text:
Talk:Rick Mercer's Monday Report

VfD listing
(it was decided to keep)

 * Monday Report - from Cleanup. Reads like a press release, about a TV show to be aired in 2004. Secretlondon 14:26, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
 * From Cleanup:
 * Monday Report
 * - reads like a press release Secretlondon
 * - Bah, it isn't even on the air yet. It's an ad. I vote for deletion, it can come back when some people have seen it. Tualha
 * I'd previously fixed it to not be a press release, and I've reverted to that revision. Keep.  Morwen 14:36, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. Daniel Quinlan 19:31, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. The other edits by this IP are fine (though use of preview would be nice!) and that suggests that this one will be updated when the show is broadcast. It appears to be a genuine contribution rather than a deliberate ad. Jamesday 03:43, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * The anon contributor has now created Rick Mercer's Monday Report with the exact same content, apparently to avoid deletion. -Minesweeper 16:13, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)
 * and blanked the original Secretlondon 17:59, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)
 * Given the absence of a VfD notice in the article, it seems more likely that the contributor found that the show name was wrong and didn't know how to fix it. Jamesday 03:34, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. We have long had articles on upcoming films. - SimonP 16:25, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)
 * Noticed it had no VfD notice, which may explain why the anon doesn't know about this process. Added it and moved from 20th to today. Jamesday 03:34, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * author has removed redirect from Rick Mercer's Monday Report to Monday Report, blanked Monday Report and is continuing to edit the former. Because of his/her changes no page has a VfD notice on anymore Secretlondon 23:28, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)
 * Thanks. So I saw. Our due process reason for the VfD notice seems to have been satisfied, so I'm making it redirect to the longer form. Now, lets see whether the anon will behave like a spammer or a contributor... Jamesday 23:53, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. When it airs in a few weeks, do we want to have to start from scratch and not even give the creator of the article any credit in the "User contributions" list? It's almost inevitable that this is going to start airing. We can't say the same for, say, Jay Evans going to be the next The Clash or Joe Ahmed going to be a big author. Wiwaxia 03:14, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. The author's jacking around shouldn't be encouraged. orthogonal 03:04, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Author's IP blanked VfD and Cleanup. Blocked. Came back on a different IP (two down), still repeatedly removing VfD notice. Left a warning telling us to leave the page alone - blocked again. Secretlondon 23:13, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)

Further discussion
Although the decision to keep is correct, it does need fixing to remove bias and unnecessary inbound links and suchlike, as do other articles by the same person. --user:MyRedDice/ToDo.

The show's name is changing in the upcoming 2005-2006 season, since it's being moved to Tuesday night from Monday night, so it will be known as Rick Mercer's Report. --Computer_Saskboy 22:09, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Rick Mercer's Monday Report


text:
Wall of Sound

The Wall of Sound (also called the Spector Sound) is a music production formula developed by American record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios, in the 1960s, with assistance from engineer Larry Levine and the conglomerate of session musicians later known as "the Wrecking Crew". The intention was to exploit the possibilities of studio recording to create an unusually dense orchestral aesthetic that came across well through radios and jukeboxes of the era. Spector explained in 1964: "I was looking for a sound, a sound so strong that if the material was not the greatest, the sound would carry the record. It was a case of augmenting, augmenting. It all fit together like a jigsaw."

A popular misconception holds that the Wall of Sound was created simply through a maximum of noise and distortion, but the method was actually more nuanced. To attain the Wall of Sound, Spector's arrangements called for large ensembles (including some instruments not generally used for ensemble playing, such as electric and acoustic guitars), with multiple instruments doubling or tripling many of the parts to create a fuller, richer tone. For example, Spector often duplicated a part played by an acoustic piano with an electric piano and a harpsichord. Mixed well enough, the three instruments would then be indistinguishable to the listener.

Among other features of the sound, Spector incorporated an array of orchestral instruments (strings, woodwind, brass and percussion) not previously associated with youth-oriented pop music. Reverb from an echo chamber was also highlighted for additional texture. He characterized his methods as "a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for the kids". The combination of large ensembles with reverberation effects also increased the average audio power in a way that resembles compression. By 1979, the use of compression had become common on the radio, marking the trend that led to the loudness war in the 1980s.

The intricacies of the technique were unprecedented in the field of sound production for popular music. According to Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, who used the formula extensively: "In the '40s and '50s, arrangements were considered 'OK here, listen to that French horn' or 'listen to this string section now.' It was all a definite sound. There weren't combinations of sound and, with the advent of Phil Spector, we find sound combinations, which—scientifically speaking—is a brilliant aspect of sound production."

Origins
During the late 1950s, Spector worked with Brill Building songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller during a period when they sought a fuller sound by the use of excessive instrumentation, using up to five electric guitars and four percussionists. Later this evolved into Spector's Wall of Sound, which Leiber and Stoller considered to be very distinct from what they were doing, stating: "Phil was the first one to use multiple drum kits, three pianos and so on. We went for much more clarity in terms of instrumental colors, and he deliberately blended everything into a kind of mulch. He definitely had a different point of view."

Spector's first production was the self-penned 1958 song "Don't You Worry My Little Pet", performed with his group the Teddy Bears. The recording was achieved by taking a demo tape of the song and playing it back over the studio's speaker system to overdub another performance over it. The end product was a cacophony, with stacked harmony vocals that could not be heard clearly. Spector spent the next several years further developing this unorthodox method of recording.

In the 1960s, Spector usually worked at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles because of its exceptional echo chambers. He also typically worked with such audio engineers as Larry Levine and the conglomerate of session musicians who later became known as The Wrecking Crew.

Etymology
Andrew Loog Oldham coined the phrase "Phil Spector's Wall of Sound" within advertisements for the Righteous Brothers 1964 single "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". An earlier usage of the phrase "wall of sound" was made in reference to the instrumentation of jazz artist Stan Kenton, who utilized numerous brass instruments to create a vibrating sound that jolted human ears.

Layering

The process was almost the same for most of Spector's recordings, with Spector starting by rehearsing the assembled musicians for several hours before recording. The backing track was performed live and recorded monaurally; a bass drum overdub on "Da Doo Ron Ron" was the exception to the rule.

Songwriter Jeff Barry, who worked extensively with Spector, described the Wall of Sound as "by and large ... a formula arrangement" with "four or five guitars ... two basses in fifths, with the same type of line ... strings ... six or seven horns adding the little punches ... [and] percussion instruments—the little bells, the shakers, the tambourines".

Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' version of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" formed the basis of Spector and Levine's future mixing practices, almost never straying from the formula it established. For the recording of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", engineer Larry Levine described the process thus: they started by recording four acoustic guitars, playing eight bars over and over again, changing the figure if necessary until Spector thought it ready. They then added the pianos, of which there were three, and if they didn't work together, Spector started again with the guitars. This is followed by three basses, the horns (two trumpets, two trombones, and three saxophones), then finally the drums. The vocals were then added with Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield singing into separate microphones and backing vocals supplied by the Blossoms and other singers.

Daniel Lanois recounted a situation during the recording of the track "Goodbye" from Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball: "We put a huge amount of compression on the piano and the mandoguitar, and it turned into this fantastic, chimey harmonic instrument. We almost got the old Spector '60s sound, not by layering, but by really compressing what was already there between the melodic events happening between these two instruments." Nonetheless, layering identical instrumental parts remained an integral component of many of Spector's productions, as session musician Barney Kessel recalled:

"There was a lot of weight on each part... The three pianos were different, one electric, one not, one harpsichord, and they would all play the same thing and it would all be swimming around like it was all down a well. Musically, it was terribly simple, but the way he recorded and miked it, they’d diffuse it so that you couldn't pick any one instrument out. Techniques like distortion and echo were not new, but Phil came along and took these to make sounds that had not been used in the past. I thought it was ingenious."

All early Wall of Sound recordings were made with a three-track Ampex 350 tape recorder. Levine explained that during mixing, "I [would] record the same thing on two of the [Ampex machine's] three tracks just to reinforce the sound, and then I would erase one of those and replace it with the voice. The console had a very limited equalizer for each input ... That was basically it in terms of effects, aside from the two echo chambers that were also there, of course, directly behind the control room."

Echo
Microphones in the recording studio captured the musicians' performance, which was then transmitted to an echo chamber—a basement room fitted with speakers and microphones. The signal from the studio was played through the speakers and reverberated throughout the room before being picked up by the microphones. The echo-laden sound was then channeled back to the control room, where it was recorded on tape. The natural reverberation and echo from the hard walls of the echo chamber gave Spector's productions their distinctive quality and resulted in a rich, complex sound that, when played on AM radio, had a texture rarely heard in musical recordings. Jeff Barry said: "Phil used his own formula for echo, and some overtone arrangements with the strings."

Spill
During the mixing for "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah", Spector turned off the track designated for electric guitar (played on this occasion by Billy Strange). However, the sound of the guitar could still be heard spilling onto other microphones in the room, creating a ghostly ambiance that obscured the instrument. In reference to this nuance of the song's recording, music professor Albin Zak has written:

"It was at this moment that the complex of relationships among all the layers and aspects of the sonic texture came together to bring the desired image into focus. As long as Strange's unmiked guitar plugs away as one of the layered timbral characters that make up the track's rhythmic groove, it is simply one strand among many in a texture whose timbres sound more like impressionistic allusions to instruments than representations. But the guitar has a latency about it, a potential. Because it has no microphone of its own, it effectively inhabits a different ambient space from the rest of the track. As it chugs along in its accompanying role, it forms a connection with a parallel sound world of which we are, for the moment, unaware. Indeed, we would never know of the secondary ambient layer were it not for the fact that this guitar is the one that takes the solo. As it steps out of the groove texture and asserts its individuality, a doorway opens to an entirely other place in the track. It becomes quite clear that this guitar inhabits a world all its own, which has been before us from the beginning yet has somehow gone unnoticed."

