Category: people

“Carla Chehadeh, 17, remembers a teacher at her school who was shot and killed in an attack and Christine Chehadeh, 12, recalls huddling in a hallway during a large bomb blast. While they lived in Damascus, the sisters took cello and violin lessons, in part because their parents always regretted never learning themselves.”

“Before his massive international hit ‘Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop),’ before selling millions of records globally in a style of music that hadn’t been popular in generations, and before he entered the National Stuttering Association’s hall of fame, Scatman John was just a kid in suburbia, … developing a stutter early in life that made communicating with others very difficult – and got him bullied.”

She was known for depicting, in books like The Middleman and Other Stories and Jasmine, the lives of young women from traditional societies as they navigate new lives in America. She’s also remembered for a stinging essay about her decision to leave Canada after 14 years for the United States.

“I love going to the symphony to escape from the everyday craziness and spend the evening enjoying my life-long love of music in the company or others who have the same passion. Last night, conductor Slatkin, whom I have always had the utmost respect for, ruined the evening for me and may have dissuaded me from attending any further concerts. If you were unaware, he began the concert with a monologue (“joke?”) insulting our president by referring to his “alternate facts.” I am sure he thought he was a hit based on the applause and the laughter. However, he could not hear the half of the theater that was not laughing or applauding. He single-handedly insulted and offended half of the audience which paid good money to enjoy the concert.”

“[His] view of art could not be less romantic. He once described to me the ‘formula’ for a gallery show: ‘You have a series of wall works that are meant to sell, and the stuff on the floor that’s meant to make things look difficult.'”

“[Her] 20 novels mined her experience as a black single mother in Britain to produce work that inspired a generation of black British writers.”

“The Pacific Coast, and California in particular, has worked its magic on a host of American composers over the years, from figures like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, who started out here, to such postwar emigres as Stravinsky and Schoenberg who arrived here with centuries of European musical history packed inside their valises. But no one has fused those strains — the freedom and sunny openness of the California milieu with the expressive depth and constructive rigor of late Romanticism — with the facility and grace that Adams has shown over a long career.”

“Twitter hashtags and Change.org petitions can be blunt instruments, even unfair ones based on misunderstandings or simplifications, but, on its good days, social media is remarkably effective at speaking truth to power. People cossetted by their privilege can be quickly forced to recognize what it feels like at the bottom of the heap.”

Riva received an Oscar nomination for her work on Amour. “‘[Amour] is such a wonderful, marvellous, extraordinary gift,’ she said in 2012. ‘I cannot tell you how happy I am. Completely happy. The whole thing is like a fairytale.'”

Goldstone recorded prolifically – and, with his wife Caroline Clemmow, produced recordings of hundreds of works for four hands. “He also delighted in excavating unpublished or unfinished pieces which he would complete himself and record. A disc of Mozart, for example, featured a number of works left unfinished at the composer’s death – including a D minor Fantasy and a Präludium in C – fragments which were reconstructed and completed with skill and sensitivity.”