Aurelia Butler

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    Detroit Opera Steps Into Trump’s Cross Hairs With ‘Central Park Five’

    A rehearsal of “The Central Park Five,” an opera about the Black and Latino boys wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger, was just a few days old this month when the tenor who plays Donald J. Trump began to sing.“They are animals! Monsters!…Support our police! Bring back the death penalty!” he bellowed.The opera, which chronicles how the young men were forced to confess and later were exonerated, depicts President Trump as an inflammatory figure who, in 1989, bought several full-page newspaper ads that demonized “roving bands of wild criminals,” adding, “I want them to be afraid.”When the work — composed by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Richard Wesley — premiered in California in 2019, Mr. Trump’s approval ratings were low and Democrats were itching to challenge him.Now, as a new production opens next month at the Detroit Opera House, the setting is quite different. Mr. Trump is a resurrected, emboldened political force who, since returning to office, has wielded power to shutter federal agencies, cut grants and strong-arm law firms and universities, all of which has led some opponents to worry about retaliation.None of this has been lost on Detroit Opera, as the company braces for blowback and hopes for applause. Its leadership team understands the perils of mounting a production that waves a red cape at a pumped-up, reactive presidency.Surprisingly, the opera is partially financed by the National Endowment for the Arts, with some $40,000 of the production’s $1 million cost coming through a federal grant. It was awarded, and paid, before the agency canceled most of its existing grants at the Trump administration’s direction.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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    Chubby Checker, Outkast and the White Stripes Will Join the Rock & Hall of Fame

    Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company and Soundgarden — but not Oasis or Phish — are also part of the 40th anniversary class.Chubby Checker is finally joining the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 65 years after “The Twist” became a No. 1 hit and an international dance craze.Checker, 83, who has campaigned for decades to be admitted to the pantheon — at one point taking out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine that said “I want my flowers while I’m alive” — is part of the 40th annual crop of performer inductees. He is joined by Joe Cocker, the White Stripes, Outkast, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company and Soundgarden, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced on Sunday evening, after a Rock Hall-themed segment on ABC’s “American Idol.”Those artists — a lineup that mixes classic rock, hip-hop, 1990s-vintage alternative rock and a female pop icon — will formally join the hall on Nov. 8 in a ceremony at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles that will stream live in Disney+.Checker, Cocker, Outkast and Bad Company were all accepted on their first nomination.The induction of the White Stripes, the stylish garage-rock minimalists whose “Seven Nation Army” has become a stadium-rousing standard, could lend some anticipatory drama to this year’s ceremony. Since the band broke up in 2011, Meg White, its drummer, has become one the great recluses of 21st-century pop, rarely seen in public and declining all interview requests — which would make any possible appearance by her a major coup for the Rock Hall.Among the other honors this year, Salt-N-Pepa, the pioneering female rap group, and the singer-songwriter Warren Zevon will receive the musical influence award. The musical excellence citation will go to the keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, the studio bassist Carol Kaye and the producer Thom Bell, a key figure in Philadelphia soul. Lenny Waronker, a producer and longtime executive at Warner Bros. Records, will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.Among the nominees who failed to make the final cut this year are Oasis, the Britpop standard-bearers who have reunited for perhaps this year’s most in-demand world tour, and Phish, the veteran Vermont jam band. Phish won the hall’s fan ballot — a single vote, entered alongside those submitted from the hall’s voting body of more than 1,000 music historians, industry professionals and previously inducted artists.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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    Director Pedro Almodóvar Through the Eyes of His Stars

    In advance of a gala celebration of the director’s career, we asked nine actresses about working with the auteur. They painted a picture of a precise artist.“I want to be an Almodóvar girl/Like Maura, Victoria Abril,” the singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina crooned in 1992. The song was an ode to Pedro Almodóvar, who even then was a master of passionate cinematic liaisons, often starring defiant women in love.Over 45 years, numerous actresses have shared that desire to be part of his boldly saturated universe, where despair and elation, sex and violence, tenderness and intense hatred often occupy the same frame. “It’s a club that I really relish being in,” as Julianne Moore put it in an interview.Film at Lincoln Center will celebrate that legacy with its highest honor, the Chaplin Award, at a gala on Monday where the presenters will include Dua Lipa, John Waters and Mikhail Baryshnikov.“Even though he constantly reinvents himself and no two of his films are the same, you can always identify a Pedro film by watching just one frame,” said Penélope Cruz, one of his most loyal collaborators. She said Almodóvar’s films pay “homage to all women.”She and Moore were among nine actresses who talked to me about working with the auteur, describing him as both a precise and unique collaborator. Here’s what else they said:Julianne Moore, ‘The Room Next Door’ (2024)“That slightly elevated sense to his stories, the colors, the composition, the energy and the beauty, all of that is Pedro,” Moore said.Iglesias Más/El Deseo and Sony Pictures ClassicsThe first time Moore walked into Almodóvar’s apartment for a rehearsal of “The Room Next Door,” she was stunned. She had seen almost every object there and all the hues in one of his films. Moore described this as “physicalized storytelling,” because the human drama he conjured up also materialized in the eye-catching costumes and sets.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 50, the Takacs Quartet Remains as Essential as Ever

