Category: people

Daniel Barenboim’s impending departure from the Chicago Symphony had been long-expected, and the perception is that his relationship with the CSO management had soured. The conductor, who has never been shy about expressing himself, admits as much in a recent interview, and in between questions about the affair he had while married to Jacqueline duPre, he insists that he isn’t the least bit tired of conducting, merely of what always comes with the job in America. “I can’t stand going out to one more dinner with some Mrs So-and-So who might leave a million dollars to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she dies.”

Priscilla Morgan is “that rare kind of patron whose phone book is more important than her pocket book. She has always been a curator of people selecting from her impeccable taste and nurturing more with friendship, encouragement, ideas and moral support than with money, though she has given plenty of that, too, over the years. She admits to having had “the most extraordinary men” in her life, including her former husband (“one of the great naval aviator heroes of the Pacific”) and the countless artists who attended the frequent gatherings at her garden apartment—from Buckminster Fuller, Willem de Kooning and Richard Lindner to Christo and Saul Steinberg. But after that Bastille Day 1959, her center was Isamu Noguchi.”

AJBlogger Terry Teachout has been named by President George Bush to be a member of the National Council on the Arts. Terry is also drama critic for The Wall Street Journal and music critic for Commentary magazine. Also nominated is “James K. Ballinger, who specializes in American art, has been director of the Phoenix Art Museum since 1982. He has overseen major exhibitions on the works of Diego Rivera, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frederic Remington.”

“Promiscuity and songwriting were Cole Porter’s antidepressants, at once an expression of and a relief from his neediness—the ‘oh, such a hungry, yearning burning inside of me’ that he wrote about in ‘Night and Day.’ Porter seems never to have found the love that he eloquently invoked in song after song.”

Fifty years after his patent on the geodesic dome was granted, Buckminster Fuller has been honored by the US Post Office with a commemorative stamp. “The stamp reproduces Boris Artzybasheff’s painting for Time magazine’s June 10, 1964, cover of Fuller — who preferred to be called “Bucky” — and his best-known discoveries and inventions.”

When BBC director general Greg Dyke was forced out following the Hutton Inquiry, BBC staffers protested and many commentators bemoaned the loss of Dyke at the helm of Britain’s largest broadcaster. But as it turns out, Dyke was able to laugh all the way to the bank, with a £456,000 severance package.

This August, just like every year, the BBC will devote a sizable chunk of its schedule to presenting the BBC Proms, the world’s largest classical music festival. But its choice of host this year has some devotees in a snit: Alan Titchmarsh, host of a popular gardening program. But Titchmarsh is firing back at the highbrow crowd: “I was rather amused that people thought it was all right for a newsreader to present the Proms, not a mere gardener, as though gardeners, by definition, know nothing about music, which is very insulting to gardeners. I have loved classical music for 45 years… I come to the Proms from the perspective of a shared passion, not as a musicologist.”

Pianist and author Charles Rosen may well be classical music’s most important intellectual of the last hundred years. But his devotion to the inner workings of musical style may have led to his reputation as an ultra-intellectual performer who sometimes doesn’t see the forest for the trees. “The fact that he has chosen to write about the physical experience of making music… may indeed be a reaction not just to some critics’ views of his performances but to the fact that his brilliant reputation as a writer and intellectual has distracted public attention from his considerable career as a concert virtuoso and recording artist.”

Artist Steve Kurtz is expected to plead not guilty today on charges that he acquired biological substances illegally. “The bizarre case of Steven Kurtz, 46, has attracted international attention in recent weeks, pitting U.S. prosecutors and FBI agents who say they’re only protecting public safety in the wake of Sept. 11, and the arts community that claims the federal government is indiscriminately and mistakenly attacking artistic expression and freedom of speech.”

Chancellor Gordon Brown is prime minister in waiting. This week he delivered a speech on Britain’s place in the world that was the picture of erudition. He’s a well-read polymath who draws on an amazing array of sources…