Category: people

The beloved and widely-recorded singer was admired for his Bach and Handel and English art song, but he was best known for his work with Benjamin Britten, who wrote a number of roles for him.

Fox has promised it will reveal the “barely-known first act” of Hirst’s life, with the artist’s “witty style and northern edge”.

“None of us who knew and worked with Gerard will ever be the same. His visionary, always practical, and constantly generous presence enlivened each conversation, each rehearsal, each project. Perhaps more amazingly, many of Gerard’s rivals, critics, and adversaries will never be the same either.”

Julian Oliver: “Whether my work is placed in a gallery and intended as art is of little interest to me, but what I’ve found is that it doesn’t matter whether I call it art. Others will do it for me, so I may as well take advantage of what those spaces have to offer.”

“As adept at comedy as drama and an excellent singer and dancer, Rooney was regarded as the consummate entertainer. During a prolific career on stage and screen that spanned eight decades (‘I’ve been working all my life, but it seems longer,’ he once said), he was nominated for four Academy Awards.”

“One of the last men who could credibly claim the title of Manhattan’s last bohemian had not only decided he was quitting the city, he also figured he could find a richer existence 4,000 miles away — in the Austrian Alps.”

“A rugged, weather-beaten figure who was reared and educated in privilege — an advantage that left him uneasy, he said — Mr. Matthiessen was a man of many parts: littérateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist, professional fisherman and, in the early 1950s, undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Paris.”

“Born into the East Coast establishment, Matthiessen ran from it, and in the running became a novelist, a C.I.A. agent, a founder of The Paris Review, author of more than 30 books, a naturalist, an activist and a master in one of the most respected lineages in Zen.”

“Known for recognizing talent and nurturing it, for making connections among artists – ‘an instinctive, intellectual switchboard,’ [one observer] wrote of her – Ms. Morgan was at various times an agent, an amanuensis, an administrator, a salon-keeper and a behind-the-scenes alchemist who helped forge creative partnerships for decades.”

“Goldsmith, who set aside a pianistic career to write for High Fidelity magazine in the heyday of the classical LP, became a familiar and influential critical voice for music lovers in the ’50s and ’60s, and could be spotted almost any night of the week in the press section of one or another of the New York concert halls, listening intently and then expounding to his colleagues on the music.” (includes audio)