Thursday January 31
AMERICAN
TRUMPETER BEATEN BY SPANISH POLICE: American trumpeter Rodney
Mack, currently living in Spain and serving as principal trumpet
of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, was viciously beaten by a
gang of out-of-uniform Spanish police two weeks ago. The officers
did not identify themselves to Mack, who thought he was being
mugged, and offered up the explanation that they thought he was
a car thief who had been seen in the area. Mack's injuries are
preventing him from performing with the BSO on its current tour
of the U.S., and he is preparing a lawsuit against the police.
The New York Times 01/31/02
MAKE
IT STOP: "Another complaint against Stephen Ambrose has
emerged. This one dates back to 1970, when fellow historian Cornelius
Ryan accused him of a 'rather graceless falsification' in Ambrose's
book, The Supreme Commander. The allegations were first
reported Tuesday on Forbes.com." The
Plain Dealer (AP) 01/31/02
SOME
VERY UNPOETIC SOUR GRAPES: "Winning the coveted T.S.
Eliot Prize last week has confirmed Anne Carson's status as one
of the most celebrated and controversial of contemporary poets.
Soon after the prize was announced, Carson, who teaches classics
at McGill University in Montreal, was denounced in Britain's Guardian
newspaper by eminent poetry critic Robert Potts for writing 'doggerel'
that mixes 'an occasional (and occasionally cliched) lyricism,
some fashionable philosophizing and an almost artless grafting-on
of academic materials.'" National
Post (Canada) 01/31/02
Wednesday January 30
GREAT WRITERS
WHO AREN'T NICE GUYS: He's been called a reactionary, an Islamophobe,
a racist, and an intellectual neo-colonialist. And last year V.
S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize. Regardless of the epithets, he
demonstrates "a fecundity, an originality, and an extraordinary
technical daring that have been insufficiently recognized, partly
because Naipaul is so readable. His work exemplifies the art that
conceals art, and he is one of the greatest living craftsmen of
English prose, perhaps the very greatest." Atlantic Monthly 02/02
Tuesday January 29
LONG
WHARF'S NEW DIRECTOR: New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre has hired
Gordon Edelstein to be its new artistic director. Edelstein is
currently director of Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre, where
he's credited with reviving the company's artistic and financial
fortunes. Seattle
Times 01/28/02
PARALYSIS
CAN'T DERAIL CONDUCTOR: Mario Miragliotta was a promising
conductor who had recently finished his term as music director
of the Santa Barbara Symphony and had been appointed assistant
conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, when he got into
a car accident last June that left him paralysed, unable to move
his hands or legs. Determined to overcome the injuries, he's been
working daily to get back on the podium, and he's got a concert
coming up... Los Angeles Daily News
01/28/02
Monday January 28
PIPPI
LONGSTOCKING CREATOR, 94: Popular children's writer Astrid
Lindgren, creator of the braided, free-thinking Pippi Longstocking,
has died at age 94. "Lindgren wrote more than 100 works,
including novels, short stories, plays, song books and poetry."
Nando Times (AP) 01/28/02
THE
AUTHOR, NOT THE PERSON: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph
J. Ellis canceled his book tour last week. Last year it was revealed
that Ellis had lied about having served in Vietnam during the
war, and Ellis was sure to be questioned about this on the tour.
In Seattle, there have also been objections to Ellis speaking
at an author series at the Seattle Public Library. But hosts of
the event have decided to go ahead with the appearance in February.
"It seemed to us that Ellis' personal life - what he did or didn't
do as a teacher - really has nothing to do with the scholarship
that went into his books about Jefferson and the founding brothers."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/28/02
Tuesday January 22
PEGGY
LEE DIES: "Soulful singing legend Peggy Lee has died
of a heart attack at the age of 81... Lee is best known for her
rendition of Fever and in 1969 she won a Grammy award for
best contemporary female vocal performance for the hit Is That
All There Is?" BBC 01/22/02
TAUBMAN
APPEALS: Former Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman, convicted
in December of price-fixing, has filed a motion for a retrial,
saying the case against him was presented unfairly. Among other
things, Taubman says the government was "wrongly allowed
to read a quotation at trial from Adam Smith to the effect that
higher prices invariably result when people in the same trade
meet." The Art Newspaper 01/22/02
RETHINKING
HINDEMITH: Few composers have had their reputations endure
harsher cultural mood swings than Paul Hindemith. Rejected by
academics in the mid-20th century after he rejected the
atonalism of Schönberg, his music has never regained any
real traction in the concert hall, even as other "accessible"
composers like Shostakovich and Britten have been vindicated and
popularized. What is it about Hindemith's music that doesn't interest
today's music programmers? Commentary
01/02
Monday January 21
IT
IS BETTER TO SOUND GOOD...(BUT DON'T LET THAT STOP THE MARKETING):
Magdalena Kozena is 28, and "the blue-eyed, blonde Czech
mezzo-soprano is the classical recording industry's latest hot
property. But does Kozena owe her success to her looks?"
