My Fellow Americans

William Ross , is an American composer, orchestrator, arranger, conductor and music director. He has worked with a large array of artists and... musicians, from famous Hollywood composers John Williams, Alan Silvestri, John Powell, Michael Giacchino, Klaus Badelt, or Michael Kamen, to pop music icons and best-sellers such as Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Whitney Houston, Kenny G, Michael Jackson, David Foster, Quincy Jones, Babyface and Sting. Ross has composed the soundtrack for films such as Tuck Everlasting, My Dog Skip and Ladder 49. He adapted and conducted John Williams's themes for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In 2008, he scored the CGI-film The Tale of Despereaux, from Universal Studios. Ross has been Music Director on many shows and for various artists, including on Barbra Streisand's 2006 US tour and 2007 European tour, as well as on the 79th and 83rd Academy Awards. William Ross' most recent work is the comedy Balls To The Wall, directed by Penelope Spheeris, for whom he had previously worked on The Little Rascals and Black Sheep.
more

Biltmore House is a Châteauesque-styled mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 135,000 square feet and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's... descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age, and of significant gardens in the jardin à la française and English Landscape garden styles in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked eighth in America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt, youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt, began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt , to the Asheville, North Carolina, area.
more