“On Saturday evening, the Phil (is) finally playing ... the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. For Dudamel, 44, who arrived in L.A. 17 years ago to lead the Phil, playing Coachella was ‘a dream, ever since I started here.’” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
"The players — the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, and the principal oboist, Liang Wang — … filed amended complaints against the orchestra on Thursday that assert they were wrongfully dismissed and that an inquiry by the ensemble had been biased against them.” - The New York Times
“After abruptly terminating critical grants to libraries, museums, and archives across the country last week, the National Endowment for the Humanities intends to redirect some of its funds to construct President Donald Trump’s bizarre ‘National Garden of American Heroes.’” - Hyperallergic
“More than 140 Chicago artists and cultural leaders are calling on Mayor Brandon Johnson to address ‘dysfunction’ within the city’s Cultural Affairs department (under commissioner Clinée Hedspeth), arguing that staffing turmoil is leading to delays in grant payments and other key functions.” - Chicago Sun-Times
“After an international search, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has selected its next director and CEO from within its own ranks. Pierre Terjanian, who is presently the museum's chief of curatorial affairs and conservation, will assume the new role in July.” - WBUR (Boston)
“More than 40 years after the start of the epidemic, the full numerical scope of the toll AIDS took on the world of theater in New York remains difficult to assess. It’s not just inaccurate death notices that are the enemy of historical precision; it’s the passage of decades.” - New York Magazine (MSN)
The idea that American history is polyphonic and unflinching, a warts-and-all story relevant to all Americans, is so deeply embedded in the Smithsonian that it is hard to imagine how it could comply with Trump’s demands. - Washington Post
"You use a pay phone in a different way than you use a cellphone. It's not in your pocket. You go and do this goodbye in a place that's different from where you do most of your business. You hear a dial tone. That's the sound of waiting." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
These changing patterns show that one’s relationship with effort isn’t simple. For many people, there’s a sweet spot – a little effort might make something more valuable, but push too far and the value drops. - The Conversation
And yest he’s currently rehearsing the title role at the RSC. “There are certain plays in the canon that teeter on the edge of acceptability. Titus is one of those for me. I don’t understand the violence. I don’t understand why as an audience we feel excited, stimulated, challenged by it.” - The Guardian
In place of pain, we have ennui, the quintessential modern condition. It follows directly from overabundance: an endless stream of video “content” or chocolate cake or edibles or any other indulgence cannot deliver lasting satisfaction. Everything gets old eventually, leaving one to grope around for the next fix. - New Statesman
Shadow Ticket, due out in October, will be the American novelist’s 10th book. Like his previous two, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013), this new work is a noir novel about a private eye. - The Guardian
"Sexual jealousy is an emotion that was once thought to be so universal, such a commonplace experience of a person in love, that no one would think it needed explaining." But we "did not anticipate a world in which jealousy within a relationship would evolve into something that could be analogized to consumer rivalry." - Hedgehog Review
“(His) sly chronicles of cultural excess, celebrity and author profiles, personal essays and investigative work enlivened the pages of a newsstand’s worth of magazines during the medium’s last golden age.” Tina Brown declared, “Jesse was the expert on everything.” - The New York Times