    Recently, the Takacs Quartet gave a recital at the University of Colorado Boulder. In many ways, it could have been perfectly routine: some Bartok and Beethoven before an adoring audience at the college where the group has taught in residence since 1986.But the Takacs simply does not do routine.The Beethoven was a perfect example, an exceptional account of the Opus 135 Quartet that was astonishingly vivid even when watched on a livestream. You could have taken any of its four movements and written pages in their praise. Perhaps what struck most, though, was just how constantly and generously each of the players — Edward Dusinberre, first violin; Harumi Rhodes, second violin; Richard O’Neill, viola; and Andras Fejer, cello — was physically and aurally in dialogue with the others, and through them, the listener.It’s that ability to communicate, among many other talents, that makes the Takacs the essential quartet of our time. It’s also one of the qualities that has kept the group so identifiably itself as time has passed: The quartet marks its 50th anniversary this year. As part of a season of celebrations, it appears with the pianist Jeremy Denk at the Frick Collection on Thursday.The Takacs has, throughout its history, been a synonym for assured, collective excellence.The name Takacs has become a synonym for assured, collective excellence, but its story is one of evolution, not stasis. Read either of Dusinberre’s eloquent memoirs relating the history of the quartet, and it becomes clear that it has been a personal drama, played out through the scores that its members rehearse and perform.Time certainly has remade the Takacs. Only one of the four young Hungarians — Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Karoly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and Fejer — who stepped into their first lesson in communist Hungary, ready with a Mozart quartet, remains. Both Roger Tapping and Geraldine Walther, the violists who followed Ormai in turn, have come and gone.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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    David Thomas, Leader of the Band Pere Ubu, Dies at 71

    David Thomas, the singer and songwriter who led Pere Ubu and other bands that stretched the parameters of punk and art-rock, died on Wednesday in Brighton and Hove, England. He was 71.Mr. Thomas had suffered from kidney disease, but the announcement of his death, on Pere Ubu’s Facebook and Instagram sites, did not specify a cause, citing only “a long illness.” He lived in Brighton and Hove, but the announcement did not say if he died at home.Through five decades of recordings and performances, Mr. Thomas maintained an audacious, unpredictable, ornery and ambitious spirit. He perpetually defied and upended structures and expectations, and he reveled in dissonance and unsprung sounds.In the mid-1970s, at the dawn of punk rock, Pere Ubu described itself as “avant-garage.” And as punk developed its own constraints and conventions, Mr. Thomas purposefully warped or ignored them. When late-’70s punk bands sported T-shirts, leather and ripped jeans, he performed in a suit and tie. And while much of his music stayed grounded in rock, he also delved into chamber music, cabaret, electronics and improvisation.Mr. Thomas in performance in 1979. Big-boned and overweight, he wielded his bulk proudly onstage. David Corio/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHis voice was always distinctive: a liquid, androgynous tenor that he pushed to its limits and beyond — crooning, chanting, whooping, muttering, barking, burbling, yelling. His lyrics could be apocalyptic, free-associative, mocking, euphoric, cryptic or startlingly direct. Onstage, gesticulating vehemently, he veered between endearing and irascible.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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    Jed the Fish Dead: KROQ DJ Who Pioneered New Wave Radio Was 69

    With his off-kilter sensibility and deep musical grounding, he brought attention to New Wave and alternative artists at the groundbreaking station KROQ.Jed Gould, the influential Los Angeles disc jockey known as Jed the Fish, who used his off-kilter sensibility and deep musical knowledge to shine a light on artists like the Cure, Depeche Mode and the Offspring at the groundbreaking New Wave and alternative rock station KROQ-FM in the 1980s and ’90s, died on April 14 at his home in Pasadena, Calif. He was 69.The cause was an aggressive form of small-cell lung cancer, Rudy Koerner, a close friend, said. Mr. Gould was never a cigarette smoker, he added, and before he was diagnosed last month, he had thought his recent violent coughing fits were related to the Los Angeles wildfires.For decades, Mr. Gould served as a trusted musical savant — and drive-time friend — to young Angelenos, particularly members of Generation X. He also influenced future broadcasting stars.In a social media post after Mr. Gould’s death, Jimmy Kimmel, who worked on the morning show at KROQ early in his career, described him as “a legend.” On his podcast, Mr. Kimmel’s old sidekick on “The Man Show,” Adam Carolla, a former host of the relationship show “Loveline” on KROQ, called Mr. Gould “an icon.”With his boyish energy, free-ranging musical tastes and maniacal cackle, Mr. Gould helped lead a radio revolution at the maverick KROQ, based in Pasadena, starting in the late 1970s.At a time when FM rock stations were dominated by hyper-produced corporate juggernauts like Styx and Foreigner, KROQ became a sensation for its “Roq of the ’80s” format, which shimmered with fresh sounds from New Wave bands like Talking Heads and Devo, synth-pop groups like the Human League and Spandau Ballet, and local heroes like X and the Go-Go’s.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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    The Symbolism in ‘Sinners’

