ROBERT DICK - Award-winning Flutist, Composer, Teacher & Author

ROBERT DICK - Award-winning Flutist, Composer, Teacher & Author

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Award-winning Flutist, Composer, Teacher & Author

I decided that I wanted to explore the flute. I mean really explore the flute. People had known a few multi-phonics where you could play two notes. But they had been basically “special effects”, sort of sprinkled into a traditional line to spice it up. And I thought, why not just go the whole way? So my concept that first of all music is made by people. All art is made by people. Music is not made by instruments. The sound of the flute is silence. The sound of the piano is silence. The mark of a brush is a white canvas until the person makes the mark. So music comes from people. We use instruments.

VIET THANH NGUYEN - Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author of The Sympathizer & The Committed

VIET THANH NGUYEN - Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author of The Sympathizer & The Committed

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Writer

Ever since I was a kid, I see this sign in a window near my parents' store. 'Another American Driven Out of Business by the Vietnamese.' And I thought, That's a story. At ten or twelve or whatever, I knew that was a story. And it didn't include me and my parents. But there's a direct connection between that story and Make America Great Again. That's been my life project to say, 'No, we didn't drive you out of your own country.' You know, there's a much more complicated story here about America, about Vietnam, about me, about my people and as American people and Vietnamese people that needs to be told through the arts and the humanities, right? It's a crucial terrain, which is why we keep fighting about it, whether we're Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals. We know that culture is an important place where we define who we are.

Remembering PAUL AUSTER - Writer, Director (1947-2024)

Remembering PAUL AUSTER - Writer, Director (1947-2024)

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Writer · Director 1947-2024

What happens is a space is created. And maybe it’s the only space of its kind in the world in which two absolute strangers can meet each other on terms of absolute intimacy. I think this is what is at the heart of the experience and why once you become a reader that you want to repeat that experience, that very deep total communication with that invisible stranger who has written the book that you’re holding in your hands. And that’s why I think, in spite of everything, novels are not going to stop being written, no matter what the circumstances. We need stories. We’re all human beings, and it’s stories from the moment we’re able to talk.