Aurelia Butler

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    Kris Kristofferson: 12 Essential Songs

    The country singer and songwriter, who died on Saturday at 88, tucked enduring aphorisms into tales about facing up to loss.Kris Kristofferson, who was 88 when he died on Saturday, embedded enduring aphorisms into his songs. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” he observed in “Me and Bobby McGee.” In “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” he wrote, “Yesterday is dead and gone/And tomorrow’s out of sight.” And in “For the Good Times,” he urged, “There is no need to watch the bridges that we’re burning.”Those are stoic lines, delivered matter-of-factly, often tucked into tales about facing up to some kind of loss: of a lover, a friend, a hope, a chance, fleeting time. Kristofferson’s characters are often isolated, luckless, drunk or high, but they’re still seeking redemption or at least trying to move on — like Casey, in “Casey’s Last Ride,” who was “seeing his reflection in the lives of all the lonely men/who reach for anything they can to keep from going home.”Kristofferson established himself as a songwriter as the 1970s began, and his early songs were his most lasting ones. His willingness to sing unpretty stories and his homey melodies were foundations for the outlaw country movement of the 1970s. Bob Dylan has said, “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”After a detour through 1970s movie stardom, Kristofferson shared the outlaw movement’s victory lap, in the 1980s, when he joined Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in the Highwaymen. He went on to write politically charged songs and the homilies of an elder. His voice was serviceable but not striking in his early years, and it grew much gruffer through the decades. But it was always forthright enough to put across the unvarnished substance of his music.Here, in chronological order, are 12 of Kristofferson’s essential songs. Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.‘Me and Bobby McGee’ (1970)Kristofferson’s own version of this tale of hitchhiking, harmonica-playing lovers, from his debut album, is far more wistful and less cathartic than Janis Joplin’s No. 1 hit version, released in 1971 after her death. Where she turned its outro of “la-da-das” into an ecstatic rave-up, Kristofferson lets them trail off, like a memory receding into the distance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Oasis Adds North American Shows to Reunion Tour

    Liam and Noel Gallagher’s band will stop in three American cities plus Toronto and Mexico City in August and September 2025.In August, when Oasis revealed a slew of reunion dates in Britain and Ireland starting next summer, the group said that plans were still underway for shows in “other continents outside of Europe.” That led to rampant speculation on social media — including purportedly leaked itineraries — about where the Britpop stars might go.Turns out that speculation was pretty close to reality. But not 100 percent right.The band announced on Monday that its world tour would include stops in Toronto, Mexico City, Chicago, Los Angeles and East Rutherford, N.J., outside New York — all of which figured prominently in online guessing, though dates and venues were not all as expected. The Oasis Live ’25 tour, led by Liam and Noel Gallagher, will be the famously combative band’s first since its implosion 15 years ago.Over the weekend, the band teased the announcement with billboards in Times Square and elsewhere pointing to 8 a.m. Eastern time and saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”“America,” the band said in a statement. “Oasis is coming. You have one last chance to prove that you loved us all along.”Fans had speculated about a wider world tour, with presumed dates in Australia and Asia, but none were announced on Monday.Even before the Gallagher brothers confirmed that Oasis would be getting back together, speculation about the Oasis reunion became front-page news in Britain, where the Gallaghers’ fisticuffs and insult trading has been hot copy for decades. After a month, they still have not confirmed any other members of the reunion band.The 19 shows announced so far in Britain and Ireland — including seven nights at Wembley Stadium in London — became immediate sellouts, and led to complaints about prices for some tickets spiking while fans were still in the queue to purchase them. A government agency, the Competition and Markets Authority, said it was opening an investigation into Ticketmaster’s handling of the sale, “including how so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ may have been used.”Registration for tickets to the North American shows was opened on the Oasis website, and the ticket sales will begin on Friday via Ticketmaster. More

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    Kris Kristofferson, Country Singer, Songwriter and Actor, Dies at 88

    Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88.His death was announced by Ebie McFarland, a spokeswoman, who did not give a cause.Hundreds of artists have recorded Mr. Kristofferson’s songs — among them, Al Green, the Grateful Dead, Michael Bublé and Gladys Knight and the Pips.Mr. Kristofferson’s breakthrough as a songwriter came with “For the Good Times,” a bittersweet ballad that topped the country chart and reached the Top 40 on the pop chart for Ray Price in 1970. His “Sunday Morning Coming Down” became a No. 1 country hit for his friend and mentor Johnny Cash later that year.Mr. Cash memorably intoned the song’s indelible opening couplet:Well, I woke up Sunday morningWith no way to hold my head that didn’t hurtAnd the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t badSo I had one more for dessert.Expressing more than just the malaise of someone suffering from a hangover, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” gives voice to feelings of spiritual abandonment that border on the absolute. “Nothing short of dying” is the way the chorus describes the desolation that the song’s protagonist is experiencing.Steeped in a neo-Romantic sensibility that owed as much to John Keats as to the Beat Generation and Bob Dylan, Mr. Kristofferson’s work explored themes of freedom and commitment, alienation and desire, darkness and light.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Patrice: The Movie’ Review: At a Crossroads

    The emotional core of this crowd-pleasing documentary concerns a couple who cannot marry without jeopardizing their disability benefits.The title of “Patrice: The Movie” is a little misleading. Although this documentary, directed by Ted Passon, certainly offers a biographical portrait of Patrice Jetter, a school crossing guard, disability rights advocate and Special Olympics athlete from New Jersey, its emotional core concerns her relationship with Garry Wickham. Jetter and Wickham want to marry, but doing so — or even living together — could jeopardize their disability benefits.Their friend Elizabeth Dicker summarizes how this situation is not just cruel, but also apparently illogical: “If two people are having Medicaid benefits, and then those two people get married and then they just don’t lose their benefits, how is the government making or losing any money?” (“Patrice: The Movie” doesn’t delve into the policy specifics, but critics have argued that the limitations on Supplemental Security Income are badly out of date.)It is easy to root for Jetter and Wickham as a couple, and to see Jetter in particular as a joyous creative force. She speaks how she found an outlet in drawing and how she has spent 20 years designing a model train world patterned after Palisades Amusement Park. In the film’s fanciful, Wes Anderson-ian flashbacks, the adult Patrice plays herself opposite child actors, against production design based on her drawings.And while Jetter and Wickham’s political fight is not resolved as of the end of the movie, the thread in which Jetter works to raise money for the new van she needs to commute affordably to her job has a crowd-pleasing finish.Patrice: The MovieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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    Paris Opera: A Veteran Falstaff Looks Back, and Ahead

    Ambrogio Maestri has sung the title role in Verdi’s comedy hundreds of times, most recently for the Paris Opera. He’s also making room for a Puccini tragedy.For Ambrogio Maestri, a bass-baritone, the title role of Verdi’s opera “Falstaff” has become nothing less than a second skin.“On the days when I’m happy or sad, he takes on a different shape,” he said between rehearsals for the Paris Opera.The Italian singer has performed the role about 400 times and in more than 20 different productions, he said. Falstaff, a gluttonous knight, is humiliated by the married women he courts, including Alice Ford, the ringleader of a plot to have him thrown into the Thames River. His latest performances have been at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, reprising Dominique Pitoiset’s classic 1999 staging.He will return to “Falstaff” at La Scala in Milan from Jan. 16 to Feb. 7 for the Giorgio Strehler production, in which he first appeared as the character in 2001.But Maestri, 54, does not live only for comedy. He has also plunged into the psyche of Scarpia, the sinister police chief in Puccini’s “Tosca,” which he will take on in mid-October at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany and again in February at the Vienna State Opera.He discussed his latest turn as Falstaff, and more, in a recent interview. The following conversation has been translated from Italian, edited and condensed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    At a French Chateau in Chantilly, a Feast of Music and Nature

