Canada’s Heritage Minister has been under fire from all sides recently, accused of snubbing arts leaders and promoting censorship. “While it can’t be easy for women in [Stephen] Harper’s testosterone-filled cabinet (seven of the 32 ministers are female), it must be even harder as the minister promoting arts and culture, an area that many Tories believe is frivolous.”
Category: people
Getting Off At Oscar Peterson
“A grassroots campaign has taken hold in Montreal to rename a busy subway station after Mr. Peterson, the Montreal-born music legend who died in December. The problem is that the station, located around the corner from where Mr. Peterson was born and raised, is currently named Station Lionel-Groulx.”
Story Of A Seattle Artist
“During his long life in the studio, Alden Mason has painted on the edge of a national reputation without achieving one. Something always held him back. Art dealers closed, lost interest or proved unreliable. He has been known to leave a good gallery for a bad one. Book projects have fallen apart. Only last year, a filmmaker who’d spent three years shooting a documentary on Mason had a fatal heart attack before finishing the project.”
Montrealers Want To Name Subway Station After Oscar Peterson
“Peterson was born and raised in Montreal’s southwest borough, where many people would like to see the Lionel-Groulx metro station named after him as an homage to the role he played within the city’s black community.”
Philadelphia’s Star Architecture Critic
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Inga Saffron “isn’t just a critic — she’s a reporter and, often, an advocate in her weekly “Changing Skyline” column. Those roles muddy the journalistic waters at times, but in a city with a planning agency that’s asleep at the wheel and a tangled, ineffective zoning code, her words carry great weight.”
Tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano, 86
“Di Stefano, to whom Luciano Pavarotti owed his launch to stardom, died in Milan on Monday. Di Stefano died after a long coma caused by an attack during a robbery at his Kenyan holiday home in late 2004.”
Elliott Carter At 99
“Carter skeptics might ask why this friendliness to the wide world of music isn’t more reflected in what he writes. His defenders would ask if skeptics have even heard enough Carter music to say that; most cities don’t.”
Playing It From Both Sides
“As Martin Luther’s PR man, Lucas Cranach was crucial to the success of the Reformation, yet he also produced many great works for the Catholic church. Ideology was all very well – but for this artist, business was business.”
9/11 Comments Come Back To Haunt Oscar Winner
“Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard is facing criticism after footage of her apparently questioning the 9/11 attacks surfaced on the internet… Cotillard appears to suggest the attacks on the World Trade Center were staged to avoid the expense of refurbishing them.”
Guillaume Côté’s Unexpected Second Act
National Ballet of Canada principal dancer Guillaume Côté has been gradually crafting a second career for himself, as a composer. Now, his ballet company is showcasing his first orchestral work as part of its spring program, on which Côté will also be a featured performer.