The Guardian (UK) 01/21/02
- SOUND
BEFORE LOOKS? "A tall and willowy 28-year-old, Kozená
is a delightful girl with a crisp sense of humour and - sorry,
chaps - a nice new French boyfriend. More important, she is
blessed with an impressive vocal technique and a clean, warm
and alluring mezzo-soprano that reaches, in the modern style
of Anne Sofie von Otter, Ann Murray and Susan Graham, into soprano
rather than contralto territory."
The Telegraph (UK) 01/21/02
Thursday January 17
NOBELIST
CAMILO CELA, 85: "Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela, winner
of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature, has died in Madrid from
respiratory and coronary failure. With his first novel, published
in 1946, Cela became a leader of a straightforward style of writing,
called tremendismo, which clashed with the lyricism that had characterised
writers of the previous generation in Spain."
BBC 01/17/02
Wednesday January 16
MUSIC
MEDICI: "Alberto Vilar has become the biggest benefactor
in the history of classical music. Whatever the critics make of
his philanthropic style, it has endeared him to many of the world's
top directors, conductors, and singers, not to mention the managers
who must pay them. He has few other cultural interests (he hates
movies) and - unlike the Medicis - isn't interested in expanding
the repertory; he doesn't commission new work and has no soft
spot for small, struggling companies."
New York Magazine 01/14/02
CHAILLY
LEAVING CONCERTGEBOUW: Riccardo Chailly, who's been chief
conductor of Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra since 1988,
is leaving the orchestra to head up the Leipzig Opera in Germany,
in 2005. Philadelphia
Inquirer (AP) 01/16/02
Monday January 15
LARKIN'S
MONEY GOES TO CHURCH: Poet Philip Larkin, who "declined
the poet laureateship a year before he died in 1985, remains best
known for his reverently agnostic poem Churchgoing. He
also said: 'The Bible is a load of balls of course - but very
beautiful'." So his friends and fans were amused recently when
£1 million of his legacy was willed to the Church of England.
The Guardian (UK) 01/12/02
DEMME
(NO, THE OTHER ONE) COLLAPSES ON THE COURT: "Ted Demme,
a film and television director whose credits include the movie
Blow, collapsed and died while playing basketball. He was
38." Washington Post (AP) 01/15/02
Friday January 11
LYNCH
LEADS CANNES THIS YEAR: Director David Lynch will be president
of the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, which runs this year from May
15 to 26. Lynch won the top prize at Cannes in 1990 for Wild
At Heart, and the best director award last year for Mulholland
Drive. Nando
Times (AP) 01/11/02
Wednesday January 9
MORE
AMBROSE ALLEGATIONS: "A second book by best-selling historian
Stephen Ambrose is being cited for having material that was allegedly
copied from another text. Forbes.com is reporting that Ambrose's
Crazy Horse and Custer contains sections similar to Jay Monaghan's
Custer. A representative for Ambrose said Tuesday there would
be no immediate comment. Anchor Books, which publishes the paperback
edition of Crazy Horse and Custer, also declined immediate comment."
Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/09/02
Tuesday January 8
THE
DIVA OF LINCOLN CENTER: Beverly Sills has always been a diva.
But heading up Lincoln Center is proving to be a rougher playground
than the opera stage was. Why does she stay? "Sills long
ago grew accustomed to being the center of attention, the cynosure
of a colorful and melodramatic whirl. But when her vehicle was
a real opera, there were flowers and shouts of 'Brava!' at the
curtain call. When she finally leaves the soap opera at Lincoln
Center, that may not be the case, and some of the people around
her think that she is only now coming to painful terms with that."
