Etymology.

Sultan Al Omaimi, a UAE poet and researcher in folk literature, says that some historians speculate that Sharjah was the name of an idol worshipped in the ancient era which was known as Abed Al Shareq.  Other researchers link the word Sharjah to the fact that the city is located to the east ('sharq' means 'east' in Arabic), of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

History.

Sharjah was historically one of the wealthiest towns in this region with a settlement in existence for over 5000 years. In the early 18th century, the Qawasim clan (Huwayla tribe) established itself in Sharjah, c.1727 declaring Sharjah independent. On 8 January 1820, Sheikh Sultan I signed the General Maritime Treaty with Britain, accepting a protectorate to keep the Ottoman Turks out. Like four of its neighbours, Ajman, Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, and Umm Al Quwain, its position on the route to India made it important enough to be recognised as a salute state (be it of the lowest class: 3 guns).  In 1829, English author and traveler James Silk Buckingham described Sharjah as such: By the turn of the 20th century, Sharjah extended inland to the area now known as Wasit Suburb, the area between the city and Dhaid being under the control of the tribes of the interior. With some 15,000 inhabitants, Sharjah had some 4 or 5 shops in Layyah and a bazaar of some 200 shops in Sharjah proper.  At the height of World War II, Nazi propaganda infiltrated the town. Loud transmissions of pro-Hitler speeches could be heard emanating from the Sheikh of Sharjah's palace during a period in 1940, and messages sharing a similar sentiment had been graffitied on walls in the town centre according to British intelligence reports at the time. Because the message being propagated by the Germans was one of anti-Imperialism, it found a sympathetic audience among the emirate's populace, particularly Abdullah bin Faris, a secretary of the Sheikh who was responsible for the broadcasts. After the Sheikh was confronted by the British, he wrote a letter reiterating his support for the British war efforts and disputed the charges laid out against bin Faris. Attached to the letter was a petition signed by 48 prominent individuals testifying to bin Faris' character, which, according to the British, had been misrepresented to the signees. The incident resolved after the Sheikh and bin Faris ceased from transmitting propaganda and doubled down on their support of the British.  On 2 December 1971, Sharjah, together with Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain and Fujairah joined in the Act of Union to form the United Arab Emirates. The seventh emirate, Ras Al Khaimah, joined the UAE on 10 February 1972, following giant non-Arab neighbour Iran's annexation of the RAK-owned Tunbs islands.  Like the other former Trucial States, Sharjah's name is known by many stamp collectors because of the large numbers of stamps that were issued by the Sharjah Post Office shortly before the formation of the United Arab Emirates, which became part of the class of virtually worthless stamps known to collectors as Dunes. Many of these items feature subjects unrelated to the emirates whose names they bear, and therefore many catalogues do not list them.

Landmarks.

Sharjah is the third largest city in the United Arab Emirates after Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The palace of the ruler of the Emirate of Sharjah, His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, is located about southeast of the city.  The city of Sharjah overlooks the Persian Gulf and has a population of over 800,000 (2008). It contains the main administrative and commercial centres together with an array of cultural and traditional projects, including several museums covering areas such as archaeology, natural history, science, arts, heritage, Islamic art and culture. Distinctive landmarks include two major covered "souks", reflecting Islamic design, and a number of recreational areas and public parks such as Al Montazah Fun Park and Al Buheirah Corniche. The city is also notable for its numerous elegant mosques.

Rolla Square.

Named after the large rolla (banyan tree) that once stood in the square and that inspired the sculpture currently at the centre of the park, Rolla Square is a common location for workers to stroll during the weekends.

Bank Street.

Bank street is near main area of Rolla there are many bank branches are there and offices.

Al Hisn Sharjah.

Sharjah Fort was demolished in the 1970s but rebuilt and is today a museum.

'Smile You're In Sharjah' Roundabout.

Located between the Blue Souq and Fish Market, near the Union Bank Tower, the floral call to cheer up etched on the roundabout has lent its name to the roundabout itself. Currently the roundabout is being upgraded and is under construction.

Gold Souq.

The Souq Al Markazi, or Gold Souq, is a tourist destination and comprises a gold souq, clothing souq and, on its first floors, antiques and jewellery shops.

Mahattah Fort.

The fort was built to house travellers on the Imperial Airways Eastern Empire route and was the site of Sharjah Airport until 1977. It is now an aviation museum.

Heritage District.

The Heart of Sharjah houses several galleries, and museums including the charming heritage museum which gives a great insight into the cultural traditions of the past. The area is also home to the traditional Souk Al Arsa, a covered souk with an array of items to sell including antiques and the office of the Sharjah Centre for Cultural Communication where you can get info on Sharjah attractions.

Al Qasba Canal.

Al-Qasba Canal is a 1 km-long canal that runs through the centre of Sharjah. Located along its waterfront are several apartments, shops and tourist attractions of the Al Qasba community.

Sharjah Heritage Museum.

The Sharjah Heritage Museum is situated near to the Bait Al Naboodah is just opposite Soouq Al Arsah. This is an architecturally designed two-storey family house. It is built around a shaded courtyard and is dedicated to a family life reconstruction many years ago. There are many rooms which has displays of traditional furniture along with household items too. Moreover, there are also provision of children's costumes, games and jewellery.

Sharjah National Park.

Sharjah National Park covers an area of nearly of area.

Sharjah Aquarium.

Located in Al Layyeh, Sharjah aquarium has over 250 species to see right from the delicate seahorses to smallest clown fish, reef sharks, rays and moray eels. Visitors can submerge themselves to the colorful, diverse and rich undersea world which is home to a variety of marine life which is native to the sea.

Al Noor Island.

Al Noor Island is located in the Khalid Lagoon and covers an area of 45,470 square metres. The destination project features art and light installations, including the 'OVO' and 'Torus' displays.

Wildlife Centers.

The Arabian Wildlife Center opened in 1999 and was home to more than 100 species of animals. Situated at a convenient location, this center was quite close to the Sharjah International Airport. Despite the hot and dry conditions in most of Arabia, there were a number of mammal species who had adapted to these conditions. The Breeding Centre for Endangered Wildlife, a sister facility, was a member of the EAZA, like Al Ain Zoo in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, but is now closed to the public. The fauna, including the Arabian leopard, which had been recorded in the mountains in the eastern part of the country, there were shifted to Al Hefaiyah Conservation Centre in the eastern area of Kalba. The center's activities had included assisting the Yemeni zoos of Sana'a and Ta'izz with taking care of their fauna in 2001.

Al Majaz Waterfront.

Al Majaz Waterfront is an expansion and beautification of the existing park in order to enhance it into a family-friendly leisure area, a waterfront landmark of Sharjah Featuring an audio-video dancing fountain, miniature golf and a number of restaurants.

Rain Room.

In 2018, the experimential art installation "Rain Room" was given a permanent home in Sharjah. Sharjah Art Foundation constructed a purpose-built visitor centre located in the city's residential area of Al Majarrah to house the permanent installation of Rain Room, with up to six visitors at a time taking fifteen minutes to explore the experience. People can experience rain all around them without getting wet. There are sensors which help detect your movement and prevent rain from falling on you directly but fall all around you.

Places of worship.

Sharjah's largest mosque, named the "Sharjah Mosque" was inaugurated in May 2019. Located in the area of Tay, at the junction of the Emirates Road and the road to Mleiha, it can accommodate up to 25,000 worshipers, with an inside capacity of over 5,000 people. Two coins, one gold and one silver, each inscribed with a verse from the Quran, were issued by the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, and designed by the Sharjah Islamic Bank, to commemorate the occasion. Previously, the King Faisal Mosque, named after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, had been the largest in the Emirate and country, with an area of.

Mleiha Archaeological Centre.

Meliha Archaeological Centre is a visitor centre and exhibition based around the history and archaeology of the areas surrounding the village of Mleiha in Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates

Climate.

Sharjah has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification "BWh"), with warm winters and extremely hot and humid summers. Rainfall is generally light and erratic, and occurs almost entirely from November to May. About two-thirds of the year's rain falls in the months of February and March.

Transportation.

The city has reasonably well developed transport infrastructure. Like many major cities, Sharjah has a problem with vehicular traffic congestion during rush hours especially the roads leading to and from the Emirate of Dubai.  The role of the Sharjah Public Transport Corporation (SPTC) is to reinforce public transportation, setting its policies and find strategic solutions for smooth traffic, providing modern and professional transport services to the passengers, driving Sharjah Emirate or on the InterCity routes, between all emirates in UAE.  Development of transportation services in Sharjah is critical and long term task. Planning by SPTC since 2008 Sharjah Metro will be third in UAE (after Dubai and Abu Dhabi metros) and planning since 2015 Sharjah Tram will be second (after Dubai Tram).  The Sharjah International Airport is the aviation hub of the city. Sharjah Airport is the third largest Middle East airfreight hub in cargo tonnage, according to official 2015 statistics from Airports Council International. Sharjah International Airport is home base of the low-cost carrier Air Arabia. It has daily flights connecting Lebanon, Jordan, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ukraine, India, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.  There are two major series of highways in Sharjah, which are "E" and "S". E represents roads connecting other emirates and S for roads within the emirates.  The major roads in the emirate of Sharjah includes  Taxis in Sharjah are clean, well maintained and reasonable. Sharjah Public Transportation Corporation is organizing and supervising the operations of taxis in Sharjah Emirate. Sharjah taxi service is provided through franchise companies. They cover all parts of the Emirate and cities, including shopping centres, residential areas and airport. Following are the major taxi operators in the emirates.  Sharjah Transport Corporation also provides Sharing Transportation with the purpose of serving certain routes in Sharjah City on a fixed rate for each route without using the meter. Sharjah Sharing Taxi routes are carefully selected to support people with low income and are covering areas with frequent needs for quick transfer within same location, to ease the traffic situation in Sharjah.  Sharjah Public Transport Corporation operates passenger bus services nationwide, between Sharjah City, Ras Al Khaimah, Khor Fakkan, Kalba, Fujairah, Masafi, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Hamriyah Free Zone, Dhaid, Al Madam, Dibba Al Hisn, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Dubai.

