Dead, Not Forgotten

In the newly globalized post World War Two environment, activity in the arts surged fantastically. Replete with new themes, new forms and new opportunities for artists, the art world also became a home for a new breed of impresarios. Pontus Hulten was one of them.

Hulten was director of an impressive list of museums around the world and in many cases the founding director. Among them are the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Kunsthalle in Bonn, the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Shows that he organized appeared in venerable institutions such as the National Museum of Sweden, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.

As an impresario of his time, Hulton was a champion of contemporary art. Among those he worked with were Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, the animation filmmaker Robert Breer, éminence grise Marcel Ducham, Pablo Picasso, Claes Oldenburg, Edward Kienholz and Andy Warhol, as well as producing retrospectives of Jackson Pollock, Lucio Fontana, Jean Fautrier, Joseph Beuys, Niki de Saint Phalle, Per Olof Ultvedt, Nam June Paik, Robert Irwin and Sam Francis.

But with Pontus Hulten it was as much about context as it was about content. Rangng from the style of exhibition to the style of exhibition space, Hulten stretched the exhibit boundries as well as the limits of compilation by joining together artists of divergent medias to create new understandings for audiences. Witness his shows in the Temporary Contemporary (a warehouse in L.A.’s Japantown) before the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles was ready for prime time as well as his demand that his personal collection of 700 works of art left to the Moderna Museet be accepted on the condition that any works not on view in the museum be made available to the public, in an open-storage warehouse.

Pontus Hulten died on October 24, 2006 at his home in Stockholm. He was 82.

For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontus_Hult%C3%A9n
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n8_v35/ai_19416259

Popularity: 12%

Every sane person wants world peace but Sally Lilienthal did something about it. She made peace her mission when she founded the Ploughshares Fund. The fund is dedicated to preventing the spread and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

An early recipient of Ploughshares Fund support was the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The fund, named from the text of the book of Isaiah in the Bible that reads, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares…. neither shall they learn war anymore,” has awarded more than $40 million to groups and individuals since its inception in 1981. Currently the Ploughshares Fund awards 4 million each year.

Sally Lilienthal died October 23, 2006 at age 87 in San Francisco of a bone infection that led to pneumonia.

For more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploughshares_Fund
http://www.ploughshares.org/

Popularity: 57%

I’m sure not all the days in Marijohn Wilkin’s songwriting career were as productive as the day she and Danny Dill wrote “The Long Black Veil.” That day in 1959 they wrote the song in the morning, pitched it to country music star Lefty Frizzell in the afternoon and he recorded it that night. It was a hit! Since then the song has been recorded by dozens of artists including The Band, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and The Kingston Trio. In 1995 “The Long Black Veil” made it into the Irish music arena on The Chieftains CD of the same name, featuring Mick Jagger on vocals.

A founder of the Nashville Songwriters Association, Wilkin was dubbed “the den mother of Music Row.” In 1975 she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame .

Marijohn Wilkin died at age 86 after a 2003 triple-bypass heart operation failed and no further options for intervention were available.

The Long Black Veil - by Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill

Ten Years ago on a cold dark night
There was someone killed ‘neath the town hall lights.
Just a few at the scene and they all did agree
that the man who ran looked a lot like me.

Well the judge said “Son, what’s your alibi?
If you were somewhere else, well you don’t have to die.”
I spoke not a word though it meant my life.
I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.

She walks these hills in a long black veil.
She visits my grave when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows lord, nobody sees.
Nobody knows but me.

The scaffold’s high and eternity nears
and she stands in the crowd and sheds not a tear.
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
in a long black veil she cries over my bones.

She walks these hills in a long black veil.
She visits my grave when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows lord, nobody sees.
Nobody knows but me.
Nobody knows but me.

For more information:

http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/fame/wilkin.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/marijohn-wilkin

Popularity: 25%

On Monday October 23rd, 2006, the music world lost a great man who touched so many lives in so many surprising ways. Lee Hambro, a world class pianist, died from complications of a fall suffered six weeks ago.

The scope of music that his talent embraced is truly inspiring. I first encountered his name as a teenager exploring the music being made by synthesizers when he played piano on “Gershwin Alive & Well & Underground” with keyboard synthesizer artist Gershon Kingsley. Recorded in 1970, the album was not ground breaking but it did feed my appetite for all things synthesizer and my growing love of the music of Ira Gershwin.

Though unknown to me, music fans around the world did know Hambro well as the pianist for the New York Philharmonic orchestra starting in the late 1940s, and for performing as a soloist for the orchestras of Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, London and others. He also distinguished himself has a pianist for radio station WQXR in New York and through his performance duo with pianist Jascha Zayde. Hambro released nearly 100 records throughout his brilliant career. Music from the classics to the modern all received the respect and musicality that Lee possessed such a wealth of.

He also possessed a wonderful ability to take himself with a sense of humor; this was well illustrated in 1967 when he began a ten-year-long collaboration with Victor Borge, the Denmark-born musical comedian that entertained audiences by poking good fun at the “serious” music world. Borge was reported to say of Hambro, “I think as much of Leonid Hambro as I do of myself, but not quite so often.”

I met Leonid Hambro in August of 1973 when I began attending the California Institute of The Arts in Valencia, California as a music composition major. He was the head of the Piano Department and the Assistant Dean of the School of Music. Having arrived early to get established I was recommended to him to perform the flute part in a concert he was to give because none of the school’s flute students had yet arrived for the start of the school year. My first musical performance in California, this effort was the beginning of a friendship and mentorship which rewarded me deeply during my time at CalArts. Though I did not study in his department I always benefited from his support and encouragement as was well illustrated when I received an accelerated graduation from the composition program due in large part to his help and belief in my abilities.

Goodbye Lee, and thank you for everything.

See the New York Times obituary
http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume7/v7i1/hambro-borge-7-1.html

Popularity: 23%

If the only things that come to mind when you think of a tuba is polka music and military marches, you’re not remembering the scary, suspenseful tones that accompanied the appearance of the great white shark in the popular movie “Jaws.”

The music was written by John Williams but the tuba was played by Tommy Johnson who died October 16, 2006 from complications of cancer and kidney failure. He was well known as a movie score player having performed in such well known movies as “Al Capone,” “The Godfather,” the “Indiana Jones” trilogy, the “Star Trek” movie series, “The Lion King,” “Titanic” and “The Thin Red Line.”

Johnson’s reach went far beyond Hollywood through his performances in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. His students, Norm Pearson of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Alan Baer of the New York Philharmonic and Gene Pokorny of the Chicago Symphony are all principal tubists.

For more information:

http://www.iteaonline.org/Journal/JournalArchives/IXN3/IXN3tjohnson.shtml
http://www.tubanews.com/articles/contentid-295.html
http://www.jimself.com/tommyJohnson.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Johnson_(session_musician)

Popularity: 6%