used in western, central and eastern Europe, Latin suits in southern Europe. Cartomantic packs have their own symbols derived from the Latin suits. Each suit has 14 cards: ten pip cards numbering from one (or Ace) to ten, and four face cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Jack/Knave/Page). In addition, the tarot has a separate 21-card trump suit and a single card known as the Fool. Depending on the game, the Fool may act as the top trump or may be played to avoid following suit. These tarot cards are still used throughout much of Europe to play conventional card games without occult associations.


title: Tarot

text: Among English-speaking countries where these games are not widely played, only specially designed cartomantic tarot cards are readily available and they are used primarily for novelty and divinatory purposes. The early French occultists claimed that tarot cards had esoteric links to ancient Egypt, the Kabbalah, Indic Tantra, or the I Ching and these claims have been frequently repeated by authors on card divination ever since. However, scholarly research has demonstrated that tarot cards were invented in northern Italy in the mid-15th century and confirmed that there is no historical evidence of the use of tarot cards for divination until the late 18th century. In the occult tradition, tarot cards are referred to as 'arcana'; with the Fool and 21 trumps being termed the Major Arcana and the suit cards the Minor Arcana. However, these terms are not used by players of tarot card games.


title: Tarot

text: Tarot cards, then known as "tarocchi", first appeared in Ferrara and Milan in northern Italy, with a Fool and 21 trumps (then called "trionfi") being added to the standard Italian pack of four suits: batons, coins, cups and swords. Scholarship has established that the early European cards were probably based on the Egyptian Mamluk deck which followed the invention of paper from Asia into Western Europe and was invented in or before the 14th century. By the late 1300's Europeans were producing their own cards, the earliest patterns being based on the Mamluk deck but with variations to the suit symbols and court cards.


title: Tarot

text: The use of tarot playing cards was at one time widespread across the whole of Europe with the exceptions of the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula. Having fallen into decline by the 20th century, in recent decades they have experienced a renaissance in some countries and regions. For example, French Tarot was largely confined to Provence in the 18th century, but took off in the 1950s to such an extent that, in 1973, the French Tarot Association ("Fédération Française de Tarot") was formed and French Tarot itself is now the second most popular card game in France. Tarock games like Königrufen have experienced significant growth in Austria where international tournaments are held with other nations especially from eastern Europe that still play such games, including Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Denmark appears to be the only Scandinavian country that still plays tarot games, Danish Tarok being a derivative of historical German Grosstarock. The game of Cego is growing in popularity again in the south German region of Baden. Italy continues to play regionally popular games with their distinctive packs. These include: Ottocento in Bologna and Sicilian Tarocchi in parts of Sicily. Meanwhile Troccas and Troggu are still played locally in parts of Switzerland.


title: Tarot

text: Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century, but the origin is unknown. The first records date to 1367 in Berne and they appear to have spread very rapidly across the whole of Europe, as may be seen from the records, mainly of card games being banned. Little is known about the appearance and number of these cards; the only significant information being provided by a text by John of Rheinfelden in 1377 from Freiburg im Breisgau, who, in addition to other versions describes the basic pack as containing the still-current 4 suits of 13 cards, the courts usually being the King, Ober and Unter ("marshals"), although Dames and Queens were already known by then.


title: Tarot

text: One early pattern of playing cards that evolved was one with the suits of Batons or Clubs, Coins, Swords, and Cups. These suits are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese playing card decks, and are also used in modern (occult) tarot divination cards that first appeared in the late 18th century.


title: Tarot

text: The first documented tarot decks were recorded between 1440 and 1450 in Milan, Ferrara, Florence and Bologna when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were called "carte da trionfi", triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The earliest documentation of "trionfi" is found in a written statement in the court records of Florence, in 1440, regarding the transfer of two decks to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta.


title: Tarot

text: The oldest surviving tarot cards are the 15 or so Visconti-Sforza tarot decks painted in the mid-15th century for the rulers of the Duchy of Milan. A lost tarot-like pack was commissioned by Duke Filippo Maria Visconti and described by Martiano da Tortona probably between 1418 and 1425, since the painter he mentions, Michelino da Besozzo, returned to Milan in 1418, while Martiano himself died in 1425. He described a 60-card deck with 16 cards having images of the Roman gods and suits depicting four kinds of birds. The 16 cards were regarded as "trumps" since in 1449 Jacopo Antonio Marcello recalled that the now deceased duke had invented a "novum quoddam et exquisitum triumphorum genus", or "a new and exquisite kind of triumphs". Other early decks that also showcased classical motifs include the Sola-Busca and Boiardo-Viti decks of the 1490s.


title: Tarot

text: In Florence, an expanded deck called "Minchiate" was used. This deck of 97 cards includes astrological symbols and the four elements, as well as traditional tarot motifs.


title: Tarot

text: Although a Dominican preacher inveighed against the evil inherent in cards (chiefly owing to their use in gambling) in a sermon in the 15th century, no routine condemnations of tarot were found during its early history.


title: Tarot

text: Because the earliest tarot cards were hand-painted, the number of the decks produced is thought to have been small. It was only after the invention of the printing press that mass production of cards became possible. The expansion of tarot outside of Italy, first to France and Switzerland, occurred during the Italian Wars. The most prominent tarot deck version used in these two countries was the Tarot of Marseilles of Milanese origin.


title: Tarot

text: The word "tarot" and German "Tarock" derive from the Italian "Tarocchi", the origin of which is uncertain but "taroch" was used as a synonym for foolishness in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The decks were known exclusively as "Trionfi" during the fifteenth century. The new name first appeared in Brescia around 1502 as "Tarocho". During the 16th century, a new game played with a standard deck but sharing a very similar name (Trionfa) was quickly becoming popular. This coincided with the older game being renamed "tarocchi". In modern Italian, the singular term is "Tarocco", which, as a noun, refers to a cultivar of blood orange. The attribute "Tarocco" and the verb "Taroccare" are used regionally to indicate that something is fake or forged. This meaning is directly derived from the tarocchi game as played in Italy, in which "tarocco" indicates a card that can be played in place of another card.


title: Tarot

text: The original purpose of tarot cards was to play games. A very cursory explanation of rules for a tarot-like deck is given in a manuscript by Martiano da Tortona before 1425. Vague descriptions of game play or game terminology follow for the next two centuries until the earliest known complete description of rules for a French variant in 1637. The game of tarot has many regional variations. Tarocchini has survived in Bologna and there are still others played in Piedmont and Sicily, but in Italy the game is generally less popular than elsewhere.