    Beneath the spectacle of an action-packed vampire movie, the film has plenty to say about what is sacred and what is profane.This article contains detailed spoilers.Ryan Coogler’s fantastical new Black horror film, “Sinners,” is a critical smash, a box office hit. But the director’s latest collaboration with the actor Michael B. Jordan has also left viewers with plenty to unpack. Jordan plays the “Smokestack twins,” Smoke and Stack, who return from working with Al Capone in Chicago to open up a juke joint in their Mississippi hometown. They arrange for their cousin Sammie, the blues-loving son of a disapproving preacher, to perform for the opening. But Sammie’s talents quickly attract a group of white vampires who threaten to overtake the town.“Sinners” is a work that’s interested in moral dichotomies. There are monsters and victims, of course — it’s a vampire movie. But when the film’s characters, objects and themes are examined through the lens of its political subtext, quite a bit is revealed about how “Sinners” defines good and evil in this supernatural version of the Jim Crow South. What follows is a spoiler-filled breakdown of what the film considers sacred, and what it deems profane.The SacredThe GuitarSammie treasures his guitar, given to him by Smoke and Stack, who told their cousin that it once belonged to the Delta blues great Charley Patton. The guitar represents the storied history of Black music, as when Sammie (Miles Caton) plays in the twins’ juke joint and summons Black artists and music makers from the distant past and future. Sammie’s music also attracts Remmick, the main vampire (played by Jack O’Connell), but also ultimately destroys him: In a confrontation, Sammie smashes his guitar over Remmick’s head, giving Smoke the opportunity to stake him.Miles Caton as Sammie in “Sinners.” Warner Bros. PicturesHaving survived the vampires, Sammie wanders around clutching the broken neck of his guitar, still believing it was Charley Patton’s. Smoke eventually reveals that Stack had lied and that the guitar had belonged to their father, proving that there’s power even in one’s personal legacy. Even though the guitar doesn’t belong to a blues legend, it doesn’t mean that an artist like Sammie can’t elicit the power of Black culture through it.The ChurchThe main chunk of Sammie’s story begins and ends at church. His father, a preacher, insists that Sammie quit the blues and pursue the same vocation. The church scenes frame the vampire horror, showing the place of worship as a safe place for the Black community. But it’s also where Sammie feels alienated by his father; it’s an institution of traditional values that can be limiting.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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    Rosa Barba Lights Up MoMA With Her Love of Cinema

    Rosa Barba makes artworks with film. But you wouldn’t call them movies.Sometimes she shoots them with 35-millimeter cameras and beams them onto screens. Other times, she turns celluloid and projectors into whirring sculptures, or choreographs musical performances with flickering light.“Film is kind of the key word,” Barba, 52, said recently. “But, in the end, maybe you can’t say they are films anymore: It’s a film about film, or it’s about the idea of a film.”Film might be her medium, material or subject, but there are many other ideas in Barba’s works, too — about ecology, landscape, science and the nature of knowledge. All her signature obsessions come together at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from May 3, where an installation of her work, called “The Ocean of One’s Pause,” runs through July 6 in the museum’s Kravis Studio, a space devoted to experimentation.The presentation brings together 12 works from the last 16 years, with performances on six dates throughout the run, that add up to a statement on her expanded understanding of cinemaRosa Barba’s “Composition in Field” (2022), a light box overlaid with text-printed celluloid strips, cracking as they turn on motorized reels. Strips are printed with a poem by Charles Olson.“Cinema, for me, is the moment when you start a kind of embarkation,” Barba said in an interview at her Berlin studio. It wasn’t just light, sound, or movement, she said; it was “a chemical reaction” when those elements come together and trigger or unveil something for the viewer — Holland Cotter of The New York Times once described this as an ability “to knock the pins out from under tyrant logic and clear a space where difference can thrive.”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