Category: people

Anne Ewers has her work cut out for her as the new CEO of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, a city well-known for being awfully stingy about funding the arts. “She’s spent her first two months on the job soaking up the details of Philly’s arts scene. That means schmoozing with politicians, foundations and the influential money players, most of the heads of the Kimmel’s resident companies, and meeting one-on-one with its 35 board members.”

“Pavarotti, 71, has been suffering from pancreatic cancer and was released from hospital on 25 August after a series of tests were carried out. He is now being treated at home in the northern city of Modena surrounded by family and friends.”

The son of a jazz musician and a schoolteacher, Lee grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in a home where freedom of expression was valued intensely. His anger at America’s 21st-century creative lockdown is fuelled by the fear and silence from people who ought to be role models. “Today’s media are used as a narcotic to put people into stupors,” he says.

“Bryn Terfel has pulled out of his highly anticipated appearance in the Royal Opera’s production of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle, citing ‘a particularly stressful family situation’ involving one of his children.”

Is soprano Anna Netrebko, still only 35, as the last hope of the expiring classical-music industry?

“Paul Addis, the San Francisco playwright arrested Tuesday for allegedly torching Burning Man’s giant effigy five days early, won’t admit to setting the icon on fire. But he effusively praises the action — whoever did it — calling it a badly needed “reality check” for the desert art festival. Addis, 35, says Burning Man has turned into an ‘Alterna-Disney,’ while the early burn acted as a protest aimed at the event’s increasing commercialization.”

Deciding what to do with your life after serving a tour of duty as a soldier in a war zone can be a tricky (and costly) process. Not so, though, for Sgt. Geoffrey Allison, who spent his down time in Iraq strengthening his skills as a violin maker. “Nearing retirement, Allison has begun turning his passion into his profession. He’s already sold some of his violins, and with his military pension he plans to support himself as a violin maker when he retires from the Army next spring.”

Does an article revealing the not-so-well-kept secret that Arthur Miller had a son with Down’s Syndrome, whom he cut entirely out of his life as an infant, taint Miller’s legacy as a playwright? “For many of those who came of age in the middle of the last century a saintly glow hovers around Miller, whose plays have often examined questions of guilt and morality through the prism of family. He was a hero of the left and a champion of the downtrodden.” That image is now in danger of shattering.

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein’s name may not ring a bell if you’re not deeply involved in the New York cultural scene, but the outgoing head of the city’s Austrian Cultural Forum has left a deep impression on those who are, “conceiving programs ranging from the music of 20th-century émigrés to the work of performance artists in the Eastern bloc; maintaining contacts with cultural institutions around the country; even hanging shows himself in his building’s diminutive exhibition space in the wee hours of the morning.”

Hilly Kristal, founder of the defunct New York music club CBGB, died of complications of lung cancer. “Kristal opened CBGB in December 1973 on the Bowery in the East Village, an area that was synonymous with poverty, crime and alcohol abuse. He gave the stage to young, then-unknown bands such as the Ramones, Television, Blondie and Talking Heads. Those musicians, especially the Ramones, inspired a generation of punk rockers in London, Los Angeles and around the world.”