Category: people

“Since Lennon’s death, she has been hounded for exploiting his memory; just last week she was castigated for including Lennon’s blood-stained clothes in a New York exhibition, a decision she justifies as a work of political art. […] Even at the height of her grief, she went on with her work  … ‘[B]ut nobody really noticed,’ she says without rancour. ‘I was like a prisoner drawing on the walls or someone doing cave paintings. I was laying things for the future, for the next prisoner who might notice it.'”

“I only feel grateful that [the authorities’] power is limited to not releasing the films. The good thing is that their power doesn’t go any further than that. The people who really want to see them can do it illegally. The fruit is blown away. But others can catch it, and eat it. The wind knows where to take it.”

“As recovery efforts continued after Sunday night’s crash of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil’s northeast coast, in which 228 people are feared dead, two more artists were named among the probable victims.” They are Eithne Walls, a former member of Riverdance, and Turkish classical harpist Fatma Ceren Necipoglu.

“‘House’ star Kal Penn’s much-heralded road from the Fox series to the White House seems to have hit a pothole, or at least taken a turn into a cul-de-sac. Despite announcing in mid-April that Penn’s character had been killed off so he could accept a position as an Associate Director at the White House Office of Public Liaison, the actor, who was an early Obama supporter, has … no official start date with the Obama administration.”

“The Chicago musical icon died Wednesday at age 80 of complications from gastrointestinal surgery less than four weeks after her last performance, at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, Tenn. There she collected her record 29th Blues Music Award, capping an era in which she became the most revered female blues vocalist of her time with signature hits ‘Wang Dang Doodle,’ ‘I’m a Woman’ and ‘Hey Bartender’.”

“Broadway musical director Hal Prince, Stratford veteran Martha Henry and New York novelist E.L. Doctorow are among the stars who have written letters praising Garth Drabinsky in a bid to secure leniency for the convicted theatre impresario, the Star has learned. The letters will be presented to Superior Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto, possibly tomorrow when sentencing court sessions are scheduled to begin.”

“The Canadian university was clear that it had not reconsidered its decision to appoint [Derek] Walcott to the role, despite making it shortly before claims of sexual harassment against the Caribbean poet were publicised during the elections for the Oxford professor of poetry. The three-year term will see Walcott spending six weeks a year teaching intensive poetry and playwriting courses and mentoring both staff and students.”

“After buying [a dilapidated San Francisco Victorian] building in 1975, he embarked on a renovation that became a sort of excavation of the structure’s history. As he peeled back layers of materials, he exposed information about former inhabitants and made collections of remnants, sometimes turning old woodwork and scraps of wallpaper into artworks.”

“The thing about Jonathan is that his comic gift is accompanied by another trait … He is one of the most formidable intellectuals in captivity. In that capacity he has fathered many books and articles in scholarly publications on science, physics, religion, politics, the arts, medicine, psychology, mesmerism and just about everything else.”

Stanley Drucker, the New York Philharmonic’s first clarinetist, “has played with the Philharmonic for the past 60 years, or nearly one-third of the orchestra’s history. When he retires at the end of June, he will have played in more than 10,200 concerts. And Drucker will be going out with a bang, including with one of his signature pieces, the Clarinet Concerto by Aaron Copland.”