Category: people

“Copland was the first, the only and probably the last American classical composer upon whose greatness and importance everyone could agree. His 100th birthday is Nov. 14, and the celebration has taken on something of an iconic status. If we fall into the temptation to look back at the 20th century as the American century, Copland, born as it began, becomes a ready symbol for a nation coming of age.” – Los Angeles Times

Gordon Davis, on taking the top job running Lincoln Center: “If you go to Lincoln Center in all its different facets, there is already a wide diversity of audiences, which is wonderful. What some people don’t understand is that you don’t try to reach more diverse audiences because it’s somehow “The Right Thing To Do.’ You do it because that is where creativity ultimately comes from-broadening and invigorating the arts. It’s in our self-interest to reach the broadest audience.” – Backstage

— at age 78 on Monday. A multitalented entertainer – comedian, singer, author, composer, actor, and TV host – Allen was most well known as the pioneer of late-night television and creator of “The Tonight Show.” – CNN

The American publication of Sylvia Plath’s unabridged journals provides a more well-rounded and nuanced portrait of the famously despairing poet. “Sometimes Plath comes across as a boy-crazy Cosmo girl, Sometimes as a willful narcissist. What is perhaps most striking about these journals, however, is their depiction of Plath’s embrace of ordinary life and her haunting knowledge that her psychological well-being depended upon her remaining anchored to ‘some external reality.’” – New York Times

The actor that LA police shot and killed at a Halloween party Sunday (he was carrying a toy gun) was a longtime much-loved Seattle actor. “For the many in Seattle who knew and admired this charismatic man who left his mark on our theater scene, Lee must be remembered not mainly as the victim of a freak shooting, but as a riveting actor and an extraordinary human being. He deserves that.” – Seattle Times

The seven “kids” from the original “Sound of Music” movie, made in 1965, reunite in Chicago. “The seven have stayed in touch–some remain very close–since their lives were forever united on celluloid in 1965. ‘Today, e-mail keeps us closer than ever’.” – Chicago Sun-Times

“By 1993, when he ended his thirteen years as the chief drama critic for the New York Times, Frank Rich had come to be known as ‘the Butcher of Broadway,’ but the Frank Rich that emerges in the pages of his new memoir is far more Dalmatian than Cruella De Vil.” – New York Magazine

For all the fascination with Sylvia Plath’s life after she died, in truth, “she was boring. Not stretches of emptiness punctuated by tragedy, like a made-for-TV movie, but dull in precisely the way everyday life is: full of waiting for mail, love, something to happen.” – Feed

“In the 1980s, Graves became the darling of postmodernist architecture. Then he designed a tea kettle for Alessi, with a bird on the spout, that became an icon of sophisticated home design. Today, he is a self-proclaimed ‘old fogey’ who designs toasters for Target – and, by the way, more buildings than ever.” – The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)