“Philip Blum played cello with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 54 years, the last 12 of them while battling cancer. … ‘He used to say if he wasn’t in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra he’d be pumping gas,’ his wife said.”
Tag: 09.06.09
It Sounds Kinda Like A Gay Ghosts Of Versailles
Halloween in the Castro, a satirical “horror opera” by Jack Curtis Dubowsky which premieres in October in the titular San Francisco neighborhood, features “a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, the ‘unseen spirit’ representing a neighborhood resident who was bashed, a ‘bitter queen’ who doesn’t feel beautiful anymore, and a politician.”
Family Seeks Return Of Vermeer Sold To Hitler
“Count Jaromir Czernin had sold Flemish painter Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece to the Nazi dictator ‘to protect the life of his family’, his descendants’ attorney, Andreas Theiss, told Der Standard. … The Art of Painting, which Vermeer created in 1665, has been on the walls of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1946. It is the Flemish master’s largest painting.”
More Legal Trouble For Leibovitz: A Copyright Infringement Suit
“[She] is being sued by an Italian photographer who says she used his pictures without permission. Paolo Pizzetti claims Ms Leibovitz used photos he took in Venice and Rome, and passed them off as her own in a 2009 calendar for a coffee company.”
Silver Screen Sex Goddesses At 75: Brigitte Bardot And Sophia Loren
“If [our sex symbols] do have the temerity to grow older, we expect them to be like Loren and segue seamlessly from sexpot youthfulness to granny glamour. We find it more difficult to fathom when, like Bardot, they choose to retire from public life … and refuse to care about the creeping onset of their decrepitude.”
From The Top Turns 10, And Early Alums Are All Grown Up
Public radio’s From the Top has expanded in the decade since it “was launched as a showcase for pre-college classical musicians.” But its host, Christopher O’Riley, “says he’s most happy about the fact that the show has become a known outlet for young people to express themselves through music.”
Research: Bach Used 20th-Century Composing Technique
“In the current issue of ‘Musical Times,’ Professors Eric Altschuler and Noam Elkies write about finding a tone row in Bach’s music that may predate [Schoenberg’s] famous compositional technique by two centuries.”
Interpol Puts Database Of Stolen Art Online
“Now, for the first time, anyone looking to establish the origins of an artwork or simply peruse the vast catalogue of the world’s stolen treasures can do so for free at the click of a mouse. Interpol, the global policing body, has unveiled an online database of about 34,000 items known to have gone missing….”
‘Frida Kahlo’ Archive Emerges, And Partisans Cry Forgery
In Mexico, “a festering dispute over a little-known archive of ephemera attributed to Kahlo has erupted into open warfare. Despite the tantalizing possibility that some or maybe even all the material is authentic,” bullying assertions that it’s fake are being made by art-world figures who’ve never laid eyes on it.
Home To Thousands Of Dancers…
“Founded in February 1989, the then San Francisco Dance Center – which moved into the upper floors of the Odd Fellows Grand Lodge in 2002 – quickly became one of the busiest locations for dancers and choreographers on the West Coast.”