Category: people

“Mr. Hayman was the St. Louis Symphony’s pops conductor from 1976 until the pops concerts were discontinued in 2002. He was also the chief arranger for the Boston Pops Orchestra for more than 50 years, under both Arthur Fiedler and John Williams, and conducted pops concerts in Detroit, Hartford and other cities in the United States and Canada.”

That – in so many words (“a reformed teenage thug”) – is what conductor John Eliot Gardiner argues in his new biography, asserting that Bach, for all his musical skill and piety, grew up to be rebellious, resentful, and mistrustful of authorities for his entire adult life. Scholar and former American Bach Society George B. Stauffer takes a look at the evidence.

“The Holy Father does not see films, and will not be seeing this one. It is also important to avoid using the Pope as part of a marketing strategy.”

“His ghost composer, Takashi Niigaki, said he provided music for Samuragochi for 18 years and questioned if he was hearing impaired.”

“I myself question very much why the country needed something like this law. … I think it was seen internationally as a bad thing happening in Russia. I think in Russia, the view was different. The way people read this law is slightly different or sometimes very different.” (includes video and transcript)

“He has wrapped himself in barbed wire, sewn his lips shut and caused the world to wince with his now-infamous stunt in Moscow. As the Russian authorities circle around Petr Pavlensky, the protest artist explains why he’s not afraid.”

“As Berlin’s cultural affairs secretary, a post he has held since 2006, Andre Schmitz was responsible for one of the largest culture budgets in Europe.”

“[He] gained instant stardom in French ballet as the violent chair-throwing youth in Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort in 1946 … His extraordinary technique, soaring leaps and masculine power were matched by a pantherlike pounce and a jarring poetic presence.”

As information about the poet’s life came out in the years after his death in 1963, his image changed from New England country sage to jealous and cruel egomaniac. Yet one of the editors of Frost’s correspondence says that what we’ll find there is “mostly … a generosity of spirit.”

Muti looks more and more these days for ways to connect past and present. He wonders if the current merging and melding of cultures and nationalities will produce a kind of music that “will be relevant to listeners today” while “exploring the many layers of the past, the many kinds of melody, harmony, chanting, rhythms of all of these societies throughout history.”