Category: people

“National Opera in 1979, creating the so-called “powerhouse” era with director David Pountney and general director Peter Jonas, Elder has been one of the iconic English musicians of his generation. Since 2000, he has transformed the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, turning it from an also-ran – it was financially bankrupt and artistically moribund at the end of the 1990s – into arguably the most exciting of any in Britain. No orchestra plays Elgar better than the Hallé at the moment, and no conductor seems to empathise with this quintessentially English music as profoundly as Elder.”

“A former Australian Museum pest controller – whose obsessive collection of fauna specimens led to the theft of more than 2000 skulls, skins and skeletons, including a Tasmanian Tiger skull – has been jailed for seven years.”

“For a writer to become an icon takes time, and 84 years is more than enough. Memorializers the day after spoke of Vonnegut’s send-up in novel after novel of America’s obsession with technology, materialism and power, his creative mentoring of younger ’60s rebels, his evolution as a genre-busting, original comic voice (though Vonnegut traced his style in that department to Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton).”

Even into her mid-90s Miss Carlisle was indefatigable. “As she reminisced onstage, telling anecdotes that were just salty enough to suggest the foibles of the numerous legends she knew without toppling them, Broadway was ‘the American musical thea-tah,’ a term she trilled with the zest of a schoolgirl. She made you believe that the dazzling world of famous composers, directors, politicians and show folk in which moved constituted an exclusive place of ultimate glamour and civility that has now vanished.”

Like so many before him, violinist Thomas Zehetmair has turned to conducting as a side career. But unlike so many other baton-wielding wannabes, he seems to be uniquely suited to the task, and has managed to dovetail the work nicely with his performing career, which has always focused on the thorny contemporary music that most speaks to him.

Her long career “spanned Broadway, opera, television and film, including the classic Marx Brothers movie ‘A Night at the Opera’.” But she was probably best known as one of the celebrity panelists on the popular game show “To Tell the Truth.”

Legendary jazz innovator Ornette Coleman won the Pulitzer Prize for music this week, leading many in the music world to wonder what could have taken so long. “Unlike any past Pulitzer selection, [Coleman’s winning album,] “Sound Grammar,” is dominated by improvisation, the essence of jazz.It’s a bold choice — a hip choice, even. If the Pulitzer image shapers wanted to crack a mold, they’ve done it. Loudly.”

“In an effort to get more people to notice its new vehicles, Ford Motor Co. has enlisted the help of filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet to direct some of its commercials.”

“Natalia Clare, an American-born principal dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and an important Southland ballet teacher and arts advocate, has died. … She studied ballet with Bronislava Nijinska, one of impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s stable of choreographers, and made her professional debut in 1940 dancing for Nijinska at the Hollywood Bowl.”

“Pending the approval of the City Council, Mayor Villaraigosa has named Olga Garay to head the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Most recently, Garay, 54, has been a New York-based independent producer and performing arts consultant.” A former program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Foundation, Garay said “that the mayor’s commitment to increasing cultural funding was part of the package.”