Category: people

“Considered one of the most eminent puppeteers in the country, Mr. Ballard was long associated with the University of Connecticut, which through his work became — and remains — a Mecca for puppeteers in training. … It is beyond rare for an institution of higher learning to grant degrees in puppetry.”

“[His] obsessive quest [was] to unearth innovative materials and utilise well-established ones in unusual ways. His career was a constant stream of experimentation: he made prints and sculpture in his youth; satirised American Pop Art in the 1960s; explored photography in the 1970s; refocused on large-scale painting in the 1980s; and continually returned to drawing throughout his life.”

“It is [her] blend of Old World manners and youthful exuberance, her journeyman work ethic, paired with a sense of privilege at being in the theater, that has made her a legendary figure within it. In the mirrored bubble of show business, where people see only themselves, she sees everyone else. More than that, she celebrates them.”

“James N. Wood, who helped the J. Paul Getty Trust regain its good name as its president and chief executive over the last three years and led the Art Institute of Chicago through 24 years of growth, died Friday” at age 69. He was found dead at his home on Friday after failing to arrive at a meeting in Chicago.

“Michel Cardin, a music professor at the University of Moncton, said he is wondering whether he’ll be able to play his lute again after Air Canada broke his instrument on a recent trip. When he opened up the case after returning to Moncton, the lute was snapped in two.”

The two Nobel laureates “will join forces … to mount an assault on autumn’s bestseller charts with the publication of the former South African president’s private journals.”

“I loved [Patsy], too. Those two when they were sozzled were the most repellent and therefore hysterically funny, risible creatures. … And then to my amazement the country went, ‘But we’re like that!’ And you think, gee-whiz, darlings, please don’t be like that! … I much prefer all that Victorian stiff upper lip. Carry on. ‘I say, your leg looks as though it’s been shot off!’ ‘By God, sir, so it has’.”

“Nicolas Slonimsky once described Mr. Beeson’s approach to composition as ‘enlightened utilitarianism.’ That characterization delighted Mr. Beeson, who eschewed dogma … His pragmatic approach was exemplified by Lizzie Borden, his fourth opera,” premiered by New York City Opera in 1965 and revived there in 1999.

In the 1920s, she “began her career at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg where she immediately landed the top roles in classic ballets like The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadère. She then moved to the Bolshoi in 1930 – reportedly on the personal invitation of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin – where she danced until 1952 and wowed the public with her strength and flexibility.”

“[A] maverick associate of the Abstract Expressionists in New York, [he] found his subject matter in the joys and sorrows of ordinary people on the street. His boxy figures of the 1960s, somberly painted in thick impasto, their features often scratched into the surface, faced the viewer squarely with an air of stoicism or grim defiance.”