Category: people

For Franzo and Marina King, who had begun taking Coltrane’s music and ideas seriously as a world view, he had not passed away. He had merely ascended. Franzo had always imagined becoming a preacher one day. He had now found his God. The Kings’ jazz club was refashioned into a temple, where members participated in the organizing and uplift common in the Bay Area of the sixties. – The New Yorker

In response to a quip about Cosby that Murphy made during the opening monologue of his return to Saturday Night Live, the now-jailed rapist‘s publicist said that Murphy “was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave.” Reporter Elahe Izadi reviews the long and unhappy relationship between the two comedians. – The Washington Post

What are the essential pieces of culture you have to have? For Whelan, they include Stravinsky, MoMA, socks and Chanel No. 19. – The New York Times

“At their best, the artists who died this year could make us see the world in new ways — even as they made us laugh and cry. Here is a tribute to some of them, in their own words.” – The New York Times

I have tried not to think too often about the long shadow that Paul Bowles casts over Tangier, but this year’s commemorations have made it hard to avoid: the twentieth anniversary of Bowles’s death and the seventieth of The Sheltering Sky’s publication. In Tangier, celebrations to mark this “existential masterpiece” are under way, including balls and masquerade parties. And so I’ve found myself again asking how this genteel American writer came to be so bound up with Morocco, and how, in recent years, he has become a figure of both nostalgia and contention. – New York Review of Books

While Clive James, a critic, writer and television broadcaster who left his native Australia to find fame in the U.K., received encomiums for the catholicity of his taste, the splendor of his wit and his evangelical passion for the life of the mind, John Simon, the Yugoslavian-born polymath who was long enthroned at New York Magazine as a theater and film critic, was remembered less for his razor-sharp prose than for his vitriolic glee, his attacks on actors’ physical flaws, his sometimes shocking political insensitivity and his penchant for acidulous put-downs and puns. – Los Angeles Times

“In the South Bronx at the dawn of the 1970s, all the creative components that would coalesce into what became widely known as hip-hop were beginning to take shape. At the center of them all was Phase 2, an intuitive, disruptive talent who first made his mark as a writer of graffiti — although he hated the term.” – The New York Times

Simon “was often called a pianist’s pianist — greatly admired by musicians and critics if not strictly a household name. Known in particular for his interpretations of the Romantic literature, he was lauded for the fleetness of his fingers, the lightness of his tone and the thoughtfulness of his interpretations.” – The New York Times

“[She] is best known for having founded, in 1968, an electronic music studio at Hunter College in New York, where she taught composition and theory from 1966 until 1989. … [She] created a relatively small but prescient body of work, including pieces that used bits of recorded speech turned into music.” – The New York Times

“Mexican muralism taught her the importance of expressing a political and social consciousness, but she softened the militancy that was common in the post-revolutionary era. In allegorical paintings, prints and murals with a subtle yet richly colorful palette, Ms. Lazo celebrated Mesoamerican cultures, especially the Maya, and the spiritual abundance of the natural world.” – The New York Times