Category: people

Say the name Totenberg, and many Americans would think of the prominent NPR reporter Nina. But say the name to a musician, and they’ll likely tell you about Nina’s father, a 96-year-old Boston legend whose students are spread far and wide throughout the music world.

“Barrett stepped down as president of Herbert Barrett Management less than two years ago. He founded HBM in 1940, after having served for the preceding seven years as public relations representative for the likes of Martha Graham, Benny Goodman.”

“Lawrence B. Salander, the embattled Manhattan art dealer whose gallery was ordered locked by a State Supreme Court justice last month, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday. Mr. Salander and his Salander-O’Reilly Galleries — which operated from a town house on East 71st Street, around the corner from the Frick Collection — had been facing a barrage of lawsuits alleging that customers or business partners had been defrauded.” The bankruptcy will effectively delay those suits.

“It may seem strange coming from a relatively young conductor, but {LA Philharmonic conductor] Salonen says he wants to change his priorities, to conduct less, compose more and spend more time with his family.”

“Michael Copps, a Democrat whose crusade against media consolidation has helped make him Hollywood’s public-policy enemy No. 1, is more proselytizer than pencil pusher.”

“Bill Beeny, the 81-year-old proprietor of The Elvis is Alive Museum in Wright City, said he has placed his Elvis memorabilia on eBay in hopes that someone else will take up the cause. His collection includes photographs, books, FBI files, replicas of the Cadillac the King drove and of the casket and gravestone from his 1977 funeral, even a painted Elvis head.”

“I am always looking for what I call ‘the ecstatic truth’. It is a deeper, more moving and mysterious truth than the truth of accountants. One can find it in music, poetry, literature, certain ancient myths.”

Violinist Itzhak “Perlman, especially in America, is not just a famous musician, he is the famous musician for millions of people – the personification of classical music.”

“Three pictures of him instantly flashed into my mind from the times I had met him: young and triumphant, middle-aged and troubled, older and wiser.”

Tom O’Horgan left New York this week after a lifetime in the theatre. “O’Horgan never stopped working, mostly directing workshops and readings in tiny theaters around town, often on a stage built in his loft. There were concerts at the loft, readings and parties that attracted artists from all corners of the city and often ended with impromptu late-night orchestras made up of whatever instruments were within reach.”