title: Tarot

text: The 18th century saw tarot's greatest revival, during which it became one of the most popular card games in Europe, played everywhere except Ireland and Britain, the Iberian peninsula, and the Ottoman Balkans. French tarot experienced another revival beginning in the 1970s and France has the strongest tarot gaming community. Regional tarot games—often known as "tarock", "tarok", or "tarokk"—are widely played in central Europe within the borders of the former Austro-Hungarian empire.


title: Tarot

text: These were the oldest form of tarot deck to be made, being first devised in the 15th century in northern Italy. Three decks of this category are still used to play certain games:


title: Tarot

text: The Tarocco Siciliano is the only deck to use the so-called Portuguese suit system which uses Spanish pips but intersects them like Italian pips. Some of the trumps are different such as the lowest trump, "Miseria" (destitution). It omits the Two and Three of coins, and numerals one to four in clubs, swords and cups: it thus has 64 cards but the ace of coins is not used, being the bearer of the former stamp tax. The cards are quite small and not reversible.


title: Tarot

text: The illustrations of French-suited tarot trumps depart considerably from the older Italian-suited design, abandoning the Renaissance allegorical motifs. With the exception of novelty decks, French-suited tarot cards are almost exclusively used for card games. The first generation of French-suited tarots depicted scenes of animals on the trumps and were thus called "Tiertarock" ('Tier' being German for 'animal') appeared around 1740. Around 1800, a greater variety of decks were produced, mostly with genre art or veduta. The German states used to produce a variety of 78-card tarot packs, originally using Italian suits, but later switching to French suited cards; some were imported to France. Today, there are only two: both are French-suited patterns of Cego packs - the Cego Adler pack manufactured by ASS Altenburger and one with genre scenes by F.X. Schmid, which may reflect the mainstream German cards of the 19th century. Current French-suited tarot decks come in these patterns:


title: Tarot

text: From the late 18th century, the south German states manufactured German-suited packs labelled 'Taroc', 'Tarock' or 'Deutsch-Tarok'. Today these survive as 'Schafkopf/Tarock' packs of the Bavarian and Franconian pattern. These are not true tarot packs, but standard 36-card German-suited decks for games like German Tarok, Bauerntarock, Württemberg Tarock and Bavarian Tarock. Until the 1980s there were also Tarock packs in the Württemberg pattern. There are 36 cards; the pip cards ranging from 6 to 10, Under Knave ("Unter"), Over Knave ("Ober"), King, and Ace. These use Ace-Ten ranking, like Klaverjas, where Ace is the highest followed by 10, King, Ober, Unter, then 9 to 6. The heart suit is the default trump suit. The Bavarian pack is also used to play Schafkopf by excluding the Sixes.


title: Tarot

text: Spanish-suited playing cards have four suits, and a deck is usually made up of 40 or 48 cards (or even up to 52 in the oldest versions). It is categorized as a Latin-suited deck and has strong similarities with the Italian-suited deck as both were derived directly from the Mamluk cards. The oldest mentions date back to the 14th century making it one of the oldest in Europe.


title: Tarot

text: Spanish-suited cards are used in Spain, southern Italy, parts of France, Hispanic America, North Africa, and the Philippines. The four suits are bastos (clubs), oros (literally "golds", that is, golden coins), copas (cups) and espadas (swords). However, the suits vary in style depending on the region and time. The following patterns (and their suits) are derived from the oldest Spanish-suited deck: the castillian pattern, the Spanish national pattern (old Catalan pattern), the new Catalan pattern, Franco-Spanish pattern (Suit Piacentine and Suit Romagnole), Madrid pattern (Suit Sicilian and Suit Neapolitan), Sardinian pattern and the extinct Portuguese pattern.


title: Tarot

text: Like the Italian-suited tarot, the deck is used for both game playing and cartomancy. The Spanish deck has been widely considered to be part of the occult in many Latin American countries, yet they continue to be used widely for card games and gambling, especially in Spain.


title: Tarot

text: The earliest evidence of a tarot deck used for cartomancy comes from an anonymous manuscript from around 1750 which documents rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the Tarocco Bolognese. The popularization of esoteric tarot started with Antoine Court and Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) in Paris during the 1780s, using the Tarot of Marseilles. French tarot players abandoned the Marseilles tarot in favor of the Tarot Nouveau around 1900, with the result that the Marseilles pattern is now used mostly by cartomancers.


title: Tarot

text: Etteilla was the first to issue a tarot deck specifically designed for occult purposes around 1789. In keeping with the unsubstantiated belief that such cards were derived from the Book of Thoth, Etteilla's tarot contained themes related to ancient Egypt.


title: Tarot

text: The terms "Major Arcana" and "Minor Arcana" were first used by Jean-Baptiste Pitois (also known as Paul Christian) and are never used in relation to tarot card games, which operate by a distinct set of rules. Some decks exist primarily as artwork, and such art decks sometimes contain only the 22 Major Arcana.


title: Tarot

text: The three most common decks used in esoteric tarot are the Tarot of Marseilles, the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck, and the Thoth tarot deck.


title: Tarot

text: Aleister Crowley, who devised the Thoth deck along with Lady Frieda Harris, stated of the tarot: "The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure. Some authorities seek to put it back as far as the ancient Egyptian Mysteries; others try to bring it forward as late as the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century ... [but] The only theory of ultimate interest about the tarot is that it is an admirable symbolic picture of the Universe, based on the data of the Holy Qabalah."


