Category: people

Trevor Nunn has been gone from London’s National Theatre only a month, and he’s launched into a new career – directing Ibsen. “No longer having to explain his decisions, he seems unburdened and even unbuttoned in the usual – and successfully youthful – head-to-toe denim (he is 63). He had hoped to do the Ibsen, in a new version by Pam Gems, at the National. But it got endlessly postponed, so when the Almeida asked me it seemed the obvious choice.”

Randall Packer is the U.S. Secretary of Art & Technology. Didn’t know there was one, did you? Well, okay, there isn’t. The whole thing is a performance art piece. And a website. And a series of treatises. But there’s a considerable amount of real-world crossover in Packer’s work, and the questions he’s raising about art, politics, money, and government are as valid and fascinating as if his Cabinet-level post were real.

“Among those whose music-making produced a level of beauty, insight and involvement practically alien to the present, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky will always be regarded highly.” But with the decline in classical record sales and a general ’embrace-the-new’ attitude in classical music, how many listeners really know Piatigorsky anymore? However many it is, the number should increase soon. Piatigorsky would have turned 100 this month, and several Baltimore-area arts organizations are celebrating with concerts, exhibits, and remembrances from family, friends, and colleagues.

German TV is adapting the BBC’s “Great Britons” poll to choose a “Great German.” But “in Germany, the voting procedure has been modified to stop Hitler or any his followers being included. A panel of experts will nominate 250 people. The public will then be invited to chose 50 more before the final voting begins.”

This much we know is true: Laura Greenday-Ness is the head of a small music school in a Dallas suburb. But nearly everything else in the Texas composer’s resume appears to be patently false. According to her school’s promotional materials, Greenday-Ness is a two-time winner of the national Composer of the Year award, is in residence with the Dallas Symphony, and has written for the Boston Pops, Chicago Symphony, and Philadelphia Philharmonic. Reality check: there is no such award; no one at the orchestras in Dallas, Boston, or Chicago has ever heard of her; and there is no such orchestra as the Philadelphia Philharmonic.

Philadelphia Orchestra music director Wolfgang Sawallisch cancelled an appearance with the orchestra last night. He’s in his final season with the orchestra, and has been fatigued for some time. “He’s just had a continuation of feeling dizzy and tired, particularly after he conducts. It’s the reason he canceled concerts in Europe in December, and when he got here he was feeling those symptoms.”

“As Wolfgang Sawallisch ends his decade with three weeks of concerts that started last week and a forthcoming tour, he is as firm a personification of the Philadelphia Orchestra as Leopold Stokowski or Eugene Ormandy. He restored the Philadelphia Orchestra’s famously velvety sound, erasing the more generic, international svelteness Muti imposed. He could be a fiery podium presence – sometimes. He didn’t shrink from tough decisions, and several controversial moves only helped to concretize his leadership.”

Frank Stella is “probably the world’s most famous living abstract artist. He is 70 years old and on the short side, but he has a sweeping, imperious manner. He was born in Massachusetts and studied at Princeton University. His frequent pronouncements about art are flavoured by a generous dollop of intellectual pride, which goes strangely with his high-pitched New York voice – comedic shades of Woody Allen or Joe Pesci. ‘I only really care about the immediate impact that art has on you,” he says. “I like all the other things that go after, but I can’t help it, I go by the first hit’.”

Wolfgang Sawallisch’s time directing the Philadelphia Orchestra is coming to an end. “The 79-year-old maestro, who restored the trademark Philadelphia string sound, performed Beethoven and Brahms with matchless authority, and premiered important new works by American composers, has long lived his public life in a businesslike, nonconfiding fashion. Though his charm and still-hearty handshake suggest he’s always glad to see you, there’s a sense that his availability has fairly strict limits, ones not to be challenged.”

Star architect Rem Koolhaas is closing his New York office after several of his American projects were cancelled. “It’s been a tough year for the high-flying Mr. Koolhaas, who won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000. Two weeks ago the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York scrapped his $200 million expansion, saying the project was too big for the cash-strapped institution to take on. A few months earlier, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had iced his $400 million building, citing budget and fund-raising problems. The Prada superstore in San Francisco that Mr. Koolhaas designed has been axed, and his glitzy, casino-cushioned Guggenheim Las Vegas closed after 18 months. In a recent lecture at Columbia University, Mr. Koolhaas suggested that he was fed up with New York and America and was shifting his focus elsewhere – to Beijing, for example, where he is designing a $650 million broadcast center for the 2008 Olympics.”