Levine disliked Spector's penchant for mic bleeding, accordingly: "I never wanted all the bleed between instruments – I had it, but I never wanted it – and since I had to live with it, that meant manipulating other things to lessen the effect; bringing the guitars up just a hair and the drums down just a hair so that it didn't sound like it was bleeding." In order to offset the mixing problems percussion leakage caused, he applied a minimal number of microphones to the drum kits, using Neumann U 67s overhead and an RCA Type 77 on the kick to establish a feeling of presence.

Mono
According to Zak: "Aside from the issues of retail and radio exposure, mono recordings represented an aesthetic frame for musicians and producers, who had grown up with them." Despite the trend toward multi-channel recording, Spector was vehemently opposed to stereo releases, claiming that it took control of the record's sound away from the producer in favor of the listener, resulting in an infringement of the Wall of Sound's carefully balanced combination of sonic textures as they were meant to be heard. Brian Wilson agreed, stating: "I look at sound like a painting, you have a balance and the balance is conceived in your mind. You finish the sound, dub it down, and you’ve stamped out a picture of your balance with the mono dubdown. But in stereo, you leave that dubdown to the listener—to his speaker placement and speaker balance. It just doesn't seem complete to me."

As a maximum of noise
It has been inaccurately suggested in critical shorthand that Spector's "wall of sound" filled every second with a maximum of noise. Levine recalled how "other engineers" mistakenly thought that the process was "turning up all the faders to get full saturation, but all that achieved was distortion." Biographer David Hinckley wrote that the Wall of Sound was flexible, more complex, and more subtle, elaborating:

"Its components included an R&B-derived rhythm section, generous echo and prominent choruses blending percussion, strings, saxophones and human voices. But equally important were its open spaces, some achieved by physical breaks (the pauses between the thunder in 'Be My Baby' or 'Baby, I Love You') and some by simply letting the music breathe in the studio. He also knew when to clear a path, as he does for the sax interlude and [Darlene] Love's vocal in '(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry'."

The Wall of Sound has been contrasted with "the standard pop mix of foregrounded solo vocal and balanced, blended backing" as well as the airy mixes typical of reggae and funk. Musicologist Richard Middleton wrote: "This can be contrasted with the open spaces and more equal lines of typical funk and reggae textures [for example], which seem to invite [listeners] to insert [themselves] in those spaces and actively participate." Supporting this, Jeff Barry said, "[Spector] buried the lead and he cannot stop himself from doing that ... if you listen to his records in sequence, the lead goes further and further in and to me what he is saying is, 'It is not the song... just listen to those strings. I want more musicians, it's me.

Closer reflection reveals that the Wall of Sound was compatible with, even supportive of, vocal protagonism. Such virtuosity was ultimately serving of Spector's own agenda—The Righteous Brothers' vocal prowess provided him a "secure and prosperous headrest", such as in Bobby Hatfield's rendering of "Unchained Melody".

As a generic term
According to author Matthew Bannister, Spector's Wall of Sound is distinct from what is typically characterized as a "wall of sound" in rock music. Bannister writes that, during the 1980s, "Jangle and drone plus reverberation create[d] a contemporary equivalent of Spector's 'Wall of Sound' – a massive, ringing, cavernous noise and a device used by many indie groups: Flying Nun, from Sneaky Feelings' Send You to Straitjacket Fits and the JPS Experience". He cites 1960s psychedelic and garage rock such as the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" (1966) as a primary musical influence on the movement.

Phil Spector
The Wall of Sound forms the foundation of Phil Spector's recordings. Certain records are considered to have epitomized its use. Spector himself is quoted as believing his production of Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" to be the summit of his Wall of Sound productions, and this sentiment has been echoed by George Harrison, who called it "a perfect record from start to finish".

Brian Wilson
Outside of Spector's own songs, the most recognizable example of the "Wall of Sound" is heard on many classic hits recorded by The Beach Boys (e.g., "God Only Knows", "Wouldn't It Be Nice"—and especially, the psychedelic "pocket symphony" of "Good Vibrations"), for which Brian Wilson used a similar recording technique, especially during the Pet Sounds and Smile eras of the band. Wilson considers Pet Sounds to be a concept album centered around interpretations of Phil Spector's recording methods. Author Domenic Priore observed, "The Ronettes had sung a dynamic version of The Students' 1961 hit 'I'm So Young', and Wilson went right for it, but took the Wall of Sound in a different direction. Where Phil would go for total effect by bringing the music to the edge of cacophony – and therefore rocking to the tenth power – Brian seemed to prefer audio clarity. His production method was to spread out the sound and arrangement, giving the music a more lush, comfortable feel."

According to Larry Levine, "Brian was one of the few people in the music business Phil respected. There was a mutual respect. Brian might say that he learned how to produce from watching Phil, but the truth is, he was already producing records before he observed Phil. He just wasn't getting credit for it, something that in the early days, I remember really used to make Phil angry. Phil would tell anybody who listened that Brian was one of the great producers."

Shoegaze
The defining feature of Shoegaze (a subgenre of indie and alternative rock) is of a wall of sound made up of various guitar effects. Originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop it is characterized by an ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume. It emerged in Ireland and the United Kingdom in the late 1980s among neo-psychedelic groups who usually stood motionless during live performances in a detached, non-confrontational state. The name comes from the heavy use of effects pedals, as the performers were often looking down at their pedals during concerts.

Others

After Sonny Bono was fired from Philles Records, he signed up with Atlantic Records and recruited some of Spector's colleagues to create "I Got You Babe" (which went to No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100) and "Baby Don't Go" (No. 8), both of which featured elements of the Wall of Sound, among other songs. Similarly, when the Righteous Brothers ended their relationship with Spector and signed with Verve/MGM Records in 1966, they released "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration", which Medley produced using this approach and also reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and stayed at the top for three weeks.

One of the earliest persons outside of Spector's talent pool to adopt the Wall of Sound approach was British producer Johnny Franz, specifically his work with Dusty Springfield and the Walker Brothers, with songs such as "I Only Want to Be with You" and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" for the former and "Make It Easy On Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" for the latter (both of which were No. 1 hits in the United Kingdom).

Another was the productions of Shadow Morton, such as his work with the Shangri-Las, one of which, "Leader of the Pack", went to No. 1 in the United States. According to Billy Joel (who played piano in another Shangri-Las song, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)"), Morton aspired to become the Phil Spector of the East Coast.

Another prominent example that reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 was Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water", which utilized the Wall of Sound with great effect towards the end, with the help of the Wrecking Crew. The production was modeled on the Righteous Brothers' version of "Old Man River", and Art Garfunkel has explicitly compared it to the Spector-produced "Let It Be". Spector's work with the Righteous Brothers also influenced the R&B band Checkmates, Ltd., with songs such as "I Can Hear the Rain", "Please Don't Take My World Away", and "Walk in the Sunlight". It was because of such experiments that their manager sought to secure Spector's involvement for their second album, Love Is All We Have to Give.

In 1973, British band Wizzard revived the Wall of Sound in three of their hits "See My Baby Jive", "Angel Fingers" and "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday". "See My Baby Jive" later influenced ABBA's song "Waterloo".

ABBA also utilized the technique for songs starting with "People Need Love" and fully realized with songs such as "Ring Ring", "Waterloo", and "Dancing Queen"; prior to recording "Ring Ring", engineer Michael B. Tretow had read Richard Williams' book Out of His Head: The Sound of Phil Spector, which inspired him to layer multiple instrumental overdubs on the band's recordings to simulate an orchestra, becoming an integral part of ABBA's sound. Bruce Springsteen also emulated the Wall of Sound in his album Born to Run, starting with the titular song, backed by the E Street Band. The E Street Band would become famous practitioners of this method, with songs such as Ronnie Spector's cover of Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (itself conceived as a tribute to the Ronettes).

Jim Steinman and Todd Rundgren, composer and producer of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell, respectively, utilized the Wall of Sound for the album. Steinman composed the songs based on Spector's productions as well as Wagner and Springsteen (also including the E Street Band's Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg on piano and drums, respectively), with the title track also being influenced by songs such as "Leader of the Pack". As with Brian Wilson, Steinman had aimed to create "anthems to the kind of feeling you get listening to 'Be My Baby for the album. Steinman would later similarly utilize such instrumentation in his own productions for other songs, such as Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (produced specifically in Spector's model), to the point that his discography ranging from Air Supply ("Making Love Out of Nothing at All") to Celine Dion ("It's All Coming Back to Me Now") has been described as an "alternate-universe Wall of Sound". When asked about his involvement with Dion for songs such as "River Deep – Mountain High" in the album Falling Into You, Spector denounced Steinman and other producers as "amateurs, students, and bad clones of yours truly", to which Steinman responded, "I’m thrilled to be insulted by Phil Spector. He’s my God, my idol. To be insulted by Phil Spector is a big honor. If he spits on me I consider myself purified."

Wagnerian rock derives its characterization from a merge between Spector's Wall of Sound and the operas of Richard Wagner.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wall of Sound


text: User talk:68.5.203.86

title: User talk:68.5.203.86


text:
35 (number)

35 (thirty-five) is the natural number following 34 and preceding 36.

In mathematics
35 is the sum of the first five triangular numbers, making it a tetrahedral number.

35 is the 10th discrete semiprime ($$5 \times 7$$) and the first with 5 as the lowest non-unitary factor, thus being the first of the form (5.q) where q is a higher prime.

