Peixinho studied composition and piano initially at the Conservatory of Lisbon (where he himself later taught), then studied composition with Boris Porena and Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia de Santa Cecilia in Rome, graduating in 1961. After working with Luigi Nono in Venice, he studied with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt and at the Academy of Music in Basel on various occasions between 1960 and 1970.
In 1970 he created the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group, and worked at the IPEM studio in Ghent from 1972 to 1973. wikipedia
Fine sound transformations
The aim of my music is the construction and organisation of a new and personal sound world. I have sought to explore deeply and intensively all the relationships between harmony and timbre in order to build a kind of very dense network of fine sound transformations. The main characteristic of my music is a kind of “oneiric sound atmosphere” in which small transformations are made via counterpunctual devices, harmonic and timbric filtering, etc. I also give great importance to the ambiguity between continuity and discontinuity. Jorge Peixinho
Note: I studied with him. So bad to Portugal that portuguese instituitions did not respect and treat Jorge Peixinho as a great composer, a great teacher and an involved citizen.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and a former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 80% (392 of 492) of the seats in Parliament, leading some to claim that this implies Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She has remained under house arrest in Myanmar for almost 14 out of the past 20 years.
Aung San Suu Kyi was the recipient of the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India. Aung San Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be father of modern-day Burma. wikipedia
Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel prize
NEW YORK – Mario Vargas Llosa, the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, has never found much honor in boundaries.
"Literature shouldn't be secluded, provincial or regional," the Peruvian author said in New York after Thursday's announcement in Sweden. "It should be universal, even if it has deep roots in one place."
The 74-year-old author and political activist, a charter member of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s, has for decades been regarded as one of the world's greatest and most adventurous writers, an unpredictable and provocative mixer of literature and social consciousness in both his work and his life.
Artists are born dissenters — often, but not always, of the left. Like such recent Nobelists as Herta Mueller and Doris Lessing, Vargas Llosa is a dissenter from communism, a former party member who ran for president of Peru in 1990 as an advocate of privatization and remains a critic of leftist leaders such as Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
The author of more than 30 novels, plays and works of nonfiction, he is known for his expansive language, his alertness to the profound and the profane, and his fierce and dark disdain for tyranny. His books are not without magical touches, but he is more grounded, more a "realist" than fellow Nobel laureate and South American Gabriel Garcia Marquez. AP/Yahoo
Al-Qaeda in Iraq vows more Christian attacks
Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq has threatened more attacks on Christians following a bloody siege at a Baghdad church that left 58 people dead, saying the "killing sword will not be lifted" from their necks.
The Islamic State of Iraq's warning of further violence against Christians comes two days after the group's assault on a Catholic church in downtown Baghdad — the deadliest attack ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries.
"We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood," the insurgent group said in a statement posted late Tuesday on militant websites.
The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq and other allied Sunni insurgent factions, also said its deadline for the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt to release Muslim women that the militant group claims are being held captive has expired. cbc.ca
Radical Muslims target Christians
The Barnabas Fund also reports that "in another attack on 20 October, a British couple in their sixties, Richard and Enid Eyeington, working for SOS Children’s villages in Somaliland were shot dead by several gunmen in their home inside the school compound while watching television. Also, in November a Kenyan Christian working for the Seventh Day Adventist mission in Gedo, South West Somalia, was murdered by Islamist radicals. The attacks appear to be deliberately anti-Christian and anti-Western. jihadwatch.org
Note: we should realise that it is not an cristian/muslim war. Different sects of islam, women that do not fully folow the islamic rules, and so on, are also a target to the radical killers.
Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO, Norway – Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights" — a prize likely to enrage the Chinese government, which had warned the Nobel committee not to honor him.
Thorbjoern Jagland, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman, said Liu Xiaobo (LEE-o SHAo-boh) was a symbol for the fight for human rights in China and the government should expect its policies to face scrutiny.
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In a year with a record 237 nominations for the peace prize, Liu had been considered a favorite, with open support from winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and others. AP/Yahoo
My trip to Tibet
