【推荐1】The Music of Ray Charles

Master of many styles

Ray Charles, a black singer and pianist, was born in 1930 in Georgia, USA. His relaxed style combined jazz, blues, pop and a type of black music called soul, which comes from the traditional music sung by slaves in the south of the USA. By the time Ray Charles died in 2004, he had won 12 Grammy Awards and performed at 10,000 concerts around the world. Many musicians called him simply “the Genius”.

Childhood poverty

Ray Charles was born into a poor family, without a father. When he was 5 years old, his younger brother died； and around the same time, Charles started to lose his sight. By the age of 7 he was completely blind. He had already been learning the piano for a year, and when he went blind, his mother knew this would be the only way he would earn any money in the future. All his life, Charles remembered her saying: “Do it right, or don’t do it at all”.

Becoming a musician

Later he went to a school for blind and deaf children where the teachers also encouraged him to study music. Sadly, while he was still at school, his mother died. He left school and in the early 1950s Charles formed a group of players. He sang, played the saxophone and the piano and composed music.

Three classic tunes

He made many recordings which are still classics: Georgia on my Mind, I Can’t Stop Loving You, and Hit the Road, Jack are the three best-known songs. He recorded CDs with famous artists like Elton John. Others, such as The Beatles, thought his music was wonderful and said that the music they composed used many of his techniques.

The film of his life

In 2003 a film biography of his life was produced, called Ray. The part of Charles was played by a young actor and musician called Jamie Foxx. The film director brought Foxx to meet Charles. After they had been playing together for two hours, Charles, then aged 73, jumped up and said, “He’s the one……he can do it.” A year later Charles died aged 74. The film of his life has been as popular as his songs and means that the memory of Charles’ music will live on.

1. Ray Charles was a black American singer ______.

A．who sang many different styles of music	B．who mostly sang jazz
C．who mostly sang pop music	D．who mostly sang soul music

2. Ray Charles’ mother encouraged him to play music because ______.

A．it would help him get used to being blind

B．it was a good way for a blind person to earn money

C．his father was a musician as well

D．she knew she would die soon

3. Ray Charles thought that Jamie Foxx ______.

A．was a good musician

B．was an excellent director

C．was the wrong person to play him in the film

D．was the right person to play him in the film

【推荐2】Beethoven wrote many famous pieces of music, but he’s probably best known for his nine symphonies. A symphony is a long, complicated piece of classical music, usually divided into four parts. The four parts are often linked by “themes” — repeated musical ideas that tie the whole piece together.

When Beethoven died in 1827, he had some ideas for a 10^th Symphony. But all that he left behind were some notes about the piece and a few “sketches” — short bits of written music.

In 2019, a special team of musicians, computer scientists, and historians was formed. Their goal: to try to complete Beethoven’s 10^th Symphony to celebrate his 250^th birthday. The team didn’t just want to complete the symphony, they wanted to come as close as possible to producing the symphony that Beethoven meant to write. That’s where deep learning came in. Deep learning — sometimes called Artificial Intelligence (AI) — describes computer programs that sort deeply through huge amounts of information. This allows them to find patterns humans may not have noticed. The programs can then use those patterns in new and surprising ways.

To train an AI to help with the symphony, the team turned every piece of music that Beethoven ever wrote into a form the computer could understand.

By feeding the program all of Beethoven’s music, the AI could look for patterns in the way Beethoven wrote. This included, for example, how he re-used simple melodies all through a piece to create a theme, or how he moved between different parts of the symphony.

Other members of the team studied Beethoven’s notes and sketches, and worked to figure out what Beethoven was planning to do. Where in the symphony did he plan to use each little bit of music that he left?

________. They played a few minutes of music created by the AI for Beethoven experts, musicians, and reporters. No one could tell which parts had been written by Beethoven and which parts the AI made up.

Finally, the AI had the challenge of trying to connect the little musical bits into a symphony. It took over two years, but the team was able to complete Beethoven’s 10^th Symphony. Not simply a melody, but 40 minutes of music for a full orchestra — a large group of musicians playing everything from string instruments, like violins, to trumpets, flutes, drums, and piano. So Beethoven now has a 10^th Symphony. And though Beethoven didn’t write it all, the team feels sure that the music is very much like what he might have written, if he’d had the chance.

1. What does “That” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．How to improve Beethoven’s symphonies.

B．How to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday.

C．How to restore Beethoven’s original thought accurately.

D．How to complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony efficiently.

2. Which of the following statement can be best filled in Paragraph 7?

A．The test showed the team was on the right track.

B．The newly created music was beyond comparison.

C．The 10th Symphony was presented to be successful.

D．The first attempt proved the symphony was a masterpiece.

3. What can be inferred about the application of AI in music?

A．They trained an AI to follow every note that Beethoven wrote.

