I don't know how I missed this, but, evidently, on February 6th, the classical music world lost a great conductor, in the form of Seiji Ozawa. The Japanese-born conductor held down several important conducting posts, including in Toronto and San Francisco, but his best-known post was from 1973 to 2002 as the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the longest in that great U.S. orchestra's history. Mr. Ozawa was 88:
"I don't think of myself as a star. I didn't set out to become a star, I set out to become a singer. I would have sung no matter what. The star part is just something that they made up in Hollywood in 1930."--Linda Ronstadt