Six degrees of separation from Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev

Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev will be honoured next Sunday when his masterpiece Peter and the Wolf is performed by the China Hong Kong Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Cultural Centre, in Tsim Sha Tsui. Born in 1891, Prokofiev, who began composing at the age of nine, died on March 5, 1953 - the same day as Joseph Stalin. Part of his Lieutenant Kijé score, composed for the 1934 Soviet film of the same name, was used for the synthesiser solo in the anti-war song Russians by Sting …

Gordon Sumner, as his birth certificate reads, grew up in Newcastle, England, helping his milkman father make deliveries. After passing the 11-plus exam, he was sent to St Cuthbert's High School, the alma mater of which includes Neil Tennant. Three years his senior, Sumner doesn't remember the future Pet Shop Boy. Earlier this year Sting co-submitted a letter pleading for world leaders to prioritise tackling climate change at United Nations summits. Among the signatories were Pakistani activist and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai, actor Ben Affleck and another mononymous musician, Bono …

Born Paul Hewson, as a teenager in Dublin, Ireland, the future frontman of rock band U2 was part of a street gang called Lypton Village, members of which gave him the nickname Bono Vox (Latin for "good voice"), after the local hearing-aid shop, Bonavox. An ambassador for global causes such as poverty, Aids and third-world debt relief, in July, Bono unveiled a giant tapestry commissioned by Amnesty International, at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, in New York. It depicts Manhattan as a yellow submarine with John Lennon as its captain, to mark the 40th anniversary of the British-born Beatles singer receiving his green card. Also attending the unveiling was Yoko Ono …

The Japanese artist, singer and peace activist's third husband was Lennon; her second, film producer Tony Cox, in 1971, kidnapped their daughter, Kyoko, then aged eight, during a custody battle and subsequently raised her in a cult called the Church of the Living Word. Ono and Lennon searched for Kyoko for years; mother and daughter were eventually reunited in the 1990s. Ono has appeared on the cover of the Rolling Stone magazine multiple times, most famously in January 1981. The photograph, which sees a naked Lennon curled up in a fetal position clinging to Ono, was posed for hours before he was shot dead, and taken by Annie Leibovitz …

The third of six children born to third-generation Romanian Jews in the United States, Leibovitz, 65, discovered her passion for photography on a trip to Japan with her mother after her sophomore year. Since 2007, she has been working on a photo series of celebrities in fantasy settings; the project has featured Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Lopez and David Beckham, and was commissioned by Walt Disney, the media company founded by, of course, Walt Disney …

As a 16-year-old, Disney drove ambulances in France during the final year of the first world war. Afterwards, he moved back to Kansas City, in the US, and with his sibling, Roy, founded the Disney Brothers studio in Hollywood. In 1946, Disney produced an animated short in which each character was represented musically by a different instrument. It was adapted from and shared the same name as the 1936 work Peter and the Wolf, by Sergei Prokofiev.