Tag: Artists

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Entertainment

Little Island Unveils Free Monthlong Competition With Over 450 Artists

Little Island Unveils Free Monthlong Festival With Over 450 Artists

Little Island was dreamed up as a haven for the performing arts on the Hudson River, and in its first months, it is also being put forward as a playground for artists who have been kept from the stage for far too long.

The operators of the island announced on Tuesday that it would host a free monthlong arts festival starting in mid-August that would feature more than 450 artists in more than 160 performances.

There will be dance, including works curated by Misty Copeland, Robert Garland and Georgina Pazcoguin. There will be music, including the pianists Jenny Lin and Adam Tendler, the composer Tyshawn Sorey and the saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and her band. And there will be live comedy, with television stars like Ziwe and Bowen Yang in the lineup.

The festival — which is being produced by Mikki Shepard, formerly the executive producer of the Apollo Theater — is another major effort by New York’s performing arts community to revive the arts after the pandemic darkened theaters and concert halls for over a year. For the performers, it is an opportunity to get paid to create new work and explore where their art is heading after months of pandemic restrictions, and in the wake of racial justice protests that swept the country.

“We wanted artists to have a voice in terms of, where are they now?” Shepard said. “Coming out of this pandemic, where do they want to be?”

By offering free performances, the festival’s objective is to host an audience that combines typical arts patrons with people who might not normally buy tickets to see live music or dance. The performances in Little Island’s 687-seat amphitheater will be ticketed, but shows located elsewhere on the island will not be, allowing tourists and other park visitors to stumble upon them as they’re walking around the 2.4-acre space.

“Nothing about it is refined,” said George C. Wolfe, a senior adviser working on the festival, which is called NYC Free. “It’s to give people a place to play.”

Copeland and Garland are co-curating a performance on Aug. 18 that features eight Black ballet dancers from three major companies: American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and the Dance Theater of Harlem, where Garland is resident choreographer. During the performance, Copeland will read aloud from American history texts on top of hip-hop, soul and funk music.

Other dance performances include Ballet Hispánico performing an evening of new works by Latina choreographers on Aug. 18, an evening of dance curated by the choreographer Ronald K. Brown on Aug. 25 and a performance by the tap dancer Dormeshia on Sept. 1.

As for music, the first day of the festival on Aug. 11 will feature John Cage’s work “4’33”” — in which the score instructs that no instruments be played. It will be performed by students of the Third Street Music School Settlement, led by Tendler. Other musicians include the jazz duo Cécile McLorin Salvant and Sullivan Fortner; Flor de Toloache, an all-women mariachi band; and Ali Stroker, the Tony-winning “Oklahoma!” performer, who will sing and tell stories onstage. The final night of the festival includes an all-women jazz performance, curated by the drummer and composer Shirazette Tinnin.

The comedy lineup features a stand-up show hosted by Michelle Buteau and a live show called “I Don’t Think So, Honey!,” hosted by Yang and Matt Rogers, that grew out of a segment on their podcast.

The festival is funded by Barry Diller, the mega-mogul who paid for Little Island and whose family foundation will bankroll the first two decades of the park’s operations. It will run from Aug. 11 to Sept. 5.

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Health

Ford and Mellon Foundations Increase Initiative for Disabled Artists

Ford and Mellon Foundations Expand Initiative for Disabled Artists

The Disability Futures initiative, a fellowship established by the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations last fall to support disabled artists, is expanding. The foundations announced on Friday that they will commit an additional $5 million to support the initiative through 2025, which will include support for two more cohorts of 20 fellows.

The fellowship, which was created by and for disabled individuals, was conceived as an 18-month initiative. It provided 20 disabled artists, filmmakers and journalists, selected from across the United States, with unrestricted $50,000 grants administered by the arts funding group United States Artists.

But Margaret Morton, the director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation, said it was clear from the beginning that it couldn’t just be a one-off venture.

