MacArthur 2017

I'm elated to see that this year's slate of MacArthur Fellows includes Yuval Sharon and Tyshawn Sorey. I wrote about Sharon's staggering, city-spanning creation Hopscotch for The New Yorker in 2015. It remains one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen. Sharon's production of Annie Gosfield's The War of the Worlds is eagerly awaited at the LA Phil in November; next summer, he will become the first American to direct at Bayreuth. As for Sorey, I spent much of the summer listening to, and thinking about, his majestic, elusive work. I first wrote about The Inner Spectrum of Variables and then became bewitched by his latest album, Verismilitude (scroll down here). In a diseased culture, marvels still unfold.