These principals of the architectural firm WORKac found it challenging to design their own home. The psychological complexity of domestic life? The culmination of years of thought? “The hardest thing about designing our house was that we just haven’t designed a lot of houses.” Produced with the Center for Architecture. Photo: Harry Willks.
The artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company summarizes his aesthetic: “The curtain goes up, twenty minutes happen, the curtain comes down, and it is transformative.” Easy to say, brilliant to achieve. And they do.
His first feature-length documentary, The War Room, was Oscar-nominated. He won an Emmy for American High, a TV series. Years earlier he received this professional tip from his mentor, D. A. Pennebaker: “You’re not a director until you wake up screaming in the middle of the night.” Apparently I am a director. As are we all. Continue reading »
When he set out to become an actor, this Broadway great—Rent, Wicked, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—was opposed by his conservative Catholic family. But they came around, even his Fox-watching father. “He loved Rent. My homophobic dad would come to Rent, probably once a month.” Tales of reconciliation. And show tunes. Continue reading »
A Russia specialist at the Brookings Institution, she testified at the House impeachment hearings with erudition, integrity, and courage. She got her start as a child dominoes hustler at a miners’ pub in the north of England. “My granddad would have me play and bet on me, and every time I won I would get … Continue reading »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
“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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »