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At 50 Pianist Lars Vogt Was Diagnosed With Cancer. Here’s What He’s Learned

For sure, in classical music, we have internalized particularly strongly an ideal image of ourselves—which we think we need to communicate to others— as the omnipotent magician who makes magic at the piano and whose personal life is going great as well. - Van

Jazz Trombone Great Curtis Fuller Dead At 88

"Mr. Fuller was among the dozens of musicians to emerge from the fertile mid-century jazz scene of Detroit, where he learned to play intricate, fast-paced bebop lines on the unwieldy slide trombone. When arrived in New York in the mid-1950s, he immediately became a major figure in the hard-bop movement." He played with many of the greatest jazz...

Phylicia Rashad Named Dean Of Howard University’s New College Of Fine Arts

The award-winning actor, herself a Howard alumna, will be the first dean of the re-established college. The nation's leading historically Black university folded its fine arts school into its College of Arts and Sciences in 1998 as a cost-cutting measure; Rashad's arrival completes the return of Howard's College of Fine Arts as an independent entity. - The Washington Post

Norman Lloyd, Whose Career Spanned Most Of Hollywood’s History, Dead At 106

He started his working life onstage with Eva Le Gallienne and Orson Welles; acted in films by Welles, Chaplin, Renoir, and Hitchcock (he was the villain in Saboteur); produced and directed episodes of Hitchcock's TV series (which saved him from the blacklist); had a key role in the primetime medical drama St. Elsewhere; and racked up countless other credits...

Balanchine’s Biggest Fan – Nancy Lassalle, 93

“She was the ultimate board member,” said Albert Bellas, chairman emeritus of the S.A.B. “She was financially supportive, knowledgeable and committed.” She was also a daily presence. - The New York Times

Architect Helmut Jahn, 81, Killed In Bicycle-Car Collision

He's best-known for a series of major buildings in Chicago, including the Thompson Center, the Xerox Center (now 55 West Monroe), the addition to the Chicago Board of Trade, and the United Airlines Terminal at O'Hare Airport, as well as the Liberty Place towers in Philadelphia, the Sony Center in Berlin, and Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport. - CNN

Manzoor Ahtesham, Who Brought Bhopal To Life, Has Died Of COVID At 73

Ahtesham wrote of his native city with care and love. One of his translators said, "He had this almost magnifying glass of an eye. ... If a cinema hall was razed or a new suburb was being built, he would describe these changes with a sensitivity, caring and love as if it were part of his own corporal organism."...

Lloyd Price, Whose Smash Hits Prefigured Rock, Dies At 88

Price, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, had his first big rhythm and blues hit with "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" in 1952. "Nicknamed Mr. Personality after his most recognizable hit, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in 1959, Mr. Price found success with Black and white audiences alike. He was a prolific...

Lyn Macdonald, Who Preserved The Voices Of WWI Soldiers, 91

Macdonald was a producer for the BBC in 1973 when she "was given what she thought would be a one-off journalistic assignment: to accompany a group of World War I veterans from a British rifle brigade on a final pilgrimage to the battlefields of France." She interviewed more than 600 veterans and wrote seven books about their experiences, popularizing...

Martin Bookspan, The Voice Of The Lincoln Center, 94

Bookspan realized young that he probably wouldn't make it as a solo violinist, but he brought music to anyone with a radio or TV. "After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a stalwart of Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS program that became America’s premier source of...

Discovered: When Tennessee Williams Wrote A Fan Letter To Eugene O’Neill

“An impassioned letter from Tennessee Williams to Eugene O’Neill is an astonishing find in the world of American drama studies. Just when it seems that the archival well has been drunk dry for these exhaustively studied artists, something truly wonderful appears and changes things. - UKNOW

Trying Very Hard To Ask Bruce Dern Interview Questions

"'Wait a minute, let me tell you about this first,” says Bruce Dern, embarking on what I think is his fifth discursive anecdote in six sentences. 'Did you ever see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Do you remember when Brad Pitt comes in and tries to wake me up?' he asks. … 'So I wake up eventually and...

Book Of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s Love Letters Marks End Of 18-Year Legal Battle Between His Heirs

The letters were between the French author of The Little Prince and his wife, a Salvadoran artist of whom his family sternly disapproved. The lengthy lawsuits were between his relatives and her heirs over rights to previous books about the couple's courtship and marriage. - The Guardian

Celebrate Napoleon? Well, It Is His 200th Birthday…

This isn’t the first time that commemorating Napoleon or the events of his reign has posed a problem. In 2005, the then president of France, Jacques Chirac, and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin – also a Napoleonic historian – thought it wise to sidestep the celebrations for the bicentenary of the French victory against the Austrians at Austerlitz....

W. Royal Stokes, Washington Post Jazz Critic, Dead At 90

"A onetime professor of classics who became a major presence in jazz as a Washington-based radio disc jockey, journalist and author known for his oral histories of musicians' lives, … Mr. Stokes was, by his own admission, an accidental jazz critic with no formal musical training. His instrument was the typewriter." - The Washington Post

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