Category: people

“Each Sunday afternoon a motley queue of artists assembles outside an unremarkable house in Chelsea, New York. Once inside their work will be judged by the 95-year-old owner, Louise Bourgeois, the most eminent female sculptor alive… Visitors have been known to leave in tears after a terse critique. Bourgeois has been holding these salons for more than 30 years.”

Riccardo Muti is pleased that you enjoy watching him conduct. He would like you to know that he very much enjoys conducting the orchestras in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. And he wouldn’t mind terribly if no one ever again asked him whether he wants to become the next music director of those, or any other, orchestras.

“Today Grieg is generally viewed as a composer of enduring popularity but secondary significance. This perception is not quite right on either count,” and as the music world prepares to mostly ignore the centenary of his death, Anthony Tommasini says that the time is right for Norway’s greatest composer to finally get his due. “If aspiring composers want an example of music that conveys the sound world of a culture and breathes with emotional honesty, they can do no better than Grieg.”

“Philip K. Dick was a disaffected loner in life, [but] in death his ideas turned out to be pitch-perfect for a Digital Age that wanted science fiction not just about aliens but also about the alienated. Posthumously, Dick became a one-man factory for Hollywood projects, with his fiction reaching the screen nine times… All of it makes for a staggering turnaround for the family of the troubled writer whose work presaged the cyberpunk movement.”

The story of how 20,000 elementary-school children in Tucson – mostly at-risk and non-English speaking – are posting impressive achievements in math and language arts begins with a 91-year-old man and his love of music.

“Bryn Terfel’s abrupt withdrawal from Covent Garden’s Ring cycle has split the world into non-operagoers who admire him for putting family ahead of career and the opera community which accuses him of betraying his colleagues and his art by abandoning the biggest show on earth.”

“Rolando Villazón, one of the most sought-after tenors and an important box office draw for his stage appeal and fine voice, is canceling all performances at least into early next year, his manager said yesterday. ‘Health reasons’ was the explanation… Others in the opera world have speculated that Mr. Villazón is suffering vocal trouble.”

Having previously led the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the London Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and, for 19 years, Milan’s La Scala, he is now, ‘How do you say? A free sword. A free lance. What can I tell you? I am a Southern Italian man, which means that by nature I am lazy. So I am enjoying my freedom’.”

Luciano Pavarotti’s adult daughters complained Tuesday night about media reports claiming they are squabbling with the late tenor’s second wife.

“The collection includes love letters, musical scores and gowns, along with photographs of her with dignitaries such as ex-US President John F Kennedy. The items are from the estate of Giovanni Battista Meneghini, to whom Callas was married for 10 years.”