The aggressively modern ballet premiered in Paris in 1913, and provoked a response just as striking as the music and dance.

Dameron was a composer and pianist who fused the sophisticated arrangements of the Big Band era with bebop's complex harmonies. A new biography shines a light on the too-brief life of the man known as "The Architect of Bop."

Cage's most lasting influence may be in his ideas — about the boundaries between noise and music and the artistic freedom that comes from breaking the rules.

Vidal wrote more than two-dozen novels and an equal number of nonfiction books in a career that spanned six decades. He was also a screenwriter, playwright and political activist, and his outspoken views made him a favorite on television talk shows. Vidal, 86, died Tuesday at home in the Hollywood Hills.