Category: people

“A Swiss orchestra conductor went on trial for the second time yesterday for his alleged role in a doomsday cult which lost dozens of members in ritual killings in Canada and Europe. Michel Tabachnik, 61, a composer who has led major orchestras in Canada, Portugal and France, is accused of criminal association and contributing to the deaths of members of the Order of the Solar Temple – 14 of whom were found burnt and lying in a star formation in a clearing in the French Alps in 1995.”

Thomas Crow is stepping down as director of The Getty Research Institute to take a position in modern art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. “Prof. Crow, who is also professor of art history at the University of Southern California, joined the Getty as director of the Getty Research Institute in 2000. Prior to that, he had been Robert Lehman Professor of Art History at Yale University.”

“Marc Ostrow has been promoted to become general manager of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., its New York-based affiliate company. The promotion follows Jenny Bilfield’s departure after twelve years with B&H to take up a position as artistic and executive director at Stanford Lively Arts.”

“He was an internationally eminent scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art, elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2003 and for 30 years a pivotal figure in the department of art history and theory at the University of Essex.”

Suzan-Lori Parks was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for theatre. “The author of nine full-length plays, most of which are taught at drama schools across the country, and one of the founders of a wave of multilayered, historically aware, and linguistically complicated theatre, she aims to defeat what she calls ‘the Theatre of Schmaltz’ — ‘the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline.”

There may not be a more iconic composer of our era than Osvaldo Golijov, whose works have become some of the most sought after in the classical music world. “As impressive as the level of success Golijov has achieved is how he has done it. The composer, who teaches at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., has managed to create works that are uncompromisingly sophisticated yet speak to listeners with little or no classical background.”

Cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich has canceled his upcoming appearance with the National Symphony, an orchestra he led for 17 seasons, saying that doctors have ordered him to remain in Russia while he undergoes tests. Rostropovich was to have conducted an ambitious two week mini-festival celebrating the centenary of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

“Anna Russell, 94, who spoofed and honored the worlds of opera and classical music with her comic yet knowledgeable musical parodies, died Oct. 18 at her home in Batemans Bay, Australia… Miss Russell became a beloved figure for her knowing satires of musical techniques, pretentious singers and, perhaps most memorably, the operas of Richard Wagner.”

“The Vietnam Memorial used to be the First Great Work of Maya Lin. But that Lin is gone, transformed into Lin the Artist, who, despite having served on the panel that chose a design for the memorial at the World Trade Center site, wants to project an image of disengagement from the huge civic issues she raised. When she speaks as an artist, she’s so determined to be out of the fight that it’s not clear she has any fight left in her.”

“The self-described ‘Dean of American Rock Critics,’ Christgau has been writing about rock and roll and popular culture since his first column was published by Esquire in 1967. Earlier this year he ended more than three decades with the Village Voice, where he served as a senior editor as well as the weekly paper’s chief music critic.”