Aurelia Butler

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    5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to in April 2025

    An exceptional account of Bach’s Mass in B minor, traditional and unusual string quartets, and Thomas Adès suites are among the highlights.Bach: Mass in B MinorJulie Roset, soprano; Beth Taylor, mezzo-soprano; Lucile Richardot, alto; Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, tenor; Christian Immler, bass; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)Raphaël Pichon and the musicians of his Pygmalion chorus and orchestra have made some extremely fine recordings over the last several years, from their Monteverdi “Vespers” to their Mozart “Requiem.” This Bach, however, is truly exceptional. It is not at all an act of staunch certainty and steadfast belief, the kind of monument that other conductors have made of this Mass. It’s a human drama, filled with the struggle and complexity of our mortal experiences. Above all, it sounds alive.Blessed with playing and singing of extraordinary virtuosity, Pichon seems determined to find every last accent of expressivity in the score, resolved to shape the smallest details in service of his broader ideas. It’s hard not to be swept away by the sheer vigor of “Cum Sancto Spiritu,” performed as if a gust of the Holy Spirit were sweeping past, or by the regal grandeur of “Et resurrexit.”Pichon is at his most breathtakingly interventionist at the first “Et expecto resurrectionem,” a moment that he sees as Bach inviting us into the darkest frailties of his faith: Everything stretches out as time dissolves and dissonance cuts at the ear. Still, this is Bach, and the “Dona nobis pacem,” though uncertain at first, grants a new dawn that blazes with resplendent light. If this is Bach for our times, then we are fortunate to have it. DAVID ALLEN‘Rare Birds’Owls (New Amsterdam)There’s a lot to keep track of with the “inverted” string quartet known as Owls: It uses two cellos instead of two violins, necessitating repertoire rearrangement; it is game to play Baroque as well as contemporary material; one of its cellists, Paul Wiancko, also composes for the group. Perhaps the most notable thing about Owls, though, is the evident joy that Wiancko, his fellow cellist Gabriel Cabezas, the violinist Alexi Kenney and the violist Ayane Kozasa find when playing together.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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    ‘On Swift Horses’ Review: Putting It All on the Line

    Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi lead a melancholic drama about love and longing in the 1950s.Often the movies treat love and desire as if they’re easy to define: romantic, platonic, familial, sexual. Either you want him or you don’t; either you love her or you don’t. But the messy places in between those poles are where real life lies, and that’s where “On Swift Horses” dwells. Based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, the story is set in the 1950s, in a world in which characters might act on desire but do not really speak of it directly. The air around them is thus charged with something that crackles and explodes, and the movie, when it works, is electric.It doesn’t always work, but you won’t mind that much, because it’s so beautiful to look at. The story centers on Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who is engaged to Lee (Will Poulter), a soldier who’s on leave from his tour of duty in Korea. We meet them in bed at the Kansas house she inherited from her mother, whose voracious hunger for life and experience set an example that Muriel yearns to follow.Within the first few moments of the film, Muriel repairs to the bathroom in a filmy nightgown for a postcoital cigarette and, leaning out her bathroom’s second-story window, discovers the long body and smiling face of Julius (Jacob Elordi) sprawled across the hood of his car below, brazenly shirtless, soaking in the sun. If you thought this was going to be a buttoned-up and modest film, think again: The director Daniel Minahan has no compunction about the fact we’re here to admire these people. The two spark, exchanging cigarettes and repartee, with the ease of strangers who nonetheless know each other. Julius is Lee’s brother, already discharged from his own tour in Korea, and Muriel has been expecting him.Julius soon comes inside and spends the evening with Lee and Muriel, and that’s the genesis of everything that follows. It’s a tangled kind of story: Lee worships Muriel and longs for a house, a family, a life. Muriel loves Lee back, but maybe in a different way, something that starts to become evident when they move to California and she meets their neighbor, Sandra (Sasha Calle).Yet she also senses an instant connection with Julius, who soon takes off for Las Vegas and a job in a casino. Julius is a gambler, both the literal and metaphorical kind; he inspires Muriel to try betting on horses soon after she and Lee move to California. He falls into a relationship with another casino employee, Henry (Diego Calva), but they dare not let that fact outside the room they share.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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    ‘Blue Sun Palace’ Review: A Whole World Inside

