Category: people

“The whole notion of Canadian culture is a very peculiar thing, driven by what are referred to unfortunately in English as founding nations – the English and French – which is just so not true since there was over 300 distinct First Nations there.”

By the time World War II ended and Zuzana Růžičková had recovered her health, her hands were in such terrible shape that her teacher cried when she saw them. She went on to have a successful concert career, including frequent visits to the West, and became the first person ever to record Bach’s complete works for harpsichord. Now she’s 90 and no longer performing, but still active – and if you’re playing for her in a lesson and she gets bored, she’ll pick up a novel.

“[She was] an actress whose aristocratic poise and willowy good looks earned her many film and TV roles as well-bred society women – parts that reflected her own life as a scion of two of America’s richest families.”

“In ‘Wicked,’ for instance, Mr. Brohn selected woodwinds and harps to convey ‘the swirling girly fantasy’ of the good witch Glinda’s entrance inside a bubble, he told a website dedicated to the musical’s composer, Stephen Schwartz. For ‘I’m Not That Girl,’ which is sung by Elphaba, the green-skinned wicked witch of the West, Mr. Brohn used muted strings, a harp and acoustic guitars to stress its melancholy mood.”

Can art – in any form – provide a cathartic experience for its creator? How do artists negotiate the landscape of their own trauma to create a work that stands independently of that experience? To distance his creation from his cataclysmic personal loss, Jonathon Young began to research post-traumatic stress disorder. He was not diagnosed with the disorder, and maybe there was relief in other people’s stories. But as his research deepened, he came across a phenomenon known as peritraumatic dissociation.

“If Mark Twain was right that clothes make the man, then Ms. Button helped define hundreds of characters in Broadway and Off Broadway plays, operas and films. … As a designer, Ms. Button was often lauded for her range and the breadth of her imagination.”

Elvis has fallen to the status of “novelty act”, according to David Hesmondhalgh, an author and professor of music at the University of Leeds, who says that any musician whose image transcends their music will ultimately fade away: “If you ask a small child about Elvis, the fact he died on a toilet through overeating or wore a silly suit is all that registers. The music has become far less important than the caricature. His image has been cheapened.”

“Hallmarks of her work, critics agreed, included her fleet, engaging prose and prodigious archival research. … What was more, where children’s biographies of an earlier age inclined toward unalloyed veneration, Mrs. Fritz’s were warts-and-all portraits of the often flawed men and women who left their impress on the world – and the resulting books were deemed far more humanizing as a result.”

“[Françoise] Nyssen is the CEO of Éditions Actes Sud, based in the southern city of Arles, which has published the work of Nobel laureates Imre Kertész and Svetlana Alexievitch, as well as Prix Goncourt winners Laurent Gaudé, Jérôme Ferrari, and Mathias Ernard.”

“Though not among the movement’s best-known adherents in the U.S., Ehrenberg was one of the most important exponents of its principles in Europe. … When he returned to Mexico in 1974, Ehrenberg participated in the country’s los grupos movement. Combining activism and anti-art, Ehrenberg and the other los grupos artists created sociopolitical work that could address oppressive political regimes.”