title: Tarot

text: With the development of psychology, some people today use Tarot cards as a tool for self-exploration and development and some psychologists use Tarot cards as a complementary care therapy. Through Tarot cards, it is claimed that the exploration of the inner self leads to greater freedom within the individual.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich (, ; ; born 24 October 1966) is a Russian oligarch and politician. He is the former owner of Chelsea, a Premier League football club in London, England, and is the primary owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC. He has Russian, Israeli and Portuguese citizenship.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: He was formerly Governor of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug from 2000 to 2008. According to "Forbes", Abramovich's net worth was 14.5 billion in 2021, making him the second-richest person in Israel, the eleventh-richest in Russia and the richest person in Portugal. Abramovich enriched himself in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, obtaining Russian state-owned assets at prices far below market value in Russia's controversial loans-for-shares privatisation program. Abramovich is considered to have a good relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, an allegation Abramovich denied.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich was born on 24 October 1966 in Saratov, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (present-day Saratov, Russia). His family was of Jewish descent and died when he was young. His mother, Irina, was a music teacher who died when Abramovich was one years old. His father, Aaron Abramovich Leibovich (1937−1969), worked in the economic council of the Komi ASSR, and passed away when he was three. Roman's maternal grandparents were Vasily Mikhailenko and Faina Borisovna Grutman, both born in Ukraine. It was to Saratov in the early days of World War II that Roman's maternal grandmother fled from Ukraine. Irina was then three years old. Roman's paternal grandparents, Nachman Leibovich and Toybe (Tatyana) Stepanovna Abramovich, were Belarusian Jews. They lived in Belarus and, after the revolution, moved to Tauragė, Lithuania, with the Lithuanian spelling of the family name being Abramavičius.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 1940, the Soviet Union (USSR) annexed Lithuania. Just before the Nazi German invasion of the USSR, the Soviets "cleared the anti-Soviet, criminal and socially dangerous element" with whole families being sent to Siberia. Abramovich's grandparents were separated when deported. The father, mother and children – Leib, Abram and Aron (Arkady) – were in different cars. Many of the deportees died in the camps. Among them was the grandfather of Abramovich. Nachman Leibovich died in 1942 in the NKVD camp in the settlement of Resheti, Krasnoyarsk Territory.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Having lost both parents before the age of 4, Abramovich was raised by relatives and spent much of his youth in the Komi Republic in northern Russia. Abramovich is the Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, and a trustee of the Moscow Jewish Museum. Abramovich decided to establish a forest of some 25,000 new and rehabilitated trees, in memory of Lithuania's Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, plus a virtual memorial and tribute to Lithuanian Jewry (Seed a Memory) enabling people from all over the world to commemorate their ancestors' personal stories by naming a tree and including their name in the memorial.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich entered the business world during his army service. He first worked as a street-trader, and then as a mechanic at a local factory. Abramovich attended the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow, then traded commodities for the Swiss trading firm Runicom.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 1988, as perestroika created opportunities for privatization in the Soviet Union, Abramovich gained a chance to legitimise his old business. He and his first wife, Olga, set up a company making dolls. Within a few years his wealth spread from oil conglomerates to pig farms. He has traded in timber, sugar, food stuffs and other products. In 1992, he was arrested and sent to prison in a case of theft of government property.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: According to two different sources, Abramovich first met Berezovsky either at a meeting with the Russian businessmen in 1993 or in the summer of 1995.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Berezovsky and Abramovich registered an offshore company, Runicom Ltd., with five subsidiaries. Abramovich headed the Moscow affiliate of the Swiss firm, Runicom S.A. In August 1995, Boris Yeltsin decreed the creation of Sibneft, of which Abramovich and Berezovsky were thought to be top executives.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 1995, Abramovich and Berezovsky acquired a controlling interest in the large oil company Sibneft in a rigged auction. The deal took place within the controversial loans-for-shares program and each partner paid US$100 million for half of the company, above the stake's stock market value of US$150 million at the time, and rapidly turned it up into billions. The fast-rising value of the company led many observers, in hindsight, to suggest that the real cost of the company should have been in the billions of dollars (it was worth US$2.7 billion at that time). Abramovich later admitted in court that he paid billions of dollars of bribes to government officials and gangsters to acquire and protect his assets. As of 2000, Sibneft annually produced US$3 billion worth of oil.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: "The Times" claimed that he was assisted by Badri Patarkatsishvili in the acquisition of Sibneft. After Sibneft, Abramovich's next target was the aluminium industry. After privatisation, the "aluminium wars" led to murders of smelting plant managers, metals traders and journalists as groups battled for control of the industry. Abramovich was initially hesitant to enter into the aluminium business, claiming that "every three days someone was murdered in that business". Abramovich sold Sibneft to the Russian government for $13 billion in 2005.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2011, Abramovich's longtime business partner filed a civil suit, "Berezovsky v Abramovich", in the High Court of Justice in London. He accused Abramovich of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract. The suit sought over £3 billion in damages.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: On 31 August 2012, the High Court dismissed the lawsuit. The High Court judge stated that because of the nature of the evidence, the case hinged on whether to believe Berezovsky or Abramovich's evidence. The judge found Berezovsky to be "an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes", whereas Abramovich was seen as "a truthful, and on the whole, reliable witness".


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2011, a transcript emerged of a taped conversation that took place between Abramovich and Berezovsky at Le Bourget airport in December 2000. Badri Patarkatsishvili, a close acquaintance of Berezovsky, was also present and secretly had the conversation recorded. During the discussion, Berezovsky spoke of how they should "legalise" their aluminium business, and later claimed in court that he was an undisclosed shareholder in the aluminium assets and that "legalisation" in this case meant to make his ownership "official". In response, Abramovich states in the transcript that they cannot legalise because the other party in the 50–50 joint venture (Rusal) would need to do the same, in a supposed reference to his business partner Oleg Deripaska. Besides Deripaska, references are made to several other players in the aluminium industry at the time that would have had to "legalise" their stake. Abramovich's lawyers later claimed that "legalisation" meant structuring protection payments to Berezovsky to ensure they complied with Western antimoney-laundering regulations.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2015, Abramovich invested and led a $30 million round of funding with businessman OD Kobo Chairman of PIR Equities. Other partners include several well-known people from the music industry, among them David Guetta, Nicki Minaj, Tiësto, Avicii, will.i.am, Benny Andersson, Dave Holmes (manager of Coldplay) and others.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In June 2003, Abramovich became the owner of the companies that control Chelsea in West London. The previous owner of the club was Ken Bates, who later bought rivals Leeds United. Chelsea immediately embarked on an ambitious programme of commercial development, with the aim of making it a worldwide brand at par with footballing dynasties such as Manchester United and Real Madrid, and also announced plans to build a new state-of-the-art training complex in Cobham, Surrey.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Since the takeover, the club has won 18 major trophies – the UEFA Champions League twice, the UEFA Europa League twice, the UEFA Supercup twice, the Premier League five times, the FA Cup five times (with 2010 providing the club's first ever league and FA Cup double), and the League Cup three times, making Chelsea the most successful English trophy winning team during Abramovich's ownership, equal with Manchester United (who have also won 16 major trophies in the same time span). His tenure has also been marked by rapid turnover in managers. Detractors have used the term "Chelski" to refer to the new Chelsea under Abramovich, to highlight the modern phenomena of billionaires buying football clubs and "purchasing trophies", by using their personal wealth to snap up marquee players at will, distorting the transfer market, citing the acquisition of Andriy Shevchenko for a then-British record transfer fee of around £30 million (€35.3 million).