    A gorgeously intimate debut feature explores the lives of Chinese immigrants in a massage parlor in Queens.The first scene of “Blue Sun Palace” lingers on a couple at dinner, eating a mouthwatering chicken, speaking Mandarin to one another. The man seems older than the woman. They’re on a date, but you can tell something is a little off — like this relationship is very new, or there’s some unresolved power dynamic.It’s not until after dinner, and a subsequent trip to a karaoke bar, that the pieces of Constance Tsang’s sensitive, lovely and ultimately devastating first feature fall into place. The man is Cheung (Lee Kang Sheng), a married Taiwanese migrant who is working a menial job and sending money back to his wife, his daughter and his mother. The woman is Didi (Haipeng Xu), who works in a massage parlor in Flushing, Queens — the Blue Sun Palace — which officially doesn’t provide any “sexual services” but is frequented by a series of men, most of them white, looking for just that. Didi and Cheung, however, have a different kind of relationship, one built partly on companionship, and she sneaks him into Blue Sun Palace to spend the night.But Didi’s closest friend is another of the Blue Sun Palace employees, Amy (Ke-Xi Wu). Tsang’s film starts out like a chronicle of workplace friendship, albeit an unusual workplace. Amy and Didi hang out on the staircase in their building, eating lunch and sharing dreams and plotting toward the day they’ll head to Baltimore, where Didi’s daughter lives with her aunt, and open a restaurant together. Wu and Xu’s performances are light and full of life, two women who are making the best of a situation that isn’t ideal but certainly could be worse. They and their other co-workers form a network of support and joy. In these early moments, “Blue Sun Palace” feels like it could have some kinship with “Support the Girls,” both films about the community that women build together to survive a world that isn’t made for their them to thrive in. But “Blue Sun Palace” is gentler, with the cinematographer Norm Li’s camera drifting around the space, capturing the play of light or air on a curtain.This first section is a prelude. On Lunar Near Year, sudden tragedy strikes the massage parlor. It happens so abruptly, and with so little cinematic heralding, that it feels almost happenstance, the full blunt weight of the impact only landing moments later. To underline this, Tsang borrows a page from a number of other films in the recent past (perhaps most notably Ryusuke Hamaguchi in “Drive My Car”) and delays the film’s credits till 30 minutes into the movie, signaling to us where the real story has begun.It turns out this is not a tale of friendship; it’s a story of grief, and of the unexpected, fraught bonds people build in the midst of it. In the wake of violence, Amy and Cheung fall into a kind of friendship, two people brought together by mutual pain and by their shared experience as immigrants with jobs of necessity. Cheung takes her to the restaurant he took Didi, to the karaoke bar where they’d gone afterward. But Amy is not interchangeable with her friend, or any other woman, as much as the men around her might like to treat her that way.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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    ‘April’ Review: A Doctor’s Dilemma

