FYI

Musical pairing.

Elvis Costello compares creating Wise Up Ghost, his new album with the Roots, to playing the children’s game “heads, bodies, and tails”.

Mix maestro.

The amaretto-like aromas of his grandmother’s cookie jar. An idea about puréed pumpkin. An English rose garden. For Tony Conigliaro, the crowned king of London’s molecular mixology scene, these simple thoughts have spawned ideas for innovative cocktails.

Enigma of Einaudi.

Audiences clearly adore Ludovico Einaudi, if the demands for encores and multiple standing ovations—which greeted him on his most recent North American tour—are any indication. Accompanied by a 10-piece orchestra, the Italian pianist and composer is expanding his popularity everywhere he goes.

Mosaic maestro.

Most people know painter Amedeo Modigliani’s famous portraits of sad, eerily empty-eyed women with elongated faces. But have you ever seen them reinterpreted as mosaics?

The oldest brandy in France.

There’s just no denying that cognac is better known than Armagnac. Both are brandies, created by distilling wine, and they’re made in regions only 100 kilometres apart at their closest points. But cognac is dominated by four big brands, while Armagnac is more often artisanal.

The quotidian apple.

A staple on kitchen counters and in lunch bags across Canada, apples are a part of everyday life. They’re so common that we don’t give them much thought—but perhaps that’s what makes them so special.

The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.

Let’s, for a moment, play that game “If you could invite anyone to dinner…” Our imaginary table has space for seven guests, each of a different nationality, and all must be living, working masters of their art.

High-end hosiery.

If Alain Regad had it his way, pantyhose would be sold not alongside bras and panties in lingerie departments but as accessories in fashion and beauty aisles. As the president of high-end hosiery brand Gerbe, Regad is transparent about his passion for the French label he bought nearly a decade ago.

Go further.

Whether in sci-fi television shows, novels, or films, the manner in which we travel from one place to another seems to epitomize technological innovation. From jet packs to spaceships, no futuristic vision is complete without a unique mode of transport.