Abstract Master Ellsworth Kelly Dies at 92

American master of abstract art, Ellsworth Kelly, died Sunday at his home in Spencertown, New York at the age of 92.  His death was announced by Matthew Marks of the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

The painter, sculptor and printmaker had studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1945.  His formative years as an artist were spent in Paris from 1948 to 1955 with support from the GI Bill.

He is credited with a distinctive style of American painting by combining solid shapes and colors of European abstraction with forms from everyday life.

“He was simply one of the great modern painters or our era, certainly of the 20th century,” said Harry Cooper, head curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.  Cooper also said Kelly became “something of a brand” similar to Jackson Pollock. “He was totally original, committed to his kind of abstraction and he never wavered,” said Cooper.

Art News  said, “He was among a handful of artists, emerging in the years after World War Two, who defined the art of the past half-century.”

In recent days, art museums and celebrities who love art have paid tribute to Kelly on social media.

Motorhead’s Lemmy Dead at Age 70

British hard rock icon Lemmy, the lead singer and bass player for Motorhead, had died at the age of 70, two days after being diagnosed with cancer.

“There is no easy way to say this…our mighty, noble friend Lemmy passed away today after a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer,” Motorhead said in a Facebook posting Monday “We cannot begin to express our shock and sadness, there aren’t words.”

The band noted that he had been diagnosed with cancer on December 26.

Born Ian Kilmister, Lemmy formed Motorhead in 1975. He was known for his aggressive bass and his gravelly voice on such songs as “Bomber,” “Overkill” and the band’s most famous track “Ace of Spades.”

“It's still very popular. When we do it onstage, everyone loves it," Lemmy told Rolling Stone in August.

Many rock and heavy metal musicians have been paying tribute to the Motorhead front man.

On Twitter, Ozzy Osbourne called him a warrior and a legend. "Lost one of my best friends, Lemmy, today. He will be sadly missed. He was a warrior and a legend. I will see you on the other side."

"We've lost a friend & legend," Foo Fighters said in a Facebook posting.

Metallica tweeted that it would be “forever grateful for all your inspiration.”

Lemmy was known for his hard living lifestyle that including heavy drinking. While confirming his death, Motorhead urged fans to “play Lemmy's music loud. Have a drink or few. Share stories. Celebrate the life this lovely, wonderful man celebrated so vibrantly himself. He would want exactly that."

Mikhail Lesin, Russian Media Tycoon, Ex-Putin Aide, Found Dead in DC Hotel

A Russian media magnate and former aide to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has been found dead in a hotel room in the U.S. capital.

American and Russian authorities are both trying to determine what caused the death of 57-year-old Mikhail Lesin, a former Russian Cabinet minister and a founder of the international media company RT, originally known as Russia Today.

President Putin mourned Lesin Saturday, saying he made great contributions to "modern Russian mass media."

RT's English-language service said Lesin died of a heart attack.

The Russian embassy in Washington confirmed Lesin's identity.

Official roles

He had served as Russian press minister from 1999 to 2004 and was presidential media adviser from 2004 to 2009. He also was a senior executive at Gazprom-Media, Russia's largest media holding company, from 2013-2014.

Washington police declined to release any details beyond confirming that they were investigating a man's death in a hotel in the capital city's fashionable Dupont Circle neighborhood.

ABC News reported that U.S. Senator Robin Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, had called last year for a probe of Lesin on suspicion of money laundering and corruption.

In a letter to the U.S. attorney general, Wicker accused Lesin of acquiring "multimillion-dollar assets" in Europe and the United States while serving as a Russian government minister.

Wicker said the assets included $28 million worth of real estate in Los Angeles.

Martin Milner, Star of TV's Adam 12, Route 66 Dies at 83

American actor Martin Milner, who starred in two hit television series reflecting America's love affairs with cars, has died at 83.

Friends and family confirmed Milner's death, but gave no details.

A child actor born in Detroit, Milner made numerous early film and TV appearances before starring in the 1960 series Route 66, named for the iconic U.S. highway.

Milner and co-star George Maharis traveled the country in a Chevrolet, finding themselves involved in the lives and problems of people they met in the large cities and small towns.

Route 66 went off the air in 1964 and Milner soon found himself behind the wheel of another vehicle — a Los Angeles police patrol car in the hit series, Adam 12. Unlike the glamorous and exciting lives of TV private eyes, Adam 12 showed that most police cases are mundane and the work routine, but still compelling.

The series ran from 1968 until 1975 and like Route 66, still remains popular.

Remembering Hollywood Icon Omar Sharif

by Mohamed Elshinnawi

Actor Omar Sharif, an icon of Hollywood's glamorous era, has died at the age of 83.