Utility services.

Utility services in the emirate is provided by SEWA (Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority). They provide electricity, water and LPG connection to about 2 Million consumers in the emirates. They have over 4000 employees serving till Dhaid, Kalba and Khorfakkan. Telephone services in the emirate both fixed lines and mobile services are provided by Govt owned Etislat and Du communication Ltd.

Culture.

The UAE culture mainly revolves around the religion of Islam and traditional Arab culture. The influence of Islamic and Arab culture on its architecture, music, attire, cuisine and lifestyle are very prominent as well. Five times every day, Muslims are called to prayer from the minarets of mosques which are scattered around the country. Since 2006, the weekend has been Friday-Saturday, as a compromise between Friday's holiness to Muslims and the Western weekend of Saturday-Sunday.  The Ruler of Sharjah ordered the establishment of several cultural institutions. The projects covered conservation of cultural heritage, active interaction with other cultures, construction of museums and the other cultural, scientific and artistic centres in the Emirate and the setting up of a television satellite channel that reflects and projects the value of culture.  In 1998, Sharjah was awarded the "Cultural Capital of the Arab World" title by UNESCO representing the United Arab Emirates. Sharjah has kept the spirit of its history alive by indicatively incorporating tradition into every aspect of contemporary development.  A cultural heritage project, Heart of Sharjah, has been undertaken to preserve and restore the old town of Sharjah and return it to its 1950s state. A five-phase project intended for completion in 2025, the project is being undertaken by the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority, Shurooq, together with Sharjah Institute for Heritage, the Sharjah Museums Department, and the Sharjah Art Foundation..  Sharjah International Book Fair is a cultural event held every year in Sharjah. It started in the year 1982 and now it attracts publishers, readers and speakers from all over the world.

Economy.

Sharjah is the headquarters of Air Arabia, the first low-cost airline in the Middle East, which operates to the Middle East, Asia and Europe. The headquarters is in the Sharjah Freight Center, on the property of Sharjah International Airport.  Sharjah Airport International Free Zone, popularly known as SAIF Zone, is one of the prominent free-trade zones in UAE. More than 6000 companies operates from SAIF Zone. The cost of setting up business in Sharjah is less than in any other emirates of UAE, and the focus of industrialisation has in recent years turned Sharjah into a commercial centre. Thanks to the facility of 100% foreign ownership, repatriation of capital and profits and exemption from income and corporate taxes, SAIF Zone has attracted investors from more than 90 countries.  Hamriyah Free Zone: Established in 1995, it offers competitive and unique opportunities to establish business in a tax-free environment, full company ownership, exemption from all commercial levies and repatriation of capital and profits. The Free Zone provides access to a 14 meter deep water port and a 7 meter deep inner harbor.

Demographics.

According to 2015 census conducted by department of statistics and community development in Sharjah, the total population of the emirate is 1.40 Million. Expatriates constitute 87% of the total population. As per the census the total number of Emirati population is only 175,432. The population density of the Emirates is 341 person per km.  Like the rest of UAE, Arabic is the official and national language of the emirate. English is used as a second language; Tagalog and South Asian languages such as Urdu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, etc are spoken widely by the residents of emirates. Islam is the predominant religion in the Emirate of Sharjah.

Education.

There are several public and private schools in addition to universities in Sharjah, including the University of Sharjah, American University of Sharjah, Skyline College Sharjah, Westford School of Management, Exeed School of Business and Finance Sharjah Men's College, and Sharjah Women's College. Some of these universities are located in one area called the University City. Private schools in the city include the Sharjah Indian School, Sharjah English School, Delta English School, Emirates National school, American Community School Sharjah, Indian School Sharjah, the International School of Choueifat, Sharjah, Sharjah High School, DPS Delhi Private School, Gulf Asian English School, Our Own English High School, And American school of creative science.

Healthcare.

Health care in Sharjah can be divided in to two different sectors, Public and Private. Public hospitals in the emirates are administered by Government of Sharjah through Ministry of health. The emirate also has 9 public medical centres to provide primary health care services.

Sports.

The Sharjah Cricket Stadium has hosted almost 218 cricket One Day Internationals, more than any other ground, and 4 Test matches. There's also Sharjah in the UAE Pro League. Sharjah also has a chess club.  Also, the organisers of Sharjah Grand Prix host the Formula One World Powerboating Championships every year at Al Buhaira Corniche, Sharjah. In 2005, it was held under the patronage of Shaikh Sultan Bin Mohammad Bin Sultan Al Qasimi, Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler of Sharjah.

Twin towns – sister cities.

Sharjah is twinned with:

Sharjah ( ""; Gulf Arabic: "aš-šārja") is the third largest and third most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, forming part of the Dubai-Sharjah-Ajman metropolitan area. The emirate of Sharjah borders with Dubai to the south, Ajman and Umm Al Quwain to the north and Ras Al Khaimah to the east. It is the only emirate that overlooks the coastline on the Arabian Gulf to the west and the Gulf of Oman (Indian Ocean) to the East, with the eastern Sharjah coastal towns of Kalba and Khor Fakkan.

Schardscha (, hocharabische Aussprache "asch-Schāriqa", lokal "asch-Schārdscha"; alternative Schreibweise Shariqah, ) ist die Hauptstadt des gleichnamigen Emirats Schardscha der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate (VAE).


Route.

The line begins at the HSB's narrow gauge station in Nordhausen (Nordhausen Nord). It lies in northwest of and parallel to the standard gauge railway station. After passing the link line to the Nordhausen Tramway that joins it from the right, the railway bends towards the north and runs for 7 km to the station of Niedersachswerfen Ost almost parallel to the standard gauge line from Nordhausen to Ellrich (the South Harz Line). The Harz mountains begin beyond Ilfeld (km 10.7). Behind "Netzkater" (km 14.0) lies the station of "Eisfelder Talmühle" (km 17.3), where the Selke Valley Railway branches off in a curve to the right.  The Trans-Harz Railway continues to follow the B 81 federal road as far as "Tiefenbachmühle" halt (km 19.5) before turning in a westerly direction in order to reach the request stop of "Sophienhof" (km 21.0), the last stop in Thuringia. The line runs through spruce forests over the state border with Saxony-Anhalt. At Benneckenstein station (km 29.8) the line crosses the ridge at, its highest point so far. It then runs downhill into the valley of the Warme Bode, where the halt of Sorge (km 33.4; ) is located. Next the route climbs to its next summit at 557 m. After Elend (km 41.6) the line reaches the junction with the Brocken Railway at "Drei-Annen-Hohne station" (km 46.4). In 2009 the construction of a new stub line from Elend to Braunlage was discussed (see "South Harz Railway Company").  Behind Drei-Annen-Hohne the line runs steeply downhill and the railway reaches the 58 m long tunnel below the "Thumkuhlenkopf". It is the only tunnel in the Harz Narrow Gauge Railway network. On emerging from the tunnel Wernigerode Castle can soon be seen in the distance. In the vicinity of the station at "Steinerne Renne" (km 54.5) the line enters one of the HSB's tightest curves with a 60-metre radius, before reaching the station of Wernigerode-Hasserode (km 56.3). The next stations en route are "Hochschule Harz" halt (formerly "Wernigerode-Kirchstraße") and "Westerntor" station (where the Wernigerode-Westerntor Bahnbetriebswerk is found) at Wernigerode. Its terminus is the station at Wernigerode (km 60.5).

History.

The first section of the Trans-Harz Railway to go into service was the line from Nordhausen to Ilfeld on 12 July 1897. On 7 February 1898 it was extended as far as Netzkater and on 15 September that year to Benneckenstein. From the north the section Wernigerode to Drei-Annen-Hohne was completed on 20 June 1898. The remaining section between Drei-Annen-Hohne and Benneckenstein was finally opened on 27 March 1899 along with the line up to the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz mountains. The original operating company was the Nordhausen-Wernigerode Railway Company. After the compulsory acquisition of the line in 1949, the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn ran it until 1993.  From 1899 the Trans-Harz Railway crossed another metre gauge line at Sorge. This other line was operated by the South Harz Railway Company (SHE) and ran from Walkenried via Brunnenbachsmühle and Sorge to Tanne. A link line, initially just for passenger trains, was laid in 1913. In 1945 services between Sorge and Brunnenbachsmühle were closed, because this section crossed the Inner German Border. The section from Sorge to Tanne continued to be worked until 1958. The tracks were left on the border bridge until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Operations.