    In this, her second feature, the Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili takes on the risks faced by an obstetrician who performs kitchen-table abortions.The visually arresting drama “April” is filled with naked and clothed female bodies that are, in turn, possessed by desire, racked by pain, and isolated by convention and otherworldly mystery. It’s a heavy, serious and studiously elusive movie filled with handsome images and troubled by the inexplicable presence of a humanoid creature in weird female form. This entity gives “April” a supernatural sheen, yet the movie is rooted in the material world, in the here and now, in flesh and fluids. Its concern is the haunted faces of women struggling to care for the children they already have and seeking to terminate the pregnancies they don’t want.These faces often turn to Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an obstetrician who works in a rural hospital in the country of Georgia. Sharp, empathetic, determined and tightly coiled, Nina has the sober confidence of a battle-tested veteran. She has also attracted the kind of resentment that professional women at times endure through no fault of their own. She lives alone and, at first, she seems OK with this even if she doesn’t seem to have friends, only patients and a former lover. Still, loneliness clings to her like a shroud; it’s as palpable as the danger she faces when she drives off to perform an abortion, which she often does in people’s homes.“April” was written and directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili, who likes minimal dialogue, long takes, narrative ellipses and really big bangs. There’s one near the start of her feature directing debut, “Beginning” (2020), set largely in the aftermath of a church bombing. In “April,” it’s the death of an infant during childbirth that shakes up this world. The birth scene is genuine — there are two in the movie — and it jolts the story into gear. The hospital begins an investigation, drawing unwanted attention to Nina’s work quietly providing abortions. (The procedure is legal in Georgia, but stigmatized.) She fights back, insisting that she did nothing wrong. “Other than my job,” she says at one point, “I have nothing to lose.”It’s a sad, persuasive line, and a memorably blunt admission. Even so, Nina sounds more matter of fact than anguished or desperate, even if the person she’s talking to is her ex, another doctor, David (Kakha Kintsurashvili), who’s been tasked with leading the investigation. What’s most notable about this exchange isn’t what the two characters say and the emotional restraint you hear in their voices. Rather, it’s how Kulumbegashvili stages and shoots the scene, which begins with Nina offscreen and the camera solely trained on David, who’s hunched over on a couch in a cheerless hospital room. Only partway through their conversation does Nina enter the shot, standing still as David rises to embrace her.Here and elsewhere, Kulumbegashvili takes a modestly stylized approach to a seemingly ordinary setup, which nibbles away at the overall realism. Nina and David sound comfortable with each other, but the staging suggests there’s a chasm separating them. When he wraps his arms around her, it takes a few beats for her to fully return his hug. It’s as if she were out of practice, or a performer briefly flubbing her cue. Her physical stiffness is as telling as some of the dialogue, which fills in a bit of their back story. Kulumbegashvili, however, isn’t interested in rekindling their romance. Her focus is on Nina, who — as the investigation develops and other characters enter — comes into view, even as she becomes increasingly enigmatic.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 Accountant 2’ Review: Ben Affleck’s Revenge of the Killer Nerd

    Affleck returns as a brilliant C.P.A. who moonlights as a mysterious, gun-toting fixer and gets help from his little bro, played by Jon Bernthal.“The Accountant 2” is a blithely nonsensical, enjoyably vulgar follow-up to “The Accountant” (2016) about a numbers whiz played by Ben Affleck, who has impeccable marksmanship and shaky people skills. Like the first movie, the sequel embraces violence without apology, slathers the screen with (fake) blood and unleashes a small army of stunt performers who convincingly play dead. This one has another complicated intrigue and a great deal of plot, though most of the tension comes from watching Affleck struggle to suppress a smile while sharing the screen with an exuberantly showboating Jon Bernthal.The sequel picks up eight years after the first movie introduced Affleck’s Christian Wolff, a brilliant autistic forensic accountant who moonlights as a freelance avenger with help from friends. (The movie’s breezy embrace of cliché includes the stereotype of the autistic savant.) J.K. Simmons shows up as Ray King, the former director of the Treasury Department’s criminal investigations unit. He briefly enters wearing a cap and soon exits without a pulse, though not before setting the story in motion. Cue the gunfire and choreographed chaos, as well as amnesia, plastic surgery, trafficked women, child hostages and a miscellany of villains, ones who are cruel enough to bring out (and amply stoke) the audience’s bloodlust.King’s successor, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), re-enters afterward to help nudge the story forward as does Christian’s younger brother, Braxton (Bernthal). Everything (and everyone) flows together more or less, even when the story strains credulity, as B-movie shoot-em-ups often do. It helps that there’s less back story here than in the first movie, which revisited Christian’s brutal childhood and his Oedipally nurtured violent skill set. That frees up the filmmakers — like the first movie, this was written by Bill Dubuque and directed by Gavin O’Connor — to focus on keeping all the people and parts nicely moving. Among these is Affleck, whose controlled, inward-directed performance holds the center.One irresistible draw of a diversion like this is that while its good guys are often bad, its bad guys are assuredly worse. Both Christian and especially Braxton have obvious moral failings (ha!), but their kill counts are never the problem, which puts them in fine, crowded company. American movies love gunslingers, after all, whether they have Texas or British accents, wear white hats or gray ones like Christian. Among these are the seemingly ordinary men — blue-collar types, next-door dads, computer jockeys — who, when hard push comes to brutal shove comes to catastrophic violence, will take off their glasses à la Clark Kent to transform into near-mystically gifted avengers. They lock and load, restoring order to a broken world.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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    Jason Moran Unpacks Duke Ellington’s Greatness in a Single Song