Projects undertaken by members of the first cohort will be showcased at the first Disability Futures virtual festival, on Monday and Tuesday, with programming from some of the country’s leading disabled artists, writers, thinkers and designers. It is free and open to the public.

Among the highlights: A session on disability portraiture with the filmmakers Jim LeBrecht and Rodney Evans, the painter Riva Lehrer and the journalist Alice Wong; a conversation exploring the connections between climate justice and disability justice led by Patty Berne; and a virtual dance party hosted by the garment maker Sky Cubacub, with music by DJ Who Girl (Kevin Gotkin). Evening runway performances from models wearing items from Cubacub’s Rebirth Garments and a meditation experience with the initiative Black Power Naps, featuring Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa, are also on tap.

“It’s been really profound for me to see how much the fellows chosen in the first cohort were interested in elevating others in the community,” Emil J. Kang, the program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation, said in an interview on Thursday.

The next class of fellows will be announced in 2022. They are chosen by peer advisers who are themselves disabled artists.

But the feedback from the first class, Morton said, was frank: Do even better in the selection process.

“One of the fellows challenged us,” she said, about there being only one Native American fellow. “And we appreciated that and were challenged to get it right and make sure we have a deeper pool.”

The grants offer flexible compensation options. The money can be distributed in a lump sum, in payments or even be deferred, depending on what works best for the artist.

The fellowship “has made an incredible difference in my life and career,” the writer and photographer Jen Deerinwater said in an email. “It’s allowed me more financial freedom, without the risk of losing my disability and health care services, to pursue more artistic pursuits such as music.”

The pandemic has made foundation leaders “deeply aware” of the challenges disabled professionals face, Morton said. About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We gained a deeper impression and perspective about what it’s like to navigate through the world,” she said.

The program’s overarching goal is to help the artists make connections, Morton said.

“Our biggest dream is visibility,” she said. For audiences to see the artists and for funders to see that “they should start investing in disabled practitioners.”

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Entertainment

Black Dance Tales: By the Artists, for the Folks

Black Dance Stories: By the Artists, for the People

She not only hopes to keep the archive on YouTube, but hopes to find a black-run institution to put it in an official capacity. She also dreams of the next chapter of the show (still in the planning phase): a personal version in which the guests of the online series pull together on stage.

“Stop talking,” she said. “Let’s dance! We miss it.”

Curator, performer, dance historian and author Warren – known to many as Mama Charmaine – began imagining Black Dance Stories in the early days of the pandemic, when so many in the dance world were stuck at home without work, breaking routine and social circles as usual. The murder of George Floyd, she said, increased her desire to bring black dance artists together to share their stories.

“When George Floyd was murdered, I was so empty,” she said. “My heart was hurt. And then I felt even more the urge to do something for our community. “As exhausting as this moment was, she added:” I also wanted to find some kind of ointment, and this ointment is community. “

The clear but open structure of the show enables both solo storytelling and intimate dialogues. Most episodes couple two guests, each invited to speak for 20 minutes to tell a story; in between they overlap in conversation. Perhaps they already know each other well or, as with Battle and Pittman, are just getting to know each other. The pairings, Warren said, were based primarily on when guests were available, which resulted in some surprising games.

“Introducing people is so much part of the mind,” said Battle, who has known Warren for over a decade, “that notion, ‘Oh, you two need to know each other’ and then step back to allow room for whatever comes out of it . “

“It only works because of her,” said Pittman, reflecting on the uncertain moments when guests start talking. “She has an incredibly supportive way of being that lends itself so well to a show like this. It is driven by their enthusiasm for people. “

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Entertainment

Emergency Grants for New York Metropolis Artists With Disabilities

Emergency Grants for New York City Artists With Disabilities

The tulips are in bloom, Broadway is coming back and the pandemic slowdown in America seems to be in sight.

But for many artists who are still trying to recover from a year of lost or reduced income, normal is still a long way off.

