Category: people

“One hundred years after her birth on Jan. 9, 1908, French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir remains a pioneer for generations of women and an author who practiced emancipation in her life and whose books established the theoretical underpinnings of modern feminism.”

The man is spending his life trying desperately to rebuild Iraq’s National Library and Archive in a city that is still very much a war zone. And the hell of it is, he didn’t have to be there at all. Saad Eskander lived happily abroad for decades, yet agreed to come back to his home country in November 2003 to try and rescue a critical piece of Iraqi history.

“I always considered myself a symphony conductor who would once in a while conduct opera. But that once-in-a-while became habit forming. It’s like a drug. The theater’s a wonderful place.”

He was known as Moondog, and his place in the vast New York cultural scene was a unique one. “He dressed in a Viking costume… He was articulate and friendly. He was blind, but refused to talk about his condition as a handicap. Perhaps most surprising of all was that this eerie and unusual figure was a classical composer in the tonal western tradition who followed all the rules of counterpoint and harmony.”

“One of the most fascinating figures of the 18th century was the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a composer, violinist, fencing champion and military hero whose fame spanned continents. That he was black, born in 1745 to a white planter and his slave mistress in Guadeloupe, not only shaped his life in France but has fed a growing interest in him today.”

Monty Python alums are known for crafting diverse and successful careers, from slapstick comedy to serious filmmaking. Now, former Python Terry Jones is jumping into the opera world, directing a production in Lisbon of a new opera for which he wrote the libretto.

W. Richard West Jr., the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, spent $48,500 in museum funds to commission a portrait of himself.

Leonard B. Meyer, a pioneering musicologist whose 1956 book, “Emotion and Meaning in Music,” remains one of the most significant scholarly works in the field of music cognition, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan.

A former home of poet Robert Frost has been vandalized, with intruders destroying dozens of items and setting fire to furniture in what police say was an underage-drinking party.

Robinson, a blues singer who performed with Steven Tyler and Bonnie Raitt but also spent time homeless. Robinson had been a sharecropper, an Army veteran and a friend of performers, including B.B. King.