Category: people

“[He] was a living refutation of the stereotype of jazz musicians as unschooled, unsophisticated and inarticulate, an image that was prevalent when he began his career in the 1940s, and that he did as much as any other musician to erase.”

“Known for her large, bright voice and expressive acting, Ms. Ginsberg was most closely associated with the spinto repertory.” She was a regular at New York City Opera and Houston Grand Opera during the 1980s and performed with a number of regional companies.

“The Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov may hail from one of the Russian intelligentsia’s most famous families, but he has become the target of barbs over a rambling political manifesto and of angry street demonstrations by his neighbors.”

“I’m 76 and I’m very ill and like a sage old dog I can smell when certain signs are there. … As a consequence we have to get some money and as time goes by you get more and more famous and less and less wealthy. I literally have to start eating my past and turning into the actually dollar all of the artifacts that have made me who I am.”

“Dutton was a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 1998, he founded the website Arts and Letters Daily, an aggregator of intellectual Web content that swiftly caught worldwide attention. His most recent book was 2009’s “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution.”

“Around AD 1000, Gerbert of Aurillac served a brief stint as pope.” (His pontifical name was Sylvester II.) “At a time supposedly devoid of science, here is a medieval pope who was highly proficient in mathematics and astronomy.”

“Eton – the world’s most esteemed high school – is not only the alma mater of Prince William and Prince Harry; of Prime Minister David Cameron and 18 of his predecessors; but also of Captain James Hook, commander of the Jolly Roger” and nemesis of Peter Pan.

Editor-in-chief of Vogue during the 1960s, Vreeland “was dead serious about clothes – she called the bikini the ‘most important thing since the atom bomb’ – but she nonetheless managed to talk about fashion in a way that appreciated and celebrated its frivolity.”

Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross interviews Brian May, once the lead guitarist for Queen, who earned a doctorate in astrophysics in 2007 and is now chancellor of a university in Liverpool.

“Karen Tuttle, a violist and teacher whose singular approach to her instrument — which entailed the expression of deep feeling, the attainment of great physical comfort and occasionally the literal rending of garments — drew disciples from around the world, died on Dec. 16 at her home in Philadelphia.”