Railway traffic has sharply increased in recent years on the section between Nordhausen and Ilfeld. Since 2004 Nordhausen hybrid-trams have run directly from Ilfeld into the tram network at Nordhausen. Other trains run to Eisfelder Talmühle and continue onto the Selke Valley Railway. Apart from one pair of steam trains, all services are worked by diesel railbuses. The only remaining goods trains on the Harz Narrow Gauge Railways work the line between Nordhausen and Eisfelder Talmühle. These regularly transport standard gauge ballast wagons from the "Hartsteinwerken Unterberg" on rollbocks to Nordhausen. A number of converted diesel locomotives are available for this, which have couplers and buffers at the right height for handling standard gauge goods wagons.  After 1993 daily trains services between Eisfelder Talmühle and Drei-Annen-Hohne were restricted to four pairs of trains. Only two pairs were hauled by steam locomotives. In addition, between Drei Annen Hohne and Wernigerode through trains run on the Brocken–Wernigerode route, the majority being steam-hauled.

The Harz Railway or Trans-Harz Railway () was formerly the main line of the Harz Narrow Gauge Railways ("Harzer Schmalspurbahnen" or "HSB") and runs north to south right across the Harz Mountains from Wernigerode to Nordhausen. However, the tourist attraction of the Brocken, the highest mountain in the Harz, is so great that the Brocken Railway is effectively the main line today. The Trans-Harz Railway joins up with the Selke Valley Railway to Quedlinburg at Eisfelder Talmühle where all trains are organised to make good connections.

Die Harzquerbahn verbindet als Schmalspurbahn in Meterspur die Städte Nordhausen in Thüringen und Wernigerode in Sachsen-Anhalt. Die eingleisige, nicht elektrifizierte Strecke durchquert den Harz in Nord-Süd-Richtung. Betreiber sind die Harzer Schmalspurbahnen (HSB).


Life and career.

Early life.

Cliburn was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the son of Rildia Bee ("" O'Bryan) and Harvey Lavan Cliburn Sr. At age three, he began taking piano lessons from his mother, who had studied under Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. When Cliburn was six, his father, who worked in the oil industry, moved the family to Kilgore, Texas.  At age 12 Cliburn won a statewide piano competition, which led to his debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He entered the Juilliard School in New York City at the age of seventeen and studied under Rosina Lhévinne, who trained him in the tradition of the great Russian romantics. At age twenty, Cliburn won the Leventritt Award and made his debut at Carnegie Hall.

Moscow, Russia.

His triumph in Moscow propelled Cliburn to international prominence. The first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 was an event designed to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority during the Cold War, after the USSR's technological victory with the Sputnik launch in October 1957. Cliburn's performance at the competition finale of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 on April 13 earned him a standing ovation lasting eight minutes. After the ovation, Van Cliburn made a brief speech in Russian, and then resumed his seat at the piano and began to play—to the surprise and delight of the Russian musicians visible behind him in the film made of his part in the competition—his own piano arrangement of the much-beloved song "Moscow Nights," which, as the response shows, further endeared him to the Russians. When it was time to announce the winner, the judges were obliged to ask permission of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to give first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. "Then give him the prize!" Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time the honor has been accorded a classical musician. Arriving at City Hall after the parade, Cliburn told the audience:I appreciate more than you will ever know that you are honoring me, but the thing that thrills me the most is that you are honoring classical music. Because I'm only one of many. I'm only a witness and a messenger. Because I believe so much in the beauty, the construction, the architecture invisible, the importance for all generations, for young people to come that it will help their minds, develop their attitudes, and give them values. That is why I'm so grateful that you have honored me in that spirit.A cover story in "Time" magazine proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia".

Cultural diplomat.

"New York Times" writer Bernard Holland shared some beautiful words from Cliburn in a 1989 article. "My relationship with the Russians was personal, not political," Mr. Cliburn said in a recent interview. "I had looked at pictures of Moscow when I was 5 years old, and I had always wanted to go there. My first night there I got permission to go down and see Red Square and the Kremlin. I felt so at home with these people, and I felt it immediately." In this article, Bernard Holland writes about Cliburn's heart that stayed consistent through his career as an artist and as a diplomat. Holland also tells of Cliburn's lasting relationship with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet diplomat who was a huge fan of Cliburn and actually the one who is pictured at the Tchaikovsky competition pinning an award on Cliburn. Cliburn's lasting love and care for the Russians was evident over the years in his music and his life.

Success.

Upon returning to the United States, Cliburn appeared in a Carnegie Hall concert with the Symphony of the Air, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin, who had led the Moscow Philharmonic in the prize-winning performances in Moscow. The performance of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto at this concert was subsequently released by RCA Victor on LP. Cliburn was also invited by Steve Allen to play a solo during Allen's prime time NBC television series on May 25, 1958. He later went to the White House to meet with President Eisenhower to discuss relations with the USSR.  RCA Victor signed him to an exclusive contract, and his subsequent recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 won the 1958 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance. It was certified a gold record in 1961, and it became the first classical album to go platinum, achieving that certification in 1989. It was the best-selling classical album in the world for more than a decade. It eventually went triple-platinum. In 2004, this recording was re-mastered from the original studio analogue tapes, and released on a Super Audio CD.  Other standard repertoire Cliburn recorded include the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 and No. 5 "Emperor", and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3.  In 1958, during a dinner hosted by the National Guild of Piano Teachers, President and Founder Dr. Irl Allison announced a cash prize of $10,000 to be used for a piano competition named in Cliburn's honor. Under the leadership of Grace Ward Lankford and with the dedicated efforts of local music teachers and volunteers, the First Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was held from September 24 to October 7, 1962, at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Until his death, Cliburn continued to serve as Director Emeritus for the Van Cliburn Foundation, as host of the quadrennial competition and host of other programs honoring his legacy.  In 1961, he first performed at the Interlochen Center for the Arts during its summer camp. He went on to do so for eighteen more years, his last visit to the school being in 2006.  Cliburn returned to the Soviet Union on several occasions. His performances there were usually recorded and even televised. In a 1962 Moscow appearance, Nikita Khrushchev, who met Cliburn again on this visit, and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister, were "spotted in the audience applauding enthusiastically". According to "The Wall Street Journal", "Mr. Cliburn's affection for the Soviet people—and theirs for him—was notable in its warmth during a prolonged period of superpower strain." A 1972 concert performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kondrashin and the Moscow orchestra, as well as a studio recording of Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini", were later issued on CD by RCA Victor.  On May 26, 1972, Cliburn gave a concert at Spaso House, the residence of the United States Ambassador to Russia, for an audience that included President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and Soviet government officials.

Comeback.

Cliburn performed and recorded through the 1970s, but in 1978, after the deaths of his father and of his manager, Sol Hurok, he began a hiatus from public life. In 1987, he was invited to perform at the White House for President Ronald Reagan and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and afterward was invited to open the 100th anniversary season of Carnegie Hall. He embarked on a 16-city tour in 1994, commencing with a performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto at the Hollywood Bowl. Also in 1994, Cliburn made a guest appearance in the cartoon "Iron Man", playing himself in the episode "Silence My Companion, Death My Destination". In his late seventies, he gave a limited number of performances to critical and popular acclaim. Cliburn appeared as a "Pennington Great Performers" series artist with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in 2006. In 2006 he performed at Interlochen Center for the Arts, spending two hours talking to the students afterwards and signing their programs while many waited at a reception at the school's president's house.  He played for royalty and heads of state from dozens of countries and for every U.S. president from 1958 until his death.

Honors.

Cliburn received the Kennedy Center Honors on December 2, 2001. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on July 23, 2003 by President George W. Bush, and, on September 20, 2004, the Russian Order of Friendship, the highest civilian awards of the two countries. He was also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year and played at a surprise 50th birthday party for United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He was a member of the Alpha Chi chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and was awarded the fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1962. He was presented a 2010 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama on March 2, 2011.  Cliburn's 1958 piano performance in Moscow, when he won the prestigious Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress for long-term preservation.

Personal life.

In 1998, Cliburn was named in a lawsuit by his domestic partner of 17 years, mortician Thomas Zaremba. In the suit, Zaremba claimed entitlement to a portion of Cliburn's income and assets and asserted that he might have been exposed to HIV, causing emotional distress. The claims were rejected by a trial court and an appellate court, on the basis that palimony suits were not permitted in the state of Texas unless the relationship is based on a written agreement.  Cliburn was known as a night owl. He often practiced until 4:30 or 5 a.m., waking around 1:30 p.m. "You feel like you're alone and the world's asleep, and it's very inspiring."

Death.

On August 27, 2012, Cliburn's publicist announced that the pianist had advanced bone cancer, had undergone treatment and was "resting comfortably at home" in Fort Worth, where he received around-the-clock care. Cliburn died on February 27, 2013, at the age of seventy-eight.  Cliburn was a member of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth and attended regularly when he was in town. His services were held on March 3, 2013, at the Broadway Baptist Church with entombment at Greenwood Memorial Park Mausoleum in Fort Worth. His obituary lists as his only survivor his "friend of longstanding", Thomas J. Smith.

Legacy.

