Erich Kunzel, Jr has died he was 74

Erich Kunzel, Jr. was an American orchestra conductor. Called the "Prince of Pops" by the Chicago Tribune,^[1][2] he performed with a number of leading pops and symphony orchestras, especially the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (CPO), which he led for over 44 years.

(March 21, 1935 – September 1, 2009)

Kunzel was born to German-American immigrant parents in New York City. At Greenwich High School in Connecticut, he arranged music and played the piano, string bass, and timpani. Initially a chemistry major, Kunzel graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in music, then studied at Harvard and Brown universities.^[3] Early in his career, he conducted for the Santa Fe Opera and studied at the Pierre Monteux School.^[4] From 1960 to 1965, he conducted the Rhode Island Philharmonic. From 1965 to 1977, Kunzel served as resident conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO).^[3]

Erich Kunzel (left) receives the 2006 National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush (right) at a 2007 ceremony.

In 1965, Kunzel began the country's first winter pops series, the "8 O'Clock Pops". When the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra board of trustees created the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra in 1977, Kunzel was named conductor. The Pops became the larger of Cincinnati's two orchestras, as all of Max Rudolf's symphony orchestra also played for the Pops year-round. At the invitation of Arthur Fiedler in 1970, Kunzel guest-conducted over 100 concerts with the Boston Pops Orchestra.^[3] He remained active with symphony, leading the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1982 to 2002.

From the beginning, Kunzel's strove to expand the Cincinnati Pops' reach worldwide, with nearly 90 recordings on the Telarc label,^[3] most of which became bestsellers. His popular recordings of classical music, Broadway musicals, and movie scores topped worldwide crossover charts more than any other conductor or orchestra in the world. Some of Kunzel's mentees at the Cincinnati Pops would later become notable in their own right, including Keith Lockhart of the Boston Pops and Steven Reineke of The New York Pops.^[4]

The Cincinnati Pops were especially popular in Asia. The group toured Japan several times. In 1998, Kunzel became the first American pops conductor to perform in China. Ten years later, he and the Cincinnati Pops were invited back to perform at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; they were the only American orchestra to play at the event.^[5]

Kunzel made most of his classical music recordings as director of the Cincinnati Pops. However, he also made jazz recordings with Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and other well-known artists. From the Capitol Building lawn, Kunzel conducted the National Symphony Orchestra every Memorial Day and Fourth of July from 1991 to 2008, in concerts televised nationwide on PBS.^[4]

The conductor had a large influence on Cincinnati's local music scene. In addition to conducting almost weekly subscription concerts with the Cincinnati Pops, he expanded the Pops program in 1984 to include a summer concert series at the newly-built Riverbend Music Center on the banks of the Ohio River. He pushed for a new campus to house the city's public School for Creative and Performing Arts. He invited many local performers, including children's choruses and College-Conservatory students, to share the stage with the Pops.^[4]

Kunzel's work with the Cincinnati Pops and other orchestras earned him a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical in 1998, for Copland: The Music of America,^[5] as well as the 2006 National Medal of Arts. In 2009, he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, based in Cincinnati.^[4]

On June 20–21, 2008, Kunzel conducted The Toronto Symphony Orchestra's performance of Star Trek: The Music at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.

In April 2009, Kunzel was diagnosed with pancreatic, liver and colon cancer and received chemotherapy treatments in Cincinnati.^[6] He performed a final concert at Riverbend on August 1, 2009. He died a month later at Bar Harbor, Maine, near his home at Swan's Island.^[4] That day, the CSO board of trustees posthumously named him "Founder and Conductor Emeritus" of the Pops.^[4]

Donald Fisher has died he was 81

Donald George Fisher has died he was 81. Fisher was an American businessman who founded The Gap clothing stores and he was collector of contemporary Western art.

(September 3, 1928 - September 27, 2009)

Fisher was born in Cutsdean, California to Sydney Fisher, businessman, and Aileen Fisher, a cabinetmaker. He spent his childhood in the then-middle-class Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco. He graduated from Lowell High School in 1946, and then matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a member of the both the Swimming and Water Polo Teams. He is an alumnus of the Theta Zeta chapter of the national fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. He earned a BS degree from the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley in 1951.