B．Computer programs were written to turn these patterns into notes.

C．They taught AI to figure out how the music was played by Beethoven.

D．The AI managed to discover the patterns after processing the programs.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．AI Is Applied to Playing Classical Music.

B．AI Is Used to Finish Beethoven’s Music.

C．The Process of Beethoven’s Creation of Music.

D．Beethoven’s Last but the Most Famous Symphony.

【推荐3】It was August 2nd, 1927. The news had spread fast. A man named Ralph Peer was coming to the city of Bristol. He wanted to make recordings of local people singing and playing musical instruments. And he said he would pay fifty dollars for each song recorded. That was a lot of money in those days. Many people came to Bristol that day to play for Mr. Peer. But one group seemed to have just the sound that he was looking for. They were a man named A .P. Carter, his wife Sara, and her cousin Maybelle. They called themselves the Carter Family.

Their first recordings were sent to radio stations throughout the United States. Many listeners were surprised at what they heard. Instead of classical or jazz songs that radio stations usually played, a new sound was born. The Carter Family sounded different. They did not sound as if they had taken music lessons. But it did not matter. The people in poor rural areas thought they sounded just like their neighbors.

The Carters sang songs about living in the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They sang about the love of a young man for a special girl. They sang about the beauty of nature. They sang about death and sadness. And they sang religious songs that told of the hope for a better life after death.

A .P. Carter sang in the group and also searched for new songs. He often traveled long distances to small towns in the south-eastern United States. He wanted to hear the songs that local people sang in their communities. He wrote down the words but kept the music in his memory. When he returned home, he helped Sara and Maybelle fit them to the Carter Family musical style.

The Carter Family soon became famous. They recorded more songs. They traveled to many cities and towns in the eastern United States to perform. Thousands of people heard them sing and bought their recordings. Some people estimate that within three years, the Carter Family sold three hundred thousand recordings.

1. When Mr. Peer heard the Carter Family’s singing, he most probably felt _________.

A．disappointed	B．calm
C．confused	D．excited

2. Many listeners were surprised when they heard the Carter Family’s songs because _________.

A．the family did not seem to be good at singing

B．what the family sang sounded uncomfortable

C．the family sang classical and jazz songs in a very different way

D．the family sang something that they had never heard before

3. What was A.P.Carter’s purpose in traveling to small towns in the south-eastern United States?

A．To ask for some advice on his music.

B．To collect songs sung by the local people there.

C．To introduce his music to the local people there.

D．To see if the local people there had heard his music.

4. What does the last paragraph suggest?

A．The Carter Family’s songs were different.

B．The Carter Family’s songs were well received.

C．The Carter Family became famous by accident.

D．The Carter Family became good at singing later.

【推荐2】More than half of the world’s wild tiger population are threatened by roads built dangerously close to their habitats, and giant projects planned across Asia could put tigers at even greater risk.

Tigers’ habitats have reduced by 40% since 2006, leaving fewer than 4000 of the animals in the wild. Those living near roads are particularly attacked because they are at risk of being hit by vehicles, have more difficulties finding food, and are easier to be killed. Using a global dataset, Neil Carter at the University of Michigan and his colleagues calculated that the tiger’s current range, which mostly distributed in south and south-east Asia, contains 134,000 kilometres of roads. They estimated that 57% of tigers live within 5 kilometres of these roads, which is considered dangerously close.

This close to roads could be decreasing the world’s tiger population by more than20%, the researchers’ modelling suggests. Nearly 24,000 kilometres of new roads are planned for construction within the tiger’s range by 2050, which will make it even harder for the animals to avoid these risks.

“New roads could be made more tiger-friendly by building them away from key tiger populations, banning overnight traffic, installing road signs to warn drivers of the presence of tigers, and building tiger-friendly crossings so that wild animals can safely cross forests on both sides of the road,” says Carter. These have been built on roads and highways in Malaysia.

In 2010, all 13 countries with wild tiger populations committed to a plan to double the tiger population by 2022. By 2016, research suggested that the global wild tiger population stopped declining and had increased. “Building tiger-friendly roads will be crucial to reaching this goal,” says Carter.

1. What does paragraph 2 mainly show?

A．Tigers are endangered species.

B．Tigers are too lazy to go around.

C．Tigers’ habitats have been threatened.

D．The tigers’ population has decreased a lot.

2. What’s Carter’s suggestion about increasing the tiger population?

A．Building fewer new roads.

B．Building protection areas for tigers.

C．Building special roads for tigers to go through.

D．Improving the living conditions of tigers.

3. What attitude does Carter have towards the future of tigers?

A．Worried.	B．Optimistic.
C．Conservative.	D．Critical.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．How to protect tigers.

B．How to build tiger-friendly roads.

C．Wild tiger population will increase.

D．Road-building threatens the tigers’ habitats.