Charles Bradley, 65, was born in Gainesville, Florida.  He was raised by his grandmother until the age of eight when, while meeting his mother for the first time, she told him that she wanted him to come live with her in Brooklyn, NY.  In 1962, his sister took him to the Apollo Theater to see James Brown perform. Bradley was so inspired by the performance that he began to practice mimicking Brown’s style of singing and stage mannerisms at home.  When he was a young teen, Bradley ran away from home and lived on the streets and in subway cars for two years. Later, he enlisted in Job Corps which eventually led him to Maine to work as a chef. One time while working, someone told him he looked like James Brown. Yet when asked if he could sing, he was too afraid to admit it. Eventually he did, however, overcome this fear and performed five or six times with…

Zoë Keating, 41, is a Canadian-born cellist and composer based in San Francisco, California. She is a one-woman orchestra. She uses a cello and a foot-controlled laptop to record layer upon layer of cello, creating intricate, haunting and compelling music.  Keating was classically trained from the age of eight.  She obtained a liberal arts degree and then spent her 20’s working in software while moonlighting as a cellist in rock bands. She eventually combined the cello and the computer, developing her signature style of live-layered music while improvising for late night crowds at her Francisco warehouse. She speaks regularly on artist-empowerment, sustainable careers and the concept of artist-as-entrepreneur, has been profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered, named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.   For the last two years, Zoë has been slowly touring North America, young child in tow, to support her latest album,Into the Trees, which spent 49 weeks on the Billboard classical charts…

Source: elias silveira ilustração & design