Category: people

The playwright is 60, and has liver cancer. “Doctors at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle discovered his condition in June and recommended immediate chemoembolization — cancer-fighting drugs injected directly into the tumor — followed by a liver transplant. But the disease proved too far advanced for treatment. Wilson said his physicians told him then that he had a life expectancy of three to five months.”

Jazz saxophone great Michael Brecker waits to find a donor for a bone marrow transplant to fight his cancer. “Brecker’s illness forced him to cancel a much-anticipated appearance at this month’s Newport Jazz Festival, where he would have showcased the stylistic versatility that won him 11 Grammys, including two last year for his large ensemble album “Wide Angles.” Brecker had been scheduled to perform with Saxophone Summit — whose adventurous and spiritual music reflects the influence of tenor saxophone legend John Coltrane — and Steps Ahead 2005, the latest edition of the all-star jazz-rock fusion band formed by Brecker and vibraphonist Mike Mainieri in the late ’70s.”

“It is only very young and inexperienced cultures that don’t understand that art and culture are the most important byproducts of any society. You’re not remembered for your armies or your navies…. You’re remembered for your music and for your stories. For your literature. For your dance. For your film. For your painting. For your great art. That is what ennobles a society.”

Charlotte Church has completed her transition from precocious child to pop princess. Church accepts that she should be more careful about looking after her voice than she is, but not to the extent that she’s going to do anything about it. “I love my voice and if I lost it I would be devastated, but I just don’t want to live my life like that. I am thinking of giving up smoking for general health reasons, and it was really embarrassing last weekend when I had overdone it and couldn’t sing at all, which meant that I had to mime at a big outdoor festival. I felt really bad about that.”

Part way thyrough a performance of Handel’s Laudate pueri Dominum in Sydney Saturday night, soprano Miriam Allan suddenly colllapsed onstage. “A doctor jumped on stage and took charge, one witness said. The doctor was none other than the NSW Governor, Professor Marie Bashir, a psychiatrist. Allan had been sick with flu all week, but did not want to miss Saturday night’s Musica Viva 60th anniversary concert.”

The synthesizer pioneer died of a brain tumor. “At the height of his synthesizer’s popularity, when progressive rock bands like Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer built their sounds around the assertive, bouncy, exotically wheezy and occasionally explosive timbres of Mr. Moog’s instruments, his name (which rhymes with vogue) became so closely associated with electronic sound that it was often used generically, if incorrectly, to describe synthesizers of all kinds.”

Robert Moog was a tinkerer. “Moog was one of the pivotal pioneers of synthesised sound. His instruments transformed pop music during that most revolutionary and experimental of times, the 1960s.”

Hunter S. Thmpson’s ashes were blasted off into space Saturday, but some of his admirers weren’t happy about the show. “I am pretty sure it isn’t how Hunter would have done it,” said longtime friend George Stranahan. The writer’s ashes were fired from atop a 15-story tower modeled after Thompson’s logo: a clenched fist, holding a peyote button, rising from the hilt of a dagger. It was built between his home and a tree-covered canyon wall.”

The remains of Hunter S. Thompson set off on their space ride. “The counterculture author killed himself six months ago at his home near Aspen. His ashes, intermingled with fireworks, were fired out of the tower Saturday evening in front of a star-studded crowd at his Owl Farm compound.”

“Charles Mackerras’s career has belatedly been recognised as great, but not because, like some jet-setting conductors, he set out to accumulate all music’s most glittering prizes – his CV is surprisingly short of those defining music directorships at Covent Garden or La Scala, or chief conductor posts in Berlin, Chicago or London. Rather, his 60-year career has been characterised by a combination of musicological awareness, meticulous preparation and highly charged performance.”