Category: people

Superstar pianist Lang Lang attracts criticism almost as easily as he attracts publicity. And when some critics heard that the 26-year-old was writing a memoir, questions flew over what such a young man could possibly have to write about. As it turns out, though, the pianist has a harrowing personal history to recount…

In which our protagonist shows off his Frank Gehry house and Warhol paintings, the photographer strips naked, and everyone survives an earthquake.

Conductor James Levine was back on the podium to open the Boston Symphony’s new season last night, following a difficult summer which saw him undergo emergency kidney surgery and miss the bulk of the orchestra’s summer season at Tanglewood. Levine appeared healthy (and relatively slender,) and said before the concert that he’s ready for the grind of the season.

“‘I have one of the great reputations in the academic world,’ he wrote in his journal after being promoted to full professor in the Columbia English Department, in 1948. ‘This thought makes me retch.'”

The granddaughter of Lucy Maud Montgomery writes, “What has never been revealed is that [she] took her own life at the age of 67 through a drug overdose. I wasn’t told the details of what happened, and I never saw the note she left, but I do know that it asked for forgiveness.”

A Univ. of California professor is publishing poems by the Al-Qaeda mastermind in an academic journal next week. The verses, collected from cassette tapes left in his Afghan compound, “reveal Osama Bin Laden as the performer, the entertainer with an agenda.”

“Sally was not just an enslaved woman; she was the half-sister of Jefferson’s dead wife… Trained for highly skilled and sensitive jobs, the Hemingses were granted tremendous autonomy, living in circumstances almost unique for Virginia slaves.”

“Haber joined Canada’s National Ballet in 1951 as its first production stage manager. He was appointed co-artistic director with founder Celia Franca in 1973 before becoming artistic director the following year. He held that position until 1975. Haber also worked with the National Film Board, National Arts Centre and Canada Council for the Arts.”

“As he awoke from a nap and performed his ablutions, you could hear the splashing, singing and kvetching over the whole apartment. It was a ritual for shaking off fatigue and the dread of having to push everything uphill all over again.”

“His life is a far cry from what it was in the mid-1990s, when he rode the market boom, especially in technology stocks. His funds soared in value, and the profits rolled in. Mr. Vilar’s investment firm was managing $9 billion, and his wealth at one point was valued at a near $1 billion.”