Category: people

Esa-Peka Salonen’s new appointment to lead London’s Philharmonia Orchestra won’t affect his main job as music director of the Los ANgeles Philharmonic. “It doesn’t affect my work in Los Angeles at all in any way. What this means is that I will consolidate my European conducting into one place. Some guest conducting activities in Europe with other orchestras are going to end.”

A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001’s “Gosford Park,” he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006.

“It is tempting to say that Smith’s chief creation is herself: a neo-hippie queen of bohemia and—what with her wild hair, sharp features, pale skin, and abundant little blue tattoos of rings and stars—an avatar of the Addams Family. But Smith is a grounded product of breeding and circumstance, with nothing made up about her.”

“Different cultural disciplines may share audiences, yet art, theater, movies, music, dance and literature rarely commune directly with one another. More often, it seems, they are self-referential, defining their own vocabularies, speaking their own languages. The Louvre has now set out to prove that this need not be so.” How best to do that? Invite Nobel laureate Toni Morrison to choose a theme and program around it.

Director Lee Breuer hasn’t had nearly as much attention for his experimental vision than some of his colleagues. Maybe “Breuer’s independent, unpredictable methods and visionary ends aren’t what the commercial theater or most of the major nonprofits are buying or selling.”

The pioneering singer died in Las Vegas of a heart attack. “Feisty, joyful and possessing the perfect balance of sugar and salt, Brown’s voice took African American pop into the rhythmically expressive, emotionally direct rhythm-and-blues era.”

The art market may be booming like never before, but at least one high-profile collector says the thrill is gone. Boston art patron Kenneth L. Freed is selling off more than 800 works he amassed over the last two decades, saying that the art world has changed for the worse. “Where once young artists searched desperately for a supportive patron, now they find themselves quickly thrust into high-profile shows. Deep-pocketed collectors compete for the latest, greatest new piece.”

Phyllis T. Garland was the first tenured woman on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She was an articulate and passionate writer about music, and taught at Columbia for 31 years. She served as administrator of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University when the program began.”

The pioneering critic and writer was 64. “Throughout her life, Willis combined her obsessions in essays on pop culture. She was deeply respectful of pop culture—something proper intellectuals disdain.”

“An across-genre journalist if ever there was one, Rockwell started at the Times as classical music critic in 1972, served as chief rock critic simultaneously from 1974-80, went back to strictly classical (1980-1992), then to European cultural correspondent* (1992-1994), editor of the Arts and Leisure section (1998-2002), arts columnist (2002-2004), and finally chief dance critic, his current post. The Times is currently in search mode for his successor in that post.”