Category: people

“It’s good to be Jim Wolfensohn, no question about it. He runs a global institution with 10,000 employees and doles out $30 billion annually to make the world a better place. A career in investment banking made him personally rich-rich-rich. He’s got friends in high places and, because he loves music, is pals with some of the world’s greatest musical artists. So Wolfensohn pulled some strings for the evening. Last night’s performers included Bono, cellists Yo-Yo Ma, Cho-Liang Lin and Sharon Robinson, pianist Vladimir Feltsman, violinists Jaime Laredo and Pinchas Zukerman — and the amateur of the bunch, Wolfensohn. ‘Not a bad group,’ he said with a chuckle.”

Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of composer Richard Wagner, has a complicated family. “As Gottfried continues to speak, it becomes apparent that Richard Wagner (who died in 1883) isn’t really the source of his angst. Although he firmly believes that his operatic great-grandfather was a raving anti-Semite who harmfully influenced German thought, what Gottfried is most concerned about is his more recent relatives’ involvement in 20th-century Nazi politics, and their subsequent efforts to sanitize the family name. He contends that the family was left in charge of the Bayreuth Festival after the Second World War because they successfully hoodwinked the occupying forces.”

“In an era marked by celebrity architects and grand cultural projects, the American Institute of Architects has awarded its 2004 Gold Medal to Samuel Mockbee, a visionary designer and educator who devoted his career to building housing for the rural poor. The award, announced yesterday, is posthumous.”

What is it about Martin Amis that causes the British literati to shriek and howl and begin sharpening their metaphorical knives? Is it that his famous father is still casting too long a shadow? Or is it Martin’s own predilection for baiting his detractors? Or is it, possibly, simple jealousy for the man’s success, commingled with a passionate intellectual distaste for the vernacular style favored by Amis? In truth, it’s probably a little of each. But whatever the cause, Martin Amis is a hunted man, and he doesn’t seem to mind all that much.

When Ben Heppner made his much-anticipated return to Toronto last week, his voice faltered and he cut short his performance, causing some critics to declare that his much-touted comeback from vocal injuries is already a failure. But the reality is that many concertgoers hadn’t even noticed Heppner’s faltering until he apologized for it, and Kate Taylor thinks that the whole episode is being way overblown. “We continually parrot the cliché that in a live show anything can happen, but most of the time, at least from the audience’s perspective, the experience is safely controlled. Heppner has reminded us that the performer is not a machine; he’s a man who can have a great night — or a bad one.”

After stumbling in recital in Toronto last week, Ben Heppner recovers in Vancouver, writes William Littler. “Whether he is correct in his vocal diagnosis — that he has been suffering from sheer fatigue, rather than something more serious — remains to be determined through the course of future performances. In the meantime, Canada’s most important voice on the world’s operatic stage appears to be on the mend and the relaxed way in which Ben Heppner bantered with his Vancouver listeners and signed post-concert autographs for a lobby full of them, suggests that its owner, at least, isn’t greatly worried.”

A Moldovan musician has sold his kidney to buy a saxophone. “Sergiu, 23 – who as a professional musician has toured parts of Europe – sold the kidney to a Turkish hospital for $10,000 (£5,800). He has since been able to afford the instruments to further his career in the poverty-stricken eastern European country.”

Violinist Gidon Kremer on the state of modern artistic accomplishment: “We are living in a digital age. It is a dangerous time for art when perfection is considered the highest achievement rather than some substantial statement or a profound insight.”

So, like, Mr. Picasso, were you like really, really excited to have the chance to finally paint “Lady with a Fan”?

Playwright Tony Kushner is 47 and “heading into the most seismically charged week of his career: his latest work, the semi-autobiographical musical “Caroline, or Change,” opens at the Public Theater today; the first half of Mike Nichols’s six-hour, star-filled, $60 million adaptation of Mr. Kushner’s epic “Angels in America” has its premiere on HBO next Sunday. “Angels” will be broadcast and rebroadcast to more than 30 million homes, and the number of people who see it the very first night should easily outnumber those who have seen the play in the several hundred North American stage productions since it opened on Broadway 10 years ago.”