Category: people

Chris Douridas made a name for himself in Los Angeles with his musical taste, first as musical director for KCRW and then in his work on a number of movies. But it all threatened to unravel earlier this year. “Though many details of what happened are unknown, law enforcement officials paint a lurid picture of events that led to Douridas’ arrest Jan. 6 on suspicion of drugging and trying to kidnap a 14-year-old girl.”

Gordon Parks, the photographer and filmmaker who died last week at 93, was a master at finding the inherent truth in any situation, and his photographs told stories far bigger than the events they captured. “In the end this could be the true source of Gordon Parks’ great appeal — his ability to find the universal significance in one person’s story, whether that of a boy in the barrios of Rio de Janeiro, or a gang leader from Harlem, and put that story in a form that the relentlessly mainstream middle class readers of Life could see and understand.”

Disgraced memoirist James Frey’s Hollywood dreams may be as dead as his credibility. “Before Oprah Winfrey castigated Frey for ‘duping’ her with his book earlier this year, the writer sold Fox a script for a one-hour, apparently tongue-in-cheek crime drama.” But in the wake of all the negative publicity surrounding Frey, “Fox has quietly killed the pilot.”

Glamorous soprano Anna Moffo, who starred on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for more than two decades, has died at her home in New York, aged 73. Moffo’s career was memorable but short – her voice deteriorated badly and forced her to retire from the stage while still in her 40s.

Pianist Maurizio Pollini has achieved elder statesman status. “Now in his mid-sixties, he is no less conspicuous for his championship of such tricky manifestations of the avant-garde as Pierre Boulez’s Sonata No 2 and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X. His stance has consistently been that contemporary music should form part of the normal repertoire, rather than being hived off into a specialist ghetto.”

UK culture minister Tessa Jowell has been cleared by a parliamentary watchdog of any wrongdoing in not declaring a business deal by her estranged husband.

“Ali Farka Touré, the self-taught Malian guitarist and songwriter who merged West African traditions with the blues and carried his music to a worldwide audience, winning two Grammy Awards, died in his sleep on Monday at his farm in the village of Niafunke in northwestern Mali, the Ministry of Culture of Mali announced.”

Photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, who broke down racial barriers throughout his career, has died at 93. “He was the first black person to work at Life magazine and Vogue, and the first to write, direct and score a Hollywood film, The Learning Tree (1969), which was based on a 1963 novel he wrote about his life as a farm boy in Kansas. He also was the director of the 1971 hit movie Shaft, which opened the way for a host of other black-oriented films.”

Sixty years ago a man in prison started making a violin out of a piece of maple he found. He never finished it, and for decades it sat in his closet. On the man’s 87th birthday, his grandson presented him with the now-completed instrument…

“The world of music these past 50 years has not had much in common with Mozart’s time, so Bennett – born 70 years ago this month – got passed off as a chameleon, too commercially successful for his own good. He has done everything, from percussion concertos to Pizza on the Park, fanfares to Four Weddings and a Funeral. The composer who started out admiring Elisabeth Lutyens and studying with Pierre Boulez – two icons of musical modernism – ended up playing jazz and cabaret. The bottom line is that Bennett is still busy, and audiences love to hear him perform.”