Category: people

“Then an electrical technician, Cassagnes came upon the Etch A Sketch idea in the late 1950s when he peeled a translucent decal from a light switch plate and found pencil mark images transferred to the opposite face.”

“Any children’s party DJ can brandish a kaleidoscopic cacophony of whirling spinamajiggers, frenetic gobo-trons and dervishing lasermabobs. … So what’s a lighting designer to do? Less.”

Simon “was known in particular for bringing long-neglected operas and oratorios by George Frideric Handel to American audiences, demonstrating that there was far more to the composer than the ‘Water Music’ and the ‘Messiah.'”

“The NJSO now says Richard Dare deceived the organization by providing an “incomplete and misleading version” of criminal charges.”

“His unfailingly accessible, straightforwardly beautiful music, like that of Aaron Copland, his opposite number in America, is widely – if by no means universally – thought [by critics] to be too ‘easy’ to be great. But there’s more to it than that. Throughout his life and to this day, Britten’s reputation has risen and fallen for reasons that have at least as much to do with his complex personality.”

“A Haitian dancer and choreographer who brought his country’s traditional music and dance to concert stages around the world, … [he] first came to international attention in the 1940s and remained prominent for decades afterward.”

“There had been rumours he would never direct again, partly on account of back problems stemming from a fall in Rome, followed by failed surgery. Only when he came to terms with his condition” – confinement to a wheelchair – “was he able to consider taking on another project.”

Bob Silvers doesn’t like to discuss what might happen to the NYRB after he steps down, saying only that there are “three or four brilliant editors who could run the review, and people who would make an exhilarating paper. They would do something probably different, in some way,” he muses. “We don’t know what they would do.”

Think he was an aloof and thoughtful but cheerful rural New Englander? He was born and raised in San Francisco, son of a boisterous former Confederate and local politician, and Robert spent his youth riding on parade floats and tacking up his old man’s placards in saloons.