Cherry died in November after performing in London. Earlier, he said, "A lot of people think your success is how much money you make. … I feel successful because I hung in there and have integrity in what I do. The stuff I do has meaning." - Oregon ArtsWatch
Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra "perfected a witty robotic pop that ... influenced the sound of everything from Nintendo video game scores to the techno genre and hip-hop." He also composed music for film scores, including for The Last Emperor. - Washington Post
Julia Voss, author of the first-ever biography of Europe's first abstract artist, talks about the influence which the 19th-century scientific revolution had on the mystical artist, how hard she tried to get shown, the appalling sexism she faced, and the voices she heard. - Artnet
Her most radical initiative was “02020,” a plan to hand over the programming, the keys to the building and the entire annual production budget to a collective of artists. The idea was to extend experimentalism into every part of the organization. - The New York Times
"From the waning years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the presidencies of 10 succeeding chief executives, Mr. Russell poked fun at the foibles and flaws of the well-known, the pompous and the powerful in monologues replete with pithy one-liners and musical ditties. He called himself 'a political cartoonist for the blind.'" - MSN (The Washington Post)
His 1981 novel, about a patient of Sigmund Freud's who ended up a victim of the Holocaust, was a huge success commercially and critically (it was runner-up to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children for the Booker Prize), and its mimicry of Freud's letters was good enough to fool Anna Freud. - The Guardian
"A Dutch art collective can release an experimental erotic film showing the French novelist Michel Houellebecq having sex with young women in spite of the author's attempt to stop its circulation, an Amsterdam court has ruled." (The project, by the way, was Houellebecq's wife's idea.) - The Guardian
A novelist and essayist who was for several years considered a likely Nobel candidate, "(she) found herself ostracized in the (newly-independent) country of Croatia for refusing to embrace its aggressive nationalism and spent the rest of her life abroad." - The New York Times
Starting in the 1970s, he overtook Alfred Deller as the world's leading male alto through his work with David Munrow's Early Music Consort of London, Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music, and other ensembles, developing a large discography and blazing a trail for the current countertenor boom. - Gramophone
For a writer so relentlessly suspicious of the accounts we give of ourselves, and so attuned to the meager defenses we muster against self-exposure, memoir is a risky medium. - The New Republic
A rescue ship funded by British street artist Banksy was seized in Lampedusa on Sunday after Italy's coast guard said the boat had disobeyed its instructions to head to Sicily after carrying out a migrant rescue operation. - Reuters
Walter Cole made Portland grow up. He, as Darcelle, "was a progressive pioneer, winning over just about anyone he encountered, helping ease a sometimes hidebound city’s fear and stigma of gay people, cross-dressers, drag performers, and anyone who fell outside the borders of restrictive 'normalcy.'" - Oregon ArtsWatch
"His artistic breakthrough came with 'John Somebody,' a playfully inventive work for solo electric guitar with taped accompaniment, which he assembled from 1980 to 1982, and which, as performed regularly and recorded in 1986, won him considerable acclaim." - The New York Times
The actor, who recently starred in Creed II, "was arrested on Saturday in Manhattan and charged with assault and harassment after what the police in New York described as a 'domestic dispute.'" - The New York Times
The oldest son of Andrew Lloyd Webber had "a protracted battle with gastric cancer," representatives said. "We are all totally bereft," said Webber, who missed a Broadway opening to be with his son's family. - Seattle Times (AP)
