Sarah Brightman, the light-lyric soprano who is due to stop off in Hong Kong on Thursday, on her world tour, is also in training to join a Russian Soyuz spacecraft mission to the International Space Station next year. As part of a three-person crew, Brightman, the world’s richest female classical performer, will orbit the Earth 16 times a day aboard the station and, as an Unesco ambassador, aims to promote peace and sustainable development to safeguard our planet’s future. Brightman’s song Mysterious Days, from her 2003 album Harem, featured the posthumous vocals of Israeli singer Ofra Haza …
The youngest of nine children born to Jewish Yemenite parents in a Tel Aviv slum, the multilingual Haza achieved international success and iconic status in her home country despite coming second to the entrant from Luxembourg when she represented Israel in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest. For the animated movie The Prince of Egypt (1998), Yocheved, the mother of Moses, was drawn to look like Haza, with the singer also voicing the part and recording the film’s keynote song, Deliver Us, in 17 languages. The music was produced by German composer Hans Zimmer …
Now a meister of the movie score, Zimmer’s celebrated career grew from humble beginnings; in the late 1980s, he wrote the Euro-poprock theme tune for tacky British television game show Going for Gold. “I’m not embarrassed about it,” Zimmer has said. “I look at it fondly as a ridiculous piece of music. It’s like looking at photos of yourself when you had a terrible hairstyle and you thought it was really cool.” The composer’s 100th film score was for 2003’s The Last Samurai, which received four Oscar nominations, including one for best supporting actor, for the performance of Ken Watanabe …
In 1989, aged 29, the Japanese actor, famed for playing noble warriors, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. In 1994, having “recovered” from the illness, Watanabe suffered a relapse, although his cancer retreated into full remission two years later. He later said: “I thought my life would be meaningless if I did not make a comeback as an actor. It was a kind of sense of duty.” Watanabe appeared in Memoirs of a Geisha, the Steven Spielberg-produced movie starring Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng …
Born in the Malaysian mining town of Ipoh, Yeoh, who starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has been known for years as a fine martial artist, despite never having trained in any ancient fighting techniques. A ballet dancer since the age of four, she moved to Britain to study dance at the Royal Academy, but a spinal injury prevented her from becoming a professional ballerina. A renowned animal-welfare activist, Yeoh is a patron of the Save China’s Tigers project and an ambassador for WildAid, a campaign to end trading in endangered wildlife parts and products that is also supported by former basketball star Yao Ming and Mando-pop singer Liu Huan …
A self-taught musician, Liu, labelled China’s King of Pop, launched his career while he was a French-language graduate student at Beijing’s University of International Relations. After winning a French songwriting competition, he spent the prize – a two-week trip to France – soaking up inspiration from music played in Parisian bars. The pinnacle of his career so far came at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when he performed the official theme song, You and Me, alongside British operatic warbler Sarah Brightman.