35 has two prime factors, (5 and 7) which also form its main factor pair (5 x 7) and comprise the second twin-prime distinct semiprime pair.

The aliquot sum of 35 is 13, within an aliquot sequence of only one composite number (35,13,1,0) to the Prime in the 13-aliquot tree. 35 is the second composite number with the aliquot sum 13; the first being the cube 27.

35 is the last member of the first triple cluster of semiprimes 33, 34, 35. The second such triple distinct semiprime cluster is 85, 86, and 87.

35 is the number of ways that three things can be selected from a set of seven unique things, also known as the "combination of seven things taken three at a time".

35 is a centered cube number, a centered tetrahedral number, a pentagonal number, and a pentatope number.

35 is a highly cototient number, since there are more solutions to the equation $$x - \varphi (x) = 35$$ than there are for any other integers below it except 1.

There are 35 free hexominoes, the polyominoes made from six squares.

Since the greatest prime factor of $$35^{2} + 1 = 1226$$ is 613, which is more than 35 twice, 35 is a Størmer number.

35 is the highest number one can count to on one's fingers using senary.

35 is the number of quasigroups of order 4.

35 is the smallest composite number of the form $$6k+5$$, where $k$ is a non-negative integer.

In science

 * The atomic number of bromine

In other fields

 * 35 mm film is the basic film gauge most commonly used for both analog photography and motion pictures.
 * The minimum age of presidential candidates for election to the United States, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.
 * For Social Security in the United States, the 35 highest years of earnings are used to calculate retirement benefits.

title: 35 (number)


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Talk:Lake Clifton Eastern High School

VfD listing
Lake Clifton Eastern High School was listed on VfD on 23 November. The result of the debate on 29 November was to keep the page.

 * Revision as of 20:46, 26 Nov 2003 (version at time of decision to keep)

 * Another bogus article about an unimportant school. If you'll read the article, you'll see that it even says in the article that the school will soon no longer even exist.  RickK 01:33, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * "Unimportant" is a very subjective critereon to be using (I doubt it being unimportant to the kids who go there). In any case, the article claims it was the largest high school in the US when it opened, which surely makes it notable on some level. The fact that it will eventually cease to exist in its current form isn't really relavent - people die and borders change, but we still have articles on people and countries. I think the article is fine to keep. --Camembert
 * Keep unless it is decided at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools to delete all schools. Angela 02:12, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * You've probably guessed already, but I think we should keep this. It's a real school. Anyone who wants to read about it in the Wikipedia should be allowed to; anyone who doesn't can always choose not to go to the page. -- Oliver P. 04:38, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep, former largest school in US, now largest on east coast. Jamesday 04:57, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * How could it be the largest school on the east coast with only 2318 students, that's medium-sized at best. Maximus Rex 04:59, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * That page has "enrollment" = 2318: I think that means 2318 students enrolled this year, so for total size you need to multiply by number of year groups. Not sure, though. Martin 17:24, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * No it's actually the the number of students. Maximus Rex 17:37, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Looks like it's physically largest, not largest in numbers, Martin 20:46, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep, well written and confirmable. --mav 06:49, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * It is confirmable, I was the one who submitted that entry, go here to see the school listed on CNN. To see how large the school is, go here for an arial picture of the school, courtesy of MapQuest.com, the large complex in the middle of the photo is Lake Clifton. -- User:KSweeley 24 Nov 2003.
 * How does the physical size (that's the largest claim, not student number) compare to at 43 acres (and 5,023 students in 1998).? This was another 1998 claimant to most students, with 5,000. Jamesday 00:37, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * We should keep in all the schools that are put up individually at VfD. (and better yet, have them all recorded on a List of schools so we can keep track of them all if our final decision means we have to delete some). That way, if we make a final decision that schools should be kept when we're deliberating on an all-Wikipedia policy that determines which schools are legitimate for Wikipedia articles and which aren't, we won't have to start from scratch all over again on all those schools people worked so hard on in order to get our coverage of schools complete. Wiwaxia 02:47, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. We can't list every school.  If we don't delete, but later decide on more objective criteria to decide which high schools etc. should have articles, we should revisit this article.  Daniel Quinlan 17:40, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep, I think - largest on East coast seems a good enough claim to fame. We have thousands of articles on towns with a smaller population than this school. Martin 20:46, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How big in area is this school?
The local highschool in Plymouth-Canton MI is 305 acres of land. How about this one?

i work at their now why it is called heritage high and the school is a disgrace to have such beautiful history.
 * It is 441.11 acres of land, taken directly from the local real property database.KSweeley 07:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Former Student of Lake Clifton and statement deletion of the Layout Section
I've typed the layout section from personal experience from attending Lake Clifton in its last 4 years of existence. Many people have actually noted that the school layout is similar to a prison; example: a central core housing administrative offices and radiating from that central core is two smaller buildings which is then broken down to 4 units housing prision cells. I am wondering why my statement was removed. KSweeley 13:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Lake Clifton Eastern High School


text:
Pikes Peak Cog Railway

The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway (also known as the Pikes Peak Cog Railway) is a cog railway that climbs one of the most iconic mountains in the United States, Pikes Peak in Colorado. The base station is in Manitou Springs, near Colorado Springs.

Construction on the line was started in 1889 and the first train reached the summit on June 30, 1891. Cog railways are common in Switzerland and found in other parts of the world (totaling about 50 lines), but this is one of only three such lines remaining in the United States, the others being the older Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire, and the short Quincy and Torch Lake Cog Railway.

Originally powered by steam locomotives, the line later switched over to diesel-powered locomotives and self-propelled railcars. The railway was closed between October 29, 2017 and May 20, 2021, for a complete refurbishment that saw the replacement of the track infrastructure, the rebuild of older railcars and the purchase of three new trainsets.

History
The idea for the railroad came in 1888, after a trip to the summit by inventor Zalmon G. Simmons, who had founded previously the Simmons Bedding Company. Simmons had designed a wooden telegraph insulator while on the board of directors of Western Union, and was surveying Englemann Canyon for telegraph lines to the top of Pikes Peak. It was a miserable two-day trip on a mule and after his return, Simmons was convinced that there needed to be a more "civilized" mode of travel to the summit of Pikes Peak and decided to fund the construction of a railway.

The line would start at a depot in the town of Manitou Springs, located at an elevation of 6320 ft, and climb 8.9 mi to the summit of Pikes Peak at an elevation of 14115 ft. The average grade of the line would be 12% but would top out at 25%. Normal trains can not retain traction on the rails at grades steeper than 10%, so the railway would need to use a cog and rack system to help pull trains up the mountain and control the speed of the descent.

Construction was started in 1889, being built by Italian laborers using only pickaxes and assisted by donkeys. The line was built as a standard-gauge railway with an Abt rack system and wooden ties. Limited service was started in 1890 on the first segment of the line from Manitou Springs to the Halfway House Hotel. On June 30, 1891, the first train reached the summit.

Three steam locomotives were built for the line by the Baldwin Locomotive Works that each featured boilers offset by 16 degrees to keep them level on the steeply inclined grades. While most locomotives pull rail cars, these steam engines would push the line's wooden passenger cars up the mountain, decreasing the chance of a runaway car.

A fourth steam locomotive was added to the fleet in 1892 (which was built as a Vauclain compound), which proved to be more efficient and cut the cost of operating on a steep incline. The locomotive was so successful that the original locomotives were rebuilt as Vauclain compounds in 1893. Over time, the Vauclain compound technology made the locomotives notoriously difficult to maintain. An additional locomotive was added to the fleet in 1901 and again in 1906. All six steam locomotives were rebuilt in 1912 to similar specifications and would burn slightly under 1 ton of coal per trip.

Just before the start of the Great Depression, Spencer Penrose purchased a stake in the line. Penrose was the owner of The Broadmoor, a well-known hotel in Colorado Springs.

Under the control of Penrose, there was an effort to find more economical ways to operate the line. To that end, gasoline-powered railcar #7 was constructed in 1938. The railcar was intended to be a cheaper alternative to operating steam locomotives during quieter times of the year. The railcar was a huge success, and led the railroad to purchase five 'streamlined' diesel locomotives from General Electric, which were equipped with matching passenger cars, acquired from 1939 onward.

The diesel locomotives slowly supplanted the steam locomotives, though some steam operations persisted until the 1960s as backup power and to operate the snow-clearing train (where their greater weight meant they were less likely to derail).

The railroad started switching over to a fleet of self-propelled railcars in 1964, purchasing two units (#14 and #15) from Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works (SLM), which would be similar to equipment used on many Swiss cog railways. The air-cooled, 8-cylinder diesel engines in the first units proved to be less than satisfactory on the railroad above the tree line and were replaced by water-cooled engines. The railcars proved to be a good addition to the fleet and the railroad purchased two more railcars (#16 and #17) in 1968. As tourism increased in the 1970s the railway needed more capacity. In 1976, the railway took delivery from SLM of two larger railcars (#18 and #19). These are identical in cosmetic appearance to cars 14-17, however consist of two articulated cars. Passing sidings were built at Minnehaha and Windy Point, allowing trains to pass at various points on the hill. Trains could previously pass only at Mountain View, permitting only three trains a day up the mountain. Eight trains per day became possible with the new equipment and sidings. Two additional two-car trainsets were added in the 1980s (#24 in 1984 and #25 in 1989).

By the 2000s, the rail infrastructure was starting to show its age. Railway managers reported that in 2017 the track geometry had become so poor that the cog wheels were wearing out twice as quickly as they did in the 1980s. Winter operations were suspended on October 29, 2017, to conduct maintenance on the railway, but crews soon realized more serious repairs were needed and in March 2018 it was announced that the railway would close indefinitely.

