Category: people

Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has a very poor opinion of his own talents, according to diaries in his personal archive, opened this week. “Somewhere in the depths of my foolish soul I nurture one conceited notion: “One day, perhaps – one day – something shining will be prised out of all this wretchedness,” he wrote of himself in 1938.

Former Museum of Modern Art curator Kirk Varnedoe has died at the age of 57. “Though he was an important historian of modern art from early on, and went on to public prominence as the top curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he never had much of the delicate aesthete about him. Kirk’s athletic, virile manner made him an oddity in the art world, and less than a favorite of a few of its inhabitants. His forceful surface also contradicted the delicately subtle tenor of his work and thought.”

“Lev Kerbel, one of the premier sculptors of Socialist realist works whose statues of Lenin once graced city squares across the Eastern bloc, has died, NTV television reported Thursday. He was 85.”

Cellist Stephen Geber has been principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra for 30 years, “the longest tenure for a principal cellist in the orchestra’s history. It’s a seat he will relinquish next week, when he retires at the end of the ensemble’s season at Blossom Music Center.”

“He had shone in so many ways: a stellar tap dancer, choreographer, actor, teacher, mentor, loved one. If you missed his appearances at tap festivals, you might have enjoyed his gritty portrayal of Jelly Roll Morton in Jelly’s Last Jam on Broadway. Although you might never have seen him tap, you might have caught him in one of his appearances on Will & Grace. His death caught most of us off guard; he let only those closest to him know that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer a little over a year ago.”

Many of today’s young dancers owe much to Gregory Hines. “If you saw Hines dance, you saw his dynamic continuation of a dance tradition inherited from legendary hoofers such as Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Honi Coles, Sandman Sims, The Nicholas Brothers and Teddy Hale, to mention a few.”

After nine years, Christoph Eschenbach leaves as music director of the Ravinia Festival this week. “If James Levine kicked Ravinia’s international profile up several notches, Eschenbach certified it as a full-service festival – a place where young musicians and seasoned artists can strike sparks off one another, where top-level chamber music thrives, where amazing things can appear out of nowhere like the fireflies that dance among the picnickers on the lawn. He has set the spontaneous tone for a summer place where performers unwind in postlude concerts that have been known to go on well past midnight.”

Actor/dancer Gregory Hines has died of cancer. He was best known for his roles in films such as The Cotton Club (1984), based around the seminal 1920s New York jazz club, in which he played Sandman Williams. He was also cast alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov in the thriller White Nights (1985), and alongside Billy Crystal in the comic cop thriller Running Scared (1986).”

The new director of the Whitney Museum is well-regarded as a curator. “What the Whitney needs to do is define its terrain. It must set itself apart from the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and a host of other smaller museums in New York, all competing for the same audience. The idea is for the Whitney to help shape the dialogue about what American art is and will be.”

Many of the jazz greats are dead. “All this weighs heavily on Canada’s jazz colossus Oscar Peterson, who will celebrate his 78th birthday on Friday. He’s been an international star for more than half a century, the work of his trios and quartets a grail for jazzers to pursue. The deaths of the jazz greats he moved with colours his views of today’s music. Peterson is from the golden age of jazz, when swing and bebop and the territory in between that he ploughs with such dazzling dexterity spawned hordes of mighty players whose genius is apparent even to contemporary listeners under assault from the forces of musical dreck.”