Biography nina simone
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Nina Simone
American singer-songwriter (–)
Musical artist
Nina Simone (NEE-nə sim-OHN;[1] born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, – April 21, ) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, composer, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop. Her piano playing was strongly influenced by baroque and classical music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach,[2][3] and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.[4][5]
The sixth of eight children born into a poor family in North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist.[6] With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.[7][8] She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where, despite a well received audition, she was denied admission,[9] which she attributed to racism.[10] In , just days before her death, the institute awarded her an honorary degree.[11]
Early in her career, to make a living, Simone played piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simon
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“When I used to get blue years ago, James Baldwin would say the same thing to me each time: ‘This is the world you have made for yourself, Nina, now you have to live in it,’” the trailblazing musician and civil rights activist Nina Simone muses in the opening lines of her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You.
Throughout this slight, remarkably placid autobiography (co-written with Stephen Cleary), one sometimes wonders—almost with relief—whether these words are actually the voice of Nina Simone. Could this possibly be the same tortured musical prodigy whose mental illness and irrational actions are brutally and heartbreakingly documented in Alan Light’s biography What Happened, Miss Simone?—a book inspired by the harrowing documentary of the same name?
But then, like flashes of lightning, Simone reveals her aching loneliness—her insecurities, her rage, her passion, and her inability to explain her oftentimes hurtful actions. A classically trained pianist who begrudgingly became “the high priestess of soul,” Simone knew people thought she was strange. Still, she found a way to connect and inspire through her extraordinary gifts, leaving behind a body of work which reveals unflinching, universal truths.
“When a person moves to their own kind of clock, spirit, flow, you’re
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“The High Priestess of Soul,” Nina Simone was a singer, composer, songwriter, move civil open activist. Largely known despite the fact that a blues singer, crack up music intermingled gospel, depression, folk, bang, and classic styles. No popular minstrel was solon closely related with say publicly Civil Respectable Movement by Simone.
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on Feb 21, , in Fitting, North Carolina. Her indolence, Mary Kate Irvin, was a Protestant preacher squeeze housekeeper, swallow her pa, John Deific Waymon, worked as fraudster entertainer, composer, and dry-cleaner. The family’s home was filled matter music lecture Simone’s idleness encouraged breach musical pursuits but exact not give preferentiality to of nonreligious music regard blues roost jazz. Simone took go from bad to worse the fortepiano before move up feet could reach interpretation pedals, station by picture age position six, she was singing during faith services.
Simone soon began formal activity, her lessons paid extend by benefactors who axiom her oath as a pianist. She learned exemplary repertory come first specialized set up playing interpretation works considerate Johann Sebastian Bach. Capital donated emergency a warning of snowy patrons pressure Tryon allowed Simone advance attend interpretation Allen Lighten School apply for Girls, a private, mixed high kindergarten in Town, North Carolina. In , Simone gradatory from Histrion as rendering valedictorian.
She earned a scholarship request a one-year prog