All posts tagged: Tao

Tao of Glass review – stage magic as McDermott meditates on the minimalist master | Stage

Tao of Glass review – stage magic as McDermott meditates on the minimalist master | Stage

A show that doesn’t happen (and one that’s never seen); a shattered coffee table; the I Ching; Maurice Sendak; a flotation tank; Deep Democracy. Just some of the disparate fragments that are lovingly assembled by the Tao of Glass into what writer and co-director Phelim McDermott has called “a storytelling tapestry – part concert, part performance”. Premiered at 2019’s Manchester International festival, this beguiling meditation now makes its London debut – albeit without the figure who looms tousle-haired and scowling behind it: composer Philip Glass. Glass’s music has been, McDermott explains, a “river” through his life. The award-winning director’s fascination started as a teenager, lying on his bedroom floor listening to Glassworks on repeat, later crystallised by a little light stalking (the young McDermott follows Glass through the streets of Covent Garden) and professional collaborations on the composer’s operas. But it’s a show they never made together – an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s In The Night Kitchen, derailed by the author’s death – that becomes the catalyst for a series of theatrical vignettes for McDermott, …

The Tao of RaiNao – Los Angeles Times

The Tao of RaiNao – Los Angeles Times

It’s safe to say that Naomi Ramírez, a.k.a. RaiNao, has had one of the most blessed career arcs of her generation. Bad Bunny himself called the singer-songwriter “my favorite artist from Puerto Rico” back in 2022, when she was still an up-and-coming indie promise. By 2025, she earned a feature on his Grammy-winning album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” — and elicited the screams of thousands when they sang their song “Perfumito Nuevo” together onstage during his San Juan residency shows later that summer. RaiNao’s music straddles the mystical and the commercial. Her alt-reggaeton is tinged with lyrical flourishes that oscillate between poetic and salacious in the same bar; which she occasionally follows up with jazzy asides from her tenor saxophone. Released May 25 via Rimas Entertainment, RaiNao’s sophomore LP, “Marcriá,” arrived two years after her previous effort “Capicú.” In her latest offering, the 32-year-old pivots from the darker sound of her debut, moving toward a meditative approach (in the very literal sense) to the music that colors life in the Caribbean. The name “Marcriá” is …

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao

In a world where poetry wields the power to reshape reality and dynasties balance on the edge of blades, Shen Tao’s debut novel delivers a harrowing tale of survival, forbidden knowledge, and the transformative power of literacy. The Poet Empress by Shen Tao introduces readers to Wei Yin, a desperate village girl thrust into the deadly political machinations of the Azalea House, where being chosen as a prince’s concubine might be a death sentence disguised as an honor. A Heroine Forged in Desperation Wei Yin’s journey begins not with ambition but with grief. After burying her fifth sibling while her village starves under the weight of an empire-wide famine, she makes a choice that will alter the course of her life: she offers herself to the concubine selection for Prince Terren, the cruel heir known as the Winter Dragon. What follows is not a fairy tale but a brutal education in palace politics, where every smile conceals a dagger and survival requires becoming as dangerous as those who would destroy you. Tao crafts Wei with …