Brandenburg Gate peace in post–Cold War Europe. On 9 November 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel, walked through Brandenburg Gate with Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev and Poland's Lech Wałęsa as part of the 20-year celebration of tearing down the Berlin Wall. On 13 August 2011, Germany marked the 50th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall started to go up with a memorial service and a minute of silence in memory of those who died trying to flee to the West. "It is our shared responsibility to keep the memory alive and to pass it on to the coming generations as a reminder to stand
While the Gate Is Open While the Gate Is Open While the Gate Is Open is the fourth album by saxophonist Gary Thomas which was recorded in 1990 and released on the JMT label. It features Thomas' interpretations of eight jazz standards. The AllMusic review by Scott Yanow states, "Thomas gives the eight tunes fresh treatments and as usual avoids all clichés (and the logic of bop) in his explorative improvisations." "The Guardian"'s John Fordham noted "This one features the hard-nosed Miles Davis saxophonist Gary Thomas with a fiercely collaborative band of experts... There's a lot of full-on tenor sax blasting over ferocious percussion barrages...