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In the year ending June 2005, Chelsea posted record losses of £140 million (€165 million) and the club was not expected to record a trading profit before 2010, although this decreased to reported losses of £80.2 million (€94.3 million) in the year ending June 2006. In a December 2006 interview, Abramovich stated that he expected Chelsea's transfer spending to fall in the years to come. UEFA responded to the precarious profit/loss landscape of clubs, some owned by billionaires, but others simply financial juggernauts like Real Madrid, with Financial Fair Play regulations.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Chelsea finished their first season after the takeover in second place in the Premier League, up from fourth the previous year. They also reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, which was eventually won by the surprise contender Porto, managed by José Mourinho. For Abramovich's second season at Stamford Bridge, Mourinho was recruited as the new manager, replacing the incumbent Claudio Ranieri. Chelsea ended the 2004–05 season as league champions for the first time in 50 years and only the second time in their history. Also high were Abramovich's spending regarding purchases of Portuguese football players. According to record newspaper accounts, he spent 165.1 million euros in Portugal: 90.9 with Benfica players, and 74.2 with FC Porto players.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich is present at nearly every Chelsea game and shows visible emotion during matches, a sign taken by supporters to indicate a genuine love for the sport, and usually visits the players in the dressing room following each match. This stopped for a time in early 2007, when press reports appeared of a feud between Abramovich and manager Mourinho regarding the performance of certain players such as Andriy Shevchenko. On 1 July 2013, Chelsea celebrated ten years under Abramovich's ownership. Before the first game of the 2013–14 season against Hull City on 18 August 2013, Abramovich thanked Chelsea supporters for ten years of support in a short message on the front cover of the match programme, saying, "We have had a great decade together and the club could not have achieved it all without you. Thanks for your support and here's to many more years of success."


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In March 2017, Chelsea announced it had received approval for a revamped £500m stadium at Stamford Bridge with a capacity of up to 60,000. On 15 July 2018, the renewal of Abramovich's British visa by the Home Office, and his subsequent withdrawal of the application, in May 2018 Chelsea halted plans to build a £500m stadium in south-west London due to the "unfavourable investment climate" and the lack of assurances about Abramovich's immigration status. Abramovich was set to invest hundreds of millions of pounds for the construction of the stadium. Abramovich has been accused of purchasing Chelsea at the behest of Vladimir Putin, but he has denied the claim. "Putin's People", a book by journalist Catherine Belton, a former "Financial Times" Moscow correspondent, formerly made such an assertion, but after libel action by Abramovich against Belton and the book's British publisher HarperCollins, the claims were agreed in December 2021 to be stated as having no factual basis in future editions.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2021, Abramovich was criticized for trying to enter Chelsea into the newly announced European Super League. The competition was widely scrutinized for encouraging greediness among the richer, larger football clubs, which would have undermined the significance of existing football competitions; however, just two days later, Abramovich pulled the club out of the new competition, with other English clubs following suit, causing the league to suspend operations. In 2022, it was reported that Abramovich was owed $2 billion from Chelsea F.C. According to "Forbes", Abramovich's loan is insurance in case the British government considers sanctioning him due to his close relationship with the Putin regime in Russia. On 26 February 2022, during the Russo-Ukrainian War, Abramovich handed over "stewardship and care" of Chelsea FC to the Chelsea Charitable Foundation.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich released an official statement on 2 March 2022 confirming that he was selling the club due to the ongoing situation in Ukraine. Although the UK government froze Abramovich's assets in the United Kingdom on 10 March due to his "close ties with [the] Kremlin", it was made clear that the Chelsea club will be allowed to operate in terms of activities which are football related. On 12 March, the Premier League disqualified Abramovich as a director of Chelsea Football Club.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: On 7 May 2022, Chelsea announced that a new ownership group led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital have agreed on the terms to acquire the club.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In March 2004, Sibneft agreed to a three-year sponsorship deal worth €41.3 million (US$58 million) with the Russian team CSKA Moscow. Although the company explained that the decision was made at management level, some viewed the deal as an attempt by Abramovich to counter accusations of being "unpatriotic" which were made at the time of the Chelsea purchase. UEFA rules prevent one person owning more than one team participating in UEFA competitions, so Abramovich has no equity interest in CSKA. A lawyer, Alexandre Garese, is one of his partners in CSKA.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Following an investigation, Abramovich was cleared by UEFA of having a conflict of interest. Nevertheless, he was named "most influential person in Russian football" in the Russian magazine "Pro Sport" at the end of June 2004. In May 2005, CSKA won the UEFA Cup, becoming the first Russian club ever to win a major European football competition. In October 2005, however, Abramovich sold his interest in Sibneft and the company's new owner Gazprom, which sponsors Zenit Saint Petersburg, cancelled the sponsorship deal.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich also played a large role in bringing Guus Hiddink to Russia to coach the Russia national football team. Piet de Visser, a former head scout of Hiddink's club PSV Eindhoven and now a personal assistant to Abramovich at Chelsea, recommended Hiddink to the Chelsea owner.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In addition to his involvement in professional football, Abramovich sponsors a foundation in Russia called the National Academy of Football. The organization sponsors youth sports programs throughout the country and has constructed more than fifty football pitches in various cities and towns. It also funds training programs for coaches, prints instruction materials, renovates sports facilities and takes top coaches and students on trips to visit professional football clubs in England, the Netherlands and Spain. In 2006 the Academy of Football took over the administration of the Konoplyov football academy at Primorsky, near Togliatti, Samara Oblast, where over 1,000 youths are in residence, following the death at 38 of its founder, Yuri Konoplev.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 1999, Abramovich was elected to the State Duma as the representative for the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, an impoverished region in the Russian Far East. He started the charity Pole of Hope to help the people of Chukotka, especially children, and in December 2000, was elected governor of Chukotka, replacing Aleksandr Nazarov.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich was the governor of Chukotka from 2000 to 2008. It is believed that he invested over US$1.3 billion (€925 million) in the region. During his tenure, living standards improved, schools and housing were restored and new investors were drawn to the region. Abramovich was awarded the Order of Honour for his "huge contribution to the economic development of the autonomous district [of Chukotka]", by a decree signed by the President of Russia.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In early July 2008, it was announced that President Dmitry Medvedev had accepted Abramovich's request to resign as governor of Chukotka, although his various charitable activities in the region would continue. In the period 2000–2006 the average salaries in Chukotka increased from about US$165 (€117/£100) per month in 2000 to US$826 (€588/£500) per month in 2006.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: The day after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich was contacted by Ukrainian magnates and asked to function as informal envoy to Putin.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich played a key role in the release of Aiden Aslin and other foreign prisoners of war from Russian captivity.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: By 1996, at the age of 30, Abramovich had become close to President Boris Yeltsin, and had moved into an apartment inside the Kremlin at the invitation of the Yeltsin family.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 1999, the 33-year-old Abramovich was elected governor of the Russian province of Chukotka. He ran for a second term as governor in 2005. The Kremlin press service reported that Abramovich's name had been sent for approval as governor for another term to Chukotka's local parliament, which confirmed his appointment on 21 October 2005.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich was the first person to recommend to Yeltsin that Vladimir Putin be his successor as the Russian president. When Putin formed his first cabinet as Prime Minister in 1999, Abramovich interviewed each of the candidates for cabinet positions before they were approved. Subsequently, Abramovich would remain one of Putin's closest confidants. In 2007, Putin consulted in meetings with Abramovich on the question of who should be his successor as president; Medvedev was personally recommended by Abramovich.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Chris Hutchins, a biographer of Putin, described the relationship between the Russian president and Abramovich as like that between a father and a favourite son. In the early 2000s, Abramovich said that when he addressed Putin he uses the Russian language's formal "вы" (like Spanish "usted" or German "Sie"), as opposed to the informal "ты" (like Spanish "tú" or German "du") as a mark of respect for Putin's seniority. Within the Kremlin, Abramovich was referred to as "Mr A".


