obituary
Ismene Brown
Joan Sutherland’s was the voice of my childhood, the voice on the record-player when my mother, a coloratura soprano, practised her Lucia and Traviata. It was a clear and ravishingly carefree sound, as fluid as a stream bubbling in sunlight, effortlessly scintillating in the highest registers, a voice that almost sounded regretful as it descended to earth.I drank in her bel canto records (I too wanted to be a singer), and generations of trainee sopranos sped through their two-octave scales seeking that sweetness, that blitheness, and also that plummy lushness. Not for the teenaged me the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Tony Curtis, who has died in Las Vegas at the age of 85, made an improbable leap from Bronx street kid - the erstwhile Bernie Schwarz, who was always getting beaten up - to Hollywood icon in the 1950s and early Sixties. That he was able to do so is a testament to his determination to be an actor on the G I Bill, Universal’s willingness to put raw hunks of beef like him and Rock Hudson (a fellow Navy man) under contract, and Bernie’s own belief in his facile charm.“I finessed myself," he told me in a 1991 interview at the Hotel Bel-Air that ended in an unexpected hug. “And these actors Read more ...
kate.connolly
It is tempting to playfully twist the German language a little to come up with a word that best describes the avant garde German theatre and film director Christoph Schlingensief. A “Wachrüttler”, literally a shaker-upper or rouser, is probably the best title to describe a man who seemed to put every vein and sinew of his body into shaking German society awake. The loss of Schlingensief, who died of lung cancer last Saturday aged 49, has left a gaping hole in the German arts world. One of the most controversial characters of cultural life here, Schlingensief made an enduring Read more ...
David Nice
Somehow I hadn't expected the death three days ago of the great British tenor, though unquestionably a world-class artist, to be commemorated among the international set of the Verbier Festival. Yet last night, before he raised his baton to conduct the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, conductor Marc Minkowski had a few words to say about Anthony Rolfe Johnson. His mezzo-soprano, the glorious Anne Sofie von Otter, especially wanted to dedicate her performance to a dearly loved friend and colleague.Of course - I'd completely forgotten that over 20 years ago, tenor and mezzo collaborated in Read more ...
David Nice
Perhaps we can drop the "sir" here, as he preferred, though most of the contributors below only knew him in his knighted later years. No death of a musical great, at least since the departure of Mstislav Rostropovich, has caused such a flurry of tributes and reminiscences, even if many of us were long prepared for the end and marvelled at the way he soldiered on to give more great performances in his final year. Tributes from Kit Armstrong, Isobel Buchanan, Colin Currie, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Edward Gardner, Linda Esther Gray, Roy McEwan, David Nice, Peter Rose and Edward Seckerson.If you Read more ...
theartsdesk
Robert Sandall, the music writer and broadcaster, and one of the first members of The Arts Desk, died this morning from prostate cancer. He was 58. His wit, easy style and energetic intelligence were seen in a number of book and concert reviews he did for this site, despite the encroachment of cancer. His range of interest and enthusiasms were shown in the subjects he covered, from his acute interview with Katherine Jenkins to his study of the Steve Jobs effect on the music industry. He was a presenter of Radio 3's eclectic Mixing It and Late Junction, a former Sunday Times rock critic and a Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Several contributors alluded to this quality – he loved stories, was caught up in the drama of pirates and swashbuckling heroes (as Adam Ant used to his advantage when he hired Malcolm “for a thousand guineas” as an advisor. Malcolm then went off with his backing band and renamed them Bow Wow Wow). His partner Young Kim spoke touchingly of how he would often talk in his sleep, regressing to being a child, and she would talk to him while he was asleep, as though he was a five-year-old. The programme managed to show his mischievousness, a certain naivety, but also his “creating anti- Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
We have lost one of the great cultural catalysts of our time, a brilliant provocateur, a different kind of artist. Malcolm McLaren was a dear friend, who will be painfully missed – we spent, for example, Millennium Eve together with a few friends in France. When Malcolm hit on the “serious joke” of running for Mayor of London in 2000, he roped me into being his agent. It was a lost cause, of course, but at times it was a surreal and often comic adventure. But then one of his favourite sayings was “Any fool can be a benign success, it takes real courage to be a failure”.He was 64 when he died Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The music world is reeling from the death of Charlie Gillett. He was not just an influential DJ who was instrumental in widening the listening habits of millions of listeners on his World Service and other radio shows, a journalist, writer and a key figure in promoting global music. He was also a beacon of decency and rare integrity in the music world who affected so many people. Heartfelt tributes have been pouring into his site with postings from complete strangers the other side of the world, to members of his family and even his post-man.I found out the shocking news when Caspar Llewellyn Read more ...
David Nice
Britain's most communicative singing actor, lyric-dramatic tenor Philip Langridge has died at the age of 70. I offer a personal reminiscence, looking back on some of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life, and ask conductors Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner and Vladimir Jurowski as well as director Richard Jones what Langridge's example has meant to them. List your top ten operatic performances: it's an exercise some critics are asked to undertake by rating-hungry newspapers, and a task many of us like to indulge in simply to remind ourselves what's truly Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Comic and reality TV star Jason Wood has died at the age of 38. Wood was a genuinely popular comic among fans and within the industry, and was for many years an Edinburgh Fringe staple. His comedy relied on his distinctive voice and astonishingly accurate impressions of male and female divas - from Dame Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand to Johnny Mathis and Neil Diamond. In 2004 he had the dubious honour of being the first participant to be voted off the first series of Strictly Come Dancing, which was later won by Natasha Kaplinksy. But Jason liked to turn setbacks to his advantage: he was Read more ...
David Nice
The redoubtable and always stylish Russian mezzo-soprano Irina Arkhipova, who died a week ago at the age of 85, still has a song to sing about the prolonged winter we're enduring. Among many roles in which she plunged in true Slavic fashion to contralto depths was that of the shepherd-boy Lel in Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden). This "Spring fairy-tale" is about how we're destined to carry on shivering until the Snow Maiden, daughter of Frost and Spring, melts at the first rays of love. Here's Arkhipova in a fine old Melodiya recording of Lel's first song, wondering whether the Read more ...