Category: people

Van Cliburn might have gotten all the attention after his Tchailowsky Competition win in 1958. But Byron Janis made his mark in the Soviet Union in subsequent years…

A self-confessed “simple man, essentially a southern Italian peasant,” the music director-designate of the Chicago Symphony said he didn’t own an iPod and that, until just the other day, thought iPod was the name of a racehorse.

Charles Wuorinen is not the type of composer anyone would ever mistake for a populist. “Words that have been used to describe his works [include] difficult – modernist – rigorous – impenetrable – gnarly – imposing – severe.” Yet in an age when modernist composition is supposed to be out of fashion, Wuorinen is thriving.

“David Hockney is over 70 years old, and very angry. With the passing of the years, the Sixties working-class wonder boy has metamorphosed into a very cross pensioner.”

“The desk where Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations and his final correspondence hours before his death fetched £433,250 [over $845,000] at auction on Wednesday, around seven times its pre-sale estimate.”

If you’re looking for evidence that classical music stars need not be stunningly beautiful women in low-cut dresses to be successful in the 21st century, you could do worse than Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Unlike some soloists, Kavakos is all about substance, a reputation shaped by a demanding series of teachers and a devotion to the folk melodies of his home country.

d’Harnoncourt was a natural museum director in perhaps the best, most basic way. She had the kind of star quality that lights up rooms, but also the confidence to let her curators shine, knowing that their achievements reflected well on her and on the museum she loved so deeply.

The name Banksy may be synonymous with graffiti art these days, but where’s the love for a true pioneer like Cy Twombly, asks Jonathan Jones? “He is a painter – and sculptor – who defies every category and transcends every cliché: a man who has never been pinned down and is still working, at 80, with tremendous gusto and creative generosity.”

Paul Sills, one of the founders of the improvisational comedy group “The Second City,” which has turned out some of America’s best-known comedians, died Monday. Second City helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Stephen Colbert and Mike Myers.

Diddley died of heart failure Monday. He had suffered a heart attack in August 2007, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.