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In September 2012, the England and Wales High Court judge Elizabeth Gloster claimed that Abramovich's influence on Putin was limited: "There was no evidential basis supporting the contention that Mr Abramovich was in a position to manipulate, or otherwise influence, President Putin, or officers in his administration, to exercise their powers in such a way as to enable Mr Abramovich to achieve his own commercial goals."


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Gloster oversaw the case between Russian oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Abramovich. She found Berezovsky to be "an inherently unreliable witness" and sided with Abramovich in 2012. It later emerged that Gloster's stepson had been paid almost £500,000 to represent Abramovich as a barrister early in the case. Her stepson's involvement was alleged to be more than had been disclosed. Berezovsky stated, "Sometimes I have the impression that Putin himself wrote this judgment". Gloster declined to comment.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: U.S. media reports that the U.S. intelligence community believes Abramovich is a "bag carrier", a financial middleman, for Putin.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich is one of many Russian oligarchs named in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017. He is one of the Navalny 35.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on March 10, 2022 Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK as part of a group of seven Russian oligarchs. Abramovich had his UK assets frozen and a travel ban was put in place. The British government said the sanctions were in response to Abramovich's alleged ties to the Kremlin and said the companies Abramovich controls could be producing steel used in tanks deployed offensively by Russia in Ukraine. On March 15, 2022, the European Union followed suit and also imposed sanctions on Abramovich. Abramovich denies that he has close ties to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In late March 2022, it was reported that Abromavich was house-hunting in Dubai, where his private plane had also been spotted, owing to the city's sanction-free status. In March 2022, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that the United States administration deferred sanctions on Abramovich at the urging of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, because of the oligarch's potential role in negotiations with Russia. The Russian government spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Abramovich took part in the negotiations "at the initial stage". No further details of the nature of Abramovich's involvement in the process were disclosed by either party to the conflict.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: On 3 to 4 March 2022, Abramovich attended peace talks on the Ukraine–Belarus border. Abramovich, Ukrainian politician Rustem Umerov and one other negotiator suffered initial symptoms consistent with likely poisoning with an unknown chemical substance, involving "piercing pain in the eyes", inflammation of the eyes and skin with some skin peeling. They all recovered quickly. "Bellingcat" investigated the allegation and said that chocolate or water that the three had consumed may have been laced with poison; experts took samples of the substance but were unable to identify the type of material used owing to the passage of time. Western sources said the low dosage of poison was aimed to serve as a warning, most likely to Abramovich, and suspected the attack may have been carried out by hardliners in Moscow who tried to sabotage peace talks. An unnamed US official said that the illness was caused by "environmental factors" rather than poisoning. Additionally, an official in the Ukrainian president's office, Ihor Zhovkva, informed the BBC that while he hadn't spoken to Mr Abramovich, participants of the Ukrainian delegation were "fine" and one had said the story was "false". Frank Gardiner of the BBC said the US denial may be caused by a reluctance to respond in a retaliatory manner to Russia by accepting the deployment of chemical weapons in Ukraine. A spokesman for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he had no information about a suspected poisoning.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2011, Boris Berezovsky brought a civil case against Abramovich, called "Berezovsky v Abramovich", in the High Court of Justice in London, but Berzovsky was unsuccessful in the case. These events are described in greater detail above .


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2008, "The Times" reported that court papers showed Abramovich admitting that he paid billions of dollars for political favours and protection fees for shares of Russia's oil and aluminium assets.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: An allegation emerging from a Swiss investigation links Roman Abramovich, through a former company, and numerous other Russian politicians, industrialists and bankers to using a US$4.8 billion (€3.4 billion) loan from the IMF as personal slush fund; an audit sponsored by the IMF itself determined that all of the IMF funds had been used appropriately.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In January 2005, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) indicated that it would be suing Abramovich over a £9 million (US$14.9 million/€10.6 million) loan. The EBRD said that it is owed US$17.5 million (€12.45 million/£10.6 million) by Runicom, a Switzerland-based oil trading business which had been controlled by Abramovich and Eugene Shvidler. Abramovich's spokesman indicated that the loan had previously been repaid.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Russia's antitrust body, the Federal Antimonopoly Service, claimed that Evraz Holding, owned in part by Abramovich, had breached Russian competition law by offering unfavourable terms for contractors and discriminating against domestic consumers for coking coal, a key material used in steel production.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: According to Putin, Abramovich has been cheated by Ukrainian-Cypriot-Israeli oligarch Igor Kolomoyskyi. Putin claimed in 2014 that Kolomoyskyi had reneged on a contract with Abramovich, saying that the pair signed a multibillion-dollar deal on which Kolomoyskyi never delivered.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: According to "The Guardian", in 2015 his $766m stake in Evraz, the steel and mining company, gave him ownership of about a quarter of Russia's largest coal mine, the Raspadskaya coal complex in Siberia, whose reserves represented 1.5GT of carbon emissions, comparable to the annual output of Russia itself.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: According to "The Conversation", "Roman Abramovich, who made most of his $19 billion fortune trading oil and gas, was the biggest polluter on our list" of most polluting billionaires, estimating "that he was responsible for at least 33,859 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2018 – more than two-thirds from his yacht."