During his long career, the Egyptian-born Sharif won international acclaim and numerous awards. His role as Sherif Ali in David Lean's 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia earned him two Golden Globe awards and an Oscar nomination. He won a further Golden Globe three years later for Doctor Zhivago, in which he starred as a physician caught up in the Russian Revolution.

In 2009, when he came to Washington to accept a lifetime achievement award from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, he spoke with Mohamed Elshinnawi.

Omar Sharif credited the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia with launching his international acting career. The role also made Sharif an attractive cultural emissary for his native Egypt. At the time, he was a matinee idol; and Gamal Abdel Nasser was the country's charismatic, anti-Western leader:

"I arrived in Hollywood when Nasser was in power. And Nasser at that time in the ‘60s was viewed in America just as badly as Saddam Hussein before they took him out,” he said. “So if you can imagine an Iraqi actor before the Iraq war would come and become a star in Hollywood; you couldn't conceive it.”

“Now,” he added, “this was a very lucky thing, because I was lucky to find the right part in a great film - Lawrence of Arabia was a great film, probably one of the greatest films ever made - and so I was very lucky and I was immediately nominated for an Academy Award."

The Arab actor received a warm welcome in Hollywood. He said felt no tensions during the four years in the 1960s when he lived and worked in the U.S. Sharif, however, he was saddened by what he saw as a widening gap between America and the Arab world in the 21st century.

"The world was different,” he said. “it was not like today where we have this terrible hatred between each other, between some of the Arabs and some of the Americans, those extreme radicals, so it was a different world. It is not the same world anymore."

He said he thought the September 11 terrorist attacks led many Americans to form gross misperceptions of Arabs and Muslims, and that they struggle to distinguish among the small groups of Muslims who are hostile to the West and the majority who, he said, are peace-loving.

Sharif - who was brought up Roman Catholic and converted to Islam when he married - often sought roles that show how Muslims can live in harmony with people of other faiths.

In a 2003 French drama, Monsieur Ibraham, he played a Muslim shopkeeper in Paris who adopts a Jewish boy. The film won him the Cesar - the French equivalent of the Oscar - as well as some of his best reviews in decades.

The late international movie star advocated building bridges among cultures through dialogue.

"We must be reasonable, all of us, them - the Americans - and we have to be reasonable and not have hatred at all,” he said. “We must have comprehension and try to … sit down and talk and be reasonable."

The actor remained active, doing voice-over work and taking small movie and TV roles, the last being the 2013 French-Moroccan drama Rock the Casbah. His son, actor Tarek Sharif, revealed in May that his father was suffering from Alzheimer's.

Omar Sharif's death, Friday in Cairo, was from a heart attack.

Titantic Composer James Horner Dies in Plane Crash

Academy Award-winning music composer James Horner has been killed in a plane crash.

Horner won two Oscars for the movie Titanic - one for its theme song My Heart Will Go On, performed by Celine Dion, and another for the film's score.

He received Oscar nominations for his music in Apollo 13, Braveheart, Field of Dreams, Aliens and Avatar.

Horner, who was 61 years old, died when his single-engine plane crashed Monday about 160 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles. No one else was on board the plane.

Horner's scores carried films to their climax and accompanied top actors as they delivered some of their most moving performances.

Tender kisses in The Amazing Spider-Man, grand battles in Troy and moments of stirring drama in A Beautiful Mind were set up by Horner's compositions.

American film hits of the 1990s, such as Patriot Games, Searching for Bobby Fischer and Jumanji also were composed by Horner. In addition, he scored popular animated films The Land Before Time (1988) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991).

Horner was nominated for an Oscar for the song Somewhere Out There in An American Tail.

Top actors and directors in the film and television world paid tribute to Horner online. Academy Award winning director Ron Howard wrote on Twitter, "Brilliant Composer James Horner, friend & collaborator on seven movies has tragically died in a plane crash. My heart aches for his loved ones."

Jazz Icon Ornette Coleman Dies at 85

by Diaa Bekheet

Legendary saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman died in Manhattan Thursday morning at the age of 85. His publicist declined to give further details about the cause of death but some media reports say the icon of "Free Jazz" died of cardiac arrest.

Coleman's album "Change of the Century" ushered in a new jazz style in the late 1950s, that later became known as “Free Jazz” - featuring songs that break the traditional rules of melody allowing musicians more latitude to go beyond the limitations of bebop and modal jazz.

The world first learned of Free Jazz in 1959 when the alto saxophonist  walked into a Hollywood music studio with bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Billy Higgins and pocket trumpeter Don Cherry. The quartet recorded "Change of the Century," which produced its most famous song: “Ramblin.”

