Category: people

“[He] began his career in Cuba at 14 and was still active past the age of 95. … His greatest innovation was to play more than one conga drum at a time, eventually settling on a setup of three congas, each tuned to a different pitch. He sometimes added bongos and other percussion instruments, creating a whirlwind of complex rhythms and sounds.” – The Washington Post

The author of more than 70 scripts, “[he] enjoyed his biggest successes Off Broadway and in regional and European theaters” — he was reportedly the most-produced American playwright in France — “[notably] at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts, which he helped found in 1979. His plays gave opportunities to a number of young actors who went on to become household names. … [But his] career was tarnished by accusations by multiple women that he had sexually assaulted them.” – The New York Times

“Irvin Mayfield and Ronald Markham, a pair of musicians-turned-impresarios who had worked to put New Orleans’s jazz scene back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to commit fraud, capping a precipitous fall from grace that now leaves them each facing up to five years in prison.” – The New York Times

“Since the early 1980s, Rath has created kinetic sculptures guided by software of his own making. Rath’s robotic structures often feature computer-generated animations of disembodied human body parts — a roving eye or gaping mouth — exemplifying his interest in the relationship between human nature and mechanical and technological systems.” – ARTnews

He was marketing shoes in Boston when he decided to try his hand at comedy, and he ultimately spent nearly fifty years in clubs and on television entertaining people with his (deliberate) misuse of vocabulary. For example: “He’s got a certain inner flux that excretes from this man, there’s an aura of marination that radiates out of him.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“The quick-witted Mr. Trebek, who died on Sunday at age 80 after a battle with cancer that drew legions of fans to rally around him, hosted Jeopardy! for a record-setting 37 years. He was an authoritative and unflappable fixture for millions of Americans who organized their weeknights around the program, shouting out the questions as Mr. Trebek read the answers with his impeccable diction.” – The New York Times

Though she played hundreds of roles on stage and screen, “none of those performances made a bigger impression than her role as ‘Clocktower Lady’ in Back to the Future, the top-grossing movie of 1985. Early in the film her character interrupts the young lovers played by Michael J. Fox and Claudia Wells in mid-kiss, urging them to ‘save the clock tower.’ The mayor, she tells them, holding out a donation can, wants to replace the clock.” – The New York Times

Littman was “a honey-voiced Louisianian and literary muse who taught Hollywood to speak Southern, but [she] left her most enduring legacy as an early force in the fight against AIDS” – The New York Times

An artist who turned to leading workshops and writing when her art career faltered, “[she] taught generations of women how to masturbate in workshops, books and videos, seeing the do-it-yourself climax as a liberating social force.” – The New York Times

“I was really depressed,” Mr. Golijov, 59, said by phone recently, of his creative drought. “That is the shortest answer.” – The New York Times