title: Roman Abramovich

text: An investigation by BBC News Arabic has found that Abramovich controls companies that have donated $100 million to an Israeli settler organisation Elad, which aims to strengthen the Jewish connection to the annexed East Jerusalem, and renew the Jewish community in the City of David. Analysis of bank documents indicate Abramovich is the largest single donor to the organisation. The bank documents - known as the FinCEN Files - were leaked to "BuzzFeed News", then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the BBC.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich has been married and divorced three times. In December 1987, following a brief stint in the Soviet Army, he married Olga Yurevna Lysova; they divorced in 1990. In October 1991, he married a former Russian Aeroflot stewardess, Irina Malandina. They have five children; Ilya, Arina, Sofia, Arkadiy and Anna. His eldest daughter Anna is a graduate of Columbia University and lives in New York City, and his daughter Sofia is a professional equestrian who lives in London after graduating from Royal Holloway, University of London.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: On 15 October 2006, the "News of the World" reported that Irina had hired two top UK divorce lawyers, following reports of Abramovich's close relationship with the then 25-year-old Dasha Zhukova, daughter of a prominent Russian oligarch, Alexander Zhukov. The Abramoviches replied that neither had consulted attorneys at that point. However, they later divorced in Russia in March 2007, with a reported settlement of US$300 million (€213 million). Abramovich married Zhukova in 2008, and they have two children, a son, Aaron Alexander, and a daughter, Leah Lou. In August 2017, the couple announced that they would separate; and their divorce was finalised in 2018.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In May 2018, Abramovich became an Israeli citizen a month after the UK delayed renewing his visa. Following the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, British authorities delayed the renewal of his visa, as tensions rose between the UK and Russia. Abramovich had been travelling in and out of the UK for years on a Tier-1 investor visa, designed for wealthy foreigners who invest at least £2 million in Britain. Abramovich, who is Russian Jewish, exercised his right under Israel's Law of Return, which states that Jews from anywhere in the world can become citizens of Israel. As an Israeli, Abramovich can now visit Britain visa-free but is not permitted to work or conduct business transactions.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich owns the Varsano boutique hotel in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel, which he bought for 100 million NIS in 2015 from Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot's husband Yaron Varsano and Varsano's brother Guy. In January 2020, Abramovich purchased a property in Herzliya Pituah, Israel, for a record 226 million NIS.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2015, Abramovich donated approximately $30m to Tel Aviv University to establish an innovative Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, which aspires to become one of the leading facilities in the Middle East. Among Abramovich's other beneficiaries is the Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer, Israel, to which he has donated in excess of $60m for various advanced medicine ventures. These include the establishment of a new nuclear medicine center spanning 2,000 sq.m., the Sheba Cancer and Cancer Research centers, the Pediatric Middle East Congenital Heart Center and the Sheba Heart Center. A donation that Abramovich made to Keren Kayemet LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) for a comprehensive forest rehabilitation program in the southern Negev desert, helps to combat the area's rising desertification and promotes increasing nature tourism to the area. Alongside his philanthropic activity, Abramovich has invested some $120m. in 20 Israeli start-ups ranging from medicine and renewable energy, to social media.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Recently, due to the alarming increase in COVID-19 cases in Israel, Abramovich gave Sheba Hospital another donation for a new subterranean Intensive Care Unit, spanning 5,400 sq.m., to provide Israel with vital crisis response in times of national emergencies. Abramovich continuously contributes to Jewish art and culture initiatives, such as the M.ART contemporary culture festival in Tel Aviv, Israel. Abramovich filed an application for a residence permit in the canton of Valais in July 2016, a tax-friendly home to successful businessmen, and planned to transfer his tax residency to the Swiss municipality. Valais authorities readily agreed to the request and transferred the application to the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration for approval. Once there, FedPol investigators expressed suspicions and opposed the request. As a result, Abramovich withdrew his application in June 2017. After a three-year legal saga, in 2021 Swiss authorities cleared Abramovich of any suspicion.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In April 2021, Abramovich became a Portuguese citizen as part of the country's Nationality Act; his genealogy was vetted by experts who look for "evidence of interest in Sephardic [Jewish] culture". Though "Reuters" noted that there is little known history of Sephardi Jews in Russia, Abramovich had donated money to projects honouring the legacy of Portuguese Sephardic Jews in Hamburg, Germany. However, on 11 March 2022, the leader of the Jewish Community in Porto, Rabbi Daniel Litvak, was arrested by Portuguese police at Porto airport amid allegations that certification of Sephardi Jewish origin had been issued corruptly in several cases.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: According to "Forbes", as of March 2016, Abramovich had a net worth of 7.6 billion, ranking him as the 155th richest person in the world. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, he was considered to be the second richest person living within the United Kingdom. Early in 2009, "The Times" estimated that due to the global economic crisis he had lost £3 billion from his £11.7 billion wealth. In the summer of 2020, Abramovich sold the gold miner Highland Gold to Vladislav Sviblov. On 5 March 2021, "Forbes" listed his net worth at US$14.5 billion, ranking him 113 on the Billionaires 2020 "Forbes" list.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich has reportedly donated more money to charity than any other living Russian. Between 2009 and 2013, Abramovich donated more than 2.5 billion to build schools, hospitals and infrastructure in Chukotka. Abramovich has reportedly spent approximately 1.5 bn on the Pole of Hope, his charity set up to help those in the Arctic region of Chukotka, where he was governor. In addition, Evraz Plc (EVR), the steelmaker partly owned by Abramovich, donated 164 million for social projects between 2010 through 2012, an amount that is excluded in Abramovich's 310 million donations during this period.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich was recognized by the Forum for Jewish Culture and Religion for his contribution of more than $500 million to Jewish causes in Russia, the US, Britain, Portugal, Lithuania, Israel and elsewhere over the past 20 years. In June 2019, Abramovich donated $5 million to the Jewish Agency for Israel, to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism globally.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich decided to establish a forest of some 25,000 trees, in memory of Lithuania's Jews who perished in the Holocaust, plus a virtual memorial and tribute to Lithuanian Jewry. He also gave a substantial donation for the rehabilitation of the Jewish cemetery of Altona, now a neighborhood in the city of Hamburg. The project is carried out by B'nai B'rith International Portugal in partnership with Hamburg's Chabad. Abramovich donates money to the Chabad movement and along with Michael Kadoorie and Jacob Safra, is one of the main benefactors of the Portuguese Jewish community and of B'nai B'rith International Portugal.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich funds an extended programme in Israel that brings Jewish and Arab children together in football coaching sessions. More than 1,000 Arab and Jewish children each year will be brought together through football, with Chelsea funding the expanded set-up and club staff training local coaches. The expanded Playing Fair, Leading Peace programme will break down barriers and combat discrimination by mixing communities in Israel. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Abramovich paid for NHS staff to stay at the Stamford Bridge Millennium Hotel.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: During Abramovich's ownership of the club, Chelsea agreed to a three-year partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to expand their Center on Extremism. Abramovich faced antisemitic messages during the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Kick It Out chief executive Tony Burnett hailed Chelsea's stance on fighting anti-Semitism, pledging the anti-discrimination organisation will now look to follow the lead of the club. "Historically it's been alleged that Kick It Out was formed to fight racism against black players and coaches. We looked at our strategy and realised we weren't doing enough on anti-Semitism and we brought together a group of stakeholders with vast experience in this area."


