Category: people

“Leo Lerman knew everybody–except perhaps himself. He died at 80 on Aug. 22, 1994. The ultimate first-nighter, he apparently never missed the opening of a play, a nightclub, an opera or a musical. He also gave remarkably well-attended parties. His Journals are worth the price of admission for the guest lists alone.”

Antonio Pappano, the music director at London’s Covent Garden says the stories of the company canceling Deborah Voigt because she couldn’t fit into a dress were “rubbish.” “Let me tell you, that was just a bunch of rubbish, all that. That story has been done to death. It had nothing to do with the dress at the time. First of all, the dress is not that small…So that wonderful bit of publicity that happened to come out during the weeks when Deborah had a new album at the time was fantastically engineered and had nothing to do with anything.”

It’s Mstislav Rostropovich’s 80th birthday. “No soloist in modern times has inspired more new works; no cellist in history did more to expand the instrument’s repertoire. Slava has given about 240 premieres, including concertos by the three Russian masters, the Frenchman Henri Dutilleux, the Estonian Arvo Paert and the Poles Lutoslawski, Panufnik and Penderecki.”

“You could forgive Kurt Beattie for being a bit blasé on the eve of ACT Theatre’s 2007 season, which opens with the Seattle debut of Sarah Ruhl’s touted play ‘The Clean House.’ But ACT’s respected artistic head is anything but jaded. Since he was diagnosed with lung cancer late last year, Beattie has endured aggressive treatment. And he’s very happy to be alive — and back to work.”

Well-known film score composer Herman Stein, whose music helped define the ’50s sci-fi era in Hollywood, has died of heart failure, aged 91. “Stein collaborated with Henry Mancini and others to create music for nearly 200 movies and shorts, though he didn’t get credit for all of his work because of the studio’s tendency to give solo credit to a project’s music supervisor.”

“Toshio Sasaki, a Japanese sculptor known for works in public spaces, particularly ‘The First Symphony of the Sea,’ a 322-foot-long wall relief at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, died on March 10 near his home in Nagakute in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan.”

“That George Benjamin at 47 is one of the most formidable composers of his generation should come as no surprise. A British prodigy, he began playing the piano at 7 and was soon after composing. His first work for orchestra was given its premiere at a BBC Proms concert when Mr. Benjamin was 20… Stylistically, Mr. Benjamin’s music, while bursting with personality, has always been hard to pin down. The pungent chromaticism of Berg, the astringent atonality of Boulez, a feeling for French sonorities, spectral colorings — these elements and more permeate his works.”

“The crazily idealistic Glass believes that music can be a means of salvation. Hence the global ambition of his grandiose projects. Or does Glass simply expect too much of his own art?”

“Sedaris has always freely acknowledged that he exaggerates. He came to fame talking on NPR in 1992 about his stint as a Santa’s elf at Macy’s (a true story, The New Republic asserts). But did he lie about his experiences working at a mental hospital or taking guitar lessons from a midget? In an article in the New Republic Alex Heard says Sedaris wildly and willfully mischaracterized what went on.”

“Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich met while traveling across the Atlantic on the Ile de France in 1934. Their friendship lasted until the Nobel Prize-winning author’s death in 1961. Thursday the John F. Kennedy Library is releasing 30 letters Hemingway wrote to the legendary actress and singer between 1949 and 1959.”