The Works：Artist Shepard Fairey, Shakespeare's First Folio & in our studio: violinist Pekka Kuusisto

Last week, The works paid tribute to Canadian poet and troubadour Leonard Cohen. Unlike Bob Dylan, Cohen rarely wrote directly political songs, although he did turn his vision more frequently to the state of the world in later works. Someone once asked him whether he felt songs could offer solutions to political problems. He replied, “I think the song itself is a kind of solution.” It’s not only songwriters who can be committed to making their work an active response to social and political trends. Performing and visual artists can too. Some take to the streets in protest. Others, like longtime street artist Shepard Fairey, take to the streets with art.
Shakespeare left us not only a trove of plays and poems, but dozens of words and phrases, never previously seen in print, that we use to this day. This year, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death, celebrations of the Bard’s works are being held across England, in the form of films, television dramas, music, theatres, opera, interactive events along the Thames, and more. Here in Hong Kong, such celebrations have been less common, but for four days, towards the end of last month, if you visited Sotheby’s exhibition rooms in Queensway, you could get a glimpse of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and an accompanying exhibition on loan from the collection of Eton College.
2016 marks not only the 400th anniversary of the death Shakespeare but also the 500th anniverary of the death of Netherlandish painter Hieronymous Bosch. There were landmark exhibitions and events in commemmorate in both his birthplace 's-Hertogenbosch and in the Prado Museum in Spain.
One of his Bosch’s most celebrated works, the “The Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych is the backdrop for part of of “Musicus Fest 2016 here in Hong Kong.