title: Roman Abramovich

text: The Chelsea Foundation has launched a new program in partnership with the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and the Israeli Football Association, introducing football sessions for Arab and Jewish children across Israel, a partnership that was developed following Chelsea Women's visit to Israel in 2019, during which the team took part in football and education workshops with Arab and Jewish girls, benefiting 1,000 children in the first year alone.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: For $74 million, Abramovich purchased four Upper East Side townhouses in Manhattan in New York City; 9, 11, 13, and 15 East 75th Street. These townhouses are planned to be combined into a megamansion that will measure 19,400 square feet, and it is estimated that renovation costs will be an additional $100 million.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich is a prolific collector of rare and expensive automobiles, and is a VIP client at both Bugatti and Pagani. The majority of his car collection is stored in Lausanne, Switzerland and is valued in excess of $45 million.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich has become the world's greatest spender on luxury yachts, and always maintains a fleet of yachts which the media have called "Abramovich's Navy":


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich owns a private Boeing 767-33A/ER, registered in Aruba as P4-MES. It is known as "The Bandit" due to its livery. Originally the aircraft was ordered by Hawaiian Airlines but the order was cancelled and Abramovich bought it from Boeing. Abramovich had it refitted it to his own requirements by Andrew Winch, who designed the interior and exterior. The aircraft was estimated in 2016 to cost 300 million and its interior is reported to include a 30-seat dining room, a boardroom, master bedrooms, luxury bathrooms with showers, and a spacious living room. The aircraft has the same air missile avoidance system as Air Force One. In 2021 Abramovich exchanged the Boeing 767 for a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: Abramovich sponsored an exhibition of photographs of Uzbekistan by renowned Soviet photographer Max Penson (1893–1959) which opened on 29 November 2006 at the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House in London. He previously funded the exhibition "Quiet Resistance: Russian Pictorial Photography 1900s–1930s" at the same gallery in 2005. Both exhibits were organized by the Moscow House of Photography.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In May 2008, Abramovich emerged as a major buyer in the international art auction market. He purchased Francis Bacon's "Triptych 1976" for €61.4 million (US$86.3 million) (a record price for a post-war work of art) and Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" for €23.9 million (US$33.6 million) (a record price for a work by a living artist).


title: Roman Abramovich

text: His former wife Dasha Zhukova manages the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture – a gallery of contemporary art in Moscow that was initially housed in the historical Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage building by Konstantin Melnikov. The building, neglected for decades and partially taken apart by previous tenants, was restored in 2007–2008 and reopened to the public in September 2008. Speed and expense of restoration is credited to sponsorship by Abramovich.


title: Roman Abramovich

text: In 2011, Abramovich hired the Red Hot Chili Peppers to perform at his estate in Baie de Gouverneur in St. Barth. The performance included a special appearance from Toots Hibbert. He reportedly spent £5 million on 300 guests, including George Lucas, Martha Stewart, Marc Jacobs, and Jimmy Buffett. In 2014, he hired English singer Robbie Williams to headline a New Year's dinner for Vladimir Putin's "inner circle". The party took place in Moscow and appears to have been the inspiration for Williams' song "Party Like a Russian".


