Michael Kaiser

President, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The situation facing the Nashville Symphony is sad and frustrating. Unfortunately, it is also not atypical. Symphony officials recently announced that it would default on the bonds for its performance hall -- the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

Robert J. Elisberg

Screenwriter and columnist

I've written about Mike Stoller a few times before, always with his longtime partner Jerry Leiber of 60 years, one of the great songwriting teams in music history. When I say "legendary," and one of the great songwriting teams in music history, that is not hyperbole.

James Scarborough

Man of Letters/Minor Critic

It's easy to see why The Fantasticks is the longest running production in the history of American theatre. It's equally easy to see why this is such a splendid production.

Susan Dormady Eisenberg

Arts writer & novelist

Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev assembled the finest dancers, choreographers, scenic artists, and composers of the early twentieth century to launch the iconic ballet company whose legacy is now on display at the National Gallery of Art.

Annette Insdorf

Director of undergraduate film studies, Columbia University, and author of PHILIP KAUFMAN

The first few days of the Cannes Film Festival have been marked by surprises -- whether in the shifting national identity of movies, or peace-making efforts between towering directors -- and parties that defy the rain.

Hoyt Hilsman

Journalist, screenwriter, critic and former candidate for Congress

Placido Domingo's collaboration with composer Lee Holdridge and librettist Richard Sparks dates back several decades and includes a number of commissioned operas for young audiences. The collaboration continues with the premiere of Dulce Rosa.

Tracey Harnish

Los Angeles artist and arts blogger

There should be a warning for this movie, because while it's labeled a documentary, with its chiaroscuro lighting, it could be called an impressionist kaleidoscope dream, culled from real-life footage.

Ken Fallin

Illustrator

People sometimes ask me what feature on a person's face is the most important in creating a caricature. When I'm drawing a famous face, that's pretty easy, as it would be the feature most people think of when they think of that particular celebrity.

Rev. Amy Ziettlow

GenX Pastor, Writer, and Host of FamilyScholars Conversations

Despite our youthful longing to kick our legs over our heads, turn triples, and leap around the room, my teachers stressed that true dance happens in the style of your movement.

Tracy Morgan

Actor

Growing up in the hood surrounded by a lot of poverty, music was one of the only things that made people feel good. That's why we need music and arts. We've got to put instruments in young people's hands because that's the kind of thing that really touches the soul.

Bess Rowen

Ph.D Student, Department of Theatre, CUNY, the Graduate Center

In Eliza Bent's new play The Hotel Colors, currently playing at The Bushwick Starr, we peer into a hostel in Rome and its inhabitants for one night as they form the kind of bond only temporary forced intimacy can foster.

Carol Muske-Dukes

Former Poet Laureate of California; Professor, University of Southern California, Dept. of English/Creative Writing

Anthologies are intriguing in what they reveal of the editor's passions. Robert Pinsky opens his new poetry anthology (with its long title): SINGING SCHOOL: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters -- with an anecdote about the great saxophonist, Dexter Gordon.

Dave Tomar

Blogger, Music Critic, Author of "The Shadow Scholar"

There are a million reasons why vinyl went out of style and most of them have to do with convenience, not just in how we listen to music, but in everything we do. I'm as spoiled by modernity as the next guy. But maybe not everything should be so convenient.

David Galenson

Professor of Economics, University of Chicago

Haring was a conceptual artist, whose goal was to communicate his ideas. He recorded in his journal that he thought in poems, and painted them instead of writing: "Paintings can be poems if they are read as words instead of images."

Marshall Fine

Author and film critic, hollywoodandfine.com

Having broken through as a filmmaker with the intriguing and moving The Freebie, actress Katie Aselton suffers the sophomore slump with her second film as a director, Black Rock.

E. Nina Rothe

Global Culture Explorer

The Man Inside follows Karim Goury on a journey inside the room in Kuwait where his father lived the last few years of his life, and places him on the path of several momentous discoveries.

Michael Giltz

Freelance writer

Turn the sprawling masterpiece War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy into a musical? Well, it worked for Les Miserables, so why not?