    <!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Moran has a lengthy history of paying homage to his heroes in creative ways, whether staging what he and the bassist-vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello called their Fats Waller Dance Party or presenting imaginative staged programs themed around the lives and times of the pianist Thelonious Monk and the ragtime […] More

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    Karen Durbin, 80, Dies; ‘Fearless’ Feminist Who Edited The Village Voice

    A fierce advocate of sexual liberation, she pushed the alternative weekly to cover women’s issues, as well as gay rights and avant-garde culture.Karen Durbin, a fierce feminist who championed sexual liberation and fulfillment as a journalist, served as the second female editor in chief of The Village Voice and then went on to become a virtuoso film critic for The New York Times and other publications, died on April 15 in Brooklyn. She was 80.Her death, in a health care facility, was caused by complications of dementia, her friend and former colleague Cynthia Carr said.Appointed in 1994 as The Voice’s editor in chief — she was only the second woman in that job in the paper’s history, and the first in nearly two decades — Ms. Durbin waged a fervent campaign to attract young readers. Part of that effort involved tilting toward often incendiary coverage of feminism, gay rights and avant-garde culture, and away from muckraking about corrupt and incompetent landlords, judges and politicians.Not that she abandoned covering corruption and crime: In 1996, she overruled the paper’s lawyers and published an article that all but accused the nightclub promoter Michael Alig of “A Murder in Clubhand,” as the headline proclaimed, after the reporter, Frank Owen, produced an on-the-record source. (Mr. Alig later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.)An assortment of Ms. Durbin’s press credentials. After her stint as editor in chief at The Village Voice, she wrote about film for The New York Times and other publications.Karen Durbin Papers, Barnard Archives and Special CollectionsBut even before she was editor in chief, she had set a tone that outraged traditionalists, mostly the older, white male staffers — or “the boys club,” as she put it. When she was the senior arts editor, they took issue with some of her editorial choices, including an assignment she made in 1986: Ms. Carr’s profile of the performance artist Karen Finley, whose act included the sexually explicit use of canned yams as part of a sendup of female objectification.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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    Jelly Roll Should Be Pardoned for Drug and Robbery Offenses, Board Says

    The Tennessee Board of Parole unanimously determined that the country star should be pardoned, but the decision is in the hands of the governor.Jelly Roll, one of the top names in country music, should be pardoned for his past robbery and drug possession convictions, the Tennessee Board of Parole unanimously determined on Tuesday.The decision now rests with Gov. Bill Lee.Jelly Roll, 40, a Tennessee native whose real name is Jason DeFord, started his career as a rapper but rose to prominence in 2023 with his country album “Whitsitt Chapel” and its popular songs “Save Me” and “Need a Favor.” He was named the best new artist at the Country Music Association Awards that year and has been nominated for four Grammys. His most recent album, “Beautifully Broken,” reached No. 1 on the charts.The singer has been open about his criminal history, including convictions for robbery and drug possession with intent to sell. He was incarcerated when his daughter was born.The Associated Press reported that Jelly Roll was sentenced to a year in prison after entering a house and demanding money in 2002; he was unarmed but two other men were carrying guns. In another case, The A.P. reported, Jelly Roll was sentenced to eight years of court-ordered supervision after the police found cocaine and marijuana in his car.Jelly Roll told The New York Times that he was 13 when the police brought him to jail after an unresolved cannabis citation.“I’m learning to forgive myself for the decisions I made when I was that young,” he said. “They were wrong and I knew they were wrong, and I was doing them with a sense of pride and excitement.”In recent years, Jelly Roll has performed at correctional facilities and testified before Congress about the fentanyl crisis. In an interview with Jon Bon Jovi last year, Jelly Roll said he still had issues performing outside of the United States because of his legal troubles.“We’re working on that,” he said. “I think it’s going to work in my favor.”The Tennessee Board of Parole unanimously voted to recommend granting a pardon during a nearly two-hour meeting in downtown Nashville on Tuesday. One of the seven board members, a former law enforcement officer, recused himself from the case.Representatives for Jelly Roll and a spokesman for Mr. Lee did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the parole board said there was no timeline for when the governor would announce a decision.Mr. Lee, a Republican, has pardoned more than 90 people since becoming governor in 2019 and typically announces his decisions in December. In addition to drug offenses, the pardons have included convictions for arson, attempted second-degree murder, domestic assault, driving under the influence, identity theft and shoplifting. More