Now a New York Foundation for the Arts program is accepting applications for $ 1,000 in cash for New York-based creators with disabilities who have struggled as a result of the pandemic. The Barbara and Carl Zydney Scholarship for Artists with Disabilities is open to literary, media, music, performing and visual artists aged 21 and over in each of the five boroughs.

The new program is named in memory of Barbara Zydney, who was born and raised in New York and teaches visually impaired children in the city’s public school system, and her husband Carl, a fellow patron of the arts.

“It brings together three things that were important to the Zydneys: their love for New York, their passion for the arts and Barbara’s commitment to working with people with disabilities,” said the announcement on the foundation’s website.

About one in five adults in New York is disabled, according to the New York State Health Department.

While there are no readily available statistics specifically tracking the impact of the pandemic on disabled artists, visual, performing and other artists had a disastrous year. Employment in the city’s arts, entertainment and recreation sectors fell 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a February report by the New York State Comptroller’s Office. It was the biggest decline in the city’s economy.

Applications are accepted until Tuesday, June 15, 5 p.m. Qualified applicants will be selected by lottery and informed of the status of their application on July 24th.

A full list of guidelines can be found on the foundation’s website.

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Entertainment

Lena Waithe on Them and Letting Black Artists Inform Tales

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 22: Lena Waithe attends the 51st NAACP Image Awards at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on February 22, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Aaron J. Thornton / FilmMagic)

Image source: Getty / Aaron J. Thornton
Lena Waithe sets out to redefine what luxury means to the entertainment industry thanks to a recent Haagen-Dazs campaign entitled “That’s Dazs”. As part of the campaign, Häagen-Dazs donated $ 100,000 to the Hillman Grad Foundation’s Mentorship Lab from Waithe as part of a larger three-year brand loyalty of $ 1.5 million to underrepresented creators and flavor makers. The 10-month program provides “Opportunities for Marginalized Storytellers to Network, Grow, and Accelerate Their Careers in Television and Film” and consists of three separate titles: Writing on TV, Screening, and Leadership Development. In addition to providing access to the Hillman Grad Network of industry professionals, the program also provides the opportunity to shadow a writers’ room and a monthly speaker series with industry experts. “I think it’s a luxury to work in this industry, but I don’t think we can treat it as such. We have to make it more accessible to everyone,” Waithe told POPSUGAR. “People think that it is only for a select few to be in business, to work and to be successful. We try to say, ‘No, it is for everyone.'”

That doesn’t mean changing the narrative is easy, as the industry often requires people to work in jobs that they aren’t paid to do. “Not everyone can afford to do this. We’re trying to make it happen so they can come and work and learn,” she added. “You don’t have to be stressed about how to pay your bills or how to pay for classes.” It’s just gotten a lot easier thanks to Häagen-Dazs. “It’s about literally and figuratively really investing in the community. With the money they have given us, we can help pay for teachers and resources they may need and whatever else they may need shows up, “she continued. “Because the truth is, it’s the money part that challenges people because they say, ‘I don’t have the money to move. I don’t have the ability to intern and keep my lights on.’ “

“People think that only a select few are able to be in business, work, and be successful.”

The Mentorship Lab came about after Waithe and film producer Rishi Rajani each ran programs that left something to be desired in terms of skills and takeaways. “Because we work in the industry every day, we learn the things we learn on the fly with the next class,” she explained. “There are things we can’t teach because this industry changes for every new generation. I find it exciting that we learn from the mentees because they tell us, ‘Hey, we’re really stressed out on social media.’ And for me and Rishi, because we’ve lived with it for so long, we say, “Yeah, it just comes with it.” But for them, they freaked out because they check their social media every day and drag people for their work and So we try to tell them, “Don’t be afraid of it. It’s okay. It’s okay It’s a difficult time in our society. But even that is something I didn’t think of when I entered it. So we’re trying to tell them,” Don’t be afraid of it Industry came.

