Category: people

“[T]here is the holiday where he taught himself ancient Greek; the lessons he is currently taking from an Oxford don in harmony and counterpoint (working out how Brahms, for instance, achieves particular emotional states); and then there is the way he treats each character he plays as a living, breathing puzzle.”

“At the peak of his influence, from the 1960s through the 1980s, Graham was the top man at Chicago’s biggest architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill…. [H]e shaped a legacy that suggests the epitaph on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, who is buried in his masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London: ‘Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.’ “

“Under terms of their arrangement, Colony will become Ms Leibovitz’s sole creditor and help her market a library of photographs that includes such images as her Vanity Fair magazine cover of a naked, pregnant Demi Moore and her Rolling Stone photo of a nude John Lennon embracing Yoko Ono.”

“[He] was renowned for roles by Benjamin Britten and was an eloquent interpreter of Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Janacek and Stravinsky” as well as Harrison Birtwistle, who wrote three roles for him. Langridge’s final performance was just after New Year’s, as the Witch in Hansel and Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera.

Plácido Domingo was discharged Sunday from Mount Sinai Hospital of  New York City after successfully undergoing laparoscopic surgery to remove a localized malignant polyp in his colon … The 69-year-old tenor is expected to make a full recovery.

“He presents reason rather than pizzazz, and restraint at the keyboard rather than the sighing, eye-rolling histrionics of a Lang Lang; Yundi Li’s disdain for the publicity game is all too apparent.”

“David Morgan, now a lecturer himself at Chelsea College of Art and Design, was a 24-year-old novice from a troubled, itinerant background when he met Murdoch, already a respected author in her forties, in February 1964.”

“[W]ith his business partner, Bill Drake, [he] reshaped rock radio in the 1960s with prepackaged programming that delivered more music and fewer commercials to hundreds of stations, creating the automated format common today.”

“The son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy said he was ‘horrified’ when he learned earlier this week that clothing that his father was wearing when he was assassinated in 1968 was being displayed at an exhibit in Las Vegas. … After a complaint from the family, the LAPD removed the items from a display at a homicide investigators conference.”

“Wendy Toye made her first stage appearance at the Albert Hall at the age of 3, and went on to develop a career of extraordinary diversity, as a dancer and choreographer, actress and director of opera and stage plays. She was also one of Britain’s few female film directors.”