Aurelia Butler

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    Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic Play Philip Glass

    Kate Soper’s tender, whimsical “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus,” a tribute to the orchestra, had its premiere on Thursday with its composer as soloist.“Is there anything like that first strike of the bow?” Kate Soper asks at the start of her new piece for the New York Philharmonic. “A hundred players moving as one! All that splendor, all that might!”She is describing the wonders of an orchestra, and you don’t have to take her word for it. In Soper’s sweet, clever “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus,” which had its premiere at David Geffen Hall on Thursday under Gustavo Dudamel’s baton, the ensemble illustrates her words as she says them, “Peter and the Wolf” style.“The highs got higher, the lows got lower,” she says, explaining the development of instruments, and we hear ethereal pitches, then loud rumbles. “Wood was lacquered,” she goes on, to delight in the oboe and clarinet. “Metal bent” elicits a horn fanfare and trombone slide.Soper soon proclaims, with disarming plainness, “That’s right everyone: I’m Orpheus!” In this half-hour monodrama for a mostly speaking, sometimes singing soprano, she offers a tender retelling of the legend of the great musician of Greek mythology. Her story blends into a poetic reflection on music’s meaning, what it can do (offer glimpses of the sublime) and what it can’t (most anything else).Soper does all this in quirkily postmodern style. Her eclectic, quick-shifting sounds, including touches of memorably ancient-feeling bass flute, are woven into a quilt of quotations from famous settings of the Orpheus myth by Monteverdi and Gluck, as well as lesser-heard ones by Sartorio, Landi, Campra and others. There are also flashes of Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart and Grieg in the mix, and the text, mostly original, interpolates passages from Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus.”Modern music lovers may be reminded of Luciano Berio’s more chaotic collage “Sinfonia.” For fans of Soper, especially in her composer-performer mode, “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus” will recall brainy, winsome works like “Ipsa Dixit” (2016), which she began by posing the spoken question, “What is art?” and attempted to answer through snippets of writers like Aristotle, Lydia Davis and Freud.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 Ditch Weekly, a Teen-Run Newspaper, Reports on the Hamptons From a Different Angle

    On a Saturday morning in May, five hard-nosed reporters filed into an office on the South Fork of Long Island and picked up their red pens.For two hours, they combed through the drafts in front of them. Clunky sentences were tightened. Inelegant adjectives were cut. Powdered doughnut holes were eaten, and mini bags of Cheez-Its, too.This was the final proofreading session for an issue of The Ditch Weekly, a seasonal newspaper about Montauk that is written and edited by locals ages 13 to 17. Its staffers had gathered to put the finishing touches on their first paper of the year, which would be published over Memorial Day weekend.Billy Stern, the paper’s 15-year-old top editor, kept tabs on their progress in a planning document on his laptop. According to his color-coding system, reporters had already filed articles about nearby summer camps and the construction of a new hospital on the grounds of a former baseball field.He turned to Teddy Rattray, 15, the paper’s most prolific columnist and Billy’s friend since Little League, to float ideas for a restaurant review.“We still haven’t done hot dogs,” Teddy said. Billy agreed: Hot dogs should be an editorial priority.The operation has grown slicker since the boys got into the news business last year, as eighth graders at East Hampton Middle School. Billy had been looking for a summer job that was more stimulating than his usual gig squeezing lemons at a food truck. He enlisted Teddy and Teddy’s cousin Ellis Rattray to put together an eight-page paper exploring Montauk from a teenager’s perspective.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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    Trump Threatens 50% Tariff on E.U. and 25% Tariff on Apple

    The president threatened both Apple and the European Union with higher tariffs on social media Friday morning, saying that trade talks with the Europeans had stalled.President Trump threatened to revive his global trade wars Friday morning, saying he would apply a steep tariff to European exports starting in just over a week and warning Apple that iPhones manufactured outside of the United States would face a 25 percent tariff.The president wrote on Truth Social Friday morning that discussions with the European Union “are going nowhere” and that he is recommending a 50 percent tariff on European imports as of June 1.“The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” Mr. Trump wrote. He claimed the bloc’s trade barriers, taxes, corporate penalties and other policies had contributed to a trade imbalance with the United States that was “totally unacceptable.”In an earlier social media post, the president also targeted Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, who visited Mr. Trump at the White House last week. The president wrote that iPhones sold in the United States should be “manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.”If they are not, Mr. Trump said the smartphones would face a 25 percent tariff.The posts appeared to rattle financial markets, with stock futures pointed sharply lower in premarket trading. In Europe, carmakers’ shares were the worst hit. Shares in Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz fell about 4.5 percent, and shares in Volkswagen and Porsche were down more than 3 percent. Estimates by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German economic research institute, showed that the tariffs would lead to a 20 percent drop in exports from the European Union to the United States in the short term, as well as a more than 6 percent increase in prices in the United States.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 Best Movies of 2025, So Far

