Deaths (Obituaries)

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    John Prescott, Former UK Deputy Prime Minister, Dies at 86

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    Mr. Prescott was a waiter on cruise ships before rising through the trade union movement and entering politics. He became one of the country’s best-known politicians under Tony Blair.John Prescott, who rose through Britain’s trade union movement to become one of the country’s best-known politicians and serve as deputy prime minister for a decade, has died. He was 86.In a statement on social media, his family said he died peacefully on Wednesday, “surrounded by the love of his family and the jazz music of Marian Montgomery.” The statement noted that he had suffered a stroke in 2019 and had latterly been living with Alzheimer’s disease.Plain-speaking and proudly working class, Mr. Prescott served as a visible link to Labour’s traditional origins when the party came to power in 1997 under the modernizing leadership of Tony Blair.In government, Mr. Prescott championed environmental causes — playing a key role in international climate negotiations — and worked hard to shift power from London to the English regions.More important for Labour, he helped defuse internal tensions between Mr. Blair and his chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, a rival who would eventually become Mr. Blair’s successor. At the time, Mr. Prescott was jokingly referred to as the political equivalent of a marriage guidance counselor.Gordon Brown, left, then the chancellor of the Exchequer; John Prescott, center, then deputy prime minister; and Tony Blair, prime minister at the time, at the Labour Party conference in 2006.John Stillwell/PA Images via ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shel Talmy, Who Produced the Who and the Kinks, Dies at 87

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      Though he was American, he helped define the sound of the British Invasion after settling in London in the early 1960s.Shel Talmy, the American-born record producer who helped unleash the id of the British Invasion with a raw, grinding sound on proto-punk salvos like “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks and “My Generation” by the Who, died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.His death was announced in a post on his Facebook page, where he had been sharing detailed reminiscences about many of his past recordings with a long list of acts, which also included Manfred Mann, Chad & Jeremy, the Easybeats and a teenage David Bowie (who at the time was using his given surname, Jones).Mr. Talmy’s climb to the top of the British music scene actually began in Los Angeles, where Mr. Talmy, who was born in Chicago, had lived since his teens. In 1962, he was working as a recording engineer at a studio in Hollywood when he headed for London for what he expected would be a five-week vacation, hoping he might scrape together enough work there to pay for the trip.Before he left, his friend Nick Venet, who produced the Beach Boys for Capitol Records, offered him the acetates of some of his hit records to help Mr. Talmy drum up work. In a 2012 interview with Finding Zoso, a fan site devoted to the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, whom Mr. Talmy used on many sessions, he recalled that Mr. Venet had told him: “Help yourself to my discs, whatever you want to use you can use. You can tell them it was yours.”Once there, Mr. Talmy passed off hit records like “Surfin’ Safari” as his own in a meeting with Dick Rowe of Decca Records. “I thought, what the hell,” he said in an interview with the music writer Richie Unterberger, “I’m not going to be here long, I might as well be as brash as possible.” By the end of the meeting, he said, Mr. Rowe had told him, “You start next week.”Mr. Talmy had already notched his first hit, “Charmaine,” a country-inflected number by the Irish vocal trio the Bachelors, when his ruse became obvious. But, by that point, he was on his way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vladimir Shklyarov, Star Russian Ballet Dancer, Dies at 39

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      The Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, which announced the death, did not say how or where he died.Vladimir Shklyarov, one of the world’s premier male ballet dancers, died on Saturday night, according to the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, where he was a principal dancer.The theater did not say in its announcement how or where Mr. Shklyarov, 39, died.Russia’s Investigative Committee, a federal law enforcement agency, began an investigation into Mr. Shklyarov’s death, according to RIA Novosti, a state-run news agency. “A preliminary cause of death was an accident,” RIA Novosti quoted the Investigative Committee’s office in St. Petersburg as saying.Over a two-decade career, Mr. Shklyarov gained international acclaim, performing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London and other prestigious theaters around the world.Born in Leningrad, Mr. Shkylarov graduated in 2003 from the Vaganova Ballet Academy, a famed institution with nearly 300 years of history. Its graduates include Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov.Mr. Shklyarov joined the Mariinsky directly out of school, and went on to perform in both contemporary and classical productions, including “Swan Lake,” “Don Quixote” and “Giselle.” He received multiple awards for his work, including the prestigious Léonide Massine International Prize in 2008. But the Mariinsky said that “the most precious for Vladimir” was receiving the title of an honored artist of Russia in 2020.Information about survivors was not immediately available. In 2012, Mr. Shklyarov married another dancer, Maria Shirinkina, who also performed with the Mariinsky, according to Russian news media.In a review of a performance during the company’s 2016 tour of the United States, a New York Times critic said, “The best moment came from Maria Shirinkina, supernaturally airborne, and Mr. Shklyarov, elegant and mournful, in a cobbled together extract from ‘Giselle.’ For a little while, they suggested another world.”A former ballerina, Irina Bartnovskaya, wrote on Telegram that Mr. Shklyarov had been at home, on painkillers and preparing for foot surgery before his death. She said that he went out to smoke onto “a very narrow balcony” and fell five stories in “a stupid, unbearable accident.”Her account could not be verified, but it echoed similar reports in Russian news outlets, including Fontanka, which quoted a Mariinsky Theater spokeswoman, Anna Kasatkina, as saying that he was on painkillers and expected to have surgery. More