Named 2007 Alumnus of the Year, Fisher had a robust college experience at Berkeley where his nickname was ‘Horny Fish’ and where he was caught cheating by then-Professor Clark Kerr. Kerr gave Fisher an F, but did not have him expelled. Had he been expelled, he writes, [it] “would have changed my life completely.” Fisher says he still thinks about his cheating and Kerr's response today.^[1]

According to Forbes magazine, his net worth was estimated to be US$3.3 billion. Fisher was a Republican, active in San Francisco politics. He was a founding Board Member of the Presidio Trust (the public corporation that runs the Presidio of San Francisco), a post nominated by the President of the United States.^[2] He was married to Doris Fisher.

Fisher has been active in several public education causes, including being a major contributor to KIPP charter schools—a national network of low-income, high-achieving college preparatory public charter schools: he is the chairman of the board of trustees of the KIPP Foundation, the non-profit central organization of the KIPP network. He is also a contributor to Teach For America, GreatSchools.net, and EdVoice, a state-wide coalition of California business leaders and others who support education reform. Fisher also serves on the California State Board of Education. Fisher and his family donated a generous sum of money to Princeton University in 2006, and the Fisher Hall dormitory at Princeton's new residential college Whitman College is named for him. ^[3]. He has also donated to charter schools and museums in San Francisco, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and paid for public sculptures in San Francisco.^[2] In 2007, Fisher was honored as the Alumnus of the Year by the California Alumni Association at the University of California, Berkeley. ^[4].

In 2000, Fisher, an investor in Edison Schools (a for-profit educational management organization), was found to be funneling "soft money" into the campaigns of pro-Edison board members during San Francisco's school board election on whether to break contract with Edison. The consulting firm Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter and Partners funded approximately $47,100 to a group called "San Franciscans for Sensible Government" that was distributing campaign flyers for Mary Hernandez, Stephen Herman, and Robert Varni. The pro-Edison campaign was not successful in preventing a new anti-privatization majority of four to three in the San Francisco Unified School Board.^[5]

Since founding the Gap in 1969, Fisher and his wife Doris began collecting contemporary Western art. In 1993, ARTnews Magazine declared Fisher one of the top ten art collectors in the world. His collection, largely housed at the Gap headquarters in San Francisco, includes comprehensive, career-spanning works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Chuck Close, and Claes Oldenburg.

On August 8, 2007, Fisher announced plans to build a 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m²) museum in the San Francisco Presidio, tentatively named the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio, to house his art collection. The museum, if it had been built, would have been larger than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).^[2] However, the plan engendered widespread skepticism and even outright antagonism among some historic preservationists in San Francisco.^[6]

In July 2009, Fisher announced that he and his wife were abandoning their efforts to build the museum at San Francisco's Presidio, stating "Doris and I will take some time to consider the future of our collection and other possible locations for a museum, which could include other sites within the Presidio and elsewhere." ^[7] In September 2009, Donald and Doris Fisher decided to enter into a partnership with SFMOMA to display the world famous collection. ^[8]

One day after the San Francisco Chronicle article on the SFMOMA partnership, the Chronicle reported that Fisher died of cancer at home on Sunday morning, September 27, 2009.^[9]

Alicia de Larrocha y de la Calle has died she was 86

Alicia de Larrocha y de la Calle has died she was 86 . Calle was a Spanish Catalan pianist. Reuters referred to her as "the greatest Spanish pianist in history"^[1] and Time called her "one of the world's most outstanding pianists".^[2] The Guardian called her "the leading Spanish pianist of her time".^[3]

She won multiple Grammy Awards, a Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and is credited with bringing greater popularity to the compositions of Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados.^[1] In 1995, she became the first Spanish artist to win the UNESCO Prize.^[3]

(23 May 1923 – 25 September 2009)

Born in Barcelona,^[4] she began studying piano with Frank Marshall at the age of three. Both her parents were pianists and she was also the niece of pianists.^[2][4] Beginning her career at the age of three, she publicly debuted at the age of five at the International Exposition in Barcelona.^[2] She performed her first concert at the age of six at the World's Fair in Seville in 1929, and had her orchestral debut at the age of 11. By 1943, she was selling out in Spain.^[2] She began touring internationally in 1947, and in 1954 toured North America with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

De Larrocha made numerous recordings of solo piano repertoire and in particular the works of composers of her native Spain. She is best known for her recordings of the music of Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados and Isaac Albéniz, as well as her 1967 recordings of Antonio Soler's keyboard sonatas. She has recorded for Hispavox, CBS/Columbia/Epic, BMG/RCA and London/Decca, winning her first Grammy Award in 1975 and again, as recently as 1992, at the age of almost seventy. She received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 1994.^[2]

