Category: people

Nikki Hemming is the 36-year-old chief executive officer of Sharman Networks, Kazaa’s parent company. It is based on Sydney’s north shore with a staff of 18. Sharman is being sued by Hollywood and the American music industry for alleged breach of copyright over pirated music and movies. But Kazaa is fighting back, counter-suing household names such as EMI, Sony, Warner and Disney for alleged collusion and anti-competitive conduct.” Hemming says she’ll win, and that she still buys CDs and goes to the theatre for movies….

Russell Allen has resigned as general manager of the Atlanta Opera. “Allen suffered a heart attack Aug. 13 and underwent quadruple-bypass surgery two days later. His recuperation time was brief, however, as he was back on the job by the end of September.”

“As chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder has been a patron of scattered efforts to help Jews reclaim what had been theirs. In testimony before Congress, he called these stolen artworks ‘the last prisoners of war.’ But in an interview he also conceded that he had artworks in his collection whose provenance was at best ambiguous and at worst unknowable.”

Robert Woodruff has a tough job – succeeding the legendary Robert Brustein as director of American Reportory Theatre in Cambridge. Some thought the director and the new job might not be a good fit. But “offstage, stripped of the spotlight, the outlaw director comes across as surprisingly regular. For all his Johnny Cash cool, he is equal parts Woody Allen: a slightly neurotic New Yorker overworked and unwilling to rest until every detail is in place. Strip away a few sexy hobbies – riding his BMW motorcycle, hiking to 18,000 feet in Tibet – and Robert Woodruff’s life outside the theater begins to sound pretty bland. In fact, there is little in his life that doesn’t involve theater.”

Architect Frank Gehry’s laid-back air “is a large part of the appeal of his architecture. His buildings, assertive and emphatic though they are, are generous and open to the unexpected. The laidback air is also partly fictional, as he has a fierce competitive and creative will that shows no sign of relenting.” He’s designing a new house for himself in Los Angeles. And he’s up for a couple new projects in London. In the meantime there’s the new Disney Hall getting set to open in LA…

“For all its reassuring familiarity, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a revolutionary idea at the outset and it remained a thing apart through all its decades on television. Others would also entertain the young or give them a leg up on their studies. But it was Fred Rogers, the composer, Protestant minister and student of behavior who ventured to deal head-on with the emotional life of children.” Fred Rogers died yesterday at his Pittsburgh home, at the age of 74.

Terry Gross is host of Fresh Air, one of America’s public radio top interview shows. But WHYY in Philadelphia, where the show originates, doesn’t list Gross among its top-paid employees. In 2001, Gross earned $85,000, making her one of the lowest-paid national hosts. “In an interview, Gross said she had considered herself underpaid compared with other hosts of nationally aired public radio shows. Since then, though, the station has raised her salary ‘substantially,’ she said. ‘I’m satisfied,’ she said.”

By any account, architect Rafael Viñoly was something of a prodigy. He’s racked up a series of high-profile projects around the world, and has developed a reputation for sensitivity to the needs of the project. “You don’t simply accept the client’s program at face value, as if your job is to be some kind of short-order cook. What you really want to do is figure out the underlying needs, which the client may never have fully understood. Then you work to define the program. You are not going to get a pre-cooked meal but something especially prepared.”

“A roly-poly guy who reminded everyone of a sun-kissed Santa Claus, Harrison seemed for a long time to be the only happy composer in America; unlike so many of his congenitally embittered ivory-tower colleagues, he not only accepted his marginal status in the nation’s culture but revelled in it. Yet he was, in many ways, an imposing figure—at once the prophet of the minimalist movement and the last vital representative of the mighty populist generation led by Aaron Copland.”

Covent Garden waited four years waiting Antonio Pappano, its new music director. “The man is a live wire, and after a few months he has electrified the entire building. The Royal Opera needed just an invigorating shock. ‘Years ago, some one gave me Solti’s memoirs, and when I got to the part where he described coming to Covent Garden as music director I had the weirdest feeling: I knew in my bones that I would get this job’.”