The Anschutz Corporation, which owned the railway, estimated a full refurbishment of the line would cost $100 million. The company negotiated a deal with the city of Manitou Springs that would provide $36 million in tax breaks for the railroad over a 50-year period if the company completed the upgrades. The agreement was signed on November 20, 2018.

The major refurbishment project would involve the near-complete replacement of the track infrastructure, the rebuild of facilities and older railcars and the purchase of three new trainsets.

Starting in March 2019, crews ripped up the old rails, Abt rack system, and wooden ties, some of which had been in place since the line was first built in 1889. Work started at the depot in Manitou Springs and reached the summit in September. In May 2020, crews began working down from the top, laying down metal ties, new rails custom ordered from Poland and a new Strub rack system which featured more robust teeth. Crews also replaced the old manual track switches with radio-controlled versions that would enable faster operations at the passing sidings.

While the track work was underway, crews at the railroad shops in Manitou Springs began to rebuild the four two-car SLM railcars (Nos. 18, 19, 24 and 25). Each railcar was converted to the new Strub system, received a new transmission with a retarder for dynamic braking and was repowered with new diesel engines.

The railroad also placed an order for three trainsets (Nos. 27, 28 and 29) from Stadler Rail of Switzerland. Each trainset would consist of a diesel-electric locomotive, two coaches and a control car, and marked a return to locomotive-hauled trains. Additionally, a snowblower (No. 30) was ordered from Stadler's partner, Zaugg AG Eggiwill of Switzerland. The snowblower has a diesel engine to turn its blades, but it is not self-propelled and instead acts as a control car and pushed by one of the Stadler locomotives. In February 2021, the new equipment was shipped from Switzerland to the United States, arriving in Manitou Springs the next month.

Meanwhile, the city of Colorado Springs (which operates the Pikes Peak Highway) built a new visitor center at the summit, while the railroad built a new platform. Down in Manitou Springs, the depot received a second boarding track and platform.

The line reopened on May 20, 2021. The cost has increased over the years. In 2023, the price for auto-assigned seatings was USD$58.50 (adults) / USD$48.50 (age 12 and under); or USD$71 / USD$61 for reserved seating.

Manitou Incline
More commonly called simply the Manitou Incline, the Mount Manitou Scenic Incline Railway was actually a funicular up the side of a peak called Rocky Mountain located adjacent to Mount Manitou. It was operated by the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway until its closure following a rockslide in 1990. This line's lower terminus was adjacent to the Cog Railway base station in Manitou Springs. The Manitou Incline averaged almost a 40% grade, gaining 2011 ft in elevation over a length of approximately 1 mi, with the maximum grade being 68%.

The Manitou Incline was initially built in 1907 for use in the construction of city water lines and a hydroelectric plant. When the construction was finished, the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway took over the cable car as a tourist operation.

From 1990 forward, the defunct Incline had been controversial because, although legally off-limits to the public, its roadbed was heavily used for recreation and exercise by people ignoring the trespassing signs. It became legal to use the Incline on February 1, 2013. Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation manages the Incline trail through an intergovernmental agreement.

title: Pikes Peak Cog Railway


text:
Mickey's Polo Team

Mickey's Polo Team is a 1936 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by United Artists. The cartoon features a game of polo played between four Disney characters, led by Mickey Mouse, and four cartoon versions of real-life movie stars. It was directed by David Hand and was first released on January 4, 1936. The film was inspired by Walt Disney's personal love of polo. It was the 80th Mickey Mouse short film to be released, and the first of that year.

The cartoon features cameos of many Disney characters from the Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies film series, as well as several real-world 1930s entertainment figures.

Plot
Mickey Mouse is participating in a polo game, with a team that includes Goofy, the Big Bad Wolf, and Donald Duck, who is having trouble with his donkey. They are playing against Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Harpo Marx, and Charlie Chaplin (for which he is in his Tramp outfit). Actor Jack Holt, who is serving as referee, throws the ball, which begins the game. First out is Oliver, who is knocked off his horse when the two teams fight to get the ball from the other. He is hit on the head with horseshoes while on the ground. The Big Bad Wolf takes the ball and manages to keep it ahead of the others but Charlie Chaplin soon steals the ball and hits it into one of the poles, using his cane to turn himself around to go in the other direction and keep up with the team. Meanwhile, Ollie is struggling to get back on his horse because of his overweight body. As Mickey hits the ball toward his home goal, Harpo Marx and his ostrich are forced to duck under the sand to avoid being hit. Ollie is finally able to get onto his horse but his weight causes the horse's body to sag in the middle.

In an attempt to make the horse stay up, Stan Laurel pulls Ollie's horse's tail out and ties it in a knot, which works. However, the horse refuses to get back in the game and no matter how hard Ollie tries to entice it, it stays in place. Stan tries to poke it with a needle to make it get going, but it takes off before he can do so, throwing Ollie off and having him get poked instead. In the game, the Big Bad Wolf takes the lead with the ball again, but loses his mallet in the process and uses his breath to make the ball go forward instead. Shirley Temple and The Three Little Pigs mock him for doing this and blow raspberries at him. He gets angry and pushes back by blowing the fence they are behind away and clouding them with dust, but the distraction causes him to lose his lead in the game. Donald Duck takes the lead and hits the ball, but Harpo Marx hits the ball back at him and the momentum behind the two to get the ball ends with them colliding.

Donald yells insults at him for knocking him off, but Harpo responds by punching him with boxers' mitts that he hides in his clothes, burns Donald with a blowtorch and uses a noisemaker to push him away, back to his donkey. The ball lands right next to him and he tries to hit it but the team takes it away. Frustrated, he tries to get his donkey to move but it sits on him, laughing. It then kicks him into the ground where the ball lands on his tail and he is trampled by the other players (including Ollie, who finally manages to get back in the game). Donald throws a tantrum and accidentally swallows the ball, causing the teams to chase after him to get it out. Harpo hits him first, using the head of his ostrich, and the Big Bad Wolf manages to briefly get the ball out by hitting him but it bounces back inside Donald. All of the players from both teams try to hit him which eventually causes him to dig into the sand to escape. Donald tries to hide inside a pole but the teams continue to try to hit him out. Finally, he rips the pole off its base and leads both teams toward referee Jack Holt, which causes everyone to collide and make the horses end up riding their owners and continue the game in that way.

Reception
The Film Daily called the short "a knockout", saying: "For fast and furious animated entertainment, this just about tops anything turned out to date by the Walt Disney shops... It was a grand idea and the Disney boys put a lot of ingenuity and effort into it, resulting in a cartoon comedy that is one big riot from start to finish."

List of celebrities spoofed
In detail the characters are:
 * Referee: Jack Holt

The "Mickey Mousers" team:
 * Mickey Mouse
 * Goofy as "The Goof"
 * Big Bad Wolf
 * Donald Duck, riding Jenny the donkey

The "Movie Stars" team:
 * Stan Laurel
 * Oliver Hardy
 * Harpo Marx, riding an ostrich
 * Charlie Chaplin

Spectators:
 * Shirley Temple, seated with the Three Little Pigs
 * Charles Laughton, dressed as Henry VIII
 * Eddie Cantor
 * W. C. Fields
 * Harold Lloyd
 * Greta Garbo, waving a Pom-pon
 * Edna May Oliver, seated next to Max Hare, from The Tortoise and the Hare
 * Clark Gable, seated with a star-struck Clarabelle Cow
 * Pluto
 * Fifi the Peke
 * Two Easter Bunnies, from Funny Little Bunnies
 * The Wise Little Hen, from The Wise Little Hen
 * The Flying Mouse and his mother, from The Flying Mouse
 * Peter and Polly Penguin, from Peculiar Penguins
 * King Midas and Goldie the Elf, from The Golden Touch
 * Ambrose Puss the Cat and Dirty Bill the Dog Robber, from The Robber Kitten
 * Cock Robin and Jenny Wren, from Who Killed Cock Robin?

Voice actors

 * Mickey Mouse: Walt Disney
 * Donald Duck: Clarence Nash
 * Goofy: Pinto Colvig
 * Big Bad Wolf: Billy Bletcher
 * Clarabelle Cow: Elvia Allman
 * Movie stars: Carter Burns

Home media
The short was released on December 4, 2001, on Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Living Color and on the "Walt Disney's Classic Cartoon Favorites Extreme Sports Fun" Volume 5.

title: Mickey's Polo Team


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oriental languages

This page is an archive of the discussion surrounding the proposed deletion of a page entitled Oriental languages.

 * There is no such classification. As well 'These use pictograms' is incorrect... actually the page as a whole is pretty content-freeZviGilbert 17:52, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * agreed. delete - its confusing and incorrect to group languages into western and non western (which is what this article seems to be trying to do). There is no such term as 'oriental languages'. Secretlondon 17:59, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)
 * Disagree, there are about 23,000 hits on Google for "Oriental languages". Some universities devote considerable attention to this classification as an academic topic. --Uncle Ed 19:55, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. Ditto, plus it is hopelessly uninformative and superficial. --Kaihsu Tai 18:01, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Make into a redirect for CJK. Morwen 20:01, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete! Not make sense to redirect CJK. --wshun 21:54, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete; it's garbage. --Jiang
 * What do all languages spoken by Oriental ethnic groups have in common? Using Chinese characters/kanji? And the ichi, ni, san, etc. names for numbers? That could be redirected to CJK (and I see Morwen also got that idea). Wiwaxia 06:20, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Needs work, but absolutely do not delete. A list of languages spoken by Oriental ethnic groups would be useful. See European languages for an example of a similarly-useful list. (I had never heard of Asturian, so it taught me something.) Anjouli 13:46, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * There is no linguistic property that the languages spoken by "Oriental ethnic groups" have in common other than being human languages. They aren't all in the same language family, nor do they all use the same method of writing: Chinese uses ideograms, Japanese uses a mixture of systems, Vietnamese uses a variant form of the Latin alphabet...that's just off the top of my non-expert head. That's aside from the problems with using "ethnic groups" as shorthand for "peoples living in this region": there are plenty of people who would be counted as ethnically East Asian who are in fact monolingual in English or French (and probably other Indo-European languages).
 * It might be worth writing a brief stub explaining that this is not a linguistically sound classification, but exists for historical reasons (like "non-Indo-European") and is used in thus-and-such ways, followed by links to the pages on the relevant languages and language families.Vicki Rosenzweig 22:44, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * So far only one article links to it and I have just rewritten that article. So oriental language is now an orphan page. Delete! -wshun 23:08, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Already covered by Asian languages? Anjouli 12:48, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I revamped this from my original attempt to fix a phantom link- decide for yourselves. - Litefantastic 00:59, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Just noticed: It's been made into a redirect to Asian languages, which serves the purpose I was going for in the beginning. - Litefantastic 01:01, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)


text:
Lennart Meri

Lennart Georg Meri (29 March 1929 – 14 March 2006) was an Estonian writer, film director and statesman. He was the country's foreign minister from 1990 to 1992 and President of Estonia from 1992 to 2001.

Early life
Meri was born in Tallinn, a son of the Estonian diplomat and later Shakespeare translator Georg Meri, and Estonian Swedish mother Alice-Brigitta Engmann. With his family, Lennart left Estonia at an early age and studied abroad, in nine different schools and in four different languages. His warmest memories were from his school years in Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. In addition to his native Estonian, Lennart Meri fluently spoke five other languages: Finnish, French, German, English, and Russian.

Lennart Meri and his family lived in Tallinn when Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Stalinist Soviet Union in June 1940. In 1941, the Meri family was deported to Siberia along with thousands of other Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians sharing the same fate. Heads of the family were separated from their families and shut into concentration camps where only a few survived. At the age of twelve, Lennart Meri worked as a lumberman in Siberia. He also worked as a potato peeler and a rafter to support his family.

Whilst in exile, Lennart Meri grew interested in the other Finno-Ugric languages that he heard around him, the language family of which his native Estonian is also a part. His interest in the ethnic and cultural kinship amongst the scattered "Finno-Ugric family" became a lifelong theme within his work.

The Meri family survived and found their way back to Estonia where Lennart Meri graduated cum laude from the Faculty of History and Languages of the University of Tartu in 1953. On 5 March 1953, the day of Joseph Stalin's death, he proposed to his first wife Regina Meri, saying "Let us remember this happy day forever." The politics of the Soviet Union did not allow him to work as a historian, so Meri found work as a dramatist in the Vanemuine, the oldest theatre of Estonia, and later on as a producer of radio plays in the Estonian broadcasting industry. Several of his films were released and have since gained great critical acclaim.

Writer and filmmaker
After a trip to the Tian Shan Mountains in Central Asia and the old Islamic centres in the Kara Kum Desert in 1958, Lennart Meri wrote his first book, which met with a warm reception from the public. Already as a student, Lennart Meri had been able to earn his living with his writing, after his father had been arrested by the Soviet authorities for the third time. With the help of his younger brother who had been forced to leave his studies and take a job as a taxi driver, he managed to support their mother and to complete his own studies. The film The Winds of the Milky Way (Estonian: Linnutee tuuled), shot in co-operation with Finland and Hungary, was banned in the Soviet Union, but won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival. In Finnish schools, his films and texts were used as study materials. In 1986, Lennart Meri was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Helsinki University. He became a member of the Estonian Writers' Union in 1963. In the 1970s, he was elected an Honorary Member of the Finnish Literary Society.

Tulemägede Maale, created in 1964, which is translated as To the Land of Fiery Mountains, chronicled Meri's journey to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the 1960s. Other members of his expedition group included well known scientists Harry Ling, Kaarel Orviku, Erast Parmasto, Ants Raik, Anto Raukas, Hans Trass, the artist Kaljo Polli, and filmmaker Hans Roosipuu. "Traveling is the only passion that doesn't need to feel shy in front of intellect," wrote Meri. Urban people still have an inner urge to see the world, hunger for nature. Meri did not underestimate the drawbacks of mass tourism but concluded that "science will liberate us from the chains of big cities and lead us back to nature".

Meri's travel book of his journey to the northeast passage, Virmaliste Väraval (At the Gate of the Northern Lights) (1974), won him huge success in the Soviet Union. It was translated into Finnish in 1977 in the Soviet Writers series, which also introduced to Finnish readers works by the Estonian writers Mats Traat, Lilli Promet, and Ülo Tuulik. In the book Meri combined the present with a perspective into history, and used material from such explorers as Cook, Forster, Wrangel, Dahl, Sauer, Middendorff, Cochran, and others. When he sees a mountain rising against the stormy sky of the Bering Strait, he realizes that Vitus Bering and James Cook had looked at the same mountain, but from the other side of the strait.

Meri's best known work is perhaps Hõbevalge, which translates into Silver White and was published in 1976. It reconstructs the history of Estonia (largely refuted by modern geneticists ) and the Baltic Sea region. As in his other works, Meri combines documentary sources and scientific research with his imagination. "If geography is prose, maps are iconography," Meri writes. Hõbevalge is based on a wide-ranging ancient seafaring sources, and carefully unveils the secret of the legendary Ultima Thule. The name was given in classical times to the most northerly land, reputedly six days' voyage from Britain. Several alternative places for its location have been suggested, among them the Shetland Islands, Iceland, and Norway. According to Meri, it is possible that Thule derives from the ancient Estonian folk poetry, which depicts the birth of the Kaali crater lake in Saaremaa. In the essay Tacituse tahtel (2000), Meri examined ancient contacts between Estonia and the Roman empire and notes that furs, amber, and especially Livonian kiln-dried, disease-free grain may have been Estonia's biggest contribution to the common culture of Europe – in lean years, it provided seed grain for Europe.

Meri founded the non-governmental Estonian Institute (Eesti Instituut) in 1988 to promote cultural contacts with the West and to send Estonian students to study abroad. He appeared in the documentary film The Singing Revolution as an interviewee discussing the collapse of the Soviet regime.

Political activity
After more than twenty years of refusals, the Soviet administration finally gave permission for Lennart Meri to travel beyond the Iron Curtain in the late 1970s, and Meri persistently used the opportunities open to him in Finland to remind the Western world of the existence of Estonia. He established close relationships with politicians, journalists and Estonians who had fled from the occupation. He was the first Estonian to publicize abroad the protests against the Soviet plan of mining phosphorite in Estonia (known as the Phosphorite War), which would have rendered a portion of the country uninhabitable.

In Estonia, environmental protests soon grew into a general revolt against Soviet rule: the "Singing Revolution", which was led by Estonian intellectuals. Meri's speech Do Estonians Have Hope focused on the existential problems of the nation and had strong repercussions abroad.

In 1988, Meri became a founding member of the Estonian Popular Front, which cooperated with its counterparts in Latvia and Lithuania.

Foreign minister (1990–1992)
After the first non-communist-style multi-party election in 1990, Meri was appointed to the post of Foreign Minister. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lennart Meri's first task was to create the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He developed around him a group of well educated young people, many English speaking, to establish an open communication channel to the West, and at the same time to represent Estonia more widely on the international scene. He participated in the CSCE Conferences in Copenhagen, New York, Paris, Berlin and Moscow, and the foundation conference of the Council of the Baltic Sea Countries. He also had several meetings with American and European Heads of State and Foreign Ministers, and was the first Eastern European guest to give a presentation at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

In 1992, Lennart Meri, together with 9 Baltic Ministers of Foreign Affairs and an EU commissioner, founded the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the EuroFaculty.

First presidential term (1992–1996)
After a brief period as Ambassador of Estonia to Finland, on 6 October 1992 he became the 2nd President of Estonia, and the first since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Meri was the candidate of the Pro Patria Union. For the only time since the restoration of independence, the election had a popular vote component. Arnold Rüütel, a former leading communist and chairman of the Supreme Council (as the Estonian Supreme Soviet had been renamed following independence), led the field with 42 per cent to Meri's 29 percent. With no candidate receiving a majority, the election was decided in the newly elected Riigikogu, which was dominated by the Pro Patria Alliance. During the campaign, some of his opponents tried to bring up questions about Meri's alleged former links with the KGB. However, these allegations did not harm Meri's reputation and public image. Lennart Meri was sworn in as the President on 6 October 1992.

Meri made public remarks against the Karaganov Doctrine on 25 February 1994 in a festival speech to the good Hamburgers, who descended from the trade barons of the Hanseatic League. Karaganov generated his doctrine in about 1992, and it states that Moscow should pose as the defender of human rights of ethnic Russians living in the 'near abroad' for the purpose of gaining political influence in these regions. Already in 1992 this idea was brought into Russian Federation politics by Boris Yeltsin.

In 1994, the Estonian Newspaper Association declared Meri the Year's Press Friend. This was the first time this award was given; since that, it has been a yearly occurrence. In 1998, Meri was given the complementary award and titled the Year's Press Friend.

Second presidential term (1996–2001)
On 20 September 1996, he was re-elected for a second and final term.

In 1999, Meri was once again given the Press Friend award.

He was a member of Club of Madrid.

Work for German refugees and for other victims of ethnic cleansing
Lennart Meri was engaged in the work for the human rights of German refugees from Central and Eastern Europe and other victims of ethnic cleansing in Europe, and was a member of the jury of the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award, which was awarded by the Centre Against Expulsions (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen). In 1999 he received the highest distinction of the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen).

