Celebrities succumb to Covid-19

NEW YORK/MADRID • American composer and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, who was one of the earliest and most admired exponents of the style known as cool jazz, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 92.

His niece Linda Konitz said the cause was complications from coronavirus.

Konitz initially attracted attention as much for the way he did not play as for the way he did. Like most of his jazz contemporaries, he adopted the expanded harmonic vocabulary of his fellow alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, the leading figure in modern jazz.

But his approach departed from Parker's in significant ways and he quickly emerged as a role model for musicians seeking an alternative to Parker's pervasive influence.

In Spain, Chilean author Luis Sepulveda, best known for his book, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, died on Thursday of Covid-19 in a hospital in Asturias, the region of northern Spain where he lived for several decades, his publisher and Spanish media said.

The 70-year-old author, who was exiled to Spain during the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, had spent weeks in a hospital in Oviedo fighting the disease caused by the coronavirus. He had recently returned from a literary festival in Porto, Portugal.

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories was translated into numerous languages and became a popular 2011 film directed by Rolf de Heer, starring American actor Richard Dreyfuss.

Meanwhile, American actor Brian Dennehy, who had won both the Tony and Golden Globe awards and was known to wider audiences for blockbuster movies First Blood (1982) and Romeo + Juliet (1996), had died aged 81.

He died of natural causes not related to coronavirus at his Connecticut home on Wednesday, with his wife Jennifer and son Cormac by his side, his agent said in a statement.

Dennehy's career spanned four decades, including early television roles in Dallas (1978) and Dynasty (1981), acclaimed Broadway performances such as in Death Of A Salesman (1999), and voice work on the Pixar hit movie Ratatouille (2007).

After a recurring role in Dynasty in 1981, Dennehy came to prominence the following year playing the overzealous sheriff who takes on actor Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo in First Blood.

He appeared as an alien leader in the science-fiction film Cocoon (1985) and played the father of actor Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo Montague in the Shakespeare re-imagining hit Romeo + Juliet.

Known for his broad physique and imposing presence, Dennehy won two Tony awards for stage performances in playwright Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman and playwright Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (2003).

The 2000 television film adaptation of Death Of A Salesman earned a Golden Globe for Dennehy, who was also nominated for six Emmys.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES, REUTERS