This flutist and composer was born in Chicago, where her grandparents arrived during the Great Migration. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely an upgrade from Mississippi.” There’s a slogan the visitors bureau won’t be using. A musician reflects on her home town and one of its sons. Another in our series On Collaboration with violist … Continue reading »
Author Archives: Randy Cohen
365: Michael R. Jackson
Having won the Pulitzer Prize for his play A Strange Loop, what will he do next? One possibility, move to Wyoming. “I’d get my house somewhere, get my shotgun, if I needed it, and sit on my porch in my rocking chair.” An eastern sophisticate contemplates the West, Tori Amos, and soap opera. Presented with Federal Hall … Continue reading »
364: Moby
Before embracing a more salubrious life in Los Angeles, he rollicked through a years-long spree back east. “New York is paradise if you’re a drunk, and a very challenging place to be sober.” A slogan inexplicably rejected by the New York Visitors Bureau. This master of electronic dance music talks about religion, wilderness, and David Bowie’s … Continue reading »
363: Cynthia Erivo
This actor and singer won a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Tony for The Color Purple. She played Harriet Tubman in Harriet and Aretha Franklin in Genius. Is there anything she can’t do? “I will not be releasing an album of Hawaiian guitar music; I don’t think I can nearly get good enough to do that.” Hey, if she turned her … Continue reading »
362: Heywood Gould
He is the writer of Drafted: A Memoir of the ‘60s and the screenplays for The Boys from Brazil (Gregory Peck) Fort Apache, the Bronx (Paul Newman), and Cocktail (Tom Cruise). “I definitely learned how to deal with people who were tougher than me, smarter than me, stronger than me; I had to find my way in that world.” He means the schoolyard. He … Continue reading »
361: Thom Mayne
“I have no interest in completing projects,” says this architect, winner of the Pritzker Prize. “A lot of our stuff just keeps moving; it refuses to have an edge, a boundary; it’s in constant change.” For someone who feels that way, he’s completed an awful lot of them, and to great acclaim. Presented with the … Continue reading »
360: Anthony McGill
Every musician relishes applause — who wouldn’t? — but the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic also finds value in an audience booing. “To know that someone was infuriated by a performance or a set or something like that is kind of enjoyable in a sick sort of way, too.” The joys of a … Continue reading »
359: Sarah Carroll
She heads New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, safeguarding 36,000 buildings. She loves them all, of course, but one material has a special claim on her heart. “We have terra cotta everywhere in this city, architectural terra cotta. It’s structural, it’s non-structural, it’s ornamental.” That fabulous clay, that magical goo, that stuff that makes Manhattan. … Continue reading »
358: Karen Krolak
To experience art does not mean to contemplate an immutable exquisite object, but to cultivate a relationship, says this dancer/choreographer. “It’s similar to what you get from long-term friendships or marriage or family.” Maybe not my family, but I see what she means. Introduced by Ralph Farris, violist in the quartet Ethel, and creator of … Continue reading »
357: Patricia Spears Jones
One way to describe art is to note that it has beauty but not utility. This poet rejects that dichotomy, especially when it comes to everyday objects. “Often, things that are domestic are diminished because they are connected to females.” She loves things that are both beautiful and useful: quilts, fans, teapots. A conversation with … Continue reading »
356: Louis Menand
Author of The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he is as sophisticated an intellectual as any of his colleagues at The New Yorker. The book that set him on his path? A Hardy Boys mystery, The Secret of the Old Mill. “I read this, and my heart was pounding. And I thought, I want to … Continue reading »
355: Penn Badgley
This actor, perhaps best known as Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl and Joe Goldberg in the Netflix series You, is modest about his craft. “The only thing that’s ours as actors is how we feel as we say lines we didn’t write, as we wear clothes we didn’t purchase or even choose.” The importance of emotional honesty, the burden of … Continue reading »