Personal life
Meri was married twice. His second wife Helle Meri (born in 1949) worked as an actress in the Estonian Drama Theatre until 1992. Lennart Meri's first wife Regina Meri (1932−2020) emigrated to Canada in 1987. Lennart Meri was survived by three children: sons Mart Meri (born in 1959) and Kristjan Meri (1966–2022) and daughter Tuule Meri (born in 1985), and five grandchildren.

His first cousin was the Estonian Soviet soldier Arnold Meri, who spent the last 2 years of his life on trial under charges of genocide for his involvement in deportations of Estonians, but died in 2009 before a verdict was given.

Meri was chosen the European of the Year in 1998 by French newspaper La Vie.

Death
Diagnosed with a brain tumor in mid-2005 after experiencing strong headaches, Meri underwent surgery in August. The tumor was found to be malignant and he died on the morning of 14 March 2006, fifteen days before his 77th birthday, after being hospitalized in Tallinn for months. In a televised national speech, his successor, President Rüütel, said, "In his nine years as head of state, Meri both restored the presidency and built up the Republic of Estonia in the widest sense." Finnish President Tarja Halonen stated, "The Finnish nation lost in Lennart Meri a close and sincere friend and the world, a great statesman who was one of the leading architects of the post-Cold War world." Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga said, "the world has lost a great Estonian, a great statesman and a true European."

Meri's funeral was attended by former Swedish premier Carl Bildt, among other figures. He was buried at Forest Cemetery in the Tallinn district of Pirita.

Legacy
Lennart Meri was one of the most popularly respected presidents in Estonian history. Tallinn Airport was renamed in his name in 2009 Lennart Meri Tallinn International Airport in his honour.

Awards and decorations

 * Merited Writer of Estonian SSR (1979)
 * Correspondent member of the European Academy of Science, Art and Literature (1989)
 * Honorary Doctor of Helsinki University (1986)
 * Liberal International and Coudenhove-Kalergi award
 * Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member and President of Latvia, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (2002)
 * Order of the Tallinn Coat of Arms (2006)

Honours

 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: Collar of the Order of the National Coat of Arms (Posthumous 2008)
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia: 1st Class of the Order of the National Coat of Arms (2006)
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia : Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (1995)
 * 🇯🇴 Jordan: Grand Cross of the Order of Jordanian Revival (1993)
 * 🇩🇰 Denmark: Knight of the Order of the Elephant (1994)
 * 🇫🇮 Finland: Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose with collar (1995)
 * 🇸🇪 Sweden: Knight of the Order of the Seraphim (1995)
 * 🇲🇽 Mexico: Grand Cross of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (1995)
 * 🇱🇻 Latvia: 1st Class of the Order of the Three Stars with collar (1996)
 * 🇭🇺 Hungary: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (1997)
 * 🇸🇮 Slovenia: Knight of the Order of the Golden Star of Liberty (1997)
 * 🇮🇹 Italy: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1997)
 * 🇱🇹 Lithuania: Grand Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great (19 August 1997)
 * 🇳🇴 Norway: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav (1998)
 * 🇮🇸 Iceland: Grand Cross of the Order of the Falcon (1998)
 * 🇵🇱 Poland: Grand Cross of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland) (1998)
 * 🇬🇷 Greece: Grand Cross of the Order of the Saviour (1999)
 * 🇩🇪 Germany: Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2000)
 * 🇲🇹 Malta: Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit of the Republic of Malta with collar (2001)
 * 🇫🇷 France: Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour (2001)

title: Lennart Meri


text:
Wikipedia talk:Historical archive/Policy/Notability/Informative

Testimonials
Not a bad summary of the criteria --Morven 01:48, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Quotes and humour
Quote: "George W. Bush is an illiterate moron - obvious."

O Brits and their dark humour.... :-D --Menchi 02:20, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I felt the humour made the page less dreary, but it is something of a hairy arm - I'm not expecting it to last... :) Martin
 * Sorry, I really felt bad about deleting that. Really doesn't need to be here though.  LittleBrother 13 Jan 2004

Data vs. information
I do copywriting. Sometimes clients want me to include statistcs because, well, they have these statistics here (and sometimes they commissioned to polls themselves, meaning they spent good money to get these here statistics). Now, when these requests come up, I can quote (the current version of) this page and say "Information is not the same as data. If you want data, get a random number generator." --Charles A. L. 18:23, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

 * Glad to be of service, Charles! Raw data can sometimes be forgiven in a work in progess, because it might eventually become information after it's worked on. But on a finished product like an advert, it's unforgivable! Martin

Title
"Informative" is a bad title. Here are a few reasons why:
 * 1) Informative is an adjective meaning providing information. There is no need to complicate things by making another page for providing information besides the one on information.
 * 2) If someone is looking for what an informative wikipedia article is (or what informative content is) they will not be expecting to find it on a page entitled "informative" they will expect it on a page such as "informative subject" or "information". Bensaccount 22:55, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"Uninformative subject" is a bad title, IMO, because the title is cumbersome, and because the content relates to both uninformative content and uninformative subjects.

I typically use this word as "this material is not informative", so the adjective name is useful, in my opinion.

I don't think this page is redundant with information: that is an encyclopedia article, while this is a policy page. They thus serve very different purposes. Martin 23:18, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The only difference between the two pages is the statement: "Wikipedia must be informative". Everything else attempts to define informative. Bensaccount 14:18, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Martin. This is a policy page. For policy, Wikipedians look to pages in the Wikipedia namespace, not to articles. Isomorphic 21:51, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That may be true but this page is still just saying one statement. The statement that wikipedia must be informative should be put on Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not (Uniformative). There is no need for a whole policy page for that one statement. Bensaccount 02:56, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

From VFD
Articles for deletion/informative

Actionable
Who is it who "often" defines "knowledge" as "actionable belief"? It sounds like someone's jargon, but whose? What distinction is actually being drawn? Which beliefs aren't "actionable"? There's lots here that is misleading, such as comparing data with random numbers. -Nunh-huh

 * Philosohers. Cf knowledge (philosophy).
 * raw data is about as useful and meaningful as random numbers.
 * This article is the place to learn about Wikipedia's policy on uninformative content. To learn about information itself, in an enyclopedic manner, see information. Martin 14:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Which ones? The page you cite suggests that "actionable" in philosophic use is a synonym for "useful". I'm not sure this page helps make the subjective determination of what is "useful" more objective. Even so, if this is a policy page, plain language rather than philosophic terms should be used. And raw data is certainly more meaningful than random numbers! That's the essential difference between them! Random numbers contain no information. Data does. - Nunh-huh 20:58, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You are trying to make Information mean something other than information when used on the Wikipedia project namespace. Wikipedia is not a common enough context to warrent its own definition of words. Its hard enough to try and explain rules on Wikipedia using the standard definition of words. Bensaccount 15:18, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Furthermore, there is no need to use the philosophical definition of knowledge here. The general definition is better suited. Knowledge. Bensaccount 15:22, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I think this page is suffering from a surfeit of philosophy. Perhaps we should edit it. A novel concept, I know... ;) And I must admit that I don't entirely get the explanation of what is "actionable". We have: Right... So everything that has been written about is also actionable, yes? After all, writing is an action. It seems to me that this is already covered by "No original research". Not including original research implies that everything in Wikipedia has been written about before, which in turn implies that it has been "actioned". So it seems to me that we don't need to worry about this "actionable" concept at all. Eh? Kamenev has been dead for a lot longer than two years, and I don't suppose many people would know his date of death if it hadn't been written down. If the cat's death has been written down, then it is actionable, since writing is an action, yes? I honestly can't see a significant difference in terms of actionability (is that a word?) between the two cases here. There may be a reason not to include the cat's date of death in Wikipedia, but I can't see how it can have anything to do with this "actionable" concept. So can we just ditch it? :) -- Oliver P. 05:07, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * "The birthday of Lev Borisovich Kamenev is actionable, as something that has been written about in his biography, and in discussions of his age relative to contemporaries."
 * "The birthday of Alicia's cat is not actionable, as the cat's been dead for two years, and even Alicia would struggle to remember it if she hadn't written it down."

 * I've clarified the Kamenev example - mentioning it in his biography was a bit of a red herring. What is actionable is that (several) people read his birthdate in his biography and do something based on that.
 * It's not a duplicate of "no original research". My granddad's birthday is recorded in a census somewhere, so it is not original research, but it's still not particularly actionable. Martin 00:42, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dead people
Removed: "Because Wikipedia is so incredibly generous, we don't even mind if the primary people interested in some fact are now all dead. For example, the 38 people with a special interest in knowing that the Hale-Bopp comet was just a comet."

This is quite amusing, so perhaps it wasn't meant seriously. However, if it was, I think it misses the point. We'd only include information relevant to the beliefs of the Heaven's Gate cult if those beliefs were potentially interesting to someone who was still alive. Of course, there are lots of living people interested in that cult, so we would include the information for their benefit, not for the benefit of the people who are now dead! -- Oliver P. 05:29, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I guess I wanted to avoid folks deleting stuff that used to be interesting, merely because it isn't currently interesting - mainly because tastes change, and there might be a sudden revival of interest in it. Martin 00:42, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So, what's happening?
What's the next step on the road to making this official policy? The term 'notablity' is banded about a lot on the VfD page, but this page is the closest thing to a definition. Dan100 10:56, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is a next step as this proposal has been dead for months. - SimonP 21:03, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Can't quite see that myself - it seems a lot of things happily chug along on Wikipedia, then just stop. Dead. But then mysteriously pick up again... Waiting for the New Year, then will put it on RfC, VP etc Dan100 21:07, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, I wouldn't count much on those like I did with Preliminary Deletion. I fully support this as policy, though — I'm actually surprised this isn't policy already. Johnleemk | Talk 13:09, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'm going to move to make this official policy. Dan100 09:31, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

 * Woot! Martin

Importance
This seems to me to be a vague variation of the older proposal Importance. "Interesting" is covered there, and I don't think "actionable" is actionable :p, because it is vague, inherently POV and hard to understand. ··gracefool |☺ 05:24, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I think you'll find that this page is the older, and that importance postdates it by eleven months.

