Category: people

Country music legend Johnny Cash has died at a Nashville hospital from complications from diabetes. Cash’s career spanned six decades, and earned him eight Grammy awards. His music did not follow the mainstream commercial path of so many other country artists, and he embraced both humor and social conscience in his songs. From the ridiculous poignance of “A Boy Named Sue” to the bitter lament of the “Folsom Prison Blues,” Cash made his mark on multiple generations of listeners. “As much an American icon as Mark Twain or Woody Guthrie or John Wayne, Cash created a persona that often seemed to overshadow his genius as a writer and performer. A country music archetype who helped invent rock and roll, he always returned for solace to the gospel music of his youth.”

Theodor Adorno was born 100 years ago. He’s “recognized as one of the leading critical minds of the 20th century, a man with an intellectual range that seemingly knew no bounds. He was a musicologist who studied in Vienna with Alban Berg and a composer in his own right, a social theorist steeped in the tradition of western Marxism, and a highly regarded commentator on literature and poetry. Yet Adorno polarized many with his dialectical style and his uncompromising assault on the enlightenment, Hegelian idealism and existentialism.”

Harrison Birtwistle is one of the UK’s leading composers. “I can’t get into all that stuff about communication. That’s what so many younger composers are doing now, and to me it seems retrogressive. It’s all rhetoric and no form. For me, music is all about making a real form, otherwise all you’re doing is making a substitute, adding another piece into a world that is already filled with pieces very like it. You have to have a vision.”

“Her most perceptive critics paint a picture of Miss Riefenstahl as a female Faust, who made a pact with Hitler in order to fulfill professional ambitions. So spectacularly did she use slow-motion photography and telephoto lenses, so dramatically did she wed inspirational music to inspirational image, that Miss Riefenstahl created the grammar of the sports movie, influencing the way TV sports events and movies such as Chariots of Fire were framed and shot.”

Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has died at the age of 101. “She was the first female film director to attract international acclaim, but her career was curtailed by public, industry and official antipathy owing to her status as “Hitler’s favourite film-maker”.

Martin Amis has a new book out and it’s had some critical drubbing. “After a going-over like this it wouldn’t be such a surprise if I were to report that Amis was a broken man: shoulders stooped; grey skin; eyes empty. Actually, he looks in terrific shape. At 54, his slicked-back hair may be of a colour seldom seen on nature’s paint chart, but he’s tanned, relaxed, good-humoured – and thinner than before.”

It’s been awhile since performance artist Karen Finley was the poster girl for Culture War controversy. Now she’s back with a new piece and getting new respect. “A lot of things have changed. Women’s rights in some ways have improved from the time I was doing my work 15 years ago. There are just different issues. The issues I’m dealing with now are the chaos of this nation at war and the psychological impact of struggling with a nation mourning.”

Simone Young is the first woman to hold a leading position in a major European opera house. “After a sudden — and sensational — announcement by Opera Australia last year that the company would not renew Ms. Young’s contract, she accepted the top positions at Hamburg, a trifecta of sorts: music director and general manager of the opera, and director of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. She has big plans for Hamburg, where she has negotiated a contract starting in August 2005 that puts her in charge of the purse strings.”

Conductor Osmo Vänskä takes on the Minnesota Orchestra this week as music director. “Vänskä’s personality has intriguing contradictions. He’s a clarinetist who loves hockey and motorcycles. He speaks of personal modesty and subservience to the composer, and yet he works in a glamorous, ego-driven profession in which he has become a star, first in Europe and now increasingly in the United States, where, as a guest conductor, he is constantly re-engaged by the nation’s major orchestras. He embodies the patient, hard-working maestro who in his early years shunned the international spotlight, turning down prestigious guest-conducting offers in Europe in order to devote himself to the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, a once-provincial Finnish ensemble that is now famous the world over for its revelatory recordings of works by Sibelius.”

Mitch Bainwol is the new head of the Recording Industry Association of America. “One Democratic operative describes him – apart from his ever-present Blackberry – as ‘the world’s least hip-seeming guy.’ Hipness is not part of the RIAA job requirement, even if he’s the new Washington voice of the music world’s hottest acts. Representing the interests of the nation’s largest recording companies – and to a certain extent their stable of artists – with unparalleled zeal is the primary mission. collective picture emerges of Bainwol as someone who has the rare combination of steely-eyed resolve, uncanny intelligence, a friendly attitude, the ability to tell it like it is and the tact required to achieve compromise when necessary.”