"The Wall Street Journal" said on his death that Cliburn was a "cultural hero" who "rocketed to unheard-of stardom for a classical musician in the U.S." Calling him "the rare classical musician to enjoy rock star status", the Associated Press on his death noted the 1958 "Time" magazine cover story that likened him to "Horowitz, Liberace, and Presley all rolled into one".  A year after Cliburn's death, a free anniversary concert was held on February 27, 2014, in his honor in downtown Fort Worth. "It's part of the Cliburn ideology of sharing the music with the larger audience," said Jacques Marquis, the Cliburn Foundation president. Cliburn lent his name to the International Piano Competition, which he viewed as a gathering of classical masterpieces played by young gifted artists.  A highlight of Cliburn's legacy was the profoundly positive reception of his person and performances in the Soviet Union during and after the Tchaikovsky competition. The same is true of his reception during and after the Cold War in the Soviet Union. According to "Life" (1958), the excitement and hype surrounding the news of Cliburn's debut in Moscow was almost too much to bear for some. They became infatuated with him and made no attempt to conceal it. “In the preliminaries, which had enlisted 50 young pianist from 19 different countries, Van was the big crowd-pleaser. Fans called him Vanyusha. Girls trailed him to the hotel. Soviet record companies pleaded with him to wax anything. In the finals, when he crashed out the last chords of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, the ecstatic audience in Moscow chanted “first prize-first prize.”  Mark MacNamara of the "San Francisco Classical Voice" wrote: "The 6-foot 4-inch aw-shucks kid from Shreveport was 23, the son of an oil executive and a Juilliard graduate, and by all accounts didn't have a mean bone in his body. Indeed, much of his charm, then and throughout his life, was that he seemed so genuinely unaware of intrigue and enmity. Cliburn's talents were astounding, and he had a heart that loved people and music. This is a legacy that lasts."

Lasting Impact.

Cliburn's contributions to society were many and one of his greatest contributions was the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Lisa McCormick, writing in Sage Journals (2009), explains the competition this way: Founded in 1958, the Cliburn is held every four years and is open to pianists between the ages of 18 and 30. Through screening auditions held in five cities around the world, 35 pianists are chosen to participate in the competition in Fort Worth, Texas, where their performances are open to the public and judged by a distinguished international jury. Since its third cycle, the Cliburn has qualified to be a member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions. (Sage Journals 2009)  For many young pianists, Cliburn is not only a symbol of talent and inspiration, but a friend to the arts that shows how appreciation for music is powerful, and his impact on the tensions of the Cold War was certainly one of distinct and unique merit.

Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. (; July 12, 1934February 27, 2013) was an American pianist who, at the age of 23, achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 (during the Cold War). Cliburn's mother, a piano teacher and an accomplished pianist in her own right, discovered him playing at age three, mimicking one of her students and arranged for him to start taking lessons. Cliburn developed a rich, round tone and a singing-voice-like phrasing, having been taught from the start to sing each piece.

Van Cliburn (* 12. Juli 1934 als "Harvey Lavan Cliburn jr." in Shreveport, Louisiana; † 27. Februar 2013 in Fort Worth, Texas) war ein US-amerikanischer Pianist.


Early life.

Hans Lundgren was born on 3 November 1957 in Spånga, the son of Sigrid Birgitta ("née" Tjerneld; 1932-1992), a language teacher, and Karl-Hugo Johan Lundgren (1923-2000), an engineer (M.Sc) and economist (MBA) for the Swedish government. He lived in Spånga until the age of 13, when he moved to his grandparents' home in Nyland, Ångermanland. Some sources wrongly state 1959 as his year of birth, but Lundgren himself has confirmed it to be 1957. He has two sisters, Katharina and Annika and an older brother Johan; he was raised in the Lutheran church. Lundgren claims his father was physically abusive and vented his frustration on his wife and eldest son. He has stated that, during his tirades, his father would call him a "loser", which motivated him later as he grew more ambitious to prove himself. But he also said, "I still love my father, no matter what happened. There are many things about him I still admire. As a child, I was probably too much like him, very stubborn—perhaps that's what he couldn't deal with." He has cited his troubled relationship with his father as the reason he developed a desire to participate in heavy contact sports such as boxing and karate. Lundgren has said that, as a child, he was insecure and suffered from allergies, describing himself as a "runt". He showed a keen interest in drumming and had aspirations to become a rock star. At age seven, he tried judo and Gōjū-ryū. He took up Kyokushin karate at the age of 10, and began lifting weights as a teenager. Lundgren stated that "My dad always told me that if I wanted to make something special with my life, I had to go to

Career.

1980s.

On the set of the James Bond film "A View to a Kill", Jones suggested that he try out for a part in the film, which led to his feature film debut playing the very minor role of a suited KGB henchman named Venz. In the film, Lundgren appears in the scene in which the KGB's General Gogol (Walter Gotell) confronts Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) about leaving the KGB, at a racing ground and ends in a minor brawl in which Lundgren's character Venz points a gun at Zorin. Roger Moore, in his last performance as James Bond, once memorably said, "Dolph is larger than Denmark". Lundgren found the entertainment business more attractive and rewarding than chemical engineering, so he decided to pursue a career in acting despite having no formal training. Upon learning that Sylvester Stallone was seeking an imposing fighter to play Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV" (1985), Lundgren sent videos and pictures of himself to a distant

1990s.

1990–1994.

In 1990, Lundgren starred in Craig R. Baxley's sci-fi thriller "I Come in Peace" (also known as "Dark Angel") opposite Brian Benben, Betsy Brantley, Matthias Hues and Jay Bilas. Lundgren plays Jack Caine, a tough Houston cop with an inner sensitivity, who does not let the rules of police procedure prevent him pursuing his mission to wipe out the White Boys, a gang of white collar drug dealers who killed his partner while he was waylaid stopping a convenience store robbery. Lundgren said of his role, "What attracted me to Dark Angel is that I get to do more than just action. There's some romance, some comedy, some drama. I actually have some clever dialogue in this one. I get to act." One author said "Universe (1987) or Dark Angel (1990), demonstrates that nature and his [Lundgren's] hairdresser have suited him perfectly to Nazi genetically engineered baddie roles."  In 1991, Lundgren starred in Manny Coto's action film "Cover Up" opposite Louis Gossett Jr.. Lundgren portrays Mike Anderson, a tough American reporter and US Marine veteran

1995–1999.

In 1995, Lundgren appeared in Robert Longo's "Johnny Mnemonic", co-starring Keanu Reeves. The film portrays screenwriter William Gibson's dystopian cyberpunk view of the future with the world dominated by megacorporations and with strong East Asian influences. Reeves plays the title character, a man with a cybernetic brain implant designed to store information. Lundgren plays Karl Honig, a Jesus-obsessed hit man and street preacher who wears a robe and carries a shepherd's staff. The film was shot on location in Toronto and Montreal in 12 weeks, filling in for the film's Newark, New Jersey and Beijing settings. The film was premiered in Japan first on 15 April 1995 and features a previously composed score by Michael Danna, different editing, and more scenes with Lundgren and Japanese star Takeshi Kitano. Critical response was negative overall; Roger Ebert said, "Johnny Mnemonic is one of the great gestures of recent cinema, a movie which doesn't deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis." The film was a financial disappointment, grossing $19,075,720 in the domestic American market against its $26m budget. The cloak worn by Lundgren in the film is now located in the lobby of the Famous Players Coliseum in Mississauga, Ontario, it was his last theatrical release film until 2010. Later in 1995, Lundgren appeared in Ted Kotcheff's "The Shooter", an action drama in which he plays Michael Dane, a U.S. Marshall who gets caught up in politics when he is hired to solve the assassination of a Cuban ambassador.  The Motion Picture Guide to the films of 1996 said, "in peak condition, Dolph Lundgren leaps trains, kicks the crap out of assailants, and handles a rifle like a pro. He's still a terrific athlete, but shows signs of histrionic mobility here."  In 1996, Lundgren starred in Russell Mulcahy's "Silent Trigger", about a sniper (Lundgren) and his female spotter (played by Gina Bellman). Lundgren plays a former Special Forces agent who joins a secretive government agency (called "The Agency") as an assassin. The movie takes place in and around an unfinished city skyscraper, shot in Montreal. The Motion Picture Guide to the films of 1997 said, "this stylish but empty thriller gives square-jawed Dolph Lundgren another shot at straight-to-video immortality".  In 1997, Dolph starred in Frédéric Forestier's "The Peacekeeper", playing Major Frank Cross of the US Air Force and the only man who can prevent the president being assassinated and with the ability to thwart an imminent nuclear holocaust. The threat is from a terrorist group, which has stolen the President's personal communications computer with the capability of launching the US arsenal to threaten global security. The film co-starred Michael Sarrazin, Montel Williams, Roy Scheider and Christopher Heyerdahl, and was shot on location in Montreal. The film was praised for its exciting action sequences. Doug Pratt described the first half of the film

2000s.

2000–2004.

In 2000, Lundgren starred in "The Last Warrior" as Captain Nick Preston under director Sheldon Lettich. This post apocalyptic movie is set in 2006 in the context of a 9.5-magnitude earthquake which kills millions of people, with Preston leading a motley military patrol on the island to help survivors in the pole shift-affected world. The film was partly shot in Eilat, Israel. Later in 2000, Dolph appeared in Damian Lee's "Agent Red" (also known as "Captured"), alongside Alexander Kuznetsov, Natalie Radford and Randolph Mantooth. The film is set during the Cold War, and is about two soldiers

2005–2009.