    Our critics picked 10 films that you might have missed but that are worth your time on this long holiday weekend.“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and the live-action “Lilo & Stitch” are flooding theaters this Memorial Day weekend. But if you don’t want to follow the crowd, it’s also a good time to catch up on some terrific films you may have missed earlier in the year. I asked our chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and our movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, to recommend releases worth your time. All are in theaters or available online.‘Sinners’In theaters.The story: The twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return from Al Capone’s Chicago to open a juke joint in Clarksdale, Miss. That’s when the devil, or rather, an Irish vampire, shows up in this talker of a film.Manohla Dargis’s take: Directed by Ryan Coogler, this “is a big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies. Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires and a lot of ideas about love and history.”Read the review; interviews with Coogler and Jordan, and other cast members; and a critic’s essay.‘I’m Still Here’Stream it on Netflix or rent it on most major platforms.Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here.”Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures ClassicsWe 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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    ‘Leap Together’: Kermit the Frog Gives a Graduation Speech

    The cheery muppet donned a tiny cap and gown to inspire students at the University of Maryland. “Life is like a movie. Write your own ending,” he said.Kermit took the podium in a muppet-size formal cap and gown on Thursday to deliver a commencement speech at the University of Maryland, the alma mater of his creator, Jim Henson.Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland, via Associated PressAt graduation ceremonies this month all across the United States, students listened to sage advice dispensed by esteemed alumni and distinguished speakers. The Class of 2025 at the University of Maryland heard from a different kind of celebrity: Kermit the Frog.He took the podium in a muppet-size formal cap and gown on Thursday to deliver a commencement speech to the graduating students at the university’s football stadium. You might call the campus his birthplace: Jim Henson, the creator of “The Muppet Show,” was a student at the University of Maryland when he first built Kermit, using his mother’s coats and a ping pong ball cut in half. Mr. Henson, Kermit said on Thursday, “had a hand in literally everything I did.”News that the famously cheery frog puppet would be delivering the “Ker-mencement,” as some students called it, was met with mixed reviews on campus. Some wondered if the speech, penned by a Muppets writer and voiced by the puppeteer Matt Vogel, was an effort by the university to sidestep the difficult issues confronting American higher education, like the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal funding and cancellation of some international student visas.The University of Maryland said it had chosen Kermit to deliver its commencement address to honor the legacy of Mr. Henson, who died in 1990.Kermit had plenty of words of wisdom, and some ribbing, for the Class of 2025 from a muppet’s life of swamp-swimming and hanging out on Sesame Street. One piece of advice, he said, was sharing life with the right people — even a spotlight-hogging pig. (Miss Piggy, Kermit told “CBS Mornings” before his address, was not among the crowd but “summering on a beach somewhere exotic.”)From the lectern on Thursday, he said, “Life is not a solo act; no, it’s not. It’s a big, messy, delightful ensemble piece, especially when you are with your people.” He called on the graduates to help each other whenever possible. “Life is better when we leap together,” he said. Kermit has hit the public speaking circuit before, including delivering the commencement speech in 1996 at Southampton College, then part of Long Island University. His friends on Sesame Street, from Grover to Cookie Monster, have also delivered their own addresses to graduating classes.He told students to stay connected to their loved ones and to their dreams, “no matter how impossible they seem.”“Life is like a movie. Write your own ending,” he said. “Keep believing, keep pretending.”He finished by leading the audience in a singalong to “Rainbow Connection.” More

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    Bangladesh’s Leader Threatens to Resign Over Election Pressure

    Muhammad Yunus has struggled to navigate between the army, career politicians and the protest movement that overthrew the country’s authoritarian leader last year.When an idealistic movement led by students toppled the increasingly autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina last August, millions of Bangladeshis celebrated the imminent revival of democracy.Almost nine months on, an appointed interim government is frustrating everyone who wanted to vote in new leaders right away. Now its celebrated leader, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, is threatening to quit if he is not allowed to get on with his job and prepare the country for elections at a slower pace.Mr. Yunus, an internationally respected technocrat, was seen as Bangladesh’s best chance to pull things together until fair elections could be held. He was appointed to lead an interim government while there was still blood in the streets.But his aides say he feels thwarted by an emerging alliance between the country’s largest remaining political party and the army, which have criticized his policies and say he is being too slow to plan elections.On Thursday, Mr. Yunus threatened to resign if he did not get political and military backing to carry on unfettered.Mr. Yunus went as far as drafting a speech announcing his resignation, according to a senior official in his government. Other advisers managed to persuade him that his resignation would further destabilize Bangladesh. The official said by phone that his boss was especially unhappy with statements recently made by the army chief calling for elections this year, and felt worn down by criticism from political opponents.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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    Tax Cuts Now Could Lead to Rising Rates Later. Here’s How to Protect Yourself.