Less than five feet tall and with small hands for a pianist,^[1][2] in her younger years she was nonetheless able to tackle all the big concertos (all five by Beethoven, Liszt's No. 1, Brahms's No. 2, Rachmaninoff's Nos. 2 and 3, both by Ravel, Prokofiev's No. 3, those by Bliss and Khachaturian, and many more) as well as the wide spans demanded by the music of Granados, Albéniz, and de Falla. She had a "long fifth finger" and a "wide stretch between thumb and index finger" which helped make her more technically gifted.^[3]

As she grew older she began to play a different style of music; more Mozart and Beethoven were featured in her recitals and she became a regular guest at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts's Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. In 2001, she was named Honorary Member of the Foundation for Iberian Music at The City University of New York. De Larrocha retired from public performing in October 2003, aged 80, following a 76-year career.^[2][4]

Alicia de Larrocha died on 25 September 2009 in Quiron Hospital, Barcelona, aged 86. She had been in declining health since breaking her hip two years previously.^[5] Her husband, the pianist Juan Torro, with whom she had two children, died in 1982.^[2][3]

Culture Minister Ángeles González Sinde described her as "an extraordinary ambassador for Spain".^[1] The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra had one minute's silence in her memory before their performances on the weekend after her death.^[1] The Daily Telegraph's Damian Thompson complimented her "rich legacy" and said she "virtually owned a small chunk of the piano repertoire".^[6] The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith praised the "excellent" obituary she was given by Allan Kozinn in The New York Times.^[7] On 27 September 2009 Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra dedicated their performance of the Brahms 2nd Symphony to Alicia de Larrocha.

Lucy Vodden died she was 46

(AP) Lucy Vodden, who provided the inspiration for the Beatles' classic song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," has died after a long battle with lupus. She was 46.


Her death was announced Monday by St. Thomas' Hospital in London, where she had been treated for the chronic disease for more than five years, and by her husband, Ross Vodden. Britain's Press Association said she died last Tuesday. Hospital officials said they could not confirm the day of her death.

Vodden's connection to the Beatles dates back to her early days, when she made friends with schoolmate Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son.

Julian Lennon, then 4 years old, came home from school with a drawing one day, showed it to his father, and said it was "Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

At the time, John Lennon was gathering material for his contributions to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," a landmark album released to worldwide acclaim in 1967.

The elder Lennon seized on the image and developed it into what is widely regarded as a psychedelic masterpiece, replete with haunting images of "newspaper taxis" and a "girl with kaleidoscope eyes."

Rock music critics thought the song's title was a veiled reference to LSD, but John Lennon always claimed the phrase came from his son, not from a desire to spell out the initials LSD in code.

Vodden lost touch with Julian Lennon after he left the school following his parents' divorce, but they were reunited in recent years when Julian Lennon, who lives in France, tried to help her cope with the disease.

He sent her flowers and vouchers for use at a gardening center near her home in Surrey in southeast England, and frequently sent her text messages in an effort to buttress her spirits.

"I wasn't sure at first how to approach her," Julian Lennon told the Associated Press in June. "I wanted at least to get a note to her. Then I heard she had a great love of gardening, and I thought I'd help with something she's passionate about, and I love gardening too. I wanted to do something to put a smile on her face."

In recent months, Vodden was too ill to go out most of the time, except for hospital visits.

She enjoyed her link to the Beatles, but was not particularly fond of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

"I don't relate to the song, to that type of song," she told the Associated Press in June. "As a teenager, I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends at school that I was the Lucy in the song and they said, 'No, it's not you, my parents said it's about drugs.' And I didn't know what LSD was at the time, so I just kept it quiet, to myself."

Vodden is the latest in a long line of people connected to the Beatles who died at a relatively young age.

The list includes John Lennon, gunned down at age 40, manager Brian Epstein, who died of a drug overdose when he was 32, and original band member Stuart Sutcliffe, who died of a brain hemorrhage at 21.

A spokeswoman for Julian Lennon and his mother, Cynthia Lennon, said they were "shocked and saddened" by Vodden's death.

Angie Davidson, a lupus sufferer who is campaign director of the St. Thomas' Lupus Trust, said Vodden was "a real fighter" who had worked behind the scenes to support efforts to combat the disease.

"It's so sad that she has finally lost the battle she fought so bravely for so long," said Davidson.

