Category: people

“Nigel Kennedy is an old-fashioned softie who loves nothing better than to bring a glisten to an audience’s eyes. He is, by a margin of millions, the biggest selling classical artist on EMI and the only living violinist with global street cred.”

Dennison is at pains to describe how similar her previous job is to her current one. “I’ve been someone who’s always come to auctions,” she says, “which is not typical for museum directors. And I did because I thought it told us a lot about our time, the market, about what collectors were thinking about.”

“You’re just drawing breath to ask the first serious question of the evening, when the woman at the table next door starts in. She’s been giving him that look you come to know, the look you’d give the Brooklyn Bridge if you were a New Yorker on a night out and it sat down next to you: recognition, amazement, awe, affection, and proprietariness – why, that’s one of my landmarks!”

Harold Pinter is 77. But anyone who thinks the fiery playwright might be mellowing with age has another think coming. “In the last five years, he has beaten back both cancer of the esophagus and an autoimmune disorder called pemphigus, and he walks tentatively, using a cane, on legs that have gone weak. But he is as mentally robust, as full of righteous rage, as ever.”

When conductor Richard Bradshaw died in August, Canada lost a powerful presence in its national opera scene. “He spent much of his career insisting that opera was an art form for everyone, that anyone who gave it a chance could respond to soaring human voices performing Mozart, Puccini, Verdi or Wagner.” Now, Bradshaw’s final performances with the Canadian Opera Company, performed outdoors in front of an audience of 20,000, are set to be broadcast nationwide.

Alagna characterizes himself as ‘hyperactive, hyperacoustic, hypersensitive, and hyper-foolish,’ he admits to a weakness for French screen clowns such as Louis de Funès, Fernandel, and Bourvil, as well as contemporary comedians such as Élie Seimoun and Gad Elmaleh, who draw comedy from their North African Jewish upbringings. In the mausoleum-like atmosphere of the world’s opera houses, this kind of anarchic comic spirit is a rarity.”

“So how did an intellectual purist become a developer’s pet? Has the real-estate business found enlightenment? Or has Libeskind refashioned himself as a high-class hack, peddling a facsimile of the avant-garde to developers who wish to disguise their rapaciousness with a few aesthetic fripperies?”

As the architecture critic for The Times from 1992 to 2004, Mr. Muschamp seized on a moment when the repetitive battles between Modernists and Post-Modernists had given way to a surge of exuberance that put architecture back in the public spotlight.

“Donald Runnicles will return to his native Scotland to take up a new position as chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra beginning in 2009, immediately after his tenure as music director of the San Francisco Opera concludes.”

“John Studzinski finds multiple uses for his money, be it to fund an actor’s education, a gallery’s expansion or a homeless person’s lunch. The U.S.-born philanthropist, senior managing director of Blackstone Group LP, … has pledged 5 million pounds ($10.2 million) toward Tate Modern’s expansion, and gives 1 million pounds a year to train the directors, actors, playwrights and composers of tomorrow.”