Fred Ho, Saxophonist, Composer and Radical Activist, Dies at 56
Ben Ratliff

The baritone saxophonist Fred Ho died on April 12th after a years-long battle with cancer. Mr. Ho’s music is known for straddling the line between classical and jazz.

Fred Ho, a composer, saxophonist, writer and radical activist who wrote politically charged operas, suites, oratorios and ballets that mixed jazz with popular and traditional elements of what he called Afro-Asian culture, died on Saturday at his home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He was 56.

The cause was complications of colorectal cancer, his student and friend Benjamin Barson said. In books, essays, speeches and interviews, Mr. Ho said he had been at war with the disease, his preferred metaphor, since 2006.

Mr. Ho, who was of Chinese descent, called himself a “popular avant-gardist.” He was inspired by the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and by the ambitious, powerful music of African-American bandleaders, including Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Sun Ra and especially Charles Mingus. But he rejected the word jazz, which he considered a pejorative term imposed by Europeans.

Living Theatre Closes NYC Space, Judith Malina Retires
Jon Kalish, New York Daily News

Clinton St. theater was behind on its rent. Anarchism and Utopian views have cut down on grants.

A lower East Side theater that championed anarchism, Utopian experimentalism for 66 years will close for good this week — and its fiery founder will spend her remaining days in an unhappy retirement.

Judith Malina will move Thursday to the Lillian Booth home for retired artists in New Jersey after losing her lease on Clinton Street's Living Theatre, where she produced cutting-edge theater for six decades.

"I'm in the theater because I'm a revolutionary and I'm very unhappy about having to give this place up," Malina told The News.

The EZLN Announces Upcoming Meetings in its Territory
Desinformémonos

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) ended "a phase on the
path" of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and announced the
start of its next political steps, which include upcoming meetings
(encuentros) in its territory and the explicit selection of those who
will accompany future initiatives, that will have as its main objective:
"to be in direct contact with the Zapatista support bases in the way
that, in my long and humble experience, is the best: as students," said
Subcomandante Marcos.

Sol Yurick, 1925–2013

Sol Yurick was born in the Bronx, New York in 1925 to a working class family of politically active Jewish immigrants. At the age of 14, Yurick became disillusioned with politics after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He enlisted during World War II, where he trained as a surgical technician. He studied at New York University after the war, majoring in literature. After graduation, he took a job with the welfare department as a social investigator, a job he held until the early 1960s, when he took up writing full time.

Yurick was involved in Students for a Democratic Society and the anti-war movement at this time. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

In 1972, Yurick was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

His first novel, The Warriors, appeared in 1965. It combined a classical Greek story, Anabasis, with a fictional account of gang wars in New York City. It inspired the 1979 film of the same name.

His other works include: Fertig (1966), The Bag (1968), Someone Just Like You (1972), An Island Death (1976), Richard A (1981), Behold Metatron, the Recording Angel (1985), Confession (1999). Yurick was still an active writer until his death on January 5, 2013.