For the Coleman quartet, it was all exciting, new music. They didn’t want to sound like other traditional jazz players of the time, and sought a greater sense of freedom. Coleman considered sound an invisible emotion combining various moods.

His first album, "The Shape of Jazz to Come," laid the foundation for “Free Jazz.” Many musicians and jazz lovers alike were shocked that the songs had no recognizable chord structure but contained free-style simultaneous improvisation.

“Ornette shocked the American jazz world," says jazz writer Howard Mandell. “Here was somebody who was completely upsetting the apple cart.  And pissing off Mingus and Max Roach – who, I think – they believed that they were going to be the Next Big Thing.  And all of a sudden here comes this guy who’s, like, doesn’t talk like anyone. He doesn’t act like anyone. And man, he is making a sound that is raising peoples' consciousness!”

“It puzzles me today why people were puzzled by that record," he continued.  "It’s so melodic.  And it’s so interactive, and the song forms are slightly unusual, but they’re nothing disturbing.  So I’ve never understood why that record was considered so radical.”

But people were puzzled nonetheless.  So much so, Mandell says, that some even wondered whether Ornette Coleman was for real.

“Many listeners/critics were very admiring of Ornette’s sound and his idealism," he said. "But other people thought that this – he was a charlatan -- a con man."

Some were disappointed, but Coleman believed that jazz must be free.

“The theme you play at the start of a number is the territory,” he explained in a documentary about Free Jazz. “And what comes after, which may have very little to do with it, is the adventure.”

"The Shape of Jazz to Come," was ranked number 246 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Coleman had lots of fans in Europe. In addition to performing at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, he was the artistic director of the 16th annual Meltdown festival in London’s Southbank Center.

In 2007, Coleman received a Grammy award for Lifetime Achievement and a Pulitzer Prize in the music category for “Sound Grammar” - making him only the second jazz composer to ever win a Pulitzer.

Richard Paul contributed to this report.

Blues Legend B.B. King Dead at 89

by Susan Logue, Eric Felten

One of the great masters of blues guitar is dead.  B.B. King died late Thursday at the age of 89.  During a career that spanned nearly 70 years (his first recording was in 1949), the "King of Blues" influenced generations of musicians. 

To his legion of fans around the world, the sustained, single-note guitar syle of B.B. King is unmistakable.  He was without a doubt one of America's best-known and best-loved blues musicians.  And he never seemed to lose the thrill, through a career in which he spent most of each year on the road, performing for audiences around the world.

"I've always felt that to be an entertainer, you've got to entertain.  So I've tried to pull all my energies together if I'm singing, to put it all right there.  I'm trying to remember that the people who come to see me are fans who are expecting the best that I have,  so I never go onstage slack (unprepared)," King said.

Lucille

Wherever B.B. King traveled, one of his signature black Gibson guitars accompanied him. He named each one of them "Lucille."  He told fans he first christened his instrument just after a performance at a club in Arkansas, when two men had a fight and knocked over a kerosene heater, which started a fire.

"And everybody started to run for the front door, including B.B. King.  When I got on the outside, I realized I left my guitar," he recalled.  "And , in '49 believe me keeping a good guitar was a hard job.  People would borrow them without your permission.  I went back for my guitar, and the building was burning rapidly, and it started to collapse around me.

"So I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar," he added.  "The next morning we found out these two men were fighting about a lady that worked in the nightclub.  I never did meet her, but I learned her name was Lucille.  I named my guitar Lucille to remind me never to do a thing like that again."

How BB got his name

The famous blues musician was born Riley B. King on September 16, 1925.  The name B.B. came later, an abbreviation of "Blues Boy," which he used while working in Memphis as a disc jockey.  Before that, he worked on the Mississippi farm where he was born, picking cotton and driving a tractor. As a boy, B.B. King sang with amateur gospel groups.  But by the age of 16, he was singing and playing guitar on street corners. He found that singing the blues was more profitable than singing gospel.

"As I played, people would come by and generally request tunes.  And the people that would request gospel songs, would always praise me highly.  They would say, 'Great, son.  That is fantastic.  Keep it up, you'll be great one day.'  But they never tipped.  But usually people that would ask me to play a blues song would always tip me and maybe (buy me) a beer from time to time.  So you can see now, starting out to be a gospel singer, I decided to be a blues singer," King said.

Hits

B.B. King made his first record in 1949, at the age of 24.  Three years later, his recording of Lowell Fulsom's "Three O'Clock Blues" became a number one R&B hit. 

