Category: people

Composer/conductor/educator/horn player Gunther Schuller is turning 75 and writing a memoir of his life. But he’s only at his 19th year and already he’s written 250 pages. “I spent about four pages just describing what was available on the radio in the way of classical music. I am self-taught in everything except the French horn, and the radio is one of the ways how I learned so much music. I had to do some research because I had forgotten how much there really was, and I was flabbergasted; it helps explain things about me and others like me. There was no excuse for anybody’s being culturally illiterate, as most Americans are today.” – Boston Globe

James Levine is in his 30th year at the Metropolitan Opera. “The man is simply wedded to the job. He even speaks the way he conducts, in long, flawlessly constructed paragraphs. He pays attention to verbal detail, too, rather as he might with some orchestral point in rehearsal, pausing to find just the right word or phrase to express what he wants to communicate. And then there is also, unmistakably, a certain personal reserve, a distancing that is sometimes a feature of his performances, a sense of his own importance that is conveyed by a reluctance to talk in depth about anything except conducting.” – The Guardian

Wolfgang Sawallisch is on his way out the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director. But as he’s turned 77 the critics are noting a new intensity in his performances. While Sawallisch notes the change, he’s at a loss to explain it. – Philadelphia Inquirer

Dour-looking US Fed chairman Alan Greenspan “studied music at Julliard, and long before he was tracking interest rates he was mastering music scales. Early on, in fact, he spent a year on the road playing saxophone and clarinet with the acclaimed Henry Jerome band.” – National Post (Canada)

John Updike is 68 and contemplating his life’s profession. “There is a dumbing down of fiction, don’t you think? In so many other areas there is dumbing down. People are impatient with any attempt of the novel to pry apart their expectations or surprise them, challenge them. Make them look up a word, think over a prejudice. I think, yes, by and large people read less and maybe they read less intelligently, because they read less and there are more alternatives.” – Baltimore Sun

On the 100th anniversary of his death, Oscar Wilde is everywhere in London. His grandson is the biggest keeper of the Wilde flame. He “seems to tread a fine line between a personal crusade to defend the family honour and a belief in the strict observation of factual accuracy.” – London Evening Standard

Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic made note, made fun and lionized, chronicling every change of attire and every quotable quote, whether he actually said it or not. And so was born the international legend known as Oscar Wilde, hitherto merely a London poetaster of some social notoriety. – New York Times

Producer Cameron Mackintosh’s home has been destroyed in a fire. – BBC

“Two South African scientists are about to embark on a series of forensic tests to prove a case that will blow smoke in the eyes of traditional Shakespearean scholarship. They believe that the man who bestrides the classical canon was not just a genius, but a very early pot head.” – The Independent (UK)

“Amalia Hernandez, the founder of Mexico’s Ballet Folklórico and a pioneer in the revival of traditional Mexican dance styles over the last 50 years, died Saturday at the age of 83.” – Dallas Morning News (AP)