According to the Canadian pianist Liu, the answer after an extra COVID year was spontaneity. "That was the challenge, actually: to not get bored of yourself after playing these pieces and practising them for thousands of hours." - CBC
"'Often there's that idea that you're just going to dig your garden and go to Zumba or visit a National Trust property,' songwriter and guitarist Ruth Miller said. 'We want to be in a punk band. We don't want to just watch daytime TV.'" - BBC
In recent weeks, documentaries about R. Kelly, Britney Spears, Malcolm X's killers, and Julius Jones appear to have had real-world effects. Why now? Theory: Unscripted content is cheaper; there's more of it; and social media exists. - Washington Post
The museum has an Afrofuturist room; therefore, civilization as "we" know it is ending. "Conservatives want to conserve. ... But if you value history, shouldn’t you value all histories?" - Hyperallergic
She told Spotify to quit with the shuffle on albums - and "on Saturday, the streaming giant confirmed that it had agreed to the British superstar’s request to automatically play the music in the order an artist has curated." - Washington Post
One armorer: "You can’t keep hiring people who aren’t qualified just to get your movie made because you have a time constriction. ... Getting rid of the guns is not going to get rid of the problem." - Los Angeles Times
At American High, "the school has not had actual students in the halls for years, but it is once again home to high school drama of the sort generally captured in R-rated teenage comedies." - The New York Times
Of course the past two years have meant near-constant revisions of goals, budgets, and the definition of success - but in Portland, the Friends of Chamber Music's Pat Zagelow had decades of flexible crisis response to call on. - Oregon ArtsWatch
In New York, the arts' elitism "stands in stark contrast to the middle decades of the 20th century, when the city was a haven for cash-strapped artists and New Yorkers across the income spectrum could make and enjoy a wide range of art." - New York Daily News
"It is striking just how much joy is contained within the vivid and eerily detailed footage. Contrary to almost all accounts over the past 52 years, John, Paul, George and Ringo are seemingly happy." - The Guardian (UK)
The artist, dead at 76, did this near an on-ramp: "A young woman was sitting on a bale of hay, surrounded by potted palm trees and 4,000 square feet of green turf, patting a Guernsey calf that was tied to a railing." - The New York Times
The inventive author, who ended her life by walking into the River Ouse, absolutely deserves a statue. But, the local council asks, does it need to be beside a river? - The Guardian (UK)
And it harms their mental health - a lot. But "families are trapped. ... Many parents say that they don’t want their children on Instagram, but they allow them to lie about their age and open accounts because, well, that’s what everyone else has done." - The Atlantic
Following up on pledges made during protests in 2020, Penguin Random House did a self-audit for diversity. What it found: "The demographics of its authors, illustrators, translators, and other creators 'do not reflect U.S. reader demographics when it comes to race and ethnicity.'" - Publishers Weekly
This is important to Greece: "The missing Parthenon frieze in its original state is a reminder of the country’s humiliation by the Turks, and by a British aristocrat." And guess what? Britain can just scan the marbles and 3D print some replacements. - The Guardian (UK)
