Category: people

Seattle artist Jesse Edwards is a jerk. “Some of his paintings are garbage but some are great. They’re great, but he’s intolerable. He heckles the art dealers whenever they talk here. He swaggers when he walks and breaks all rules. He still leaves me obnoxious phone messages. He has no social skills. I’m behind him all the way.”

“Claude Luter, a horn player who hobnobbed with Louis Armstrong and was one of France’s most celebrated jazz musicians, has died… Best known for boosting the trans-Atlantic transferal of New Orleans-style jazz to Paris, Luter suffered complications after a fall and died Friday at a hospital outside Paris.”

71-year-old conductor Seiji Ozawa has canceled two concerts scheduled for early November in Paris due to ill health. Ozawa, who had to pull out of several appearances with the Vienna State Opera earlier this year, isn’t disclosing the nature of his illness.

Zaha Hadid has “become an international celebrity in the world of architecture; quite why Britain has been starved of her magic is a puzzle. Although she has been awarded a CBE for services to architecture, it was her adopted homeland (she was born in Baghdad) that very nearly ended her career only a decade ago.”

“The idea that now, having won the Nobel Prize and when his reputation as a playwright is higher than it has ever been, he is going to perform Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape is a testament to his bravery and his need, like a gambler needs chance, to put his life and his happiness in the uneasy hands of an audience.”

“She controls a vast international art empire, and numbers Clinton, Kissinger and Bianca Jagger among her network of powerful friends and supporters. Next week she opens a multimillion-pound art institute in London, designed, she says, to make the world a better place. Welcome to the world of self-styled cultural philanthropist Louise T Blouin MacBain.”

Legendary Chicago actor Gene Janson, who crafted a decades-long career portraying “avuncular father figures, embittered academics and crusty old political types,” collapsed on stage and died last week. He was 72.

Jonathan Miller is retiring from the world of opera. Again. Maybe. But regardless of his career status, he’s still one of the more fascinating interviews in the business. “Amid bomblets tossed at traditional opera audiences, the Metropolitan Opera, religious Jews (he is Jewish), American political culture, Belgian colonialists and German conceptualist directors, Mr. Miller weaves a narrative of his directing method: a focus on the ‘negligible detail’ and ‘subintentional actions.'”

Bernard Haitink is taking up duties as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony. “Now he takes up his new duties in Chicago in what he calls the autumnal period of his life, and it is clear that he does not see this as a long-term proposition. ‘Every conductor, including myself, has a sell-by date’.”

Clive Gillinson has had enough careers for three musicians, and the new director of Carnegie Hall shows no sign of slowing down. “When you are running an orchestra, you’re hearing everything in relation to your own orchestra. Now it’s a wonderful experience, and quite relaxing, when you don’t have the responsibility for everything happening in that orchestra.”