Category: people

“A scion of a prominent German-Jewish family, Mr. Morgenthau was a son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s treasury secretary, a grandson of the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire under President Woodrow Wilson, the older brother of former Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, and a cousin of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara W. Tuchman. … His years as a producer at WGBH in Boston, from 1955 to 1977, coincided with the birth of public television.”

The term “Follow your passion” has increased ninefold in English books since 1990. “Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” is another college-counseling standby of unknown provenance. But according to psychologist Carol Dweck and others, that advice is steering people wrong.

As industrious a writer as he was an editor (John McPhee marveled that Gottlieb once read an 80,000-word article of his overnight, with cogent suggestions for improvements), Gottlieb has published biographical treatments of Sarah Bernhardt, Charles Dickens’s children and the choreographer George Balanchine. Given that he turned 87 in April, the title of his new book, “Near-Death Experiences … and Others,” might suggest a meditation on impending mortality, a midnight reflection on the exit sign hanging at the end of the hall. Nothing of the sort.

Timothy Lees has been on leave since December due to medical issues related to a nerve injury affecting the fingers of his left hand. He has undergone cervical spine surgery and continues with a plethora of treatments. Lees has been on intermittent leave since the condition rose in April 2016. Although he was able to perform for the orchestra’s tour of Asia in March 2017 and again for the re-opening of the renovated Cincinnati Music Hall in October 2017, persisting symptoms resulted in his going back on leave.

Maria Konnikova: “It’s really physically and emotionally and mentally exhausting. I’m just sitting at a poker table inside a casino. I don’t actually see any of the places I visit a lot of the time. It can get really lonely. … People want to get into it because they think it’s easy money are absolutely insane. It’s some of the most difficult money in the world.”

Besides definitive interpretations of his own music, he must surely have given more first performances than any other conductor, alongside an outstanding body of recordings. He was the central focus of so many activities, and an irreplaceable mentor to his fellow composers, who constantly sought and relied on his advice and encouragement.

The 2018 laureates of the Japan Art Assoication’s 15 million yen ($133,000) prize, created as a sort of Nobel for the arts, are actress Catherine Deneuve, conductor Riccardo Muti, architect Christian de Portzamparc, painter Pierre Alechinsky, and sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, known for using fog as a medium.

“That’s where my storytelling comes from. My feminism comes from somewhere else: acute dissatisfaction. … I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to tell stories. Sadly, I also don’t remember a time when I wasn’t telling people what I think about the world.”

“A wiry, calming presence backstage, Mr. Johnson choreographed solo shows and revues for performers including Ann-Margret, Bernadette Peters, Tommy Tune and Shirley MacLaine, who once christened him the ‘heir apparent’ to acclaimed choreographers Michael F. Bennet and Bob Fosse. Yet Mr. Johnson remained best known for his work with Brooks” – the dancing in “Springtime for Hitler” in The Producers, the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” tap dance in Young Frankenstein, Madeline Kahn’s burlesque number in Blazing Saddles, the Busby Berkeley-style monks and nuns in History of the World: Part I.

Jean-Marc Bustamante, the outgoing director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA), France’s national arts academy in Paris, has criticised the French culture minister for a lack of support after being attacked by students. This follows allegations of sexual harassment made by students against some of the school’s teachers earlier this year. An online petition on Change.org, demanding that the administration address the issue, has more than 1,000 signatures.