Category: people

It’s been ten years “since chain-smoking, emphysema and pleural tumors ended that neck-and-neck race between Bernstein and “the odds,” he’s still – in a strange way – on the scene, though without his provocative politics, podium gyrations, capes and cigarette holders. So can we finally get to the truth behind the best-documented musician in Western Civilization?” – Philadelphia Inquirer

“His name is Costa Pilavachi, and he is president of the Decca Music Group in London. At 49, he happens to be just about the most powerful person in the classical-music business – the man who produces not only Bartoli’s albums but those of Luciano Pavarotti, Renée Fleming, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrea Bocelli and Jessye Norman.” – Toronto Star

“Death is a recurring theme in a Ivry Gitlis interview because, well, other people just keep bringing up the subject. ‘Maestro rages against dying of the light’ screamed one review headline after Gitlis made his Australian debut at the 1998 Huntington Festival. Across the globe, music writers never tire of surmising whether the astonishing performance they’ve just witnessed might very well be the violinist’s last.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“This week sees the 600th anniversary of the death of Geoffrey Chaucer, spy, courtier, envoy and the father of English literature and the queues outside the Canterbury Tales, a converted church which contains an audio-assisted whistlestop tour round the great man’s work, themselves tell a remarkable tale. “Canterbury is more popular today than it was in Chaucer’s time.” – London Evening Standard

The Australian Ballet orchestra’s conductor strode onstage as the applause was dying down after Tuesday night’s performance in Perth, dropped to one knee and proposed to the dancer who had just danced the lead in “Merry Widow.” – The Age (Melbourne)

Actor John Gielgud, who died earlier this year at the age of 96, has left an estate of £1.5 million, most of which will go to arts organizations. – BBC

J.K. Rowling drew the largest audience ever to turn out for an author reading to hear her read from her Harry Potter series at Toronto’s SkyDome as part of the International Festival of Authors. An estimated more than 12,000 people attended. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)

It’s been a year since Paul Bowles died in Morocco. But the picture of him as the expat recluse is not very accurate. And tributes on the anniversary of his death aren’t likely to get at the meat of his life. “The idea that Bowles preferred to live in isolation from the world – because he never moved back to New York – is an enabling fiction: it lets journalists and critics off the hook for not bothering to learn about Morocco or Bowles’s life there.” – Feed

Sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, one of the most prolific and distinctive British artists of the 20th century, is in a persistent vegetative state after collapsing at his studio. It is thought unlikely that the prolific Scottish-born artist will recover.” – The Age (Melbourne)

At the age of 67, Susan Sontag declares a new direction. “The milk train of Sontag’s imagination and intellect no longer stops at the essay form for which she is most famous. The American cultural critic plans to focus on fiction.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)