Photo © by Radiance exhibition by Mariko Mori installation view, photo by Christopher PelhamPhoto © by Radiance exhibition by Mariko Mori installation view, photo by Christopher Pelham
No one ever actually told me how to live as a musician. There are many ways, and you have so much freedom to create your own way. And that’s not easy because the choices are endless. So, I started this series of interviews to ask my friends how they live as artists. This first interview was with Todd Marston, my long-time friend and a keyboard player, composer, and educator.
Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart died on June 9th, 2025. There have been a lot of narratives about his life and death, but less about his music, particularly his under-appreciated 1973 album, Fresh. True to its title, Fresh is lighter, more relaxed, and much more personal than any music Sly had written to date. It's also much funkier, as Sly had in turn embraced the deep grooves of the Bootsy Collins-era JBs of James Brown.
Photo © by Nguyễn Tuấn CườngThe first time I encountered one of Nguyễn Tuấn Cường's works, I found myself stunned before a canvas not characterized by richness, but by solidity. It was a painting of a bowl — an ordinary, creased enamel bowl — so realistically rendered it seemed to be living. Not polished, not idealized. It just was. Its rim chipped, its pale blue faded to something almost ghostly, the bowl rested ever so slightly askew on a darkened ground, emanating not surface light but a glow from deep within the layers of lacquer.
Photo © by Hai Yen HoI don’t know why I came here. Waking at four in the morning, inside this airtight dormitory room with no windows, I can only tell the time from the screen of my phone. Below my bed, the Afghan girl is snoring softly. I imagine her bed, surrounded by piles of stuff hung haphazardly like a rumpled bed curtain. She’s been here for two weeks; the items hanging around the bed are a way for her to assert her attachment, her sovereignty, and to establish herself more firmly than the others, which currently consist of me, a Cambodian girl, and an Indonesian girl.
Photo © by Hai Yen Hoby Hai Yen Ho| Novem...
Photo © by Hai Yen HoThe world is full of people who leave the place they were born, only to survive and then die in a place they never expected to live. The world is full of people who live without purpose, without any relationships, without any stories, or many that no one cares to know, despite the constant progress of everything around them. Such people tend to appear the most often in America, and even more in New York, the place where the no-identity-faces gather, the embodiment of the splendid America, the image that represents the most solid but also the most easily shattered dreams.
I saw one of them on the first morning after arriving in New York right after stepping out of a concrete hotel on Twenty-fourth Street, heading towards Seventh Avenue. For a moment, I had the idea of doing something different from the drivers — that is, following the African man to his destination.
Photo © by Dirk VerheRema Hasumi’s music rises to higher ground, but it navigates deep and turbulent waters to get there. That journey has taken on new dimensions in recent years, as her journey through motherhood has reshaped both her life and art, leading to the release of her new album, Mothers.
Photo © by Hai Yen HoThe previous night, the snow fell heavily. The snowflakes fell gently yet fiercely, floating through the night like magical creatures. The cold crashed on me suddenly as soon as I stepped outside, aggressively occupying all the corners in my body, sneaking into every inch of carelessly exposed skin. The cold froze on the skin, piercing my brain, aching with every breath. On cold winter nights like this, the best thing to do is to stay in a cozy room, drink a cup of ginger tea, and talk about everything — except politics, of course. Politics in Russia these days is taboo. Russians avoided the subject like a terminal illness. “War in Ukraine? No, don’t worry, we are fine.” They changed the subject. Except Varf Labec.
Photo © by Hai Yen HoEver since I was a child, I have always known that the world around me was much larger, that it was not limited to a small market, a moldering temple with a desolate courtyard, a solid church that I had not entered, rows of houses, schools, and a highway. That poor and ragged landscape never limited my imagination. I did not know how I got there, but I always knew that one day I would leave it. I knew I would travel to other vast places, reach the tops of mountains, dive to the bottom of the sea, and talk to people in every corner of the world.
