Category: people

“His love might have been like a red red rose, but it turns out that Robert Burns may also have been suffering from a rather nasty STD, according to a collection of explicit writing apparently by Scotland’s national bard, due to go on sale in January 2009.”

Wallace was “wary of ideas. He was perpetually on guard against the ways in which abstract thinking (especially thinking about your own thinking) can draw you away from something more genuine and real. To read his acutely self-conscious, dialectically fevered writing was often to witness the agony of cognition.”

A core member of Fluxus, the loosely affiliated international group of playful Conceptual artists that emerged in the early 1960s, Brecht died on Dec. 5 in Cologne, Germany.

“By age 50, Copland had become one of the pivotal figures in American musical history. While at this property, Copland composed symphonic works, as well as ballet, chamber, orchestral, and piano works. This house reflects Copland’s lifestyle, values, and personal modesty.” A ceremony and the unveiling of a plaque will be held early next year.

The Portuguese filmmaker celebrated his 100th birthday on Dec. 11, the same day that composer Elliott Carter did. And, like Carter, Oliveira is still making new work.

A 16-year-old guitarist with Italian gothic metal band Soul Cry is in hospital after bandmates allegedly stabbed him for not playing well enough.

“Elliott [has], even now at 100, a fantastic vitality and a fantastic youthful view of things,” James Levine says. “He’s literally still in his prime. He’s writing just one marvelous, original new piece after the other.”

Sure, he can conduct Tristan at the Met and name his own date for playing Carnegie Hall. (He chose today, Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday.) But even he gets taken for a ride by a NY cabbie, finds that some backstage ticket staff don’t recognize his name, and is made to hobble around the block on a gout-ridden leg because a security guard has to follow the rules.

Retired cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez interrupted his homily in honor of the late dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet yesterday to rail against the pop star, who is currently making her first appearances in Chile. “This woman comes here and in an incredibly shameless manner, she provokes a crazy enthusiasm, an enthusiasm of lust, lustful thoughts, impure thoughts.”

“Richard Van Allan, who has died aged 73, was a stalwart of British opera from his debut in the Glyndebourne chorus in 1964 until his last appearance at the Edinburgh Festival two years ago.”