Antwerp

The Antwerps Sportpaleis , also called Sportpaleis Antwerpen or simply the Sportpaleis, is an arena in Antwerp, Belgium. It is a multipurpose hall... where concerts, sporting events, festivals and fairs are organized. The arena was built for sport, especially track cycling, but there is now little sport there, an exception being the Diamond Games tennis. According to Billboard Magazine, the Sportpaleis is the second most visited event hall in the world, second only to Madison Square Garden. The Sportpaleis is known for performances by both Dutch-speaking and international artists. It also hosts the Nekka-Nacht, the Proximus Diamond Games tennis tournament for women and Pop Poll De Luxe, organised by the magazine HUMO. The main building is 88 metres wide and 132 metres long and has a roof spanning 11.600 m². Under the stands, there is a wooden cycling track 250 meters long and 8 meters wide. The arena is elliptical and has two floors. Next to the Sportpaleis is the Lotto Arena, a hall that can accommodate 5,000 spectators. Building started on 11 January 1932.
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The Liefkenshoektunnel is a toll tunnel to the north of Antwerp under the River Schelde. The tunnel is a continuation of Highway R2, the ring... motorway surrounding the city and harbour of Antwerp. In 2010 the tunnel was used by 6,373,894 vehicles. Positioned between the Beverentunnel and the Tijsmanstunnel, the Liefkenshoektunnel is the second of three sequential road tunnels running under the river and port installations. The tunnel takes its name from nearby Fort Liefkenshoek. It was constructed between 1987 and 1991, and opened on 10 July 1991. The tunnel is 1.37 km miles long. It comprises two parallel bores, each of which contains a two-lane roadway: each lane is 3.75 meters wide and the bores also include a hard shoulder. The tunnel can be used by vehicles up to 5.10 meters tall and, where exceptional loads need to be transported through it, up to 7.50 meters wide. Escape doors on the right side of each bore give access to emergency exit corridors. These are separate from the ventilation and drainage ducts.
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The Olympisch Stadion or Kielstadion [ˈkiɫ.staː.di.ˌjɔn] was built as the main stadium for the 1920 Summer Olympics in... Antwerp. For those games, it hosted the athletics, equestrian, field hockey, football, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, rugby union, tug of war, and weightlifting events. It is currently used as the home ground of K.F.C. Germinal Beerschot, a Belgian football club. It is possible that Archibald Leitch was involved in the design of the stadium having made several visits prior to the Games.
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The Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp is the contemporary art museum of the city of Antwerp, Belgium, and it is one of the most important art museums... in Belgium. The museum holds a permanent collection of contemporary art from Belgian and international artists, an arthouse cinema and an extensive library of books on contemporary art. The architect responsible for the creation of the museum from an old grain storage space was Michel Grandsard who also designed the extension of the museum . The director of the museum since 1992 is Bart de Baere.
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An Pierlé is a Belgian pianist and singer-songwriter. She studied classical piano and enrolled at the age of 17 at the art school Studio Herman... Teirlinck in Antwerp. In her third year there she made a solo-programme with songs of her own, alone at the piano. Shortly after she became known to a moderately wide audience in 1996 when she entered Humo's Rock Rally with a tape of her own version of Are 'Friends' Electric?, originally sung by Tubeway Army. The song ended up on a number of albums, including Random, a tribute album to Gary Numan composed of covers of Gary Numan songs. After this, An toured for two years with a theatre group, and starred in a Belgium television series , gave a few solo performances and collaborated with DAAU on their song "Broken", where she sings all of the vocals. In 1998 she signed a record deal with Warner Music Benelux. This resulted in her first album titled Mud Stories, completely in singer-songwriter fashion.
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Gertjan Mulder, professionally known as Brainpower, is a bi-lingual rapper, who writes, records and performs in both the English as well as the Dutch... language. The Dutch audience mainly knows him as a Dutch language rapper. He was born in Belgium and grew up in the Netherlands. He started making music in the eighties, and spent his time making a name for himself in the 90s. Since 2001, he released five solo studio albums, one Live album CD/DVD set, a book/DVD set, a Greatest Hits Box Set, and a few other successful side projects. Gertjan Mulder was born in Antwerp, Belgium as son of a progressive Reverend. He was raised in Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands, where he became a fan of hip hop and rap. He started rapping in the mid eighties, imitating heroes like Run DMC, and Eric B & Rakim. He wrote his first rap song in 1988. He moved back to the place where his mother was born, Amsterdam, in the early 90s. He started practicing his freestyle skills in the summer of 1990 and honed his skills as a furious battle MC from that moment 'til the late 90's and basically until way after he signed a record deal and produced major hit records.