    Starting this year, a series of musical weekends in Chantilly, north of Paris, is teaming up with a gardening festival for a program with bucolic themes.Since 2021, the ornate Château de Chantilly and its imposing grounds, 30 miles north of Paris, have served as the backdrop for an intimate series of musical weekends.The series, Les Coups de Coeur à Chantilly, is intended, in part, to promote the site’s cultural importance and natural beauty. This month, it is putting a special emphasis on nature by collaborating with one of France’s most important gardening events.“It’s much more than a chateau,” Anne Miller, the general manager of the Château de Chantilly, whose estate encompasses about 284 acres of gardens and roughly 15,000 acres of forest, said in a recent interview.Musicians assembling before a performance in the stables of the Château de Chantilly during Les Coups de Coeur à Chantilly in September.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“Here you have an art collection worthy of the Louvre,” she said from the grounds of the chateau, referring to the painting gallery of the Musée Condé, which features works by Raphael, Botticelli and Poussin, among others, and is used as one of the festival’s concert venues.“This melding between architecture, water, nature is pretty impressive,” she added. “And you have the stables for horse lovers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Aubrey Plaza Goes for Broke in ‘Megalopolis’ and ‘Agatha All Along’

    “I bleed for movies,” Aubrey Plaza told me on an August morning, just seconds before the ground began to tremble.We had met for brunch at Little Dom’s, a hip Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that was unusually quiet until that low rumble began. Frozen, we stared at each other as the windows rattled — bum-bum-BAM — and then quieted. It was quick and violent, as though someone had seized the place and given it a brisk, get-yourself-together shake.Plaza’s eyes, already open and avid, got even wider. “I think that was an earthquake,” she said. A Google search revealed it to have been a 4.7 temblor out of nearby Pasadena, which prompted us to wonder: If something more severe were to occur, would we know what to do instead of just sitting there blankly?“What if it’s the small one before the big one?” she asked.These days, only a natural disaster could force Plaza to pause. She has spent the last decade working at a nearly nonstop pace, determined to show there’s more to her than April Ludgate, the disaffected intern she played on six seasons of the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” Though Plaza’s point has by now been proved — in particular, the 2022 double-header of “The White Lotus” and “Emily the Criminal” amply demonstrated her range — that drive has not yet abated.In fact, Plaza has stayed so prolific that her three newest projects have all come out within days of each other. The first was the charming time-travel comedy “My Old Ass” on Sept. 13, followed by the Marvel series “Agatha All Along,” in which she plays the romantic antagonist to Kathryn Hahn’s “WandaVision” witch. Friday saw the long-awaited release of “Megalopolis,” from the 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”), which features Plaza in a grabby role unlike anything she’s played before.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Parties, in His Own Words

    For decades, Combs and other celebrities have commented on his party lifestyle. Here’s some of what they have publicly said.In 2005, when Sean Combs — also known as Diddy or Puff Daddy — hosted the MTV Video Music Awards, the network advertised the broadcast with a playful star-studded spoof called “Diddy Parties,” in which the events he hosted were referred to as “hedonistic romps.”It’s one of many examples that illustrate how the powerful music mogul’s reputation for hard-partying was an accepted part of the pop culture discourse. But since Combs’s arrest on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking this month, the lifestyle at the center of the criminal case has taken on a different light.Those who attended his events — whether his glitzy, A-list “white parties” or the “freak-offs” described in the indictment against him — have largely refrained from discussing their experiences in recent weeks. That hasn’t always been the case. In years past, celebrities have openly talked about his public-facing bashes and his general party habits.Here is some of what Combs and other stars have said about his party orbit.In His WordsIn a 1999 interview with Entertainment Tonight, in response to an interviewer who said, “Your parties are the hottest ticket around,” Combs said, “They won’t even give me a permit for the parties no more.”“They don’t want me to throw the parties no more, but we ain’t going to stop, we going to keep on having fun, bringing people together from all walks of life,” he continued. “You’re going to hear about my parties, they’re going to be shutting them down, they going to probably be arresting me, doing all types of crazy things just because we want to have a good time. Whenever you bring up a different element into people’s environment, things that broaden people’s horizons, people get intimidated.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More