Category: people

Last week’s snowstorms in the Northeastern US interrupted the travel plans of many musicians trying to get to their concert dates. Some bailed on canceled flights and instead rented car services to get them to their performances…

“Ernst Haefliger, a Swiss tenor who was most renowned as an interpreter of German art song and oratorio roles, died on Saturday in Davos, Switzerland, where he maintained a second home. He was 87 and lived in Vienna… Mr. Haefliger was a graceful singer with a flexible, lyrical voice that served him well in recitals — particularly in Schubert lieder — and made him an ideal Evangelist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.”

“Kathy Halbreich, who greatly expanded the role of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as a risk-taking multidisciplinary institution that is a model for contemporary art museums around the world, said yesterday that she was retiring after 16 years as director. … She will leave the post in November.”

“From the career perspective, Yo-Yo Ma has done it all. He is one of the handful of virtuoso musicians who can call his own shots and one of the rare Midas-touch classical-recording artists, with over 50 titles on his label, Sony, and 15 Grammys. Last year he received a $1-million Dan David Prize for his work on the Silk Road. Virtually every performance sells out. He garners fees that can top $75,000 a night…”

“True, Ian McKellen is not Tom Hanks, nor would he want to be. ‘Oh, it would be totally miserable,’ he said after witnessing the logistical nightmare that is global celebrity. But he remains an actor with a serious following who manages, through a tendency to playfulness, to avoid seeming either elitist or diffident. Certainly, he is not wary of his fans. He reaches out to them – and they to him – through one of the web’s most dizzyingly garish sites, mckellen.com, which he describes as a substitute for the autobiography he will never write.”

“Wendy Reves, who donated more than 1,400 works she and her husband collected to the Dallas Museum of Art, died on Tuesday in Menton, France. She was 90 and lived in Switzerland… The collection, which includes works by Rodin, Cézanne, van Gogh, Monet and Degas, among others, is in a wing of the museum that recreates five rooms from the home she and her husband, Emery Reves, shared in the South of France.”

“Raymond D. Nasher, who left an indelible stamp on Dallas by developing NorthPark Center and giving the city a sculpture collection worth more than $400 million and the museum that serves as its permanent home, died Friday at a local hospital. He was 85.”

“Like a French Ann Coulter with stumpy legs and nicotine-ruined lungs, but sans Coulter’s gift for punchy images, Baudrillard stalked fame by making outrageous declarations he knew to be false. Authors of the Baudrillard obituaries, like the writers of encyclopedia articles on him, found it easier to list subjects he’d written about or the usual-suspects list of influences (Nietzsche, Mauss, Debord, Bataille) than to articulate what he claimed about them.”

Hollywood sees star potential in Thomas Kinkade, the self-styled “Painter of Light.” A major studio movie is imminent. “Thomas Kinkade is probably the most successful artist of all time. And we like how accessible Thomas Kinkade is,” he added. “For us, it’s all about reaching an audience, and Thomas Kinkade has a vast audience.”

“Emily Sano, director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, has announced her intention to retire. She has set the end of 2007 as a departure date but has pledged to continue her duties until a replacement can be found. Named museum director in 1995, Sano joined the museum in 1993 as chief curator and deputy director.”