Category: people

To anyone familiar with his writing, Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide probably wasn’t a big shock, but his drug-addled, gloom-filled prose was some of the best writing done in America in the last hundred years. “He was also what you get when you combine Murphy’s Law and some hillbilly Calvinist preaching the doctrine of innate depravity. He believed every man had it in him to do wrong… He spoke in bursts of words that later in his life became so unintelligible that a documentary about him provided subtitles. He had a sharp eye for the right people and he hung out with them. He had charisma. Being around him gave you the charmed but unsettled feeling of having joined an entourage.”

Okay, he may not have the pop cultural clout of MTV or, um, Paris Hilton, but the President Of The United States actually has a fairly weighty impact on national culture – when he cares to, anyway. “There are certain colorful aspects of the [current] president’s life that have not been much explored, understandably overshadowed by war and a hard-fought election. That he listens to Creedence Clearwater Revival on his iPod, for instance. That he loves biographies and has recently dipped into Tom Wolfe’s latest take on American culture. That he and his wife are enthusiastic art collectors. That he has no idea what’s happening on Wisteria Lane.”

The head of music for the Scottish Arts Council has resigned to take a position as chief executive of England’s Bath Festivals Trust. The SAC has been under fire in recent months for its lack of support for Scottish art and music, particularly in the wake of the government’s temporary shutdown plan for Scottish Opera, but Nod Knowles was reportedly highly respected in musical circles.

“Hunter S. Thompson died on Sunday, alone with a gun in his kitchen in Woody Creek, Colo. In doing so, he added heft to a legend that came to obscure his gifts as one of journalism’s most influential practitioners. Somewhere beneath the cartoon – he was Uncle Duke in the Doonesbury strip, of course, but Bill Murray inked him well in the 1980 film ‘Where the Buffalo Roam’ – and a lifestyle dominated by a long and sophisticated romance with drugs, Mr. Thompson managed to change the course of American journalism.”

Hunter S. Thompson shot and killed himself at his home in Aspen Sunday night. “Juan Thompson found his father’s body. Thompson’s wife, Anita, was not home at the time.”

David Childs has won some major commissions in recent years. But he is “no longer content to be the pet architect of the mainstream development world: he now longs for the kind of critical recognition that has so far eluded him. Increasingly, in seeking it he has begun to position himself as a worthy rival to the more daring architects from whom he once sought to distance himself.”

Joanna MacGregor is not your typical classical concert pianist. For starters, she completely rejects the notion that concert music is superior to other genres. “One critic has described her as ‘exhilaratingly, recklessly democratic’ in her musical tastes, because the London-born pianist has no qualms about mixing musical genres in unconventional and sometimes unlikely ways.” But don’t call her concerts “crossover”. MacGregor’s programs may mix a few musical metaphors, but never in a way that demeans the intelligence of either the music or her audience.

“Viotti, director of La Fenice since 2002, conducted at renowned opera houses worldwide including Milan’s La Scala and the Vienna State Opera. His time at La Fenice coincided with its reopening in 2003 after it was destroyed by fire in 1996. He fell into a coma after suffering a stroke during rehearsals for Jules Massenet’s Manon last week.”

Sixten Ehrling, Sweden’s most prominent conductor who ran the Stockholm Royal Opera and Detroit Symphony Orchestra and conducted the “Ring” at the New York Metropolitan, has died aged 86

“Driving Miss Daisy” playwright Alfred Uhry is accused in a $1.4 million lawsuit of defaming his former son-in-law, who claims he was wrongly accused of child abuse and attempted poisoning by nicotine patch.