Category: people

In 2020, a year of crisis upon crisis, some of those losses were especially painful, brought on by a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. – The New York Times

Born in mandate-era Palestine in 1922, he started playing violin at 6, entered the Paris Conservatory at 11 and won the school’s top prize at 13, and toured the world as a soloist into his 90s. (He also had a small sideline in movie acting.) – France 24 (AFP)

Born Joseph Gantic, raised as Robert Sheff, and having acquired the name he was known by during a brief period as a member of Iggy Pop’s band, he performed Charles Ives and John Cage while still in high school, worked with Robert Ashley and Laurie Anderson, and made a career composing and performing music that, as Steve Smith puts it, “deftly balanced conceptual rigor with breezy pop sounds.” – The New York Times

An operatically trained soprano whose clear and youthful voice was a natural for such roles as Maria in The Sound of Music and Christine in The Phantom of the Opera (which she understudied and which became her first lead role on Broadway), she was a three-time Tony nominee, for work in Show Boat, The Music Man, and Mary Poppins. Her last Broadway appearance was as Alison’s mother in Fun Home in 2016, and she worked until late last year before announcing her ALS diagnosis this past February. – Playbill

“[He] developed a rich, singular voice and worked across media, bouncing seamlessly through performance, video, book projects, and paintings. This past year was a breakout moment for the artist.” – Artnet

“Somewhat embarrassingly, it was one of her own pupils, Michael Roll, who won the first competition, … but, despite the controversy, the event gradually grew from what she herself described as a ‘cottage industry’ into one of the most important of its type in the world.” She remained chairman and artistic director of “the Leeds” until just five years ago. – The Guardian

Lazarus landed into the public eye during another highly unfunny time – just after the Great Recession. She “probed the minds of celebrities and created her own late-night comedy universe on her longstanding self-produced live New York talk show, Employee of the Month.” – The New York Times

Cowell “had one foot firmly in the jazz tradition and another in the avant-garde. He often performed standards and jazz classics, but in new and unexpected ways.” – Washington Post

Meeting culture in the middle meant Armstrong could change things from within. The list of firsts he oversaw is staggering. Knockin’ a Jug, which featured black and white musicians, was one of the US’s first integrated recordings. That same year, he cut the first integrated vocal duet, Rockin’ Chair, with white singer Hoagy Carmichael. Black and Blue, a 1929 B-side on Okeh Records’ “popular music” listings (a label that had previously marketed him for “race records”), has been called American music’s first bona fideprotest song against racial inequality. – The Guardian

“From strips of mulberry tree bark, she produced an intricate vase. To make a stout bowl, she folded hunks of poplar bark. She once wove a basket on a loom with lichen. She also created sculptures from wood, like a hollowed-out oak tree she encased with apple suckers and a work featuring branches of cherry and paulownia linked together like a necklace with glass and wire.” – The New York Times