Aberdeen

Craigievar Castle is a pinkish harled castle six miles south of Alford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It was the seat of Clan Sempill. The setting is... among scenic rolling foothills of the Grampian Mountains. The contrast of its massive lower story structure to the finely sculpted multiple turrets, gargoyles and high corbelling work create a classic fairytale appearance. An excellent example of the original Scottish Baronial architecture, the great seven-storey castle was completed in 1626 by the Aberdonian merchant William Forbes, ancestor to the "Forbes-Sempill family" and brother of the Bishop of Aberdeen. Forbes purchased the partially completed structure from the impoverished Mortimer family in the year 1610. Forbes' nickname was Danzig Willy, a reference to his shrewd international trading success. The Forbes family resided here for 350 years until 1963, when the property was gifted to the National Trust for Scotland. Designed in the L plan, as was Muchalls Castle, which is located in the same region, Craigievar is noted for its exceptionally crafted plasterwork ceilings.
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The Music Hall is a concert hall in Aberdeen, Scotland, formerly the city's Assembly Rooms, located on Union Street in the city centre. It was... designed by architect Archibald Simpson, costing £11,500 when it was originally constructed in 1822, opened to the public as a concert hall in 1859, and was extensively renovated in the 1980s. It regularly plays host to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, as well as a variety of pop/rock concerts, and the annual Aberdeen International Youth Festival.
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Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre , is a large exhibition and conference complex, in Aberdeen, Scotland. The complex is home to a Holiday Inn... and Holiday Inn Express hotel, conference facilities and the 4,800-seat multi-purpose Press & Journal Arena, which can hold around 4,000 to 8,500 people, depending on the size of the performance. The arena currently hosts local sporting events, including the Aberdeen Cup tennis event. In recent years, the AECC underwent a major refurbishment, with the conference facilities being completely re-built. As part of the redevelopment, a large viewing tower was constructed and is one of the tallest structures in Aberdeen. Oasis have played several times over the years – their first being two performances on the 19-20 September 1997. They returned for another two gigs on the 9-10 September 2002 and once more on the 12 December 2005. They performed their most recent, and probably last concerts at the venue on the 1–2 November 2008. All these gigs were sold out in a matter of minutes. Noel Gallagher returned to the venue on the 14 February 2012 as part of his High Flying Birds Tour. The concert was a sell-out.
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Aberdeen Art Gallery is the main visual arts exhibition space in the city of Aberdeen in Scotland. It opened in 1885, in a building designed by... Alexander Marshall Mackenzie. The permanent collection including works by the Post-Impressionists and the Scottish Colourists as well as applied arts and crafts. The central hall is supported by granite columns in a variety of colours, derived from different quarries in the local area and far beyond. At the western end of the building, with a room inside and a monument outside, is a major war memorial.
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Ann "Annie" Lennox, OBE , is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s as... part of the New Wave band The Tourists, she and fellow musician David A. Stewart went on to achieve major international success in the 1980s as Eurythmics. Lennox is the most recognized female artist at the Brit Awards, winning a total of eight awards. She has also been named the "Brits Champion of Champions". Lennox embarked on a solo career in the 1990s with her debut album, Diva , which produced several hit singles including "Why" and "Walking on Broken Glass". To date, she has released five solo studio albums and a compilation album, The Annie Lennox Collection . She is the recipient of eight Brit Awards, four Grammy Awards and an MTV Video Music Award. In 2002, Lennox received a Billboard Century Award; the highest accolade from Billboard Magazine. In 2004, she won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Into the West", written for the soundtrack to the feature film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
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Mary Garden , was a Scottish operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century. She spent the... latter part of her childhood and youth in the United States and eventually became an American citizen, although she lived in France for many years and eventually retired to Scotland, where she died. Described as "the Sarah Bernhardt of opera", Garden was an exceptional actress as well as a talented singer. She was particularly admired for her nuanced performances which employed interesting uses of vocal color. Possessing a beautiful lyric voice that had a wide vocal range and considerable amount of flexibility, Garden first arose to success in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century. She became the leading soprano at the Opéra-Comique; notably portraying roles in several world premieres, including Mélisande in Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande . She worked closely with Jules Massenet, in whose operas she excelled. Massenet notably wrote the title role in his opera Chérubin for her.
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Norman John Baker is a British Liberal Democrat politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Lewes in East Sussex since 1997. Since May... 2010 he has been Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Department for Transport. Born in Aberdeen, Baker's family moved to Hornchurch in East London in 1968. He was educated at the Royal Liberty School in Gidea Park, near Romford, and at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where he earned a BA degree in German & History in 1978. Baker was a regional director for Our Price Records for five years from 1978. He worked at Malling Street Service Station from 1983 to 1985. He taught English as a foreign language from 1985–97, with a spell as a Liberal Democrat environment researcher in the House of Commons in 1989–90. In 1987, he was elected as a councillor on the Lewes District Council, and two years later was also elected to the local county council of East Sussex. He became the Leader of Lewes District Council in 1991, a position he held until his election as an MP. Baker contested Lewes at the 1992 general election, but was defeated by the sitting Conservative Party MP Tim Rathbone.
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Vincent Winter was a Scottish film actor who was successful as a child actor. Winter was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and made his first film... appearance at the age of six in The Little Kidnappers winning, along with his co-star Jon Whiteley, an Academy Juvenile Award. He appeared in several films as a child including Beyond This Place and the Walt Disney features Greyfriars Bobby , Almost Angels and The Three Lives of Thomasina . As an adult he continued to work in films behind the scenes, and was a production manager on such films as For Your Eyes Only , Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Color Purple . He died in Chertsey, England, as a result of a heart attack.
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James Donald was a Scottish actor. Tall and thin, he usually specialised in playing authority figures. Donald was born in Aberdeen, and made his... first professional stage appearance sometime in the late-1930s, having been educated at Rossall School on Lancashire's Fylde coast. During World War II he appeared in minor roles in such war films as In Which We Serve , Went the Day Well? and The Way Ahead , and he played Mr. Winkle in the 1952 film version of The Pickwick Papers. However, leading roles eluded him until Lust for Life , in which he played Theo Van Gogh. His work in the theatre included Noël Coward's Present Laughter which starred Coward himself, and The Eagle with Two Heads , You Never Can Tell , and The Heiress with Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and Donald Sinden. He memorably portrayed Major Clipton, the doctor who expresses grave doubts about the sanity of Col. Nicholson's efforts to build the bridge in order to show up his Japanese captors, in the blockbuster classic film The Bridge on the River Kwai .
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Jeannie Robertson was a Scottish folk singer. It is not known where Jeannie Robertson was born but she did live at 90, Hilton Street in Aberdeen,... where a plaque now commemorates her. Like many of the Scottish Travellers from Aberdeen, Glasgow and Ayrshire, she went to Blairgowrie to pick raspberries once a year. Hamish Henderson was born in Blairgowrie and tried to track down the best singers there. In 1953 he followed her reputation to her doorstep in Aberdeen. According to legend Jeannie was reluctant to let him in. She challenged him to tell her the opening line of Child ballad no 163, The Battle of Harlaw and he complied. In November of the same year she was staying in the London apartment of Alan Lomax. In preparation for a TV appearance, Jean Ritchie, Margaret Barry and Isla Cameron were also there. They swapped songs with each other, while the tape rolled. It is sometimes stated that she made the first recording of The Battle of Harlaw but this is not so. The first recording was made in 1936 by the Bothy Ballad singer, Willie Kemp and it may be from this that she learnt the song.
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