    The swelling budget deficit makes future tax increases likely, our columnist says, even if taxes are going down now. Hedge your bets with a concept from investing — diversification.Investors must deal with uncertainty every day. Without knowing what the markets will bring, they try to get good returns without bearing excessive risk.The classic solution is diversification — holding a broad array of global stocks and bonds. By spreading your risk, you obtain some protection against a disaster in any single holding. Even through the chaos in the markets brought about by President Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs, well-diversified portfolios have been shielded from the wildest swings in the markets.This survival strategy makes sense in thinking about your taxes, too.Every taxpayer must deal with at least two kinds of uncertainty. First, you don’t know exactly what your income will be in the future. And far more irksome, you don’t know what the tax code will be next year, or over the next decade or two. That’s especially true now, because of the likelihood of a swelling budget deficit stemming from the Trump administration’s tax and budget policies.Consider the budget negotiations underway in Congress. Will they mean higher or lower taxes in the future? There are major disagreements and it’s not clear how they’ll turn out. Yet this much seems evident: There is little appetite in the White House or Congress for short-term tax increases. So you may conclude that your taxes will stay the same or even be lower, and plan accordingly.But not so fast. It’s easy to construct an argument suggesting that whatever happens this year, taxes must rise, and fairly quickly. After all, there are already signs that the bond market is reacting negatively to the prospect of ever widening federal budget deficits, which seem baked into every version of the Republican tax legislation now under consideration.The deficit may become so high in the years ahead, in fact, that the United States may not be able to finance all of its debt cheaply. Moody’s said as much earlier this month, when it downgraded the credit rating of the United States, warning that political dysfunction is imperiling the nation’s financial future. It’s easy to imagine a pushback by financial markets so powerful that tax rates will need to increase in the future — even if Congress reduces them for most people now.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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    Two Miss Austens, Asterix & Obelix and Robot Chambermaids

    New international series include a drama about Jane Austen and her sister, a Netflix reboot of a French institution and a whimsical sci-fi anime.In this roundup of recent series from other shores, we go tripping through time and space: from Roman Empire high jinks to Regency England melodrama, and from contemporary British mystery to a postapocalyptic Japanese hotel.‘Apocalypse Hotel’This whimsical, oddball science-fiction anime has not ranked highly in surveys of this spring’s season of Japanese animated series, perhaps because it doesn’t fit precisely into a standard category. (It also has the disadvantage of being a rare original series, with no ties to an already popular manga or light-novel franchise.) In a Tokyo slowly being reclaimed by nature, on an Earth abandoned by humans because of an environmental catastrophe, an intrepid band of robots keep the lights on at a luxury hotel, prepping every day for nonexistent guests. The staff members’ intelligence may be artificial, but their commitment to service is touchingly genuine.When guests do appear — sometimes decades or even centuries apart — they are not humans but wandering aliens whose habits and needs test the robots’ resourcefulness. A family of shape-shifting interstellar tanuki (raccoon dogs) decorate their rooms with towers of dung; a superpowered kangaroo with boxing gloves for paws is intent on destroying the planet’s civilization, not realizing the job is already done. As the travelers and the staff adjust to one another, the robots enact their own version of exquisite Japanese tact and hospitality, with results that are both melancholy and raucously comic. (Streaming at Crunchyroll.)‘Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight’The tremendous success of the Asterix comics and their offshoots across more than 60 years — hundreds of millions of books sold, a panoply of movies, a popular theme park outside Paris — has never translated particularly well to the United States. The heroes of the stories, a village of 1st-century-B.C. Gauls with egregiously punny names, may hold out against Roman occupation because of the magic strength potion brewed by their druid priest. But their true power, in literary terms, is a projection of insular French wit and wordplay and rough-and-ready Gallic sang-froid. For Americans, the humor can seem both beneath our standards and over our heads.“Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight” is based on the long-running Asterix comics.2025 Les éditions Albert René/Goscinny-Uderzo/NetflixNow that Netflix is involved, however, it is a sure bet that the intention is to cross over into as many markets as possible, not least the United States. This five-episode adaptation of an early (1966) Asterix book accomplishes that goal with sufficient style, primarily through its brightly colorful 3-D animation. The images are vivid and pleasing, and they hold your interest even when the action kicks in and the storytelling loses some of its French particularity, sliding into a Pixar-derived international-blockbuster groove. (Streaming at Netflix.)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