Category: people

The feminist author said she first noticed her special gift as a young child, and still uses it today to gain a deeper understanding of human feelings that enriches her work.

“I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept,” she once said. “I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.”

The conductor showed virtually no signs of injury and appeared to have full range of motion. He did not address the audience or make any reference to Thursday’s incident.

“Philharmonic president Deborah Borda said that the 28-year-old Venezuelan music director heard a loud pop and lost sensation on one side. He managed to pump out enough endorphins to keep up a fiery performance, but he did not look himself at the curtain call.”

“When you are a leader, you have to learn how to work because you have to convince the people in front of you of your ideas. When I started to conduct in professional orchestras when I was 22 or 23, [I had to] convince people with a lot of experience, with the tradition of sound or the idea of specific piece. What I want from the musicians is to enjoy what they are doing.”

“A baron of the early computer industry, he helped found the world’s largest chipmaker, Intel. He came up with the cash to save a fledgling magazine called Rolling Stone and bankrolled movies. And he used his immense wealth to build notable art collections that turned the Los Angeles County Museum of Art into a destination for lovers of the Arts and Crafts movement.”

Considered one of the great opera singers of the postwar era, Simionato had a 30-year career at La Scala that encompassed most of the great standard mezzo roles. She performed in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s debut season (1954), and continued there as well as at the Met and most of the world’s major companies until she retired in 1966.

“As [the Indian-British author] publishes his collected short stories, he talks to Sarfraz Manzoor about his career, and his determination to escape the suburbs in favour of velvet trousers, drugs and cultural self-invention.”

A CNN copy editor sprang into action when he spotted errors in Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ about-to-be-unveiled star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “‘Um, excuse me,’ I said to the workmen, ‘but I’m pretty sure that star is missing an O. And a hyphen.’ They were startled, and a little unsure what to do – after all, the ceremony was in four hours….”

That headline is not figurative: the Canadian singer-songwriter is spending this spring and summer playing dozens of concerts to crowds in the dozens in individual fans’ homes (and the occasional café-bar) in Great Britain and Europe. “If you miss me,” she e-mailed to a fan in an out-of-the-way place, “invite me to your living room and find, say, 30 people at 30 dollars.”