Category: people

A bestselling writer and broadcaster, Silvano Vinceti has carved out a lucrative niche for himself as the solver of art’s great mysteries. When it comes to cracking cases and codes, there’s nothing in The Da Vinci Code to touch him. Yet Vinceti is keen to dismiss the Dan Brown comparison from the off. “Brown writes novels, and his theses are fantasies. I, by contrast, make findings based on historical investigation.”

“As a professional talker, on radio, Winters was one of a kind, and prized as such during the prime of his CBC radio career. He savoured consonants and especially vowels the way some people savour wine.”

“A decade later, Ludlum’s death has become the subject of an inflammatory book that raises startling questions about the final weeks of the ailing author, who changed his will shortly before he died.”

“Valerie Wilder rose from company dancer to general manager of the National Ballet in Toronto, but is now leading the Australian Ballet company into its 50th anniversary next year.”

“Ansari often satirises people’s expectations of him based on his ethnicity, and the fact that he tells these stories with the light southern accent that comes from having grown up in South Carolina makes them funnier. But it’s the way he tells them that gives them that extra comic twist, devoid of the anger or bitterness that is so common in standups.”

“[V]arious Los Angeles bloggers are pointing to evidence that graffiti street artist Banksy has targeted Hollywood with his latest round of art … Whether he’s here and whether these are, in fact, his works remain to be seen, but the timing is curious” – his documentary Exit Through the Guft Shop is on Oscar voters’ ballots.

He “was a prominent CBC radio host and contributor for [40] years, most notably during his tenure at Mostly Music in the 1980s and 1990s.” His long career as a critic included work for the Winnipeg Free Press, Toronto Telegram, and The Globe and Mail, and he was a principal editor of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

“For decades Mr. Ames performed as a soloist on stages in New York and around the world. From 1976 to the early 1980s he also directed the Jerry Ames Tap Dance Company, one of the first regular troupes devoted exclusively to tap.”

“That partner, Eva Gabrielsson, has spent the last several years fighting for the right to determine how [the late] Larsson’s name and work … are used.” (That right currently belongs to Larsson’s father and brother.) “But it’s not just a desire for creative control that she wants now, … [She] also wants something that Larsson’s heroine, Lisbeth Salander, pursues throughout Larsson’s Millennium series: revenge.”

“Harth served as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Louisville Symphony Orchestra over his career. He left first chair of the latter and stepped onto the podium as an assistant conductor, leading to a second career.”