Category: people

The conductor died six years after being diagnosed with a rare blood disease died today at his home in Uffing, Germany at the age of 68. He was a popular guest conductor and was music director of the Phoenix Symphony from 1997-2004.

R&B legend Fats Domino is missing in New Orleans. “Domino, 77, a native of New Orleans, had remained with his family at their home in the city’s low-lying 9th ward district.”

A new exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has ostensibly been put together to show off the impressive collections of William I. Koch. But as it turns out, the collector himself is the real star of the show, his outsized personality dominating the art he has amassed over a lifetime of collecting. “Over the years, Koch has skippered an America’s Cup winner, built a billion-dollar energy company, sued his family members, engaged in a high-profile court battle with his onetime mistress, and been arrested for allegedly beating his then-wife. (The charges were later dropped.) He’s also built an art collection that has attracted the attention of countless museums.”

Zhang Xiaogang is China’s hottest painter, and as the country continues to walk the fine line between totalitarian regime and capitalist republic, his life has become increasingly complicated – and busy. “For years, his works – like those of other avant-garde artists of his generation – could not be exhibited in China, often because they were deemed too modern or politically questionable. But now his paintings are not only collected by wealthy Westerners and leading foreign museums, but they are also increasingly fashionable among well-to-do Chinese… few artists are as celebrated as Mr. Zhang, whose paintings can now fetch as much as $200,000 each.” In fact, Zhang has been having trouble keeping up with the demand for his work.

“You have to understand life in L.A. People find it embarrassing to travel commercial class.”

Damien Hirst has bought a rotting old gothic mansion and pland to turn it into a museum for his work. “Hirst fell in love with the grade one listed building as soon as he saw it and now regards it as a lifetime’s work to restore the mansion and grounds, which have fallen into serious disrepair. His ambition will not come cheap. He is believed to have spent about £3m to acquire the 124-acre estate and may need as much as £10m to refurbish it.”

When Gretchen Valade heard that Ford had pulled out as major sponsor of the 25-year-old Detroit Jazz festival, she stepped in to save the day. “The angel who saved the jazz festival has the bank account of a blue blood but the soul of an artist. She wrote short stories in her youth and standard-ballad pop songs as she got older, and when no one seemed interested in her music, she started her own record company. Valade’s fortune is homegrown — she’s the granddaughter of the founder of Carhartt Inc., the $400-million Dearborn company that makes rugged work clothes that have also become hip urban fashion.”

Michael Brand has a big promotion in his appointment as the Getty Museum’s new director. “No one, as yet, has a bad word to say about 47-year-old Brand, the likeable and well-regarded Australian who is credited with transforming the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, where he has raised $150 million for capital improvements. But his expertise is in Asian art, an area for which the Getty is not known, and there are suspicions that his appointment has more to do with his talents in generating money.”

Saklman Rushdie, now 58, is “sometimes cast as the over-indulged boy-child: chubby, cute, aware of his own cuteness, with the reserves of spite and temper that come from the eminence of this position. He has many more female than male friends – “I remember saying to [his wife] Padma last year, I’m going to have to start dating some guys!” – and has some mannerisms usually associated with women; with one hand he tucks his hair behind his ear; he can look as demure as Princess Di. But he can be caustic, too.”

Not just anyone gets a funeral sendoff in a rocketship like Hunter S. Thompson. But “while Thompson’s pyrotechnic pyre last week must be one of the most extravagant and expensive funerals in recent history (price tag: $2.5 million, paid by Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in the film version of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”), it’s not unusual for people who lived in the limelight to shuffle off this mortal coil in some colorful fashion.”