Amazing Performers: B1. Jane Rollason

rights away.

      Franco was still in control of Spain, and sadly he lived two years longer than me. Two years after my UN performance, in 1973, I died of old age at home in Puerto Rico. I did not live to see Spain become free again. I was very sad that war had driven me from the land of my birth. But I was very happy, and lucky, because I had loved and played music for more than 90 years.

       The Life of Pablo Casals

1876		Pau (Pablo) Casals i Defilló was born in El Vendrell, Catalonia, Spain, on 29th December 1876. He was the second of eleven children.
1881		Aged five, Pablo joined a church choir. He had already learnt to play the piano, and soon he could also play the violin.
1888		He became a cello student at the Escola Municipal de Música in Barcelona, Spain. He was an excellent student.
1893		He moved to Madrid, where he entered the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. He played in the Quartet Society, and gave concerts for the Queen Regent, Maria Cristina.
1895		He moved to Paris. He earned a living playing the cello in an orchestra in a musical theatre.
1896		Returning to Catalonia, he became a teacher at his old school, the Escola Municipal de Música in Barcelona. He also performed in the orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu.
1897		Pablo performed with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra. He received a high honour – the Order of Carlos III – from Queen Maria Cristina.
1899		He visited England, where he played a public concert at London’s Crystal Palace, and a private concert for Queen Victoria at her summer palace on the Isle of Wight. Later in the year, he made appeared at the Lamoureux Concerts in Paris. The audience loved him.
1900		A concert tour of Spain and Holland with the pianist Harold Bauer was a big success.
1901		Pablo crossed the Atlantic for the first time, and played concerts in the United States and South America.
1904		He played for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and then played for President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House in Washington DC.
1914		In the year that war broke out in Europe, Pablo married the American singer Susan Metcalfe.
1919		Pablo set up an orchestra in his home city of Barcelona, calling it Orquesta Pau Casals. It gave its first concert the following year.
1928		After 14 years Pablo and Susan decided to end their marriage.
1936		General Franco led the Army of Africa into Spain, taking control of Spain’s government. The Spanish Civil War started, lasting until 1939. Pablo hated Franco, and decided to shut down the Orquesta Pau Casals and leave Spain until democracy returned. He moved to France. Franco said he must never return to Spain. He never did.
1939–1942		Pablo moved to Prades, in southern France, near to the Spanish border. He performed at different places in southern France and Switzerland.
1945		After the war, he felt that Britain and the USA had abandoned Spain. They were too friendly to Franco. Pablo stopped performing.
1950		He started conducting and playing the cello again, performing at the Prades Festival. It was organized to celebrate two hundred years since the death of J. S. Bach. Pablo continued to lead the Prades Festivals until 1966.
1955		Pablo married his good friend, Francesca Vidal de Capdevila. Sadly, she died in the same year.
1956		Pablo moved to San Juan in Puerto Rico.
1957		Pablo married his pupil, Marta Montáñez Martínez.
1958		He started an orchestra – the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra – and, a year later, a music school, the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico.
1961		Pablo performed at the White House again, this time for President John F. Kennedy, who he admired.
1963		President Kennedy awarded Pablo the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1971		Approaching the great age of 95, Pablo performed his Himno a las Naciones Unidas (Hymn of the United Nations) at the General Assembly in New York City. He was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal.
1973		Pablo Casals died, aged 96, at home in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

       Louis Armstrong

       1901–1971

      the American trumpet-player and singer

      I was not born into a wonderful world. I grew up in a poor area of New Orleans, where life was tough for young African-American boys. But music saved me, and showed me that the world really was wonderful.

      I was born in 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the Deep South of the United States. Two years later, soon after my little sister was born, my father left the family. My mother didn’t want to look after us on her own, so my sister and I went to live with Grandma Josephine. Although we had no toys, no shoes and very little food, my grandmother always sent us to school and to church.

      When I was five, my mother returned and we lived with her. It wasn’t a real home though, and I was often on the streets. I needed to earn money to buy food for my mother and sister, so I found a job delivering newspapers. But I started getting into trouble too. New Orleans was a tough city, and you had to join a street gang to survive. One of my jobs as a young member of the gang was to take messages, while another person was watching for enemy gangs outside clubs. I liked standing outside the clubs, because I could hear the music inside. Ragtime music was very popular then.

      I found a job with a Jewish family from