Confessions of a Bad Writer Gone Good
There is a certain kind of bad writing that occurs when you are between the ages of 16 and 24 and have an audience of one. 'Self-indulgent' doesn't begin to describe it, and in fact to do so would...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Joel Meyerowitz and Twelve Other Street Photographers on Their Best Photographs
As artists, it is always a significant challenge to objectively view our own work. We have emotional and psychological ties to both the work itself, and the experience of creating it. When I look at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Farewell, Fair Ladies: American Roots by Women
The Quebe Sisters Band, 2014: Hulda Quebe, Penny Lea Clark, Sophia Quebe, Katy Lou Clark, Grace Quebe. Photo by Stephen D. Winick Lots of discs have appeared in my box lately on which great women...
View ArticleSo You Want to Be An Opera Singer?
Not long ago, I wrote a piece about how college ranking systems aren't useful for students looking to go into music programs. Many people thought I was spot on; a few had criticism. Let me be clear --...
View ArticleJo Fong: An Invitation...to Dance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Very much a work in progress, Jo Fong's An Invitation... is an experimental dance theater piece, which depends heavily on the dynamics of the audience. The piece certainly works when half the audience...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Great Classical Music Festivals of 2014: Itinéraire Baroque in the Dordogne,...
For a month I've been away in Europe covering festivals for Strings magazine. I have not been to the great festivals of Salzburg and Lugano, Verbier and Aspen. Instead I habituated small chamber music...
View ArticleChristian Marclay's 'The Clock'
Dear Chicago museums and galleries: Would one of you please show "The Clock"? It's hard to believe this work of art from 2010 -- celebrated by critics, unbelievably ambitious and staggeringly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
'Contains Nudity': Culturally Biased Stand-Up Comedy
(Photo Copyright Cosmin Gheorghe) Every year between October and December, the San Francisco Bay Area enters a local performance fever. The flip-side of this is that I invariably see advertisements...
View ArticleAir and Music
Around the enormous lawn as the sun set Friday night came a sprinkling of folks dressed as Dorothy or the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion. The reward for them and the other several thousand of us...
View ArticleClik here to view.
3D Lytro Illum Photos: Awesome Costumes at Pax Gaming Convention
I was at the PAX gaming convention with the Lytro Illum camera. Lytro pictures are interactive photos built for the web. The camera incorporates a new technology known as light-field photography. Does...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Magic in the Moonlight
The seen and the unseen are fair enough themes, particularly for a filmmaker in the latter stage of his career. And the protagonist of Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight, a magician and skeptic...
View Article5 Things I Learned About Female Sexual Desires
Last year, around this time, I got the chance to share with you, the readers of The Huffington Post, a project I was developing on female sexual desires. At the time, I was looking for respondents to...
View ArticlePrimal Fear and the Legacy of Damien Hirst
What artworks of the past 25 years will we care about in the future? Damien Hirst's 1991 tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MOLAA: Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun
I wouldn't be surprised if first time visitors to Long Beach have on their must-do list trips to the Long Beach Aquarium and the famous Queen Mary. But for real savvy and adventurous travelers, I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How A Typewriter Helped Me Find My Voice
Writing, for me, was always more of a necessity than a hobby. I wrote to empty out all that cluttered up the insides of me. I wrote to make sense of the noise in my head, the constant humming of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Art in the Lofoten Islands, Norway
Camile Norment, Triplight, 2008. Galleri 2, Stamsund, Lofoten Island. Scott Thoe and Vebjorg Hagene Thoe are both artists and founders of Galleri 2, in Stamsund of the Lofoten archipelago. On the...
View ArticleDon't Miss the Opera in the Pit
I am occasionally asked, on panels, and in master classes, why it is important for an opera composer to write well for the orchestra, do their own orchestrations, and use it for more than mere...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Celebrating Kathy
I'm humming "Happy Birthday" to a hero far away. South Africa's freedom fighter Ahmed Kathrada. "Kathy" -- as he's well known there -- turned a robust 85-years-old on August 21. Long considered a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Little Italy's San Gennaro Feast, More Tales From The Godfather by Det. Sonny...
One of the key early scenes in the 1974 sequel The Godfather Part II occurs during the annual San Gennaro festival in Little Italy, New York, when a young, upcoming Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is Dale Chihuly in the Right Line of Work?
When I met Dale Chihuly and was introduced to his art, his studio, his family and his employees, it felt to me as though there were few people I had ever met who were so much in the right line of work...
View Article