Category: people

He may not fit the conventional mold for the job, but Peter Mazwell Davies is nonetheless about to be named “Master of the Queen’s Music, in a move likely to send shockwaves through royal, political and musical circles. Maxwell Davies describes himself as an old-fashioned socialist who passionately opposed the war on Iraq, and has previously been labelled ‘a scourge of the establishment’. He has criticised institutions including the Royal Opera House, loathes Tony Blair and has never made any secret of his homosexuality. But, while his music is an acquired taste, Maxwell Davies, 69, is also regarded as Britain’s greatest living composer and is thus believed to have been earmarked by Buckingham Palace for a vacant position described as the “musical equivalent of the Poet Laureate”.

Few artists could claim to be at their professional peak at the age of 93, but Louise Bourgeois is having a crack at it. “Bourgeois’ reputation is growing steadily, boosted by the fact that she regularly shows work alongside artists half her age. French-born, but now living in Manhattan, she represented the US in the Venice Biennale in 1993, and completed the inaugural commission for Tate Modern’s vast turbine hall in 2000.” Her work is unquestionably contemporary, which may account for some of her continued success, but more than merely seeming fresh, it comes across as intensely autobiographical, a trick which few visual artists have mastered without seeming trite.

The body of Spalding Gray, the monologuist who went missing a few months ago, has been found. “Mr. Gray’s body was pulled from the East River near Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Sunday and was identified through dental records.”

Bernard Haitink turns 75. “The great Dutch conductor has been around for so long and has been so prominent – first as head of the London Philharmonic, then in charge of Glyndebourne and Covent Garden, in addition to his regular guest work with a range of orchestras – that it is hard not to think that he must somehow be immortal.”

Disney’s Michael Eisner has already lost his position as board chairman, and several prominent board members are putting serious pressure on the company to remove him as CEO as well. Eisner’s detractors say that he has lost the confidence not only of his own employees, but of institutional investors around the world. “They contend that he has done little since the mid-1990s to boost the company’s stock price and earnings to acceptable levels, as ABC television ratings have languished and few hits have emerged from the Disney animation factory.”

“In a remarkable vote of defiance against a once unassailable executive, shareholders owning an estimated 43 percent of the Walt Disney Company declined on Wednesday to support the re-election of Michael D. Eisner, the chairman and chief executive, to the board. The mounting shareholder dissent prodded the board to strip Mr. Eisner of the chairman’s title Wednesday night and give it to George J. Mitchell, Disney’s presiding director and a former senator. Disney board members hope the split of the chairman and chief executive titles will pacify investors disgruntled about an underperforming stock price and Mr. Eisner’s autocratic management style.”

“Steven C. Newsome, the director of the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, resigned yesterday but will remain with the Smithsonian Institution to help plan a national black museum. In his 12 years at the helm of the Anacostia Museum, Newsome directed a successful campaign to raise $8.5 million for a renovation of the museum’s Southeast Washington building, which was completed in 2002.”

This much we know to be true: Lang Lang is an unusually gifted young pianist. Also undeniably true is that Lang Lang was considerably overhyped by a classical marketing machine desperate to find the next Joshua Bell or Yo-Yo Ma to make up for the considerable losses the industry has been taking. But the backlash against the Lang Lang hype seemed to crystallize remarkably quickly last fall, in the wake of the pianist’s Carnegie Hall recital, and David Patrick Stearns is a bit suspicious of the motives of his detractors. Could Lang Lang’s race have been a factor? Or is it simply that he doesn’t fit into any of the pre-fab pigeonholes that music writers have set aside for hot young soloists?

“Conrad Black will loom large in the publishing industry this fall — not in his usual role as newspaper baron or even FDR biographer, but as the subject of two books examining the beleaguered lord’s recent trials with Hollinger International Inc., and his alleged millions of dollars in unauthorized personal payments.” The media baron, who is struggling to maintain his grip on what remains of his personal empire, is a classic example of the type of outsized personality which fascinates other media types, and the fact that Black has a history of being litigious only seems to be encouraging the reporters and authors eager to kick him on his way down.

Norman Mailer is 81 now. He walks with canes. And last week, he “complained lightheartedly to the kids around him that listening to the world through a hearing aid is somewhat surreal. He apologized in advance if his answers didn’t jibe with their questions. ‘I’m deaf,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’m damn deaf’.”