In 2005, Lundgren starred and directed his second picture "The Mechanik" (The Russian Specialist), playing a retired Russian Special Forces hit man Nikolai "Nick" Cherenko caught in the crossfire with Russian mobsters. Sky Movies remarked that "The Mechanik" is "hardcore death-dealing from the Nordic leviathan" and said that "The Mechanik delivers all the no-nonsense gunplay you'd want of a Friday night".  In 2006, Lundgren played gladiator Brixos in the Italian-made historical/biblical drama, "The Inquiry" ("L'inchiesta"), also known as "The Final Inquiry", alongside Daniele Liotti, Mónica Cruz, Max von Sydow, F. Murray Abraham and Ornella Muti. It is the remake of the 1986 Italian film directed by Damiano Damiani and starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. Set in AD 35 in the Roman Empire, the story follows a fictional Roman general named Titus Valerius Taurus, a veteran of campaigns in Germania, who is sent to Judea by the emperor Tiberius to investigate the possibility of the divinity of the recently crucified Jesus. The film, shot on location in Tunisia and Bulgaria, featured a score from Andrea Morricone, the son of the acclaimed film score composer Ennio Morricone. It premiered at the Capri, Hollywood and the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival. One reviewer on a website catering for historical movies said of the film, "The Final Inquiry is one of those movies you are glad you ran into... I had such low expectations for this movie, but was glad to have been proven wrong. I know about the negative reviews this movie has gotten and some of the criticism is well deserved while some of it is a bit unfair." In the same year, he appeared in the music video "Kosmosa" sung by the Russian singer Irson Kudikova.  In 2007, Lundgren directed and starred in the Mongolia-based action adventure, "Diamond Dogs". Lundgren portrays the character of Xander Ronson, a mercenary hired by a group of American fortune hunters to act as their guide and bodyguard, while they search for a priceless Buddhist artifact deep within the Chinese wilderness. They get more than they bargained for, however, as they come face to face with Russian mercenaries also after the artifact. The film, a Canadian-Chinese production, was shot on location in Inner Mongolia. Later in 2007, Lundgren wrote, directed and starred in "Missionary Man" alongside Charles Solomon Jr.. Described as a "modern western" by Lundgren, He plays a lone, Bible-preaching stranger named Ryder who comes into a small Texas town on his 1970's Harley-Davidson motorcycle to

2010s.

2010–2017: "Expendables" and direct-to-video films.

In 2010, Lundgren made a guest star appearance on the TV series "Chuck" in the fourth-season premiere episode, "Chuck Versus the Anniversary", as Russian spy Marco, with references to "Rocky IV"'s Ivan Drago. He then played a drug-addled assassin alongside Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action film "The Expendables", which opened in theatres on 13 August 2010. The film is about a group of elite mercenaries, tasked with a mission to overthrow a Latin American dictator. It was described by Lundgren as "an old-school, kick-ass action movie where people are fighting with knives and shooting at each other." This was his first American theatrical release film since 1995's "Johnny Mnemonic", (although The Inquiry (The Final Inquiry) and "Missionary Man"

2017–present: Comeback and return to the big screen.

In 2018, Lundgren reprised his role of Ivan Drago from "Rocky IV" in "Creed II", the sequel to "Creed". He played an older, impoverished Drago in the film, which also introduces the character's son, Viktor. This marked the beginning of what New York Magazine has described as Lundgren's "comeback." Also that year, Lundgren co-starred in the DC Extended Universe film "Aquaman", from director James Wan, as the underwater king Nereus.

Training and diet.

Although Lundgren has never competed as a professional bodybuilder, he has been closely associated with bodybuilding and fitness since his role as Drago in the mid-1980s. Bodybuilding.com said, "Looking like a man in his 30s rather than his 50s, Lundgren is the poster boy of precise nutrition, supplementation and exercise application that he has practiced for over 35 years." In an interview with them, he claimed to often train up to six days a week, usually one-hour sessions completed in the morning, saying that "it's just one hour a day, and then you can enjoy the other 23 hours". Although he had begun lifting weights as a teenager, he cites co-star Sylvester Stallone as the man who got him into serious bodybuilding for a period in the 1980s after he arrived in the U.S. Stallone had a lasting influence on his fitness regimen and diet, ensuring that he ate a much higher percentage of protein and split his food

Personal life.

Lundgren resides in Los Angeles, California. He speaks Swedish and English fluently, as well as smaller amounts of French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish, but is not fluent in five languages as has often been reported.  He is an avid football fan. He supported Everton FC when he lived in Europe, but developed more of an interest in international football tournaments (such as the UEFA European Championship and the FIFA World Cup) after moving to Los Angeles.  During the 1980s, Lundgren had relationships with Jamaican singer Grace Jones and American model Paula Barbieri. While Dolph was completing a Master's Degree in Chemical Engineering on an exchange program with the University of Sydney in Australia, Grace Jones spotted him at a dance club and hired him as a bodyguard. Dolph was whisked off to the USA from where he completed

Filmography.

Feature films.

Denotes

Television.

Denotes

Music videos.

Denotes

Video clip.

Denotes

Hans Lundgren (born 3 November 1957), better known as Dolph Lundgren (, ), is a Swedish actor, filmmaker, martial artist and chemical engineer. Lundgren's breakthrough came in 1985, when he starred in "Rocky IV" as the imposing Soviet Union boxer Ivan Drago. Since then, he has starred in more than 40 films, almost all of them in the action genre.

Dolph Lundgren (* 3. November 1957 in Stockholm als "Hans Lundgren") ist ein schwedischer Kyokushin-Meister sowie Schauspieler und Regisseur von Actionfilmen.


History.

Formation and "Vengeance" (1980–1984).

The band were formed in Bradford, West Yorkshire in the autumn of 1980, taking their name from the army established by Parliament during the English Civil War, and played their first concert in Bradford in October, playing songs based on their shared love of punk rock and Northern soul.  Until the mid-1980s, Sullivan used the alter ego of "Slade the Leveller" (Levellers being a radical political movement of the 1640s), supposedly so that he would not lose his unemployment benefits if the authorities realized he was making money from music. They continued to gig around the United Kingdom with little recognition, but in 1983 released their first singles "Bittersweet" and "Great Expectations" on Abstract Records, and were given airplay by Radio 1's John Peel.  In February 1984, they were invited to play on popular music show "The Tube", being introduced by presenter Muriel Gray as "the ugliest band in rock and roll". The producers of the show however were concerned about the lyrics of "Vengeance", which the band were due to perform ("I believe in justice / I believe in vengeance / I believe in getting the bastards") and so the band played "Christian Militia".  Following this performance, the band's first mini-album "Vengeance" reached Number 1 in the UK independent chart in early 1984, pushing The Smiths from that position. After a further single "The Price" also reached a high placing in the independent charts, the band were signed by major label EMI.

The major label years (1985–1993).

The band then made four studio albums (plus a live album) for EMI and one studio album for Epic, in a period of eight years. 1985's "No Rest for the Wicked" and associated single "No Rest" both made the mainstream Top 30 in the UK, the latter leading to some controversy when the band sported T-shirts with the phrase "Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin" during an appearance on "Top of the Pops". During the "No Rest" tour, Morrow left the band, and after some delay was replaced by 17-year-old Jason "Moose" Harris. However the band were refused work permits to enter the United States, as the US Immigration Department had said the band's work was of "no artistic merit". In December 1986 the band finally got permission to tour in the US. By this time "The Ghost of Cain", produced by Glyn Johns, had been released, and was named best album of the year for 1986 in The Times by David Sinclair, who said that it "was the best thing to happen to English rock music since the first Clash album". Concerts included Reading Festival and a gig with David Bowie in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, and the band for the first time expanded their touring line-up to include a second guitarist in the shape of Ricky Warwick, as well as harmonica player Mark Feltham from Nine Below Zero.  "Thunder and Consolation" was released in February 1989, and saw the band moving towards a more folk-rock sound, especially on the tracks including violinist Ed Alleyne-Johnson. Described as the band's "landmark" album, it reached No.20 in the UK charts, the singles "Stupid Questions" and "Vagabonds" made an impression in America and the band was able to tour the album there with Alleyne-Johnson also providing additional guitar and keyboards. At the end of the year however, Harris left the band, to be replaced by Peter "Nelson" Nice, who would play with the band for more than 20 years. 1990's "Impurity", continued the folk-driven theme with Alleyne-Johnson still to the fore, and Adrian Portas joining the band on guitar.  The next album was to be a musical change of direction; as Sullivan later said, "just as this folk-cum-rave-cum-crusty-cum-new-age thing broke and became big in the early 1990s, we went – whoosh – done that – and went and made a very angry hard rock album". "The Love of Hopeless Causes", New Model Army's only release on Epic Records, appeared in 1993 and led with the single "Here Comes the War", which spawned controversy when it came packaged with instructions on how to construct a nuclear device.

Hiatus and return to independence (1994–2000).

The band had previously decided to take a year out to concentrate on personal and other musical issues, and reconvened in late 1994 with Dean White, playing keyboards and guitar, replacing Alleyne-Johnson. It became clear, that all was not well between Sullivan and Heaton; Sullivan later said "We wrote "Thunder and Consolation" and it was brilliant, but very shortly after that, we started falling out, which went on during the making of that album. His life went in one direction and mine went in another". It was agreed that they would go their separate ways after the forthcoming album and tour. "Strange Brotherhood" was released in May 1998 to mixed reviews, but then Heaton was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He suggested that his drum technician Michael Dean take over from him to tour the album. By this time the band had formed their own independent label, Attack Attack, and former tour manager Tommy Tee had returned to manage the band. A live album ""...& Nobody Else"" followed in 1999, and eighth studio album "Eight" in 2000.

Death of Robert Heaton, and "Carnival" to "Today is a Good Day" (2001–2009).

