Category: people

“Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ had its première on September 8, 1971, at the Kennedy Center Opera House. The Kennedy Center opened the same night, promising a new era of culture on the Potomac. … In the weeks before and after the premiere, Nixon repeatedly discussed ‘Mass’ and related events with H. R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, and on one occasion with the movie star Ginger Rogers.”

“Because ‘Mass’ was scheduled to have its première at the Kennedy Center, a shrine to a fallen President, Nixon felt some pressure to attend. But the F.B.I. warned that Bernstein might be perpetrating something ghastly, and other disturbing reports reached the White House in the summer of 1971. Some of the more curious characters on Nixon’s staff went to work on the problem,” as these memos attest.

“The old theatrical term is ‘go break a leg’. It is usually meant as a message of good luck. But Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, has done just that. Mr Mills has fractured his right ankle on an uneven area of Edinburgh pavement.”

“Working intently and noisily in her home in Montclair, N.J., she helped reimagine the idea of what a violin could be. In the process she designed and built an entire family of violins, eight instruments proportional in size and pitch known collectively as the new violin family or the violin octet.The new violin family, its enthusiasts say, not only extends the range of the traditional violin family, but also corrects the acoustic imbalances among its members that have bedeviled composers and players for generations.”

“Pasang Sherpa, 51, of Long Island City, lost his prime spot outside the Met on Friday when he failed to pay his $53,558 monthly rent at the city’s most lucrative vending spot.”

She’s “an ex-studio musician who played on KFC and Lysol television commercials as a struggling 20-something. Now here she is, a globe-trotting superstar … [who] pops up on NPR and the Today show to banter about classical music.” She says, “I have managers who tell me, ‘Oh, maestros don’t do that.’ They’re always trying to get me to be more maestro-like. It’s a losing battle.”

He “wrote the award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront and created a classic American archetype of naked ambition, Sammy Glick, in his novel What Makes Sammy Run? … Mr. Schulberg also wrote journalism, short stories, novels and biographies. He collaborated with F. Scott Fitzgerald, arrested the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and named names before a Communist-hunting Congressional committee.”

When you’re a smart person who’s made a high-profile career as a funny, caustic performer, how do you recalibrate your tone for a serious setting? It’s a question celebrities have long confronted, and Al Franken faces the same problem as he gears up for his maiden speech in the Senate. The issue isn’t only what he says; it’s that his audience has been conditioned over decades to expect humor from him.

The man arrested in Saturday’s bomb scare at La Guardia Airport “was a regular at Beethoven Pianos on W. 58th St., turning up weekly over the last year to rent one of the $15-an-hour instruments, according to shop employees. ‘He’s always welcome here,’ said Perry Fellwock, marketing manager at the store. ‘His piano playing is brilliant. He plays mostly classical music.'”

“Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz may be better off declaring bankruptcy than battling a creditor suing her for breaching a contract related to a $24 million loan, bankruptcy experts said. … While losing the case may result in Leibovitz’s financial ruin, a bankruptcy court filing ‘may be more attuned to fairness issues with regard to her and to all her creditors,'” one lawyer said.