Category: people

Christopher Plummer “comes naturally to his noblesse. It has served him well. In roles ranging from the creepy von Trapp to a fantastically neurotic Iago to the crusading Mike Wallace in the 1999 film “The Insider,” he has consistently thrilled audiences with the kind of voice and bearing that used to be taken for granted in an actor. Still, for all its high-tone glories, his career — nearly 200 television and movie roles, by his estimate, and stage productions too numerous to count — has thrived on his eagerness to strip away that noblesse and reveal the human muck beneath, the rot in the royalty.”

William and Nadine McGuire moved to Minnesota about 15 years ago, and have emerged as leading donors to the arts in the Twin Cities. “The McGuires’ burst of generosity just since July has left observers giddy: $10 million to the University of Minnesota, $10 million to the Guthrie Theater and $1 million to the Children’s Theatre Company. Other recent Twin Cities giving by the McGuires and their family foundation, for which details were not revealed, bring their total giving to more than $40 million, William McGuire said Thursday.”

In search of a job, actor/model/artist Richard K. Rogers put together a conceptual gallery show in New York featuring “photos of Rogers marketing various generic products – from telephone services to breath freshener. He – or, more precisely, the cartoony characters he portrays in these deliberately cheesy shots – is either in desperate need of some product or service, or joyfully satisfied because he has used it – whatever it might be.”

Dana Gioia says his job as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts is to take charge of logistics. “He points out that it was Nancy Hanks, the endowment’s chair during the Nixon administration, who spread the money that helped build dance companies, opera companies, and museums. As Gioia sees it, there is no fight: Most people want the arts in their communities and schools. The only real issues are logistical.”

Cleatus Rattan is a former Marine and rancher. He’s currently Texas’ Poet Laureate. “Writing poetry in Texas, though, doesn’t win you many friends. In fact, he says, his poems about how dead his hometown of Cisco is (population: 3,183) have made him unpopular there. It’s a town, he writes, ‘with no plans to rebuild. The streetlights dim’.”

Mel Brooks has a musical ear. “Brooks writes the lyric and melody, leaving harmony and orchestration to others. He is too much a Broadway guy to be deemed an original composer, but he has an unerring ear for speech rhythms that translate into melody, a gift shared with the likes of Schubert, Janacek and Noel Coward. The comedy comes from close acquaintance with human frailty. The youngest of four boys, his father died when he was two and his mother raised the family sewing sashes for swimsuit straps and sequins onto frocks.”

“When he died last Sunday (at age 95), he left the kind of void all unique personalities do. He was one of a kind, this country’s most remarkable cultural entrepreneur, an adopted Canadian who gave native Canadians the confidence to walk tall on the world’s stage.”

The late composer’s house near Joshua Tree National Park, is made of straw, and constructed in a unique, quirky way. “Like Harrison — who incorporated Baroque, Asian and a wide range of other musical forms into complex, achingly beautiful works — it’s a glorious mixture.”

American conductor Karen Kamensek is a rising young star in Germany, where she’s been appointed chief conductor of the Freiburg Theatre. Why Germany? “Job opportunities for Americans in Europe are certainly better these days than at home, Kamensek told F.A.Z. Weekly. It might simply be a matter of numbers: There are over 80 functioning operas in Germany alone, and Louisville’s opera, for example, plays maybe three operas a year, while at Freiburg, we play three to four a week.”

Julian Schnabel is back. “How Alpha-male American, how gloriously, absurdly, heart-on-his-sleeve, Schnabel appears to be in a European setting. Surrounded by demure, waist-coated museum officials, he strides, shaggy-haired and bear-like in a great coat and baggy trousers, up and down the prestigious German gallery that has dignified him with a retrospective.”