After touring "Eight", the band again took time out, most notably so that Sullivan could concentrate on his solo album "Navigating by the Stars" which was eventually released in 2003, and toured by Sullivan, Dean and White. As the band got together to record their ninth album, Robert Heaton died from pancreatic cancer on 4 November 2004. "Carnival" was finally released in September 2005, and includes Sullivan's reaction to Heaton's death, "Fireworks Night". Dave Blomberg was unable to take part in touring the album, and was replaced by current guitarist Marshall Gill.  The band's tenth studio album, "High", was produced relatively quickly and was released in August 2007. The tour suffered a slight setback when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services again denied the band visas; this time the issue was relatively quickly resolved and the dates rescheduled for early 2008. Soon afterwards, the band was again shaken as manager Tommy Tee died unexpectedly at the age of 46. By 2009, though, the band were again back in the studio. "Today Is a Good Day" was a far more uncompromising album, the heavy rock title track and others directly referencing the stock market crash of 2008. As the tour to promote the album came to an end, it was drawing close to 30 years since the band had started.

30th anniversary to present (2010–present).

Towards the end of 2010, the band's 30th anniversary was celebrated with special shows across four continents every weekend from September until early December; in most cities, the shows were across two nights with completely different sets, the band having promised to play at least four songs from each of their eleven studio albums plus "Lost Songs" and "B-Sides and Abandoned Tracks", their rarities and B-sides collections. The final shows at the Kentish Town Forum in London were collected on a double CD and DVD release containing all 58 songs played over the nights of 3 and 4 December.  After the band had played their traditional Christmas shows the following year, the news was released that Nelson had decided to leave the band for personal reasons, a decision that had been taken some time before. A few days later, on Christmas Eve, a fire destroyed the band's studio and rehearsal space in Bradford. Numerous guitars and other instruments were lost along with recording equipment and memorabilia. However, the studio was back in operation within three months, and after a number of auditions, Ceri Monger was announced as the band's new bassist and multi-instrumentalist.  In 2013, the band's twelfth studio album, "Between Dog and Wolf", mixed by Joe Barresi, was released and became the band's most successful since "The Love of Hopeless Causes" 20 years earlier. The album showed a marked shift away from the band's traditional sounds, including rhythms that were described as "tribal", though Sullivan claimed they were merely different ways of using drums – "We really like complex tom-tom rhythms, we really like that pounding (beat)". A year later, "Between Wine and Blood" was released, including six previously unreleased studio tracks from the "Between Dog and Wolf" sessions, along with eleven live tracks from that album. In October 2014, a documentary feature film about the band's career, "Between Dog and Wolf: The New Model Army Story" by director Matt Reid premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in London and the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal. The band's 14th studio album, "Winter", was released on 26 August 2016. "Winter" was named the #1 album of 2016 by The Big Takeover. On 23 August 2019, the band's 15th studio album, "From Here", was released.

Timeline of major contributors.

This is a list of musicians who were (or currently have been) a permanent - not touring - member of the band for a significant amount of time.

"The Family".

Over the years, New Model Army have gathered a wide selection of fans, many of whom dedicatedly follow the band. Originally calling themselves "The Militia", after the song "Christian Militia", the term "The Family" was later universally adopted for what is a multi-generational and gendered group. Joolz Denby, long-time collaborator of Sullivan and the band's main artist has referred to The Family as "not a formal, contrived organisation, but a spontaneous sense of fellowship that has developed over the years", whilst elsewhere it has been described as "sanctuary... and acceptance".

Influences.

Frequently noted for their musical lyricism, Justin Sullivan has noted in interviews that some of the band's (and his own) lyrical inspiration has come from Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Gillian Welch, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan, as well as "lots of country and hip-hop artists, all for their precision and poetry."

New Model Army are an English rock band formed in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 1980 by lead singer, guitarist and main composer Justin Sullivan, bassist Stuart Morrow and drummer Phil Tompkins. Sullivan has been the only continuous member of the band, which has seen numerous line-up changes in its four-decade history. Their music draws on influences across the musical spectrum, from punk and folk to soul, metal and classical. Sullivan's lyrics, which range from directly political through to spiritual and personal, have always been considered as a key part of the band's appeal. By the time they began making their first records in 1983, Robert Heaton, a former drum technician for Hawkwind, had replaced Tompkins.

New Model Army ist eine britische Independent-Band, deren Musik durch Rock-, Folk- und Punkelemente beeinflusst ist und deren Ursprünge im Punk liegen.


History.

In the late 19th century it was known as Stanley Pool. A railway was constructed traversing nearby. A plaque was installed to commemorate the rail line connecting Matadi to Stanley-Pool.

Description.

The Pool Malebo is about 35 km (22 mi) long, 23 km (14 mi) wide and 500 km in surface area. Its central part is occupied by M'Bamou or Bamu Island (180 km), which is Republic of the Congo territory. The pool is shallow with depths of 3–10 m, while water levels vary by as much as 3 m over the course of a year at an average altitude of 272 m (900 ft).

Geography.

The capitals of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo—Kinshasa and Brazzaville, respectively—are located on opposite shores of Pool Malebo. These are the two closest capital cities in the world (other than Rome, Italy and Vatican City, which are actually contiguous).  The Pool is the beginning of the navigable part of the Congo River upstream to the cities of Mbandaka, Kisangani and Bangui. Downstream, the river descends hundreds of meters in a series of rapids known as the Livingstone Falls to reach sea level at the port of Boma after a trajectory of 300 km.

Ecology.

Flora.

There are many palm and papyrus swamps along the edges of the river and pool, and often movement of floating mats of "Eichhornia" plants.

Fauna.

Fish.

Most fish endemic to the area are catfishes, including the mountain catfish, "L. brieni", "Leptoglanis mandevillei", "L. bouilloni" and "Atopochilus chabanaudi", an upside-down catfish. The area has over 200 fish species documented, with Mormyrids as the most common with over 40 species, and with the highest diversification.

The Pool Malebo, formerly Stanley Pool, also known as Lake Nkunda by local indigenous people in pre-colonial times, is a lake-like widening in the lower reaches of the Congo River. The former name Stanley Pool was named after early European explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley.

Der Pool Malebo (früher Stanleypool, nach Henry Morton Stanley, auch Malebopool, Ngobilasee) ist eine Erweiterung des unteren Kongo in der Art eines Sees.


Expanded definition.

Collocations are partly or fully fixed expressions that become established through repeated context-dependent use. Such terms as 'crystal clear','middle management', 'nuclear family', and 'cosmetic surgery' are examples of collocated pairs of words.  Collocations can be in a syntactic relation (such as verb–object:'make' and 'decision'), lexical relation (such as antonymy), or they can be in no linguistically defined relation. Knowledge of collocations is vital for the competent use of a language: a grammatically correct sentence will stand out as awkward if collocational preferences are violated. This makes collocation an interesting area for language teaching.  Corpus linguists specify a key word in context (KWIC) and identify the words immediately surrounding them. This gives an idea of the way words are used.  The processing of collocations involves a number of parameters, the most important of which is the "measure of association", which evaluates whether the co-occurrence is purely by chance or statistically significant. Due to the non-random nature of language, most collocations are classed as significant, and the association scores are simply used to rank the results. Commonly used measures of association include mutual information, t scores, and log-likelihood.  Rather than select a single definition, Gledhill proposes that collocation involves at least three different perspectives: (i) co-occurrence, a statistical view, which sees collocation as the recurrent appearance in a text of a node and its collocates, (ii) construction, which sees collocation either as a correlation between a lexeme and a lexical-grammatical pattern, or as a relation between a base and its collocative partners and (iii) expression, a pragmatic view of collocation as a conventional unit of expression, regardless of form. These different perspectives contrast with the usual way of presenting collocation in phraseological studies. Traditionally speaking, collocation is explained in terms of all three perspectives at once, in a continuum:

In dictionaries.

In 1933, Harold Palmer's "Second Interim Report on English Collocations" highlighted the importance of collocation as a key to producing natural-sounding language, for anyone learning a foreign language. Thus from the 1940s onwards, information about recurrent word combinations became a standard feature of monolingual learner's dictionaries. As these dictionaries became 'less word-centred and more phrase-centred', more attention was paid to collocation. This trend was supported, from the beginning of the 21st century, by the availability of large text corpora and intelligent corpus-querying software, making possible to provide a more systematic account of collocation in dictionaries. Using these tools, dictionaries such as the "Macmillan English Dictionary" and the "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English" included boxes or panels with lists of frequent collocations.  There are also a number of specialized dictionaries devoted to describing the frequent collocations in a language. These include (for Spanish) "Redes: Diccionario combinatorio del español contemporaneo" (2004), (for French) "Le Robert: Dictionnaire des combinaisons de mots" (2007), and (for English) the "LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations" (1997) and the "Macmillan Collocations Dictionary" (2010).

Statistically significant collocation.

Student's t-test can be used to determine whether the occurrence of a collocation in a corpus is statistically significant. For a bigram formula_1, let formula_2 be the unconditional probability of occurrence of formula_3 in a corpus with size formula_4, and let formula_5 be the unconditional probability of occurrence of formula_6 in the corpus. Then the t-score for the bigram formula_1 is calculated as:  formula_8  where formula_9 is the sample mean of the occurrence of formula_1, formula_11 is the number of occurrences of formula_1, formula_13 is the probability of formula_1 under the null-hypothesis that formula_3 and formula_6 appear independently in the text, and formula_17 is the sample variance. With a large formula_4, the t-test is equivalent to a z-test.

In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation, as propounded by Michael Halliday, is the expression "strong tea". While the same meaning could be conveyed by the roughly equivalent "powerful tea", this expression is considered excessive and awkward by English speakers. Conversely, the corresponding expression in technology, "powerful computer" is preferred over "strong computer". Phraseological collocations should not be confused with idioms, where an idiom's meaning is derived from its convention as a stand-in for something else while collocation is a mere popular composition. The ability to use English effectively involves an awareness of a distinctive feature of the language known as collocation. Collocation is that behaviour of the language by which two or more words go together, in speech or writing.

