Category: people

Boris Grebenshikov earned that sobriquet not only because of Dylan’s influence on his text-heavy, socially conscious songs, but also because “his audience includes, in the words of one professor, ‘pretty much any educated Russian between the ages of 30 and 50’.”

“The moment Dawn and Shirley have in the kitchenette where they call each other by the other’s name, commenting on the fact that no one in the office can tell them apart, actually happened to myself and the actress who plays Shirley, Sola Bamis. I won’t say who the offenders were, but it’s happened … on more than one occasion.”

“She was sometimes called a poet of love and loss, a description whose murky universality irritated her greatly, for what poet’s work, at bottom, is not about those things?”

“When she walks into the building site that will become her new gallery space just off Golden Square, in London’s Soho, she is dwarfed by scaffolding. She is tiny – barely 5ft tall – dressed all in black, and when she speaks, her voice is so soft that the architects in hard hats have to crane down to hear what she is saying.”

Maria Konnikova looks at Walter Mischel (her old psychology professor and thesis adviser) and his struggles – most notably with tobacco – and the techniques he developed to master (some of) his urges.

Hilton Als: “His writing was the bridge he tried to build between his besmirched, original-sin self – the self that loved the temporary pleasures of sex, but no doubt considered it ‘dirty’ – and the self that sought purification in a world other than this one.”

“One of the most prominent figures on the Colorado performing arts scene throughout the second half of the 20th century, Lowenstein ran the Bonfils Theater in downtown Denver… Lowenstein produced around 400 plays, operas and ballets at the venue during his time there before retiring as general manager in 1986.”

“He is everywhere, and still he scares us. Why? Because with Sade, no cold or objective analysis is possible; the body is implicated as much as the mind, and reason has to be subordinated to deeper, scarier impulses.”

“In April, Heppner – who currently hosts CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera – released a statement announcing that he was “setting aside my career as an opera and concert singer” – but he didn’t say anything about musical theatre.”