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Christian Olde Wolbers , is the guitarist of the Metal band Arkaea. He is the former bassist and guitarist of the industrial metal band Fear Factory,... and is now in Beowülf. Olde Wolbers was born in Belgium , and moved to the US in 1993. He was asked to join Fear Factory in December 1993 as a bass player. He recorded five albums with them. The group disbanded in 2002 and when it reformed in 2003, Olde Wolbers had switched to guitar, replacing Dino Cazares. In 2009, Olde Wolbers and drummer Raymond Herrera parted ways with Fear Factory when vocalist Burton C. Bell chose to reform Fear Factory with Dino Cazares, bassist Byron Stroud, and drummer Gene Hoglan. Olde Wolbers is currently working on musical project Arkaea with fellow ex- Fear Factory drummer Raymond Herrera along with Jon Howard and Pat Kavanagh of the band Threat Signal. On 14 July 2009, Arkaea's debut album, Years in the Darkness was released. Olde Wolbers is now in Beowülf, where he co-produced their 2011 album Jesus Freak. He contributed upright bass to Devin Townsend's second album Infinity in 1998.
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Jean Servais was a Belgian actor trained at the Brussels Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, where he won the Second Prize. His acting skills came to the... attention of Raymond Rouleau, and he was hired at the Théâtre du Marais, where he acted in Le mal de jeunesse, which was successful in Brussels and in Paris. He was also a member of Jean-Louis Barrault's theatre company. His first film role was as the simple country dweller who was the victim of an error by the justice system in the film Criminel , directed by Jack Forrester. Servais's film career continued in the 1930s with roles in films such as La Chanson De L'Adieu and La Vie Est Magnifique . After a break in acting during World War II, he returned to the screen with roles in films such as La Danse De Mort . In the 1950s, he displayed a brooding, haunted demeanor in the crime drama Rififi directed by Jules Dassin, in which he played an embittered and physically ailing leader of a gang of jewel thieves. He appeared in another film directed by Dassin, Celui qui doit mourir, in 1957.
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Giya Kancheli , born 10 August 1935, in Tbilisi, is a Georgian composer resident in Belgium. Since 1991, Kancheli has lived in Western Europe: first... in Berlin, and since 1995 in Antwerp, where he is composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. In his symphonies, Kancheli's musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. These passages are occasionally punctuated with "battle scenes" involving martial brass and percussion. His music post-1990 has become more refined and generally more subdued and nostalgic in character. Some commentators talk about his music in cinematic terms; one can find equivalents of the dissolve , zoom , abrupt cuts , and so on. Rodion Shchedrin speaks of Kancheli as "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius". Kancheli has written seven symphonies, and what he terms a liturgy for viola and orchestra, called Mourned by the Wind.
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Jan Leyers is a singer, songwriter, and television personality. He was a member of the group Soulsister and later became a solo musician and host of... various television series. Jan Leyers was born in Wilrijk, in Antwerp. When he was about 10 years old, he found an acoustic guitar in his attic, and his father, an architect, taught him how to play. 10 years later, he started the group Beri-Beri with Hugo Matthysen, Bart Peeters, and Marc Kruithof. The group tried for some years to become successful, but failed. After Beri-Beri, Leyers spent a few years singing in theaters. In 1986, he met singer Paul Michiels in a café in Heist-op-den-Berg. Together, they recorded a single, "You Get to Me," which impressed Guy Brulez, an executive for EMI in Belgium. Brulez persuaded them to form a duo, which they named "Soul Sisters'". They recorded "Talk About It" and "Like a Mountain." The group, now under the name SoulSister, released their debut album, It Takes Two, in 1988. The single "The Way to Your Heart" was a hit in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and even made its way onto the United States charts.
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Tom Barman is a Belgian musician and film director. Barman studied at the film school of St.-Lucas in Brussels, but didn't finish his studies... because of he wished to pursue a career in music. He began by forming the rock band, Deus in Antwerp, in 1989. Although he had chosen music over his interest in film, his experience aided him in directing his own music videos for Deus, and he made a short film in 1996 titled Turnpike. He also directed videos for other Belgian musicians including Axelle Red and Hooverphonic among others. In the summer of 2002 shooting started in Antwerp for his first feature film Any Way the Wind Blows which was released in Belgian cinemas in the summer of 2003. In February 2004, he released "The Body Gave You Everything", the debut album by Magnus, his dance-oriented project with techno producer CJ Bolland. Barman has since explored the other side of the camera as well. He agreed to a "leading role" allowing directors, Manu Riche and Renaat Lambeet to film a documentary derived by Barman's everyday life, entitled Tempo of a Restless Soul.