Als Kollokation (von „Stellung, Anordnung“, als Fachbegriff jedoch von engl. "collocation") bezeichnet man in der Linguistik das gehäufte benachbarte Auftreten von Wörtern, wie auch immer ihr gemeinsames Auftreten zunächst begründbar sein mag.


History.

World War II.

Assault guns were primarily used during World War II by the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Early in the war, the Germans began to create makeshift assault guns by mounting their infantry support weapons on the bed of a truck or on obsolete tanks with the turret removed. Later in the war, both the Germans and the Soviets introduced fully armoured purpose-built assault guns into their arsenals.  Early on, the Soviets built the KV-2, a variant of the KV-1 heavy tank with a short-barrelled 152 mm howitzer mounted in an oversized turret. This was not a success in battle, and was replaced with a very successful series of turretless assault guns: the SU-76, SU-122, and the heavy SU-152, which were followed by the ISU-122 and ISU-152 on the new IS heavy tank chassis.  The primary German assault gun was the "Sturmgeschütz III" (StuG III). At about the same time (March 1942) as the howitzer-like KwK 37 gun was dropped from the Panzer IV's use, its "Sturmkanone" equivalent in the StuG III up to that time, was likewise replaced with a longer-barreled, high-velocity dual-purpose 75mm gun that had also been derived from the successful PaK 40 anti-tank towed artillery piece. The Germans also built a number of other fully armoured turretless assault guns, including the StuG IV, StuIG 33B, "Brummbär" and "Sturmtiger". The latter two were very heavy vehicles, and were built only in small quantities.  Battalions of assault guns, usually StuG IIIs, commonly replaced the intended panzer battalion in the German panzergrenadier divisions due to the chronic shortage of tanks, and were sometimes used as makeshifts even in the panzer divisions. Independent battalions were also deployed as "stiffeners" for infantry divisions, and the StuG III's anti-tank capabilities bolstered dwindling tank numbers on the Eastern and Western fronts.  US and UK forces also deployed vehicles designed for a close support role, but these were conventional tanks whose only significant modification was the replacement of the main gun with a howitzer. Two versions of the American Sherman tank were armed with the M4 105 mm howitzer, the M4(105) and the M4A3(105); these were designated assault guns in US usage of the term. The M8 Scott, based on the chassis of the M5 Stuart light tank, was also an assault cannon and carried a 75 mm short howitzer. The Churchill, Centaur and Cromwell tanks were all produced in versions armed with 95 mm howitzers: the Churchill Mark V and Mark VIII, the Centaur Mark IV and the Cromwell Mark VI. Earlier British tanks, such as the Crusader cruiser tank and the Matilda II Infantry tank were produced in versions armed with the 3-inch howitzer; the first versions of the Churchill tank also had this gun in a hull mounting. American tank destroyer units were often used in the assault gun role for infantry support.  The AVRE version of the Churchill Tank was armed with a Spigot mortar that fired a HE-filled projectile (nicknamed the "Flying Dustbin"). Its task was to attack fortified positions such as bunkers at close range (see Hobart's Funnies).

Post-war use.

In the post-WWII era, vehicles fitting into an "assault gun" category were developed as a light-weight, air-deployable, direct fire weapon for use with airborne troops. Those weapons were either based on jeeps or small tracked vehicles and the airborne troops thus always fought at a distinct disadvantage in terms of heavy weapons. The Soviet Union and the United States were the most attracted to the idea of providing this capability to traditionally light airborne forces. Their answers to the problem were similar, with the United States developing the M56 Scorpion and the Soviet Union developing the ASU-57, both essentially air-droppable light anti-tank guns.  The Soviets went on to develop an improved air-droppable assault gun, the ASU-85, which served through the 1980s, while their SU-100 remained in service with Communist countries, including Vietnam and Cuba, years after World War II. The US M56 and another armoured vehicle, the M50 Ontos, were to be the last of the more traditional assault guns in US service. Improvised arrangements such as M113 personnel carriers with recoilless rifles were quickly replaced by missile carrier vehicles in the anti-tank role.  The only vehicle with the qualities of an assault gun to be fielded after the removal of the M50 and M56 from service within the US military was the M551 Sheridan. The Sheridan's gun was a low-velocity weapon suitable in the assault role, but with the addition of the Shillelagh missile could double in the anti-tank role as well. The Sheridan, however, was not developed as an assault gun but as a light reconnaissance vehicle.  Currently there appears to be a move toward wheeled vehicles fitting a "tank destroyer" or "assault gun" role, such as the M1128 Mobile Gun System of the US Army, the Centauro Wheeled Tank Destroyer of the Italian and Spanish Armies, the Chinese anti-tank gun PTL-02 and ZBL08 assault gun, and the French AMX-10 RC heavy armoured car. While these vehicles might be useful in a direct fire role, none were developed with this specifically in mind, reminiscent of the use of tank destroyers by the US military in the assault gun role during World War II.

An assault gun is a form of self-propelled artillery which uses an infantry support gun mounted on a motorized chassis, normally an armored fighting vehicle. Assault guns are designed to provide direct fire support for infantry attacks, especially against other infantry or fortified positions. The term is a literal translation of the German word "Sturmgeschütz", which was applied to the first purpose-built assault gun, the StuG III, in 1940.

Sturmgeschütze sind mit einem Artilleriegeschütz bestückte Vollkettenpanzerfahrzeuge der Sturmartillerie. Sie wurden in den 1930er Jahren in Deutschland als Unterstützungswaffe der Infanterie entwickelt und im Zweiten Weltkrieg eingesetzt.


Early life.

McVie was born in the Lake District village of Bouth, Lancashire, and grew up in the Bearwood area of Smethwick near Birmingham. Her father, Cyril Percy Absell Perfect, was a concert violinist and music lecturer at St Peter's College of Education, Saltley, Birmingham and taught violin at St Philip's Grammar School, Birmingham. McVie's mother Beatrice Edith Maud (Reece) Perfect, was a medium, psychic and faith healer. McVie's grandfather was an organist at Westminster Abbey.  Although McVie was introduced to the piano when she was four, she did not study music seriously until age 11, when she was re-introduced to it by Philip Fisher, a local musician and school friend of McVie's older brother, John. Continuing her classical training until age 15, McVie shifted her musical focus to rock and roll when her brother, John, came home with a Fats Domino songbook. Other early influences included The Everly Brothers.

Early music.

McVie studied sculpture at an art college in Birmingham for five years, with the goal of becoming an art teacher. During that time she met a number of budding musicians in Britain's blues scene. Her first foray into the music field did not come until she met two friends, Stan Webb and Andy Silvester in a pub one night. At the time, they were playing in a band called Sounds Of Blue. Knowing that McVie had musical talent, they asked her to join. She often sang with Spencer Davis. After five years, McVie graduated from art college, but by that time Sounds of Blue had split up. McVie found she did not have enough money to launch herself into the art world, so she moved to London and worked briefly as a department store window dresser.

Chicken Shack.

In 1967 McVie learned that her ex-bandmates, Andy Silvester and Stan Webb, were forming a blues band, Chicken Shack, and were looking for a pianist. She wrote to them asking to join. They accepted and invited her to play keyboards/piano and to sing background vocals. Chicken Shack's debut release was "It's Okay With Me Baby", written by and featuring McVie. She stayed with Chicken Shack for two albums, during which her genuine feel for the blues became evident, not only in her Sonny Thompson-style piano playing, but through her authentic "bluesy" voice. Chicken Shack had a hit with "I'd Rather Go Blind", which featured McVie on lead vocals. McVie received a "Melody Maker" award for female vocalist in both 1969 and 1970. McVie left Chicken Shack in 1969 after marrying Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie a year earlier.

Fleetwood Mac.

