Category: people

“His pieces include a string quartet to be played by gloved musicians using knitting needles (String Quartet II); a lecture on avant-garde music that is interrupted by music and mime (Sur scène); and an orchestral piece in which the conductor tries to get through a performance while negotiating with hostage-takers (Kidnapping in the Concert Hall).”

Wallace was the kind of literary figure whose career was emblematic of his age. He may not have been the most famous novelist of his time, but more than anyone else, he exemplified and articulated the defining anxieties and attitudes of his generation.

“In the American literary undergrowth, Philip Roth is a big beast as fabulous as the hippogriff, rarely sighted, spoken of with awe, and the subject of wild, sometimes scandalised, gossip.”

“Jopling, an art dealer, is the owner of the the commercial White Cube gallery, whose artists include Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers. Taylor-Wood is a Turner Prize-nominated artist probably best known for her video portrait, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, of David Beckham sleeping.”

Henry Z. Steinway, the great-grandson of the founder of the legendary piano-making company, died Thursday in New York. He was 93. He was the last of his family to run the company that was started in 1853. The company was sold to CBS Corp. in 1977.

“Motown songwriter and producer Norman Whitfield, whose credits include hits I Heard It Through The Grapevine and War, has died in Los Angeles… The Temptations’ chart hits were all Whitfield’s work, and he was their chief producer from 1966-74. The songwriter also co-wrote and produced songs for Gladys Knights and The Pips.”

Oboist Peter Kjome was forced to give up his performing career in the 1990s because of health problems, but he never forgot his passion for the orchestral world. So after a stint in business school and nearly a decade running the $3.4 billion consumer-products division at 3M, Kjome is back at his old orchestra, Michigan’s Grand Rapids Symphony, this time as CEO.

“He doesn’t much like it when his story is told as if it were a piece of theatre in its own right, for fear that it trivialises that time of mighty shifts in the world order. Yet when you look at this extraordinary life it is hard to ignore completely the parallels between his progress and the sometimes absurdist tone of his work.”

A 1929 agreement between Italy and the Vatican that says an insult to the Pope shall carry the same penalty as an insult to the Italian president. For Sabina Guzzanti, that could mean five years in jail.

One of Canada’s leading philanthropists says that arts advocates can’t just sit around bad-mouthing the prime minister whenever conservatives less friendly to cultural funding are in charge. “The goal, he says, must be to influence the government. Get on the radar screen. Get the media to publicize your issue. Build a strong argument. Demand that every party articulate a cultural policy.”