Category: people

“This Venezuelan revolution is the music story thus far of the 21st century. But now Venezuela is in trouble. The price to save El Sistema may turn out to be high, politically and morally. The answers are not clear, and the country’s two best-known classical musicians, pianist Gabriela Montero and Dudamel, once friends, are, as is much of the country, painfully divided on what to do.”

“What’s clear from Mann’s not always coherent defense of her actions in the book is that she, too, is uncertain about the answers to her questions I asked—a confusion that, I believe, only increases her stature by adding a complicating layer to her motives. No one likes a smug, self-satisfied artist and Mann’s intelligence attractively joins a bold disregard for convention and self-doubt.”

“Blues musician Robert Johnson is that grand rarity in the music world—a recording artist from the 1930s who can sell millions of records in the modern day. He left his stamp on the work of almost every later blues musician… But the rumors of Johnson’s dealings with the Devil are even more famous than his recordings. I’ve found that people who know nothing else about the blues, have often heard that story.”

“There he was, with all these endearments at the top of his voice. He treated us like dirt, we were nothing. We didn’t have anything to do with his film career.”

“Two careers, as composer and ethnomusicologist, would be more than enough for most, but Bartók managed a third, as travelling concert pianist. Finances were always tight, his relationships with women were complicated, and looming over it all were the tumultuous political upheavals of the first half of the 20th century.”

“Her portraits of celebrities, street people, and prom-goers are familiar to many Americans who saw her work in Life, National Geographic, Vogue, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, or one of her 18 published photo collections.”

“Shepard was arrested on a charge of aggravated driving while intoxicated outside La Choza restaurant in downtown. The restaurant’s security called police about 7:45 p.m. Monday concerned about an intoxicated driver, Dobyns said. The man was trying to leave in the pickup, but the vehicle’s emergency brake was engaged.”

He says the hardest thing about the court case – apart from one preposterous moment in the trial when his behaviour was likened to that of a man who had knowingly infected his wife with HIV – was the 19th-century tort it was brought under, “intentional harm”.

“During the heyday of Stiller and Meara, Meara also pursued a separate career as an actress. She had already amassed an impressive list of stage credits before beginning her comedy career, including an Obie Award-winning performance in “Madchen in Uniform” in 1955 and roles in several Shakespeare in the Park productions.”