 * Informative - (cur) (last) 23:33, 25 Nov 2003 MyRedDice
 * Importance - (cur) (last) 22:55, 26 Aug 2004 Gracefool

 * No Respect For History...

 * Anyways, if you would like to merge the two articles in a single page, please be bold in doing so. Don't forget to update the links. :)

 * -- user:MyRedDice
 * Oops. I've moved the policy to Informative/Old, and the main page now redirects to Importance. ··gracefool |☺ 09:47, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't understand this redirect. How is being important the same as being informative? Also, Importance links to Informative, so it doesn't make sense to redirect Informative back there. The two concepts seems very different to me. Surely something can be informative without being important? Angela. 14:46, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * I hadn't removed the links from Important yet. Since both policies try to define what should and should not be included in Wikipedia, and Important tries to be a complete definition, they are the same thing (or, at least, Informative is a subset). As I said above, "interesting" is better defined in Important, and "actionable" is "vague, inherently POV and hard to understand". ··gracefool |☺ 04:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Removing Informative altogether would seem better than redirecting it to Importance since they're two different concepts. Angela. 23:38, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree that they are different concepts. As I mentioned on Wikipedia talk:importance I think the best solution is to merge all these pages to Encyclopedic, which is a broad enough term to cover everything. - SimonP 00:14, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)


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Music of Iceland

The music of Iceland includes vibrant folk and pop traditions, as well as an active classical and contemporary music scene. Well-known artists from Iceland include medieval music group Voces Thules, alternative pop band The Sugarcubes, singers Björk, Laufey, Daði Freyr, Hafdís Huld and Emiliana Torrini, post-rock band Sigur Rós and Múm, post-metal band Sólstafir, indie folk/indie pop band Of Monsters and Men, blues/rock band Kaleo, metal band Skálmöld and techno-industrial band Hatari. Iceland's traditional music is related to Nordic music forms. Although Iceland has a very small population, it is home to many famous and praised bands and musicians.

Folk music
Icelandic music has a relatively long tradition, with some songs still sung today dating from 14th century. Folk songs are often about love, sailors, masculinity, hard winters, as well as elves, trolls and other mythological creatures, and tend to be quite secular and often humorous. Bjarni Þorsteinsson collected Icelandic folk music between 1906 and 1909, and many of the songs he encountered were accompanied by traditional instruments like the langspil and fiðla, which are among the few musical instruments traditionally played in Iceland. Chain dances, known as vikivaki, have been performed in Iceland since the 11th century at a variety of occasions, such as in churches and during the Christmas season. An example is "Ólafur Liljurós", an Icelandic vikivaki folk song dating to the 14th century, about a man who, while on his way to meet his mother, is seduced, kissed, and stabbed by an elf woman while riding his horse, then eventually dies.

Iceland's isolation meant that, until the 18th century, foreign influences were almost completely absent, which resulted in the maintenance of a particular rhythm, called hákveða, lost in other Nordic countries and considered one of the main characteristics of Icelandic folk music. Hákveða refers to a special emphasis placed on some of the words of a song, often the last word of each sentence in each verse. In the following example, taken from the song "Ólafur Liljurós", hákveða is shown in italics:

 * Ólafur reið með björgunum fram, villir Hann, stillir "Hann,
 * hitti hann fyrir sér álfarann, þar rauði loginn brann,
 * Blíðan lagði byrinn undan björgunum, blíðan lagði byrinn undan björgunum fram.

Rímur are epic tales sung as alliterative, rhyming ballads, usually a cappella. Rímur can be traced back to the Viking Age Eddic poetry of the skalds and employs complex metaphors and cryptic rhymes and forms. Some of the most famous rímur were written between the 18th and early 20th centuries, by poets like Hannes Bjarnason (1776–1838), Jón Sigurðsson (1853–1922) and Sigurður Breiðfjörð (1798–1846).

In the early 18th century, European dances like polka, waltz, reel and schottische begin to arrive via Denmark. These foreign dances are today known as gömlu dansarnir or literally the "old dances". After their arrival, native dance and song traditions fell into serious decline. For a long time, rímur were officially banned by the church. Paradoxically, many Icelandic priests were keen in making rímur. Rímur remained popular recreation until the early 20th century. In recent years, efforts have been made to revive native Icelandic forms. For example, a modern revitalization of the Rímur tradition began in 1929 with the formation of the organization Iðunn.

Protestantism has also left its mark on the music of Iceland. Hallgrímur Pétursson wrote numerous Protestant hymns in the 17th century. In the 19th century, Magnús Stephensen brought pipe organs to Iceland, soon to be followed by harmonium pumped reed-organs. "Heyr himna smiður" ("Hark, Creator of the Heaven") is probably the oldest psalm which is still sung today; it was composed by Kolbeinn Tumason in 1208.

Popular music
The music of Iceland includes vibrant folk and pop traditions and is expanding in its variety of sound styles and genres. Well-known artists from Iceland include alternative rock band The Sugarcubes, singers Björk, Hafdís Huld and Emilíana Torrini, and post-rock band Sigur Rós, as well as electronic music groups like GusGus. Iceland's traditional music is related to Nordic music forms.

Icelandic popular music today includes many bands and artists, ranging from indie and pop-rock to electronic music. It is also increasingly becoming recognized for its vibrant and growing metal and hardcore scene.

One widely known Icelandic artist is eclectic singer and composer Björk, who has received 15 Grammy nominations and sold over 15 million albums worldwide, including two platinum albums and one gold album in the United States. Another is the post-rock formation Sigur Rós and its lead singer Jónsi. Widely known outside Iceland, they were immortalized in an episode of The Simpsons and more recently in an episode of Game of Thrones.

Indie and pop-rock
According to the Icelandic label Record Records, the indie pop-folk group Of Monsters and Men is Iceland's biggest act since Björk and Sigur Rós. Their debut album My Head Is an Animal, as well as their first single "Little Talks", reached high positions in single and album charts worldwide. In 2013 they won the European Border Breakers Awards. Singer-songwriter Ásgeir Trausti did likewise in 2014, and ever since has been successfully touring Europe and the U.S. with his melodic-folk-pop songs, which he sings both in his native language Icelandic and in English. The singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini is an established Icelandic artist who had a base in the UK for many years. Her song "Jungle Drum", from her 2008 album Me and Armini, is internationally known and reached number one in the German, Austrian, Belgium and Icelandic single charts. Her album Tookah, released in 2013, reached the Top 50 album charts in several countries.

Other artists that are attracting attention outside Iceland include the electro-pop group FM Belfast, indie pop / rock / folk band Kaleo as well as the singers and composers Sóley and Sin Fang, who are both known as founding members of the band Seabear.

Alternative and metal
The alternative and metal scene is vibrant with Icelandic bands playing large festivals in Europe and the United States. The metal-band Sólstafir is widely known outside Iceland. Already back in 1999 they had a contract for their debut album with a German record label. The Viking-Metal Band Skálmöld played two sold out shows with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in the capital's concert hall Harpa in December 2013. Agent Fresco combine metal, rock and alternative elements with the unique voice of singer Arnór Dan Arnarson and have also gained international attention. The instrumental post-rock and alternative-rock band For a Minor Reflection is widely known since supported Sigur Rós on tour back in 2009. Their sound is often compared to Explosions in the Sky or the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. Dead Skeletons are not only known for their unique psychedelic-rock sound but also for their artwork and an art gallery in Reykjavik run by front man and singer Jón Sæmundur Auðarson. The Vintage Caravan, founded by two of the members in 2006 when they were only 12 years old, have played festivals in Europe, including the Wacken Open Air and toured with bigger bands like Europe and Opeth.

Iceland also has a thriving extreme metal scene which is gaining recognition abroad. The black metal band Svartidauði are widely considered a central figure in the development of the Icelandic black metal scene. Many of the scene's most significant albums were recorded and produced at Studio Emissary, a recording studio set up by Irish musician Stephen Lockhart, and the cassette label Vánagandr has also had a significant role in the development of the country's black metal scene. In 2016, the music festival Oration MMXVI debuted as Iceland's first black metal festival, and subsequently returned for two final instalments in 2017 and 2018. In 2016, black metal band Misþyrming were selected as one of Roadburn Fesitval's artists in residence.

Electronic music
The techno house group GusGus is one of Iceland's most successful exports in the field of electronic music. So far they released nine studio albums. The latest Lies Are More Flexible came out in February 2018.

Other artists include DJ duo Gluteus Maximus, Hermigervill, Bloodgroup and Sísý Ey.

The international franchise Sónar held their first festival in Reykjavik in 2013 with a long roster of international and local electronic acts.

Experimental
Ben Frost, born in Melbourne, living in Reykjavik, is bringing together electronic soundscapes with classical elements and noisy tunes. His latest album, Aurora, was released in June 2014.

Classical elements also characterize the symphonic music of composer and singer Ólafur Arnalds. Other widely known experimental bands are Múm and the high school originated Hjaltalín.

The trio Samaris have gained attention, especially in Europe, and have played festivals all over Europe. Their self-released EP, Stofnar falla, received positive reviews and was followed by their self-titled debut album, released in July 2013.