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      Gerry Faust, Coach Who Lived a Dream at Notre Dame, Dies at 89

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      Jumping from the high school ranks to lead one of the most storied programs in college football, he lost games but rarely lost hope.Gerry Faust, who saw his childhood dream to play quarterback for the University of Notre Dame dashed, only to live out another one by rising from high school football coach in Ohio to leader of the storied Fighting Irish, died on Monday. He was 89.The university confirmed his death in a statement. It did not cite a cause or say where he died.Before Faust first strode onto the football field amid a sea of gold Notre Dame helmets in 1981, he was not unheralded. Over nearly two decades, starting in 1962, he guided Archbishop Moeller High School, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, to a jaw-dropping 174-17-2 record.Even so, he was considered an extreme outlier in taking over a marquee college program without ever having coached beyond the high school level. His hiring became known as the Bold Experiment.Faust’s five-year tenure with the Irish was checkered, with the team, a perennial powerhouse, tallying an uncharacteristically mediocre 30-26-1 record under him, with just one bowl victory, a 19-18 win over Boston College in the 1983 Liberty Bowl.But while his run was underwhelming, his underdog tale became the stuff of Notre Dame lore.“The story is one of the great stories you’ve ever heard,” the television host and Notre Dame alumnus Regis Philbin recalled in a 2007 ESPN documentary about Faust. “Guy praying for something all his life, and one day he got it.”This was not just any university, after all, but a football bastion in South Bend, Ind., where hallowed coaches like Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian once strode the sidelines, Parseghian in the shadow of a giant “Word of Life” mural portraying Christ holding his arms aloft toward the heavens and that fans came to christen “Touchdown Jesus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sharath Jois, Heir to Founder of Ashtanga Yoga, Dies at 53

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      He became one of the world’s most sought-after teachers of a style of yoga that his grandfather helped turn into a popular form of exercise worldwide.Sharath Jois, the yoga master who garnered legions of followers by teaching Ashtanga, the popular style of yoga founded by his grandfather, died on Monday in Virginia. He was 53.His death was confirmed by his sister, Sharmila Mahesh, and John Bultman, the yoga program manager at the University of Virginia. Mr. Bultman said that Mr. Jois had died after suffering a heart attack on a hiking trail near the university’s campus in Charlottesville, where he was visiting.Mr. Jois’s workshops, in his hometown in India and worldwide, were attended by thousands of disciples seeking a direct experience with the leader of the Ashtanga yoga tradition, which involves a demanding series of postures and dynamic movements. Rooted in Sanskrit and Hindu rituals, Ashtanga yoga is widely viewed today as one of the most accessible forms of exercise.His grandfather, Krishna Pattabhi Jois, helped lift yoga to soaring levels of popularity in the 1990s, drawing a global following that included celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna. Ashtanga, which is more physically arduous than other forms of yoga, later came into vogue in India with the arrival of modern fitness culture there.After inheriting his grandfather’s practice, Mr. Jois began calling himself the “Paramaguru,” which translates to “lineage holder,” on Instagram. In Mysore, a city in southern India known as the home of Ashtanga, he was referred to simply as the “boss,” and the workshops he taught there filled up within moments of opening, Kino MacGregor, one of his most prominent students, wrote in an essay published in 2016.“The crowd was growing every year,” Isha Singh Sawhney, a student of Mr. Jois’s who cowrote his 2018 book “Ageless,” said in an interview. “He was an excellent yoga teacher, one of the best.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ella Jenkins, Musician Who Found an Audience in Children, Dies at 100

