Category: people

“While the issue of producing evidence of the impact is complex and much debated, researchers and practitioners have focussed energies on collecting information that gives a convincing picture of the relationship between good quality arts and cultural activity and outcomes for older people, in terms of quality of life, better health and wellbeing.”

With dozens of recordings, the globally beloved Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, his decades directing London’s Bach Choir (Britain’s most prominent large amateur chorus), and innumerable descants for church hymns, Willcocks was one of the most influential choral conductors of the 20th century.

The first of his 33 Broadway shows was the original Oklahoma!, he acted under directors Gower Champion and John Gielgud and opposite acting legends Vivien Leigh and Liv Ullmann, and he got a death threat for his performance as Richard Nixon in a Gore Vidal satire.

The 1964 Broadway hit won a Tony and a Pulitzer. “But for Mr. Gilroy, who wrote more than 30 other plays, Roses was his only major theatrical success. And while he wrote the screenplays for 10 feature films (some of which he also produced or directed); three novels; and scores of adventures, westerns and dramas in the golden age of television, none had the impact of his first and only Broadway hit.”

A source told Politico that the 63-year-old Isaacson – former chairman and CEO of CNN, former managing editor of Time, currently president of the Aspen Institute, and author of admired biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs – was approached by the White House about the job and declined.

“People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That’s a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man’s touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don’t understand how you could have self-confidence if you don’t do the work.”

“Known for his astute casting and skillful work with actors,” Bernhard directed two Pultizer-winning plays – Paul Zindel’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1970) and Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart (1980) – and picked up a Tony for his 1978 production of Hugh Leonard’s Da.

“[It’s] different to being a famous rock star. With a writer, people bond to the books. Nobody wants my shoelaces. … One of the few privileges of being older is people put my bags on the overhead racks for me. It’s too hair-raising for them to watch me climb up on to the seat.”

“Host Alec Baldwin talks to Eric Shiner, director of The Andy Warhol Museum, about the hyper-inventive multimedia star, and learns about the surprisingly deep emotional basis for Warhol’s obsession with Campbell’s Soup.” (podcast)