Image source: Shayan Asgharnia
Between the possibilities with the Mentorship Lab and the upcoming Amazon Prime Video series You: BundWaithe has a lot going for it. “We have a couple of mini-scrolls that are going to open up, especially on Amazon, for these writers to sit in the room,” she said. “Obviously we have You: Bund Coming April 9th, which the streets are already talking about, produced and written by Little Marvin. And then The chi come back. We now have a release date, May 23rd, for the fourth season and then Twenties will start filming in May. So we have a few other things that we cook and look forward to. “

With the mentees, she would like to gain practical experience with projects in which she is involved. “We’re going to have them audition and see if there is room for an employee on one of these new shows. They really have full access to everything we do,” she added. “And then the writers in the lab will be finishing scripts very soon too, so the actors will come and be the readers of those scripts. They will get to know each other, they will learn from each other.” Voices and what they’re good at and things like that. It’s just going to be a really exciting time to build these people, grow and encourage them to be creative and do whatever comes to their minds and not suffocate them whatsoever. “

“That doesn’t mean that black people can’t tell stories about horror through the black lens just because they did it first.”

Waithe speaks of creative minds and is aware of the comparisons between Little Marvins they and Jordan Peeles Get out. “It’s just so funny because Jordan Peele obviously opened a huge door, but that doesn’t mean that as a black person, you can’t tell stories about horror through the black lens just because he did it first.”

She continued, “But I went to a showing of Get out and we were all obviously blown away by the movie. And then Jordan said to us: “Do you know what is interesting? I wrote this film before Obama even took office. ‘So when something comes out, it can often take years to start. “There was actually no plan when it came to the timing of theyPublication. “It was just the right timing,” she said. “It was about when it was finished, it was about when it was finished. This production was on COVID like many other productions, so there was a little delay. So when something comes out it often has very little to do with the subject But I definitely think our society goes through cycles. “

NEWARK, NJ - AUGUST 26: Lena Waithe visits Black Girls Rock! 2018 red carpet at NJPAC on August 26, 2018 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Paras Griffin / Getty Images for BET)Image source: Getty / Paras Griffin
For Waithe, it is important to give an artist the creative license so that their work can stand the test of time. “If the work stands the test of time and says something about our society that wasn’t really said that way before, I think it’s valid and important,” said Waithe. “I just don’t believe in suffocating artists. We can never win if we do that. When we started telling artists what they can and can’t do, we are doing ourselves a disservice. Because the truth is, white.” Male Artists Get Chances All The Time Nobody tells a white guy, “Hey, don’t do this,” or maybe we are, but the truth is, black artists deserve to be free to tell the story they want to tell. At least we deserve it. “

Your statements are particularly true when it comes to the Twitter comment that took place on the trailer for they was published first. Immediately people assumed it was being tried Lovecraft Land or Get outIn reality, it is a far cry from either. “I can’t even explain to people what they’re going to see. Can you? It’s like Little Marvin’s brain is different from what I’ve ever experienced,” she revealed. (She’s right. After seeing the screeners for theyI still haven’t found words to describe what’s going on. “Even the pilot. I said, ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’ And that’s his first. I’ll go with him too. I’ve been there trying to hold his hand and say, “Hey, how are you? Get ready. Gird your loins. “And he just says,” Look, I’m half Indian, half black, gay man. I’ve gotten every name and hatred you can think of, “from people who don’t look like him and from people who do.”

they deals with a number of difficult issues including racism, death, mental illness and murder. With the rise in media-centric black trauma, why did Little Marvin feel the need to tell this particular story? “I hope you can understand why he did that or why he felt the need to tell this story. I don’t think he’s in any way trying to take advantage of anything or anything,” Waithe shared. “It’s really an artistic expression of what he’s been thinking about and what he’s thinking. And I think he has the right to be. These are the times that we are in and that we have to accept. I know this work is going to be last and that’s the most important thing. “

“Black artists deserve to be free to tell any story they want to tell. At least we deserve that.”