McVie was a fan of Fleetwood Mac, and while touring with Chicken Shack, the two bands would often meet. They also were "label mates" at Blue Horizon, and Fleetwood Mac had asked her to play piano as a session musician for Peter Green's songs on the band's second album, "Mr. Wonderful".  Encouraged to continue her career, McVie recorded a solo album, "Christine Perfect"; following her success as a member of Fleetwood Mac, the album was reissued under the name "The Legendary Christine Perfect Album". After marrying Fleetwood Mac bassist, John McVie, she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970. She had already contributed backup vocals and painted the cover for "Kiln House". The band had just lost founding member Peter Green, and its members were nervous about touring without him. McVie had been a huge fan of the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac; and since she knew all the lyrics to their songs, she went along.  McVie went on to become an integral member, another lead vocalist, and keyboardist of the group and the first album with her as a full-fledged band member was "Future Games". It was recorded at London's Advision Studios and included the first with American-born member Bob Welch in place of founding member Jeremy Spencer. Danny Kirwan was still in the band at this point, but he was fired in 1972 after an incident on tour where he refused to perform at a gig after a row with Welch.  The early 1970s was a rocky time for the band, with a revolving door of musicians; and only the albums "Bare Trees" and "Mystery to Me" were successful. Furthermore, a group impersonating Fleetwood Mac (which later became Stretch) was touring the United States with encouragement from the band's manager, Clifford Davis. The tour collapsed, but it led to a protracted lawsuit between Davis and Fleetwood Mac.  In 1974, McVie reluctantly agreed to move with the rest of Fleetwood Mac to the United States. Within a year Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Buckingham Nicks joined the band, giving it an added dimension. Their first album together, 1975's "Fleetwood Mac", had several hit songs, with McVie's "Over My Head" and "Say You Love Me", both reaching Billboard's top-20 singles chart. It was "Over My Head" which first put Fleetwood Mac on American radio and into the national Top 20.  In 1976, McVie began an on-the-road affair with the band's lighting director, which inspired her to write "You Make Loving Fun", a top-10 hit on the landmark smash "Rumours", one of the best-selling albums of all-time. Her biggest hit was "Don't Stop", which reached number three. The "Rumours" tour also included McVie's "Songbird", a ballad played as the encore of many Fleetwood Mac concerts.  By the end of the "Rumours" tour the McVies were divorced. The 1979 double album "Tusk" produced three more US top-20 hits ("Tusk", "Sara", and Christine's "Think About Me"), but it came nowhere near to matching the success of the "Rumours" album. The "Tusk" tour continued into 1980 after which the band took time apart. They reunited in 1981 to record the album "Mirage" at the Château d'Hérouville's studio in France. The album, released in 1982, returned the band to the top of the US charts and contained the top-5 hit "Hold Me", co-written by McVie. McVie's inspiration for the song was her tortured relationship with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. Her song, "Love in Store", became the third single from the album peaking at #22 in early 1983.  In 1984, McVie recorded another solo album which included the hits "Got a Hold on Me" (#10 US pop and #1 adult contemporary) and "Love Will Show Us How" (#30). A third single, "I'm The One", was released but did not chart. McVie is quoted in "The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits" as saying of her solo album, "Maybe it isn't the most adventurous album in the world, but I wanted to be honest and please my own ears with it."  McVie also met keyboardist Eddy Quintela, whom she married on 18 October 1986. Quintela went on to co-write many songs with her that were featured on subsequent Fleetwood Mac albums. She rejoined Fleetwood Mac to record the "Tango in the Night" album, which went on to become the band's biggest success since "Rumours" ten years earlier. The biggest hit from the album, which was top 5 in both the UK and U.S., was McVie's "Little Lies", co-written with her husband Quintela. Another McVie single from the album, "Everywhere", reached #4 in the UK, which would be the band's third highest ever chart peak there, and their final top 40 UK hit to date (the single peaked at #14 in the U.S.). In 1990, the band (now without Lindsey Buckingham) recorded "Behind the Mask", but the album only reached Gold status in the U.S., and only McVie's song "Save Me" made the U.S. Top 40. The album did enter the UK album chart at #1 and reached Platinum status there. The second US single release from the album, McVie's "Skies the Limit" did not make the top 100, but did reach #10 on the adult contemporary chart.  McVie has often been reluctant to go on concert tours, preferring to stay close to home with friends and family. Upon the death of her father, Cyril Perfect, while she was touring for "Behind the Mask", McVie made the decision to retire from touring altogether. Despite the departure of Stevie Nicks, McVie remained with the band, writing and recording a new track ("Love Shines") for the 1992 boxed set "25 Years - The Chain", and five songs for the band's 1995 album "Time". After Fleetwood, John McVie, and Buckingham got together for one of Buckingham's solo projects in the mid-1990s, she was asked to sing and play on some of the tracks. Then, the four decided a full reunion was possible and Nicks joined them. The live album, "The Dance", reached #1 on the US album charts.  Despite her reservations, McVie complied with the band's touring schedule, and then performed for the group's 1998 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as the Grammy Awards show, and the BRIT Awards in the UK. McVie later revealed in a 2014 "Rolling Stone" interview that she had developed a phobia about flying, which was later treated with psychotherapy. This phobia was the reason she decided not to continue with Fleetwood Mac after 1998. In 2006 "Paste" magazine named McVie, together with bandmates Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, as the 83rd greatest living songwriter or songwriting team.

Hiatus from Fleetwood Mac and semi-retirement (1998–2014).

After "The Dance", McVie returned to England to be near her family and stayed out of public view until 2000 when she appeared to accept an Honorary Doctorate in music from the University of Greenwich. Five years after leaving Fleetwood Mac, she and Quintela divorced.  In a 2004 interview, McVie admitted to not listening much to pop music anymore and stated instead a preference for Classic FM. In December 2003, McVie went to see Fleetwood Mac's last UK performance on the "Say You Will" tour in London, but did not join her former bandmates on stage. Mid-2004 saw the release of McVie's new solo album, "In the Meantime", her third in a career spanning five decades. Recording in her converted barn in Kent, she worked on the project with her nephew, Dan Perfect, who contributed guitar-playing, backing vocals, and songwriting. No tour was organized to promote this album; instead McVie conducted several press interviews in both Britain and the United States.  In 2006, McVie was awarded the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors' Gold Badge of Merit at a ceremony held at London's Savoy Hotel. In November 2009, McVie did not join her former bandmates on the band's last performance in the UK of the tour "Unleashed". During the announcement of Fleetwood Mac's 2012 world tour, Stevie Nicks downplayed the likelihood of McVie ever rejoining the group: "She went to England and she has never been back since 1998 [...] as much as we would all like to think that she'll just change her mind one day, I don't think it'll happen [...] We love her, so we had to let her go."  It was announced in October 2013 that McVie was recording a solo album for the first time in nine years. The album is yet to be released.

Return to Fleetwood Mac and album with Lindsey Buckingham (2014–present).

In 2013, McVie appeared on stage in Maui, Hawaii performing with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band which included Mick Fleetwood and ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Rick Vito. This was her first appearance on stage in 15 years. Later in September, Christine McVie joined Fleetwood Mac on stage for the first time in 15 years to play "Don't Stop" at The O2 Arena, London. She played on two dates and her appearance on stage was received with rapturous applause.  On 11 January 2014, Mick Fleetwood announced during a concert in Maui that McVie would be rejoining the band, and it was officially announced two days later that she had rejoined. The band's most popular lineup (Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Stevie Nicks) performed together for the first time since 1998 in its On with the Show tour beginning in Minneapolis at the Target Center on 30 September 2014.  In August 2016, Mick Fleetwood said that while the band has "a huge amount of recorded music", virtually none of it features Stevie Nicks. Lindsey Buckingham and McVie, however, have contributed multiple songs to the new project. Fleetwood told Ultimate Classic Rock, "She [McVie]... wrote up a storm... She and Lindsey could probably have a mighty strong duet album if they want. In truth, I hope it will come to more than that. There really are dozens of songs. And they're really good. So we'll see." Buckingham and Christine McVie announced a new album titled "Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie", which also features Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. The album was originally planned as a Fleetwood Mac album. Stevie Nicks did not participate due to her preference for a solo tour with The Pretenders. "Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie" was released on 9 June 2017, and was preceded by the single, "In My World". A 38-date tour began on 21 June 2017 and ended on 16 November.  On 11 April 2017, the duo announced a 14-date North American tour was announced. Eight of the album's ten tracks were played live, with the rest of the set list consisting of Fleetwood Mac songs and Buckingham solo cuts. The Wallflowers opened for the band on select nights. In June, the band appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" to perform the album's first single, "In My World".  Some extra North American shows were later added in August, including one in Los Angeles and another in New York City. Another North American leg began in October, which saw the addition of 22 more shows.  Fleetwood Mac headlined the second night of the Classic West concert (on 16 July 2017 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles) and the second night of the Classic East concert (at New York's Citi Field on 30 July 2017). On 9 April 2018, Fleetwood Mac announced that Mike Campbell would be joining the band along with Neil Finn to replace lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham who was fired.

Personal life.

When McVie married John McVie in 1968, Peter Green was best man. They honeymooned in Birmingham before going off with their own separate bands. The couple divorced in 1976. From 1979 to 1982 she was engaged to Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys. She married keyboardist Eddy Quintela on 18 October 1986. They divorced in 2003.

Collaborations.

McVie sang with Dennis Wilson on his song "Love Surrounds Me" for The Beach Boys' 1979 album "L.A. (Light Album)". She also sang with Christopher Cross on the song "Never Stop Believing" on his 1988 album "Back of My Mind", as well as with Bob Welch on his solo version of "Sentimental Lady". McVie released an album with fellow Fleetwood Mac member Lindsey Buckingham titled "Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie" on 9 June 2017.

Christine Anne Perfect (born 12 July 1943), known professionally as Christine McVie following her marriage to John McVie, is an English singer, songwriter and keyboardist, best known as one of the three lead vocalists and the keyboardist of Fleetwood Mac. She joined the band in 1970. She has also released three solo albums. McVie is known for her contralto vocals and her direct but poignant lyrics, which concentrated on love and relationships. AllMusic describes her as an "Unabashedly easy-on-the-ears singer/songwriter, and the prime mover behind some of Fleetwood Mac's biggest hits." Eight of her songs appeared on Fleetwood Mac's 1988 "Greatest Hits" album. In 1998 McVie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Fleetwood Mac and received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. The same year, after almost 30 years with the band, she opted to leave and lived in semi-retirement for nearly 15 years. McVie released one solo album in 2004. In September 2013, McVie appeared on stage with Fleetwood Mac at London's O2 Arena. She rejoined the band in October 2014, ready for Fleetwood Mac's On with the Show tour.

Christine McVie, geborene "Christine Anne Perfect" (* 12. Juli 1943 in Greenodd bei Bouth, Lancashire, heute Cumbria, England), ist eine britische Musikerin, Sängerin und Songschreiberin.