Category: people

Billy Crystal has been announced as the winner of this year’s Mark Twain Prize, presented by the Kennedy Center, “not just for his comedy but also for his charity work. In 1986, with Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams, Crystal started Comic Relief. The annual show raises money for the homeless ,and most recently, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.”

As the Philadelphia Orchestra’s departing principal violist, Roberto Diaz, feels his way as the new leader of the city’s renowned Curtis Institute of Music, one colleague says that his job will be to “sweep away the cobwebs” in the notoriously tradition-bound school, but to do so without losing the qualities that make Curtis unique (and uniquely successful) in the music world.

“Vladimir Ashkenazy has decided to give up playing the piano in public,” apparently because of painful arthritis in his hands. Ashkenazy, who was recently appointed chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony, “decided to give up public concerts several months ago. He does plan to continue recording, however.”

“When speaking with younger admirers, Mr. Rostropovich often tried to instill, by demonstration or simply by being himself — a living repository of 20th-century history — the importance of music not as a decorative appendage to a cultured life, but as an existential necessity and as a moral force capable of bringing hope and consolation to those in need.”

“The Massachusetts Cultural Council yesterday announced that Anita Walker has been named the state agency’s new executive director. Walker, 53, comes to the job from the Midwest, where she was director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs from September 2000 to this past January.” The council has a budget of $13 million.

The late writer was a fan of mazes. Now a maze is being constructed in her honor in Winnipeg. “A big chunk of the $130,000 cost is coming from friends, family and Shields’s publisher, Random House of Canada. The labyrinth’s 2,000 square metres, with stone pathways, a reading area and a healing garden, will be the largest maze in Canada.”

For all his involvement with the political struggles of his era, Rostropovich remained an artist first and foremost. ‘Music is part of history, and our history has lessons that cannot be separated from our greatest music. But maybe soon, maybe finally we can feel free just to love music’.”

“Kaiser, 53, clearly savors the business of heading the Kennedy Center, where fundraising has doubled from $35 million annually to $70 million since his tenure began in 2001 ($3 million will be raised tonight alone, at the annual gala). But Kaiser seems to get as big a charge out of helping others in the performing arts business, and his Washington post makes it easier to spread his gospel.”

“In an age of performers created by record companies or talent shows, Rostropovich was the real thing – a player of breathtaking command and power who put across the music he played with an emotional intensity that none could resist. But more than that, in standing up for his friends and colleagues and for music itself, Rostropovich was the most inspiring example of the interconnectedness and total indivisibility of music and political reality, art and life.”

“Rostropovich, who died Friday in Moscow at 80, went on, of course, to become one of the most celebrated musicians of our — or any other — time. Not only were some 240 pieces written for him, but he was a major political figure. Larger than life, he was Slava to the world. But Rostropovich cannot be left out in any study of the vagaries of fame. I hope history is kind to him. His early achievements easily outweigh the musical immoderation of his over-the-top years. He left behind enough great music and music making for any lifetime.”