What Waithe would like to take away from the audience they, of which she is an executive producer, it’s complicated. “People ask, ‘What did you want people to take away from work?’ and I always say, “Whatever you make it do,” she announced. “Because if people come up to it and want to say, ‘I want to be angry about it,’ they will. If people want to come and say, ‘I want to be open and just see this as a beautiful piece of art,’ it will be. It just depends. ”

It remains to be seen what the audience thinks of they when it premieres on April 9th. “In ten years and in ten years and in ten years we will be living in a completely different society. That’s just the way it is,” she argued. “There are things that will be the same and there are things that will change. The audience evolves and changes, but the work is there. Therefore, all of the works that we revisit and that we carry on in life watch them classic because we keep them alive. “The audience isn’t the only thing that evolves and changes, everything goes back to the creators. For Waithe, Little Marvin, and the Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab mentees, the hope is that the work will be something people won’t forget. “It’s the job that people want to go back and visit again,” she continued. “This is the kind of job I love because I know I always go back.”

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Politics

San Francisco and Different Cities Attempt to Give Artists Regular Revenue

San Francisco and Other Cities Try to Give Artists Steady Income

In San Francisco, officials have announced a pilot program that gives artists a monthly grant. The mayor’s office recently unveiled the initiative, city payments approved by the Arts Commission that provides 130 eligible artists with a guaranteed monthly income of $ 1,000 over a six month period.

A similar experiment began this week in St. Paul, Minnesota. There, a nonprofit is working with the city to pay 25 local artists monthly checks worth $ 500 for the next 18 months. Springboard for the Arts, the organization running the initiative with funding from two foundations, hoped that a successful program could change the national conversation.

In cities like Oakland, California, and Atlanta, whose leaders are part of a 41-member coalition, mayors for guaranteed income, other programs are emerging that aren’t just limited to art workers. The coalition says providing such income will improve race and gender equality. (New York has no such plan in the works, a Department of Cultural Affairs spokesman said last week.)

Interest in guaranteed income – or universal basic income – has grown over the past year as a possible solution to the one-sided economic impact of the pandemic.

“We knew this health crisis would hit artists, and color artists in particular,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “If we help the arts recover, the arts will help San Francisco recover.”

San Francisco has other such programs – one that pays for paramedic training for San Franciscans and another that is part of a $ 60 million initiative to invest in black children and families.

Since the artist application portal opened on March 25, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which administers the Guaranteed Income program on behalf of San Francisco, has received more than 1,800 responses. (The application deadline is April 15th.)

Deborah Cullinan, the organization’s executive director, said that when people are unstable in the arts, “I think that means we are not stable. An organization is only as stable as its core community. “

Cullinan said she hoped data from the program could be used to inform about the national agenda and that she was already interested in the federal government.

“It’s about finding new and innovative ways to tackle the economic uncertainty in our sector,” added Cullinan.

In St. Paul, the McKnight and Bush Foundations helped get the guaranteed income program off the ground. Laura Zabel, Springboard’s director who oversaw the project, said the monthly payments would help artists afford food and rent. Scholarship recipients will be selected from a pool of past recipients of the organization’s coronavirus emergency grants. The director added that at least 75 percent of the recipients would be people of color.

