Category: today’s top story

“Mo’s comments were still unforgivable because behind his stance on censorship lies a commitment to collective cultural amnesia. Beyond the perpetual balancing act of state collaboration that China’s artists play, Mo’s position betrays a suffocating sickness in China’s literary scene.”

“A Matagorda County woman has filed a lawsuit against the Houston Grand Opera and a Pearland man who she says sexually assaulted her during rehearsals for an production in which they had been hired as extras.”

“It is up for seven prizes, including best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, best director for Spielberg, and best film drama. In the latter category, it competes with Ben Affleck’s thriller Argo, and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, both of which have five nominations.”

She spent two decades as the Bolshoi’s prima donna assoluta and the USSR’s most venerated classical singer – until she and husband Mstislav Rostropovich were blacklisted for having sheltered dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. They emigrated to the US in 1974, as famous Cold War icons as well as renowned artists.

“[He] was the Indian maestro who put the sitar on the musical map. George Harrison called him ‘the godfather of world music’ and it was Shankar’s vision that brought the sounds of the raga into western consciousness, thus bridging the gap between eastern and western music for the first time.”

“Should a prize of this magnitude go to a writer who is ‘inside the system’ of an authoritarian government that imprisons other writers–of whom Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize (a ‘convicted criminal,’ in the Chinese government’s view) is only the most famous example?”

“Two new dances by the choreographer Trisha Brown to be performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music beginning in January will be the final works of her career … Ms. Brown, 76, last performed with her company at the Joyce Theater in 2008, and has suffered health problems in recent years. But she remains the company’s artistic director.”

“[He] composed ambitious classical and choral works, released nearly 100 albums” – including the first jazz album to sell a million copies – “and remained a charismatic and indefatigable performer into old age. In December 2010, … his quartet won the readers’ poll of DownBeat magazine as the best group in jazz – 57 years after he first won the poll.”