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      Performing and recording, she transformed what was seen as a marginal genre in the music industry into a celebration of shared humanity. Ella Jenkins, a self-taught musician who defied her industry’s norms by recording and performing solely for children, and in doing so transformed a marginal and moralistic genre into a celebration of a diverse yet common humanity with songs like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” died on Saturday in Chicago. She was 100. Her death was confirmed by John Smith, associate director at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.Ms. Jenkins had no formal musical training, but she had an innate sense of rhythm. “I was always humming or singing and la-la, lu-lu or something,” she once said.She absorbed the everyday melodies of her childhood — the playground clapping games, the high school sports chants, the calls of a sidewalk watermelon vendor hawking his produce. As an adult, she paired such singsong rhythms with original compositions and sought not simply to amuse or distract children but to teach them to respect themselves and others.Against the sound of a kazoo, a harmonica, a variety of hand drums or, later, a baritone ukulele, Ms. Jenkins sang subtly instructive lyrics, as in “A Neighborhood Is a Friendly Place,” a song she wrote in 1976:You can say hiTo friends passing byA neighborhood is a friendly place.You can say helloTo people that you knowA neighborhood is a friendly place.Neighbors to learn to shareNeighbors learn to careA neighborhood is a friendly place.Over children’s steady clapping, she recorded the age-old “A Sailor Went to Sea”:A sailor went to sea, sea, seaTo see what he could see, see, seeAnd all that he could see, see, seeWas down in the bottom of the sea, sea, sea.For many parents and classroom teachers, Ms. Jenkins’s renditions of traditional nursery rhymes like “Miss Mary Mack” and “The Muffin Man” are authoritative.Still, from the beginning of her career in the 1950s, Ms. Jenkins pronounced her signature to be call-and-response, in which she asked her charges to participate directly in the music-making, granting them an equal responsibility in a song’s success. She had seen Cab Calloway employ the technique in “Hi-De-Ho,” and for her, the animating idea, veiled in a playful to-and-fro, was that everything good in the world was born of collaboration.In one of her most popular recordings, Ms. Jenkins sings out, “Did you feed my cow?” “Yes, ma’am!” a group of children trumpet back. The song continues:Could you tell me how?Yes, ma’am!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!As Ms. Jenkins repopularized time-honored children’s songs, she also gave the genre global scope. Before Ms. Jenkins, children’s music in the United States consisted primarily of simplified, often cartoonish renditions of classical music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bruce Degen, Who Drew ‘The Magic School Bus,’ Dies at 79

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      He memorably portrayed a frizzy-haired science teacher roping her elementary school class into adventures aboard a shape-shifting yellow bus.Bruce Degen, the illustrator of “The Magic School Bus” series of children’s books, died on Thursday at his home in Newtown, Conn. He was 79.The cause was pancreatic cancer, his family said.The main character of the books, a science teacher named Ms. Frizzle, shows her elementary school students that adventure awaits in understanding the biology, chemistry and physics of everyday life.Ms. Frizzle drives her yellow school bus up into the clouds, so that her students can hop inside raindrops and travel through their local water treatment system. On other occasions, she drives through the small intestine and across the surface of the sun.Joanna Cole, a children’s book author, was responsible for making those lessons educational, writing the text of Ms. Frizzle’s lessons and inventing plots that put her students inside a hurricane or a classmate’s nose. Ms. Cole gave Ms. Frizzle catchphrases like “take chances, make mistakes and get messy!”Mr. Degen (pronounced like the Major Deegan Expressway) made the visual world of the books by using the clear lines of pen and ink and also the childlike softness of watercolor. He rendered Ms. Frizzle’s hair red and wildly frizzy — but contained it all in a mostly tidy bun.Mr. Degen with Joanna Cole, who wrote the text for the “Magic School Bus” books.ScholasticWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69

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      Mr. Todd’s decades-long career spanned across mediums and genres, but he was largely associated with a scary figure summoned in front of a mirror.Tony Todd, a prolific actor whose more than 100 film and television credits included “Candyman” and “Final Destination,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69.Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr. Todd’s manager, announced the death in a statement on Saturday morning. He did not specify the cause.Mr. Todd’s decades-long acting career spanned genres and mediums. He starred or had prominent roles in several films, including the 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead,” “The Crow,” “The Rock” and Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie, “Platoon.” His television credits include “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “24,” “The X-Files,” and many other shows. He also lent his rich voice to animation and video games.He was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie “Candyman.” He told The New York Times in 2020 that he was proud of playing the terrifying figure with a hook for a hand, a Black man who had been wronged in life and is summoned from the beyond by people who call his name five times while looking in a mirror — unleashing vicious attacks in which the Candyman slices to death those who dared to disturb him. “If I had never done another horror film,” he said, “I could live with that, and I’d carry this character.”Mr. Todd reprised the role in the film’s 1995 and 1999 sequels and returned to it for the 2021 reboot, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele.In the “Final Destination” franchise, Mr. Todd played the role of the mysterious funeral-home owner William Bludworth — the rare recurring character in a film series that famously killed off all of its new characters by the time the end credits rolled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey Dancer of ‘Power and Radiance,’ Dies at 81

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      Judith Jamison, a majestic dancer who became an international star as a member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and who directed the troupe for more than two decades, building it into the most successful modern dance company in the country, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 81.Her death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, was announced by Christopher Zunner, a spokesman for the Ailey company, who said she died “after a brief illness.”Ms. Jamison performed Alvin Ailey’s “Cry” at New York City Center in 1975. “Cry,” an immediate hit, made her a star.Jack Vartoogian/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesAt 5-foot-10, Ms. Jamison was unusually tall for a woman in her profession. “But anyone who’s seen her onstage is convinced she’s six feet five,” the critic Deborah Jowitt wrote in The New York Times in 1976.“I was the antithesis of the small-boned, demure dancer with a classically feminine shape.” Ms. Jamison (pronounced JAM-ih-son) wrote in her 1993 autobiography, “Dancing Spirit.”It wasn’t just her size and shape that were distinctive, however. She was a performer of great intelligence, warmth and wit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More