Category: people

The New York Post’s “Michael Riedel has become the columnist Broadway loves to hate. An attack dog in a world of lapdogs, this magna cum laude Columbia graduate, who reads Dante and Suetonius for fun, is an unlikely tabloid bad boy. But his twice-a-week, mean, often funny, always dishy, ruthlessly vitriolic behind-the-scenes gossip column has made him the scourge and the talk of the theater world.”

“Roger W. Straus Jr., the brash and opinionated grandee who presided for nearly six decades over the book-publishing company that bore his name, the last surviving representative of the age of independent houses owned privately by gentlemen of literary taste, died Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was 87 and lived in Manhattan… With its distinguished list of authors and its course set almost entirely at the proprietor’s discretion, Farrar, Straus & Giroux — as it was known for much of its existence — approached uniqueness as the conglomeration boom swept through the publishing trade in the 1960’s and 70’s.”

Diana Hollander was 33 years old, the signature voice of classical music in Washington DC as the “midday host at WGMS-FM (Classical 103.5), the top-rated commercial classical station in the country with 450,000 listeners a week. Listeners loved her. She was smart but not condescending, effervescent without being fluffy, a perfect accompaniment to the music she played.” Then the epilepsy struck and she was confined to bed. Two-and-a-half years later, she’s fought her way back into the studio…

A seed heiress living in Connecticut has died, leaving $16 million to various arts groups in the state. Louise Wheelock Willson was a passionate promoter of the arts, donating money to various groups and handing out stacks of tickets to friends and acquaintances in an effort to promote the groups she supported. The Hartford Symphony, Connecticut Opera, and New Britain Museum of American Art are among the list of beneficiaries in her will, and the big winner is the Nutmeg Ballet in Torrington, which will receive $5 million, the biggest gift in the company’s history.

Writer E.L. Doctorow gave a commencement speech at Hofstra University over the weekend, and was extremely critical of George Bush. “Apparently, some folks at the university ceremony liked what Doctorow had to say and cheered. But others said his comments were inappropriately political. The vocal outrage grew so vociferous that at one point Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz stepped in and asked the crowd to quiet down so Doctorow could continue.”

Henry Louis Gates may be the “Hardest Working Man in Academia.” His latest book “The just-released African American Lives (Oxford University Press, $55, co-edited with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham) brings the number of books Gates has edited or co-edited to 51. He has written or co-written another 12.” And he’s hard at work on another half dozen projects…

Zaha Hadid “is the world’s foremost woman architect. Yet, until a recent explosion in work, she had built little. This is an award more for influence than for physical impact on the world. Hadid’s extraordinary designs have been instantly recognisable and seemingly omnipresent for more than two decades, well before she had realised any significant structures.”

This week, the Philadelphia Orchestra played Vienna’s famed Musikverein, and by coincidence, the ensemble’s old music director, Riccardo Muti, just happened to be staying at a hotel right across the street from the concert hall. Yet strangely, Muti didn’t attend either of the Philadelphians’ concerts, and other than a quick dinner with a violinist and a hastily scheduled meeting with orchestra president Joe Kluger, no one in the orchestra even caught a glimpse of him. In fact, since leaving Philadelphia in 1992, Muti has declined multiple invitations to return to the podium there. Orchestra officials insist that the maestro has a standing invitation.

The BBC hopes to heal the rifts caused by the scandal surrounding the Hutton report and the suicide of Dr. David Kelley with the appointment of Mark Thompson as the corporation’s new director general. Thompson, who worked at the BBC for 23 years before leaving to head up the UK’s Channel 4 two years ago, succeeds the popular Greg Dyke, who was forced out of the top BBC post following the scandal over journalist Andrew Gilligan’s report claiming that the government had “sexed up” a dossier concerning intelligence information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Sir Harold Acton was one of the great art collectors of the 20th Century. When he died he left his collection to New York University. “Acton left 40,000 rare books, 5,000 art works, including one attributed to Donatello, and a 57-acre estate with four villas. The biggest is Villa La Pietra, a 60-room Medici family palace, whose former guests include Prince Charles, Winston Churchill, DH Lawrence and Picasso.” Now new DNA evidence has bolstered claims of those contesting the bequest.