Even now, "some employees, particularly female employees, continue to feel unsafe. A current member of the orchestra told me about an incident this past February in which her male colleagues spoke negatively about Asian women performing with the orchestra." - Vulture (MSN)
"Critics need to be more flexible than artists. You have to be open to being changed and pushed into new directions. ... My main goal has always been to point out art that people would enjoy seeing, and to show them how I saw it and enjoyed it." - The New York Times
Although distributors and streaming services frequently use language that places the blame on the artist for fraudulent activity detected on their accounts, it has become clear that artists are often caught in the middle of a crossfire between streaming services, distributors and fraudsters attempting to game the system for their own financial gain. - Variety
In the foreword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a possible second Donald Trump administration, it says “people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.” - AP
Said the 82-year-old this morning, "I woke up at 5:30 yesterday morning to get ready for rehearsal and I thought, what am I even doing? I was wobbly on my feet, and then I thought, I just shouldn't do it anymore." - NPO Radio 4 (Netherlands) (via Google Translate)
One musician says, "Every time I go over there, I'm losing money. … We’re never making money, it's not a possibility. I'm lucky enough that I'm signed now and I've made two albums so I have the money to lose in America.” - BBC
Lea Salonga, on the song “The Worst Pies in London": "There are a whole lot of built-in reversals and crazy shifts. And I don’t mean vocal, but rather where she goes emotionally. It’s like this woman is the multitasking queen.” - Washington Post
The city was a beacon of artistic freedom. Then came October 7. Now, "a climate of fear and recrimination has put Berlin’s status as an international cultural capital in greater hazard than at any time since 1989." - The New York Times
The theatre company said, "We are working with a remarkable group of artists. We insist that they are free to create work without facing online harassment.” - BBC
"In a career spanning (over) 40 years, he established himself as a hyperliterate jester and an anarchic clown. Regarding subject and theme, he pogoed from sex to metaphysics to serial killers to psychology; he had a way of collapsing high art and jokes that aimed much lower." - The New York Times
"A Finn who turned 28 in January, Mäkelä has had an astonishing rise in the music world. … Mäkelä will become CSO music director designate immediately and start a five-year tenure in 2027-28" — at the same time he begins as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. - AP
"Any attempt to look at the company’s finances suggests a long history of issues at the very top. … Sources described a corporate culture with no discernible strategy and little of the necessary financial infrastructure or discipline. … While Vice execs were spending opulently, the newsroom struggled to pay its bills." - The Verge
"Puccini’s universalism was sincerely felt, even if it’s unfashionable today, and it deserves to be appreciated rather than cynically apologized for — as some opera companies seem to do while continuing to reap the ticket-selling benefits of his popularity." - The New York Times
The Guadeloupe-born writer didn't publish her first book until age 40, and she came to international prominence in her 80s: in 2018, she won the New Academy Prize, which Sweden instituted when the Nobel for Literature was suspended due to an internal scandal. - AFP (Yahoo!)
"The post-pandemic picture is improving but from such a low that no one can feel confident about moving forward. Theater attendance hasn’t yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, production and administrative costs have skyrocketed with inflation, and donor fatigue has turned to exhaustion." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
Or, as it’s more commonly called, ‘monster smut.’ One bookseller says, “We had one that actually sold out really fast where it was called Hot Tyrannosaurus Rex. It’s just like, dinosaur smut.” - Oregon Public Broadcasting
"(In Teeth,) a show in which violence begets vengeance, … it’s a lot to endure, for both biter and bitee. … Campy or not, choreographing the many scenes of intimacy and assault required extraordinary sensitivity." Enter Crista Marie Jackson. - The New York Times
Sebastian Smee: "As an artist, he was no bully. Rather, he was a physicist. He wanted you to know, and to feel in your bones, that weight isn’t just a thing — it’s a force. It’s mass times acceleration. As such, it carries an inherent threat." - The Washington Post (MSN)
With the completion of the Chapel of the Assumption in 2025 and the last and highest of its six towers the following year, construction of architect Antoni Gaudí's masterpiece will conclude after 140 years, just in time for the centennial of his death. Well, complete except for the enormous, controversial staircase. - CNN
"The possible choice for the opening ceremony of Aya Nakamura, a superstar French-Malian singer whose slang-spiced lyrics stand at some distance from academic French, has ignited a furor tinged with issues of race and linguistic propriety and the politics of immigration." - The New York Times