Categories
Entertainment

The Artists Dismantling the Limitations Between Rap and Poetry

The Artists Dismantling the Barriers Between Rap and Poetry

Rappers have an obvious advantage over side-born poets when it comes to rhythm. But also poets can shape the rhythm through stress patterns as well as through their lines on the page. Poets differ from prose writers in that they, not the typographer, choose where their lines should end, thus giving them the opportunity to play with a reader’s sense of time. Enjambment, when a syntactic unit overflows from one line to the next, is a fundamental poetic practice that empowers poets with the ability to create and re-shape meaning. In “Highest” from his upcoming “Somebody Else Sold the World” collection, 49-year-old Indianapolis poet Adrian Matejka rifles over Travis Scott’s 2019 hit “Highest in the Room,” but where Scott’s lines almost completely end – that is , dissolved in a complete phrase – Matejkas are mostly enjamged. Sometimes the effect is a syncopation: “This is / Machu Picchu high.” In other cases a picture is paused and then revived with a parable: “I raise / like the highest black hand in history class.” Still other times, Matejka enables a complex idea to unfold over several lines: “I rose like that Blood pressure of someone / black reproduced in the textbook / this monochromatic year. ”Matejka’s line breaks attest to a year of pandemic and racist violence and deny any effort to overcome the pain.

Moments like these show the reciprocity between rap and poetry, little formal things that have a big impact on meaning. “For me, it’s sound,” says 45-year-old Los Angeles-based poet Khadijah Queen of her work’s connection to hip-hop, although her poems also make use of silence. In her latest collection “Anodyne” (2020) she uses the entire page and writes not only with words but also with the space around it. Their lines dance, yes, but they also trip, cancel, pause, and begin in a way that’s reminiscent of an inventive MC playing a dozen different beats in a row.

Queen also understands her role, and that of her fellow poets and rappers, as necessarily engaged in civic work. She looks at Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, perhaps the most prominent black writer of the 19th century, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women and children on her platform. “Our job is to grasp what people feel in this time of contradiction: the difficulty and the beauty together. We are called to clearly recognize what is happening, ”says Queen. After the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others, rappers were also moved to express themselves through songs. Atlanta’s Lil Baby, 26 and one of the most successful emerging artists, released The Bigger Picture in June, in which he seriously deals with police brutality: “It doesn’t make sense; I’m only here to vent “In the past year, several other songs have expressed the anger and pain of Americans: Terrace Martin’s“ Pig Feet ”starring Denzel Curry, Daylyt, G Perico and Kamasi Washington; Noname’s “Song 33”; Meek Mills “Otherside of America”; YOUR “I can’t breathe”; Anderson .Paak’s “Lockdown”. For Queen and other black poets, hip-hop is not just beats and rhymes, but something more necessary as well. Hearing black voices speaking on their own terms creates refuge, especially at a time when blackness and blacks are besieged. “I love hip-hop because it emphasizes the use of black language as the standard,” she says. “It’s a space to be who you are without apologizing.”

Categories
Entertainment

Little Island Broadcasts Resident Artists

Little Island Announces Resident Artists

A long-term stay on Little Island offers theater makers Tina Landau, Michael McElroy and PigPen Theater Co. as well as tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel the opportunity to build the performance arts program of the new public park from scratch.

The selected artists, announced on Wednesday, will tinker, curate and perform for three seasons in the outdoor area currently under construction in Hudson River Park near West 13th Street.

“They all share this feeling of joy and adventure and a real passion for embracing the things that could be possible in this public space,” said Trish Santini, the park’s general manager, in an interview.

The residences were planned before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, but the ongoing performing arts shutdown has made them more meaningful: Little Island plans to start performances in late spring – before actors, dancers and musicians are likely to hit the indoor stages City can return.

“There is a sense of urgency at the moment – artists need to be able to get their work done and help shape how that work manifests itself in a new public space,” said Santini.

The scale and extent of artistic involvement set the Little Island Residences apart from some of their counterparts elsewhere. In addition to directing and performing work, the artists will cultivate relationships with the park’s community partners and organize festivals and other events across multiple seasons.

It’s an opportunity that McElroy, actor, music director, and director of the Broadway Inspirational Voices Choir, is enjoying.

“There is an investment in artists and you can tell by the length of the residence,” he said. “It’s not a one-and-do. It allows me to dream big. “

His plans include creating new musical theater works, organizing a community-based initiative focused on the senior experience, and providing opportunities for other musicians and singer-songwriters.

