Category: people

Roy E. Disney has resigned from Disney’s board of directors, “reportedly calling on chairman Michael Eisner to resign also. Disney’s resignation may be a pre-emptive move to avoid being forced off the board of The Walt Disney Co. The board’s governance and nominating committee has decided not to recommend Disney for another term because he is over the mandated retirement age of 72.

Two years ago tenor Ben Heppner had to walk offstage in the middle of a recital in Toronto because of vocal problems. He got medical attention and stopped singing. Earlier this year he resumed singing and the problems seemed gone. Then this recital in Toronto: As the concert went on, “traces of fragility in the upper third of his voice became more obvious and oppressive. He began the second half with a frank acknowledgment of his problem. He would sing on, he said, for as long as we and he could manage. But it was never the forceful high notes that went awry. It was the sustained medium-volume singing in that upper third of the voice. The sound would waver and shred, and all the sophistication and subtlety of this fine artist would count for nothing. In the end, he sang five of the nine programmed songs, with varying degrees of distress.”

Hugh Kenner, who died last week at the age of 80, was one of America’s finest critical writers, writes Benjamin Ivry. “His 25 books are charmingly written, intellectually alive excursions. They have a scientist’s eye for elegance, clarity and specificity.”

Poet Benjamin Zephaniah doesn’t want the Royal honor for which he has been put forward. “This OBE thing is supposed to be for my services to literature, but there are a whole lot of writers who are better than me, and they’re not involved in the things that I’m involved in. All they do is write; I spend most of my time doing other things. If they want to give me one of these empire things, why can’t they give me one for my work in animal rights? Why can’t they give me one for my struggle against racism? What about giving me one for all the letters I write to innocent people in prisons who have been framed? I may just consider accepting some kind of award for my services on behalf of the millions of people who have stood up against the war in Iraq. It’s such hard work – much harder than writing poems.”

“The last time he sang at Roy Thomson Hall turned out to be the worst night of Ben Heppner’s astonishing career. As they stumbled out of the hall into the cold night air in January, 2002, his hometown fans murmured that he might be finished. And for several agonizing months Heppner — one of the world’s greatest dramatic opera tenors — wondered whether they might be right. But Heppner is full of confidence and enthusiasm as he prepares for his Thomson Hall return tomorrow night, his first since that traumatic occasion.”

“The association of the Israel Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta is going into its fifth decade and the symbiosis between the two is closer than ever. Mehta’s English is peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish; the food at orchestra outings is peppered with the fiendishly hot chiles that Mehta is famously fond of.” The IPO, which has a reputation of being one of the most argumentative collections of musicians anywhere on Earth, genuinely loves this man who, more than any other conductor alive, has crafted his own identity within the national identity of Israel.

When Edo deWaart took up the reins of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1993, he was exhausted, drained by the various stresses of leading orchestras in the dual pressure cookers of Europe and America. This week is deWaart’s last in Australia, and as he prepares to take over as music director in Hong Kong, he refers to Sydney as his “spiritual holiday.” During his tenure, the SSO significantly improved its musicians’ wages and working conditions, and critics say that the orchestra is a decidedly better ensemble than it was when he arrived.

The self-styles “comedy terrorist” Aaron Barschak, has been sentenced to four weeks in jail for throwing red paint over Turner-nominated artist Jake Chapman.

“In the last 35 years, Twyla Tharp has created 126 dances, choreographed 5 movies (including Milos Forman’s “Hair” and “Amadeus”), won two Emmys for her television special “Baryshnikov by Tharp,” written an autobiography, worked on four Broadway shows and, this year, won a Tony for “Movin’ Out,” a narrative ballet set to Billy Joel’s music. Now she has completed her second book, “The Creative Habit.” And she wants to be very clear that it is not about dance.

Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) began talking to his colleagues in 1986 about the need for a national museum of African-American culture. Most of the time, his exhortations were met with condescending smiles, stony silence, or even outright hostility from such famous Congressional bigots as Jesse Helms. But Lewis persevered, and last week, his dream was finally realized, as both houses of Congress approved the creation of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.