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: Bohemian Rhapsody is a 2018 biographical musical drama film directed by Bryan Singer from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, and produced by Graham King and Queen manager Jim Beach. It focuses on the life of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the British rock band Queen, from the formation of the band in 1970 to their 1985 Live Aid performance at the original Wembley Stadium. It stars Rami Malek as Mercury, with Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joe Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, and Mike Myers in supporting roles. Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor also served as consultants. A British-American venture, it was produced by Regency Enterprises, GK Films and Queen Films, and was distributed by 20th Century Fox.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: "Bohemian Rhapsody" was announced in 2010, with Sacha Baron Cohen set to play Mercury. After he left the project in 2013 following creative differences with producers, the project languished in development hell for several years before Malek was cast in November 2016. Singer served as director through most of principal photography, which began in London in September 2017, but was fired in December 2017 due to frequent absences and clashing with the cast and crew. Dexter Fletcher, who was originally set to direct the film early in development, was hired to complete the film; Singer retained sole director credit as per Directors Guild of America guidelines, while Fletcher received an executive producer credit. Filming concluded in January 2018.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: The film was released in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2018 and in the United States on 2 November 2018. The film received praise for its musical sequences and Malek's performance, while the editing, Singer's direction, and McCarten's screenplay (particularly the portrayal of Mercury's sexuality and the lives of the other band members) received criticism. The film also contains a number of historical inaccuracies. It nonetheless was well received by audiences and became a major box office success, grossing over worldwide on a production budget of about , becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2018 worldwide and setting the all-time box office records for the biopic and drama genres. "Bohemian Rhapsody" received numerous accolades, including a leading four wins at the 91st Academy Awards for Best Actor (Malek), Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing; it was also nominated for Best Picture. The film also won Best Motion Picture – Drama at the 76th Golden Globe Awards, and was nominated for the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture and BAFTA Award for Best British Film, while Malek won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA for Best Actor.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: In 1985, Queen waits to perform at Live Aid. Fifteen years earlier, in 1970, Farrokh Bulsara works as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport and lives with his parents and sister. He goes to a pub to see the band Smile perform. Seeking them out after the show, he meets and is attracted to Mary Austin, who works at the boutique Biba. He finds drummer Roger Taylor and guitarist Brian May and learns that their lead singer and bassist, Tim Staffell, has just quit to join Humpy Bong. Farrokh offers himself as a replacement singer and impresses them with his vocal ability. Farrokh seeks out Mary at Biba and they start dating. The band plays gigs across Britain with Farrokh as the lead singer and new bassist John Deacon. Farrokh pushes them to think bigger and sells their van to finance a record album. An A&R rep from EMI asks engineer Roy Thomas Baker for demos.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: Farrokh changes his name to Freddie Mercury and renames the band Queen. They sign with John Reid, who books an American tour. Paul Prenter, who is attracted to Freddie, manages their daily schedule. An appearance on "Top of the Pops" gives Queen their first hit, "Killer Queen". Freddie proposes to Mary but begins questioning his sexuality. In 1975, Queen record their fourth studio album, "A Night at the Opera," placing extensive effort into recording Freddie's magnum opus, "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, they quit EMI when executive Ray Foster refuses to release it as the album's lead single. Freddie conspires with radio DJ Kenny Everett to debut the song on his program. Despite critical pans, "Bohemian Rhapsody" becomes a global hit, launching Queen to international superstardom. Following a world tour, Freddie begins an affair with Paul and comes out to Mary as bisexual. She counters that he is gay and they call off the engagement but remain close friends.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: The band's success continues into the 1980s, but tensions arise over Paul's influence on Freddie. At a lavish party at his home, Freddie is attracted to a waiter, Jim Hutton, who tells Freddie to find him when he learns self-acceptance. Paul encourages Reid to persuade Freddie to go solo, but when the idea offends Freddie, Paul feigns ignorance and Freddie fires Reid without consulting the band. Freddie's relationship with the band further deteriorates after the campy music video for "I Want to Break Free", where the band appears in drag, backfires and he signs a $4-million solo deal with CBS Records, effectively breaking up the band. He records his 1984 solo album "Mr. Bad Guy" in Munich and engages in drugs and gay orgies with Paul. Mary, now married and pregnant, visits unexpectedly and urges him to return to Queen and participate in the benefit concert Live Aid. Realizing that Paul withheld news of Live Aid from him and has been a corrosive influence, Freddie fires him. In retaliation, Paul goes public about Freddie's sexual escapades.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: Freddie returns to London to reconcile with the band and persuade them to play at Live Aid as a last-minute addition. Freddie learns that he has AIDS. He reveals his condition to the band, but brushes off their sympathy, wishing to focus on performing and making music for however long he has left. The band embraces in solidarity. On the day of Live Aid, Freddie reconnects with Jim Hutton, Mary, and his family, and heeds his father's Zoroastrian maxim, "Good thoughts, good words, good deeds". Freddie and the band are in top form at Live Aid, performing several hits including "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Radio Ga Ga", and "We Are the Champions", and helping to increase donations.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: Plans for a film about Queen were revealed in September 2010 by the band's guitarist Brian May. Covering the period up to Live Aid in 1985, the film was to feature Sacha Baron Cohen as Freddie Mercury, with Graham King to co-produce, and Peter Morgan to write the screenplay. May confirmed in April 2011 that the production was moving forward. He approved of Baron Cohen as Mercury but had reservations about the project's possible direction. The band's concerns focused on avoiding any harm to Mercury's legacy.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: In July 2013, Baron Cohen left the project due to creative differences. Allegedly, he had wanted a "gritty R-rated tell-all" focused on Mercury, while the band hoped for a PG-rated film about the band. May said later in 2013 that Baron Cohen had left the project on good terms. Comments by May and Roger Taylor suggested that Baron Cohen was too well known as a comedian and prankster (due largely to his fictional personae Ali G and Borat), and that his presence in the film would be distracting. In March 2016, Baron Cohen spoke about misunderstandings with Queen about the subject and events of the film, in particular, whether the story ought to continue past Mercury's 1991 death. He also mentioned artistic disagreements with the band over the composition of the production team, referring specifically to Cohen recruiting Morgan, David Fincher, and Tom Hooper.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: Following Baron Cohen's departure, in December 2013, Ben Whishaw was mentioned as a possible replacement to play Mercury. Also at this time, Dexter Fletcher was selected as the film's director. Fletcher removed himself from the project early the following year, amid reports of creative disagreements with King. In August 2014, Whishaw suggested that the film was not progressing well and that there had been scripting problems. Whishaw left the project seven months later. Rumours followed in 2015 that Baron Cohen had rejoined the project, or that Whishaw might return.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: In November 2015, screenwriter Anthony McCarten became attached to the project, which now had the working title of "Bohemian Rhapsody" after Queen's song of the same name. Developing a fresh take on the story from his interviews with May and Taylor, he delivered his first draft in February 2016. A year later, Bryan Singer was in talks to take over as director, Rami Malek was cast as Mercury, and the film was fast-tracked by 20th Century Fox and New Regency. It was reported in 2015 that Johnny Flynn was due to play Roger Taylor and that Gemma Arterton would play Mercury's partner Mary Austin.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: In May 2017, Malek confirmed that he had conducted recordings at Abbey Road Studios and had consulted Taylor and May. The same month, "Entertainment Weekly" reported that Taylor and May were serving as music producers. In August 2017, Justin Haythe was revealed to have penned another draft of the script.


title: Bohemian Rhapsody (film)

text: On 4 November 2016, it was announced that Rami Malek would star as Freddie Mercury, after the producers saw his work in "Mr. Robot". He had to make a pre-recording at Abbey Road Studios, which was sent to Queen members for approval. On 21 August 2017, additional cast members were announced: Ben Hardy as drummer Roger Taylor, Gwilym Lee as lead guitarist Brian May, and Joseph Mazzello as bass guitarist John Deacon. On 30 August 2017, it was reported that Allen Leech had been cast in the film to play Mercury's personal manager, Paul Prenter, who worked for him from 1977 to 1987, when he was fired for betraying Mercury by selling his personal information to UK newspapers.