William Safire, political and linguistic commentator died he was 79

William Safire died he was 79. Safire was credited, along with William F. Buckley Jr with restoring substance and respectability to the American Right. He was, in addition, one of those loquacious Americans of a certain vintage who, if rarely laugh-out-loud funny, were venerated for their wit.

For some 35 years, writing a political column syndicated in more than 300 papers, he straddled the worlds of partisan politics and libertarianism, engaging in the first with unabashed ferocity while exploring the second as the surest sign of a civilised society.

( Hewas born on December 17, 1929. He died of pancreatic cancer on September 27, 2009, aged 79)

He could be abrasive, even abusive, as when he notoriously labelled Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady, a “congenital liar”. He could get things hopelessly wrong, as when he wrote, beneath the headline “Found: A Smoking Gun”, that a “clear link” had been established between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He was also an unwavering Zionist, with a particular regard for the belligerent former general and Likud party leader Ariel Sharon. He brooked no criticism of Israel and regarded the protection of the Jewish state as almost a constitutional requirement of the United States.

Yet, in repose, when writing his long-running column “On Language”, his mind was as playful as a grand piano. He was meticulous in his choice of words, determined always to strike the right note, keen that his learning should be on display alongside an obvious bonhomie. Many readers of The New York Times who would instinctively have shied away from his political opinions believed him to be the ultimate fount of wisdom when it came to style and usage.

It would never have occurred to Safire — not even in jest — to become a stand-up comedian. There was a polished quality to his humour that harked back to the Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, when tweedy men and women with feathers in their hats exchanged well-practised aphorisms in midtown Manhattan while enjoying a three-Martini lunch.

If The New Yorker magazine had ever lurched to the right, he would have been one of its brightest stars. As it was, having served as a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, he worked for many years as a political pundit and linguistic commentator on the otherwise liberal New York Times, where his gung-ho conservatism — notable for its support for both the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — was balanced by his unwavering support for civil liberties, including his spirited opposition to the Patriot Act of 2001.

William Lewis Safir (he added the “e” to his surname to make it appear more American) was born, the eldest of three brothers, into a Jewish family in New York City in 1929. His father, Oliver, was a threads manufacturer to the garment trade who died when Safire was 4. Brought up by his mother, Ida, in Los Angeles and New York, the future “maven” attended the Bronx High School of Sciences, from which he won a place at Syracuse University, dropping out at the end of his second year to work as a copyboy for Tex McCrary, a columnist with the New York Herald Tribune.

It was McCrary — later credited with the invention of the talk show — who introduced Safire to the Republican Party, then recovering from the shock defeat of Thomas E. Dewey in the eventful 1948 campaign in which President Harry S. Truman won his second term.

Safire came to believe that only Republicans could maintain order in the world and provide succour to the nascent Israeli state, and was persuaded by his boss that the best man to succeed Truman in the White House was the former Commander-in-Chief Dwight D. Eisenhower.

By 1951, aged 22, the erstwhile trainee was a foreign correspondent for the NBC, working in Europe and the Middle East, but drafted into the army 12 months later and assigned to the Armed Forces Network. Upon his discharge from the military, he entered public relations and in 1959 represented a US domestic appliances company at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. It was here that he persuaded the visiting Vice-President, Richard M. Nixon, and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to engage in a revealing political discussion on the merits of communism v capitalism that became known as the “kitchen debate”.

For Safire, it was a life-changing event. Within a year, Nixon had taken on the young PR man to boost his forthcoming bid for the presidency. The campaign, against the unstoppable John F. Kennedy, was a disaster, but no blame attached to Safire, who, while honing his craft, maintained links with Nixon all the way through his wilderness years until his victory, at the second attempt, in 1968.

The first Nixon Administration was dominated by the Vietnam War, which Safire, as an in-house speechwriter, defended as a national and ideological crusade. In one speech, written for the Vice-President, Spiro T. Agnew, he described opponents of the war as “nattering nabobs of negativism”, a largely meaningless phrase that caught the media’s attention. Pleased with the result, he then coined the equally alliterative “hysterical hypochondriacs”.

Dr Vasco Smith Died he was 89

Dr. Vasco Smith died he was 89. Smith, who led in the fight for civil rights for more than 50 years was a member of the Shelby County Commission for more than 20 years.

Dr. Smith was married to Civil Rights icon, Maxine Smith, and was himself, a leader in the movement. Dr. Smith was also a member of the board of the Memphis NAACP.

Dr. Smith was a graduate of LeMoyne-Owen College and Meharry School of Dentistry.