The New York Times 01/06/02
ART
OF TRAITORS: Anthony Blunt was one of England's most notorious
spies. He was "a diligent, cool-headed traitor for two decades,
yet this was the smaller part of his life. His overt expertise
was in French art and architecture. He was (legally) recruited
first by the Warburg Institute in London, then moved to its rival
the Courtauld, where he eventually became director." The
New Yorker 01/07/02
JUST
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS: "Leni Riefenstahl, who produced
masterful propaganda films for the Nazis, plans her first movie
release in nearly 50 years to coincide with her 100th birthday
this summer. Impressions Under Water, a 45-minute film about the
underwater world of the Indian Ocean, is the result of dives between
1974 and 2000, Riefenstahl told Germany's Die Welt newspaper
in a rare interview." Toronto
Star (AP) 01/08/02
Monday January 7
THE
SELLING OF RENEE: Soprano Renee Fleming is said to have the
most beautiful voice on stage today. "Though singing may
be a private orgy, it is also a business, and if Fleming has become
America's sweetheart it is because, behind her soft smile, she
so shrewdly understands the country's values: the need to balance
pleasure and profit, self-expression and the ambitious manoeuvrings
of a career." The Observer (UK) 01/06/02
VARNEDOE
LEAVES MOMA: Kirk Varnedoe has been chief curator of the Museum
of Modern Art's department of painting and sculpture since 1988.
But as MOMA prepares for a major expansion, Varnedoe is leaving
the museum to go to Princeton. "Many people regard me as a raging
postmodernist, says Mr. Varnedoe, who has also been accused of
an emphatic bias against contemporary theory. 'I'm more of a pragmatist
than anything else, a Darwinist, I suppose, as opposed to having
a teleological vision of a great race of isolated geniuses who
pass the baton on to one another'."
The New York Times 01/06/02
Friday January 4
KERNIS
AT THE TOP: Composer Aaron Jay Kernis has been winning all
the music world's top prizes for composers, including the Grawemeyer
and the Pulitzer. He's also getting some of the most prominent
commissions by major orchestras. "He's capable of irony and wit,
but won't take cover behind those qualities. There's a lot of
passion to his writing, and what ties his disparate pieces together
are the grand gestures, the way he'll go for a big romantic statement."
Christian Science Monitor 01/04/02
PETER
HEMMINGS, 67, L.A. OPERA'S FOUNDING DIRECTOR: "With a
budget of just $6.4 million, Hemmings launched Music Center Opera
(later renamed Los Angeles Opera), mounting five productions in
a first season that immediately made the operatic world take notice.
By the time he retired in 2000 to return to his native England,
Hemmings had left behind a company with a $22-million budget and
an eight-opera season of more than 50 performances, most of them
selling out." Los
Angeles Times 01/04/02
Thursday January 3
WHO'S
WHO OF SMART: A new book attempts to determine who America's
leading intellectuals are by counting media mentions. Dumb methodology
but great fun. "The top public intellectual by media mentions
in the last five years turns out to be Henry Kissinger, followed
by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Sidney Blumenthal comes in seventh,
which of course undermines the entire enterprise." New
York Observer 01/02/02
SANDERLING
TO STEP DOWN: Conductor Kurt Sanderling is turning 90, and
he's decided to retire from the podium after 70 years on stage.
"Musicians are rueing his departure, while admiring its dignified
restraint." Why do so many other artists have difficulty
knowing when it's time to quit? The
Telegraph (UK) 01/03/02
PORTRAIT
OF THE ARTIST AS (HAPPILY) UNKNOWN: "Successful, of course,
is not synonymous with famous. For famous, you might choose a
name such as Riopelle, Thomson, Carr, Pratt or Colville. But Eric
Dennis Waugh has likely sold more canvases than all of them --
combined. In fact, he's sold more paintings, by far, than anyone
else in Canada (and in most other countries as well). Eric Dennis
who? Exactly." The Globe &
Mail (Toronto) 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
MESSING
WITH THE POPE: Last month the acting head of the National
Endowment for the Arts turned back two grants; one - for a production
of Tony Kushner's Kabul play eventually was approved, but
the other, for a retrospective of conceptual artist William Pope,
was not. Pope's work is hard to categorize. "Combining performance,
installation and sculpture, it is formally exacting but improvisational,
politically pointed but comedic. Social inequality and consumerism
are among his targets, and although his work deals intensively
with the issue of race, it upsets preconceptions of what 'black
art' should be." The New York
Times 01/01/02
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