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Christian Olde Wolbers , is the guitarist of the Metal band Arkaea. He is the former bassist and guitarist of the industrial metal band Fear Factory,... and is now in Beowülf. Olde Wolbers was born in Belgium , and moved to the US in 1993. He was asked to join Fear Factory in December 1993 as a bass player. He recorded five albums with them. The group disbanded in 2002 and when it reformed in 2003, Olde Wolbers had switched to guitar, replacing Dino Cazares. In 2009, Olde Wolbers and drummer Raymond Herrera parted ways with Fear Factory when vocalist Burton C. Bell chose to reform Fear Factory with Dino Cazares, bassist Byron Stroud, and drummer Gene Hoglan. Olde Wolbers is currently working on musical project Arkaea with fellow ex- Fear Factory drummer Raymond Herrera along with Jon Howard and Pat Kavanagh of the band Threat Signal. On 14 July 2009, Arkaea's debut album, Years in the Darkness was released. Olde Wolbers is now in Beowülf, where he co-produced their 2011 album Jesus Freak. He contributed upright bass to Devin Townsend's second album Infinity in 1998.
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Jean Servais was a Belgian actor trained at the Brussels Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, where he won the Second Prize. His acting skills came to the... attention of Raymond Rouleau, and he was hired at the Théâtre du Marais, where he acted in Le mal de jeunesse, which was successful in Brussels and in Paris. He was also a member of Jean-Louis Barrault's theatre company. His first film role was as the simple country dweller who was the victim of an error by the justice system in the film Criminel , directed by Jack Forrester. Servais's film career continued in the 1930s with roles in films such as La Chanson De L'Adieu and La Vie Est Magnifique . After a break in acting during World War II, he returned to the screen with roles in films such as La Danse De Mort . In the 1950s, he displayed a brooding, haunted demeanor in the crime drama Rififi directed by Jules Dassin, in which he played an embittered and physically ailing leader of a gang of jewel thieves. He appeared in another film directed by Dassin, Celui qui doit mourir, in 1957.
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André Cluytens was a Belgian-born French conductor who was active in the concert hall, opera house and recording studio. His repertoire... extended from Viennese classics through French composers to 20th century works. Although much of his career was in France, he was the first French conductor at Bayreuth in 1955; he also conducted the Ring and Parsifal at La Scala. Cluytens was born in Antwerp into a musical family: his paternal grandfather, father and uncles were all professional musicians. His mother was a soprano at the opera, and after she died in 1906 his father married another singer. He entered the Royal Flemish Conservatory at the age of 9, graduating at 16 with first prizes in harmony and counterpoint, and piano. His father Alphonse, conductor of the Antwerp Opera , engaged his son as a chorusmaster and coach. He joined his father at the Opera, conducting productions there, making his debut on 14 December 1926 with Les pêcheurs de perles.
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Henry Geldzahler was a curator of contemporary art in the late 20th century, as well as a modern art art historian and art critic. He is best known... for his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, and for his social role in the art world with a close relationship with contemporary artists. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, Geldzahler's Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1940. He graduated from Yale University in 1957, where he was a member of Manuscript Society. In 1960, Geldzahler left graduate school at Harvard University to join the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He became the Curator for American Art there, and later the first Curator for 20th Century Art. His time at the Met is most known for his landmark 1969 exhibition, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970, which included his favorite contemporary work and became the talk of the town. Unlike most curators at the time, he befriended many of the artists he was interested in, and socialized with them as part of the same art world.
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Anouck Lepere is a Belgian model. Lepere was studying architecture in Antwerp, when she was persuaded by her friends Dries van Noten and Olivier... Theyskens to try modelling. She first appeared on the runways in Paris in 2000 and is currently signed with IMG Models. She also worked as a model for the Hugo Boss "Woman" and "Deep Red" perfumes, and with Steven Meisel, Mario Testino, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Lepere was on the covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, and French Playboy. She has her own line of jewellery. In 2006, Lepere became engaged to Jefferson Hack, father of Kate Moss' daughter Lila Grace.
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