Dr. Smith and his wife, Maxine, executive secretary of the Memphis branch of the NAACP, celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary 10 days ago.

Their partnership had a lasting effect on the march toward civil rights in Memphis.

“She and Vasco should have been called the freedom fighters,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who served with Dr. Smith on the commission. “They would stand up for principle and stand up on issues. They were strong moral voices in the community.”

Dr. Smith graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1937, then from LeMoyne College in 1941. He received his dental degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville in 1945.

He began his public life in 1973 when he won a special election for an at-large seat on the Shelby County Quorum Court, forerunner of the commission. He served on that body until retiring from politics in 1994.

During his time there, Dr. Smith and others were instrumental in founding the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. Dr. Smith remembered his mother, who worked at the old John Gaston Hospital, telling him stories about that facility’s inadequacies.

“I always said if I could at some time do something about it, I would. On the County Commission, I saw an opportunity,” he told The Commercial Appeal in 1994.

But it was also his efforts at promoting civil rights and rooting out racism that left a lasting mark on the city.

Teaming with the likes of Jesse Turner, A. W. Willis, H. T. Lockard, Russell Sugarmon, Hooks and others, the Smiths pushed for voter registration, filed lawsuits, raised money and helped elect blacks to office. They also took part in demonstrations and sit-ins and were arrested more than once.

“I know that I would not be where I am today as a lawyer or in political circles had it not been for Vasco Smith,” said Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton, a neighbor of the Smiths, who announced Dr. Smith’s death at Monday’s commission meeting.

“Dr. Vasco Smith just expired a few minutes ago,” Wharton told the commission. “He served on this body from 1973 to 1994. I’ve been with Ms. Smith in the last hour. And under the circumstances she’s well.”

Commissioners then observed a moment of silence.

Later, Wharton said, “I could best describe him as a valiant soldier in the army for justice (and) equality who suffered many combat injuries and never received a Purple Heart for it.”

Dr. Smith was also a music aficionado with a particular love for jazz. At the Smith home, a large portion of one wall is devoted to his expansive collection, dominated by jazz but including music that covered most of the nearly nine decades of his life. The albums were catalogued in the kind of minute detail characteristic of someone passionate about music.

Wharton would often pass along obituaries from The New York Times when an influential musician would pass away, but Dr. Smith’s knowledge would run deeper than the newspaper’s account.

“You name it, he would give you a dissertation on it,” Wharton said.

While many in Memphis and around the country mourned Dr. Smith’s passing Monday, perhaps his old college classmate and fellow civil-rights warrior Lockard best summed up the loss.

“He was a good fellow,” Lockard said.

In an interview with The Commercial Appeal in January, Maxine Smith talked about how she and Vasco’s efforts built on even greater sacrifices made by those who came before them.

She talked about Vasco’s “sacrifices,” how his family from Arkansas “didn’t even have a 6th-grade education” and how “they moved every time the rent man came.”

“We hit the ground running after Vasco got out of the service,” she said. “I never had the good sense to get away and I don’t have a single regret.

“We all got here on somebody’s shoulders and we can go as far back in history as we want and far enough we don’t even remember some of those days. One good thing stacks on top of another. I sometimes wonder why God is so good to Vasco and I.”

Sam Carr died he was 83

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Sam Carr, a drummer who was considered an anchor in the blues scene that continues to draw fans to the poverty-stricken Delta region where the music form was born, died Monday. He was 83.

Carr died of congestive heart failure, said John Andrews, director of Century Funeral Home in Clarksdale.

Carr had a reputation as one of the best blues drummers in the country, but he made his living in the Mississippi Delta where he was raised.

At one time or another, Carr had backed big names like Sonny Boy Williamson II and Buddy Guy.

Carr had received multiple honors, including the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2007. He also received several awards from Living Blues magazine.

Carr's father was 1930s blues guitarist and vocalist Robert Nighthawk who made famous the song, "Sweet Black Angel." Early in his career Carr often played with father.


Carr was born Samuel Lee McCollum in 1926 near Marvell, Ark. His name was changed after he was adopted as a toddler by a Mississippi family with a farm near Dundee, according to a biography written by Barretta.

He moved back to Arkansas at age 16 and collected money at door of clubs where his father performed.

He worked as a sharecropper before turning his full attention to blues music, moving to St. Louis and playing bass with harmonica player Tree Top Slim.

He returned to Mississippi in the early 1960s and formed the Jellyroll Kings.