Elaine Stritch Talks Sondheim

“No Sondheim song comes easy to me. You depend on Rodgers and Hart for that. Those songs have easy brilliance. Stephen Sondheim gives you complicated brilliance. But once you get him, you got him. He makes you think a little bit. But those hours in a rehearsal room learning a song – those hours are rough.”

France As Melting Pot? Musically, Yes.

“France has become a center of stylistic blending. They do it so well in part because it resonates with their cultural history, but also because the current wave of immigration from Africa has produced a conflictual combination of obsessive anxiety and fascination. … In French pop one hears what France could become if it got over its hysteria about immigrants.”

Is There An Art Market Blacklist?

“At its heart, the $8 million suit is a fairly ordinary contract dispute about confidentiality agreements and sales promises. But the details of the disagreement have provided a rare view into a normally very private world of high-end art selling in which membership rules, responsibilities, rewards and reprisals can be so complex and changeable that even art world veterans say they sometimes struggle to decode them.”