His only pop hit was "The Thrill Is Gone," from 1969, for which he received a Grammy.  Nevertheless, B.B. King was described by critics as America's "most popular blues guitarist," and with good reason  He had a tremendous influence on rock musicians like British guitarist Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and U2.  B.B. King met the Irish band while performing in Dublin and ended up recording the song "When Love Comes to Town" them in 1988.

B.B. King credited the British rock bands of the 1960s with popularizing the music he loved, making it possible for him to crossover to a mainstream audience:

"When the British groups for example, the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Who, when these groups started to play blues in the U.S., it started to become a very popular kind of music and opened the doors for a lot of black blues singers and musicians like myself,”  King said.

Awards

During his long career, B.B. King received 15 Grammy awards. He was inducted not only into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, but the Rock and Roll and R&B halls as well. He was awarded honorary doctorates from several universities and was honored by presidents. B.B. King kept his music fresh by being true to himself:

"I don't try to play what my ancestors played, as they played it.  In fact, I don't play myself as I did in '49, when I began my career.  I play as I feel today,” he said.

World Leaders in Singapore Sunday for Lee's Funeral

by Steve Herman

Dozens of world leaders will be in Singapore on Sunday for the state funeral of the small country's first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew.  Lee was greatly admired in the region where other leaders sought to emulate him and replicate his success.

In Bangkok, Beijing, Jakarta and other Asian capitals, Lee Kuan Yew served as a role model for leaders hoping to reproduce the magic that took Singapore from a colonial backwater to one of the world's most prosperous and efficient nations.

One of his many such admirers: former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, who says as a Southeast Asian, he feels “a great sense of loss.”

“His wisdom, his advice, his insight have always been sought by leaders of other nations,” he said.

Autocrats envied the well-educated pragmatist's ability to maintain a one-party government in a nanny state that eschewed liberalism, except for economic policies.

Curtis Chin, a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, says many of Mr. Lee's less successful fellow leaders in the region failed to absorb his most important lessons.

“So when we think about what others can learn from Lee Kwan Yew they may be citing some things," he said. "But unfortunately too many leaders of Asia today have not learned about the rule of law, the good governance, the accountability, the battle against corruption that Lee Kwan Yew also was all about.”

Lee rejected the notion of an “Asian model” for development but articulated Asian values which, in his eyes, made individual rights subservient to collective security and growth.

Thus it is no surprise that over the decades many of China's leaders expressed admiration for the rapid transformation of Singapore under the leadership of Lee, an ethnic Hakka Chinese.

Lee made “historical contributions to the bilateral relationship” between Beijing and Singapore, says China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

“Mr. Lee Kuan Yew is a uniquely influential statesman in Asia. And he is also a strategist embodying oriental values and international vision,” said Hong Lei.

The official delegation from the United States will be led by former president Bill Clinton and will include former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, a contemporary of Lee's, who said the Singaporean leader was a "close personal friend, a fact that I consider one of the great blessings of my life."

Final Exits of 2014

New York City’s Harlem Mourns, Cherishes Maya Angelou
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-york-citys-harlem-mourns-cherishes.html

Boxer 'Hurricane' Carter Dead at 76
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/04/boxer-hurricane-carter-dead-at-76.html

Pioneering TV Comedian Sid Caesar Dies at 91
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/02/pioneering-tv-comedian-sid-caesar-dies.html

Afghanistan's First Vice President Dies
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/03/afghanistans-first-vice-president-dies.html

Spanish Flamenco Guitar Legend Dies
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/02/spanish-flamenco-guitar-legend-dies.html

Legendary Lebanese Actress, Singer Sabah Dies at 87
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/11/legendary-lebanese-actress-singer-sabah.html

Pete Seeger, US Folk Singer, Songwriter and Political Activist, Dies at 94
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/01/pete-seeger-us-folk-singer-songwriter.html

Israel's Sharon Dies at 85
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/01/israels-sharon-dies-at-85_11.html

Dignitaries Praise Ariel Sharon at Funeral
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/01/dignitaries-praise-ariel-sharon-at.html

Jazz Pioneer Horace Silver Dies
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/06/jazz-pioneer-horace-silver-dies.html

Shirley Temple
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/02/shirley-temple.html

Somali Singer, Parliament Member Killed in Mogadishu
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/07/somali-singer-parliament-member-killed.html

Robin Williams Remembered With Heartfelt Accolades
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/08/robin-williams-remembered-with.html

Johnny Winter: America's 'Down and Dirty' Bluesman
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/07/johnny-winter-americas-down-and-dirty_26.html

Bobby Womack Dies at 70
http://post-humous.blogspot.com/2014/06/bobby-womack-dies-at-70.html