The other three resident artists also tend to work across borders.

Landau, the Tony Award nominated director of “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” began her career with site-specific work at En Garde Arts, including “Orestes” at Penn Yards and “Stonewall: Night Variations” at Pier 25 on the Hudson River.

Casel has been combining tap dancing and storytelling since 2005 in order to shed more light on the art form with her series “Diary of a Tap Dancer”. And PigPen, whose musical “The Tale of Despereaux” debuted at the Old Globe Theater in 2019, is known for skillfully combining music, film and theater.

The resident artists have already started to design what the park has to offer. You recently helped review the submission of local artists looking to contribute to Little Island’s inaugural season. The selection will be announced in spring.

When completed, Little Island will contain three open-air venues: a 700-seat amphitheater, a garden area for small productions for 200 visitors, and an open space for educational activities.

This flexibility gives the seven members of Landau, McElroy, Casel and PigPen the opportunity to design and present their work. It should also make it easier to conduct appearances safely during the pandemic.

Little Island has overcome several obstacles since it was announced in 2014.

Legal challenges and rising costs caused Barry Diller, the park’s sponsor, to temporarily cancel the company in 2017. It was revived later that year after Governor Andrew M. Cuomo convinced his opponents to drop their lawsuits by agreeing to complete Hudson River Park and protect the local estuary.

Categories
Entertainment

The Artists We Misplaced in 2020, in Their Phrases

The Artists We Lost in 2020, in Their Words

Losing a favorite actor or musician is always difficult. But in 2020, a year of crisis, some of those losses were particularly painful, brought on by a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands in the United States alone. The artists on this list could help us better understand the time we are going through, or at least get through it with a smile or a cathartic scream. Here is a tribute to her, in her own words.

– Chadwick Boseman, actor, born 1976 (Read the obituary.)

– Ann Reinking, dancer, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)

– Larry Kramer, writer, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)

– Luchita Hurtado, artist, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)

– Sean Connery, actor, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)

– Little Richard, singer, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)

– Alex Trebek, TV presenter, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)

– Othella Dallas, dancer, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)

– Eddie Van Halen, guitarist, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)

– Ennio Morricone, composer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)

– Diana Rigg, actress, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)

– Helen Reddy, singer, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)

– Jerry Stiller, comedian, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)

– Christiane Eda-Pierre, singer, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)

– Milton Glaser, designer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)

– Cristina, singer, born 1956 (Read the obituary.)

– Adam Schlesinger, songwriter, born 1967 (Read the obituary.)

– Anthony Chisholm, actor, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)

– Olivia de Havilland, actress, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)

– Krzysztof Penderecki, composer, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)

– Helen LaFrance, artist, born 1919 (Read the obituary.)

– Kirk Douglas, actor, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)

– Aileen Passloff, dancer, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)

– Kenny Rogers, singer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)

– Peter Beard, artist, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)

– Charley Pride, singer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)

– Elizabeth Wurtzel, author, born 1967 (Read the obituary.)

– Leon Fleisher, pianist, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)

– Zoe Caldwell, actress, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)

– Louis Johnson, dancer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)

– Terrence McNally, playwright, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)

– Jean Erdman, dancer, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)

– Bill Withers, singer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)

– Christo, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)

– John le Carré, author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)

– Mirella Freni, singer, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)

– Ming Cho Lee, theater designer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)

– Lynn Shelton, director, born 1965 (Read the obituary.)

– Nick Cordero, actor, born 1978 (Read the obituary.)

– Toots Hibbert, singer, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)

– Regis Philbin, TV presenter, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)

– Mary Higgins Clark, author, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)

– Irrfan Khan, actor, born 1967 (Read the obituary.)

– Betty Wright, singer, born 1953 (Read the obituary.)

– John Prine, musician, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)