Category: people

“Jimmy Lee Sudduth, an African-American folk artist whose evocative, textured paintings made partly from Alabama mud were prized by collectors around the world, died last Sunday in Fayette, Ala. … A self-taught artist who began painting as a very small child, Mr. Sudduth was renowned for the effects he could produce with his own homemade paint, which consisted of mud blended with a variety of common substances — soot, axle grease, sugar, coffee grounds and much else — to lend it color and texture.”

“Mark Weil, a prominent theater director in Uzbekistan whose productions caused controversy in the tightly controlled former Soviet state, was stabbed to death in the Uzbek capital, a theater spokeswoman said today. He was 55. Weil, a part-time Seattle resident who founded the Ilkhom theater more than 30 years ago, was attacked in front of his apartment building in Tashkent late Thursday night….”

“Madeleine L’Engle, an author whose childhood fables, religious meditations and fanciful science fiction transcended both genre and generation, most memorably in her children’s classic ‘A Wrinkle in Time,’ died on Thursday in Litchfield, Conn. … Her works included poetry, plays, autobiography and books on prayer, and almost all were deeply, quixotically personal. But it was in her vivid children’s characters that readers most clearly glimpsed her passionate search for answers to the questions that mattered most.”

“Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian tenor, was eulogized on Saturday as a ‘great artist’ with ‘a profound sense of humanity’ in the same cathedral where he once sang in the children’s choir.”

“Claudio Abbado, the Italian conductor, said yesterday he had canceled all engagements in the near future — including a much-anticipated visit to Carnegie Hall next month — because of poor health… Abbado, who is 74, gave no specifics about his condition but said he was following his doctors’ advice.”

A Polish writer has been convicted of a murder, the account of which he subsequently incorporated into a grisly novel. The case had been closed, but details in the novel matched exactly the crime and Krystian Bala was arrested.

Pavarotti was a great entertainer who didn’t always sing well in later years. But “for all the silly stuff, he was never a buffoon. He helped many young singers and raised a lot of money for good causes singing his medleys with the stars of rock and pop.”

Fans of the Italian singer gathered in the streets of Modena to pay tribute. “His body is lying in state in the cathedral in Modena, in northern Italy, until his funeral on Saturday.”

Hope Abelson died last year at the age of 95. She was an ardent supporter of Chicago arts, and before she died she set up a fund to help emerging arts organizations. “According to the trust, the awards will recognize area performing arts groups that have less than $1 million in operating revenues, been in existence at least three years and whose work demonstrates ‘innovation, inspiration and creativity’.”

Anthony Tommasini says that Luciano Pavarotti will be remembered not only for helping to turn opera into a stadium concert event, but for a voice so unmistakable, so effortless that no one could ever mistake it. “For intelligence, discipline, breadth of repertory, musicianship, interpretive depth and virile vocalism, Mr. Pavarotti was outclassed by his Three Tenors sidekick and chief rival, Plácido Domingo. But for sheer Italianate tenorial beauty, Mr. Pavarotti was hard to top.”