Mengi in Reykjavik is a centre for avant garde music, experimental music and contemporary music. The organisation organizes performances, exhibitions, conferences and runs a recording studio and a record label.

Composition
Classical music came to Iceland comparatively late, with the first Iceland composers working in the western, classical tradition emerging in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Among them was Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson, who is considered to have been the first Icelandic professional composer. Among his contributions to Icelandic music is the national anthem, Lofsöngur. Belonging to this first generation of Icelandic composers were Sigvaldi Kaldalóns and Sigfús Einarsson, and Emil Thoroddsen, best known for their songs with piano accompaniment. The most significant Icelandic composer in the first half of the 20th century was Jón Leifs who studied and worked in Germany until 1944 when he fled Nazi Germany to Norway and later Iceland where he became a considerable force in Icelandic musical life. A female composer from the same period, who also studied in Germany and fled the Nazis at the beginning of the war was Jórunn Viðar.

Today, Iceland has a vibrant classical music scene, with numerous composers of contemporary music achieving international success. These include Haukur Tómasson, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Daníel Bjarnason, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hugi Gudmundsson.

Performance
The first proper orchestral concert in Iceland was held in 1921, in conjunction with the royal visit of Christian X of Denmark, the reigning monarch of Iceland. The ensemble created for the occasion was given the name Hljómsveit Reykjavíkur (The Reykjavík Orchestra), and performed sporadically in the years that followed under the direction of Sigfús Einarsson and Páll Ísólfsson. Following the founding of the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service in 1930, and the festivities at the 1000th anniversary of the Alþingi, and through the pioneering work of musicians like Franz Mixa, Victor Urbancic and Róbert A. Ottóson, this ensemble was slowly transformed into the professional symphony orchestra known today as the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra resides in Harpa, Reykjavík's largest concert house, and holds weekly concerts in its Eldborg hall.

Additionally, a number of musical ensembles regularly perform in Reykjavík, playing music that ranges from Baroque to contemporary music. These include Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, CAPUT ensemble and Nordic Affect. Several classic music festivals are held in Reykjavík and all around Iceland annually, including Dark Music Days and Reykjavík Midsummer Music.

Icelandic classical instrumentalists have achieved success internationally. Undoubtedly, the most famous Icelandic citizen within the world of classical music is the Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, who settled in Iceland with his Icelandic wife Þórunn Jóhannsdóttir in 1968, following their defection from the Soviet Union. He was awarded Icelandic citizenship in 1972. Other notable, Icelandic classical instrumentalists with international careers include Sigurbjörn Bernharðsson, violinist and member of the Pacifica Quartet, Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir, violinist, Víkingur Ólafsson, pianist, and the cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir.

List of Icelandic music artists

 * Á Móti Sól
 * Árstíðir
 * Agent Fresco
 * Amiina
 * Anna Mjöll
 * Apparat Organ Quartet
 * Ásgeir Trausti
 * Bang Gang
 * Björk
 * Bony Man
 * Botnleðja
 * Bubbi Morthens
 * Daði Freyr
 * Daníel Ágúst
 * Dikta
 * DIMMA
 * Eberg
 * Egó
 * Emilíana Torrini
 * Eurobandið
 * For a Minor Reflection
 * FM Belfast
 * GDRN
 * Glowie
 * GusGus
 * HAM
 * Hafdís Huld
 * Hatari
 * Hildur Guðnadóttir
 * Hilmar Jensson
 * Hjálmar
 * Hjaltalín
 * Inki
 * Jagúar
 * Jakobínarína
 * Jófríður Ákadóttir
 * Jóhann Jóhannsson
 * JóiPé
 * Jónsi
 * Jónsi & Alex
 * Just Another Snake Cult
 * Kaleo
 * Katrín Lea
 * Kiasmos
 * Kukl
 * Laufey
 * Lay Low
 * Leaves
 * Leoncie
 * Low Roar
 * Magni Ásgeirsson (Rock Star Supernova)
 * Maus
 * Megas
 * Mammút
 * Mezzoforte
 * Mínus
 * Moses Hightower
 * Mugison
 * múm
 * Noise
 * Of Monsters and Men
 * Ókindarhjarta
 * Ólafur Arnalds
 * Ólafur Kram
 * Ólöf Arnalds
 * Páll Óskar
 * Parachutes
 * Pascal Pinon
 * Purrkur Pillnikk
 * Quarashi
 * Ragnheiður Gröndal
 * Rökkurró
 * Samaris
 * Sálin hans Jóns míns
 * Sigur Rós
 * Sign
 * Seabear
 * Sin Fang
 * Singapore Sling
 * Skálmöld
 * Skoffín
 * Snorri Helgason
 * Sóley
 * Sólstafir
 * Stafrænn Hákon
 * Steed Lord
 * Stjórnin
 * Supersport!
 * Svala Björgvinsdóttir
 * Svartidauði
 * The Sugarcubes
 * Tappi Tíkarrass
 * Teitur Magnússon
 * Todmobile
 * Trabant
 * Una Torfa
 * Utangarðsmenn
 * Valdimar
 * Valgeir Sigurðsson
 * Vök
 * Weapons
 * Yohanna
 * Þeyr

National anthem
The national anthem of Iceland is "Lofsöngur", written by Matthías Jochumsson, with music by Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson. The song, in the form of a hymn, was written in 1874, when Iceland celebrated the one thousandth anniversary of settlement on the island. It was first published under the title "A Hymn in Commemoration of Iceland's Thousand Years".

Music institutions

 * Iceland Music aims to aid in exporting Icelandic music abroad. It runs a website and newsletter with information about Icelandic music, with a social media presence where an audience can follow development in Icelandic music. ÚTÓN is the local wing of Iceland Music which educates musicians on matters of music promotion as well as administering funds and general consultation.
 * The Music Information Center (MIC) is a national agency for contemporary and older, mostly classical, music. It is also part of the International Music Information center.
 * Samtónn is an umbrella organization for Icelandic authors, performers and producers.
 * Mengi in Reykjavík is a centre for avant garde music, experimental music and contemporary music. The organisation organizes performances, exhibitions, conferences and runs a recording studio and a record label.

Festivals
Iceland hosts a variety of music festivals. The biggest festival is Iceland Airwaves with over 9000 guests. It takes place in the central area of Iceland's capital city Reykjavík for five days at the beginning of November. There is also an up-and-coming festival, Secret Solstice, which was held for the first time in the summer of 2014. There are also a number of intimate and transformative festivals that happen year-round in the countryside, such as Saga Fest in Selfoss and LungA Art Festival in Seyðisfjörður.

Other festivals are:

 * Dark Music Days
 * Erkitíð
 * Sónar Reykjavík
 * Reykjavik Folk Festival
 * Battle of the Bands - Músíktilraunir
 * AK Extreme
 * Tectonics
 * Reykjavík Blues Festival
 * Aldrei fór ég suður
 * Norðanpaunk
 * Gardabaer Jazz Festival
 * RAFLOST
 * Reykjavík Arts Festival
 * Reykjavík Music Mess
 * Reykjavík Midsummer Music
 * IS NORD
 * Við Djúpið - Summer Courses and Music Festival
 * JEA Jazz Festival
 * Blue North Music Festival
 * Kirkjubæjarklaustur Chamber Music Festival
 * Skálholt Summer Concerts
 * Folk music festival of Siglufjordur
 * Rauðasandur Festival
 * All Tomorrow's Parties
 * The Blue Church Concert Series
 * Eistnaflug
 * Extreme Chill Festival
 * Frum - Contemporary Music Festival
 * LungA
 * Saga Fest
 * Reykjavik Accordion Festival
 * Reykholt Music Festival
 * Bræðslan
 * Síldarævintýrið
 * Innipúkinn
 * Neistaflug
 * Þjóðhátíð í Eyjum
 * The Icelandic Chamber Music Festival
 * Pönk á Patró
 * Reykjavík Jazz Festival
 * Gæran
 * Tradition for tomorrow
 * Reykjavik Cultural Festival
 * Melodica Acoustic Festival Reykjavik
 * Night of lights
 * Októberfest á Íslandi
 * Rokkjötnar
 * Sláturtíð

Venues
Concert hall Harpa held its opening concert on May 4, 2011. Bigger concerts are held in sportshalls Laugardalshöll, Egilshöll and Kórinn. Theaters such as Gamla bíó, Bæjarbíó and Iðnó are used for concerts. Austurbær is an old movie theater.

Smaller concerts are held at smaller venues or pubs located mainly around capital area, with Mengi being a central hub for progressive and experimental music.

Record labels
Some of the labels mostly concentrate on one genre, whilst others are promoting many types of music. 12 Tónar and Smekkleysa run record stores in Reykjavik.

 * 12 Tónar
 * Bedroom Community
 * Blánótt
 * Ching Ching Bling Bling
 * Dimma
 * Dirrindí
 * Geimsteinn
 * Hljóðaklettar
 * Kimi Records
 * Kóp Boys Entertainment (KBE)
 * Lady Boy Records
 * Lagaffe Tales
 * Mugiboogie
 * Möller Records
 * Record Records
 * Sena
 * SJS Music
 * Smekkleysa SM/Bad Taste SM
 * Synthadelia
 * Zonet Music

Producers and studios

 * Bang Studio
 * Greenhouse Studios
 * Hljodriti (Studio Syrland Hafnarfjordur)
 * Medialux HQ
 * Orgelsmiðjan
 * Studio Syrland
 * Sundlaugin Studio
 * Gryfjan

title: Music of Iceland


text:
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This article shows a list of cities in Haiti.

title: List of cities in Haiti