Lifestyle

At Jazz at Lincoln Center, Dave Chappelle Rallies to Keep ‘Tradition Alive’

Published

7 months ago

May 1, 2025

At Jazz at Lincoln Center, Dave Chappelle Rallies to Keep ‘Tradition Alive’

Outside the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night, hundreds of people in shimmering gowns and velvet tuxes waited for the program to begin. They snacked on popcorn from gold pinstriped bags and sipped cocktails in front of a wall lined with giant black-and-white photos of the jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington.

“I love coming here,” said Alec Baldwin, as he posed with his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, who was wearing a plunging lilac gown and a cross necklace, on the red carpet at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual fund-raising gala, which celebrated Ellington’s 125th birthday.

The couple, who married in 2012, star in a TLC reality TV show, “The Baldwins.” Filmed as Mr. Baldwin faced trial for involuntary manslaughter, it focuses on their hectic family life with seven children, all age 11 and under, and eight pets. A judge dismissed the case in July.

“The kids aren’t necessarily into the music I appreciate,” said Mr. Baldwin, 67, who wore a navy suit and a burgundy button-down. “I like a lot of classical. I love Japanese jazz, too.” (Ms. Baldwin, 41, a fitness expert and podcast host, said she played a lot of Billie Eilish.)

Another jazz fan in the crowd was Michael Imperioli, the “Sopranos” star who recently played Dom Di Grasso, a smooth Hollywood producer, in the second season of “The White Lotus.”

He has not seen the new season yet, he said, but he plans to soon.

“I’m going to sit down and watch the whole thing in two days or something,” he said. “I’ve been binging British detective shows.”

The Baldwins and Mr. Imperioli were among a smattering of celebrities from the film, music and media worlds, including the journalist Joy Reid and Ellington’s granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington. The evening, which was hosted by the actor and comedian Dave Chappelle, honored the philanthropist H.E. Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo and the jazz pianist and composer Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Around 6:45 p.m., attendees began funneling into the theater. In front of the stage were two rows of table seating, topped with bags of popcorn and bottles of wine. The Baldwins shared a table with Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, and Greg Scholl, the executive director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

As they waited for the concert to begin, which featured the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Ms. Baldwin sipped a glass of red wine, while Mr. Baldwin munched on a bag of popcorn and scrolled through his phone.

Around 7:15 p.m., Mr. Chappelle took the stage.

“Man, you would’ve never thought you’d see me at an event like this, would you?” said Mr. Chappelle, the famously firebrand comedian.

“Don’t worry, no bad words,” he joked. “Just here to help out.”

He then shared a lesser-known part of his biography: Before he was in the stand-up comedy scene, he attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., a public high school with a focus on arts education.

“That school profoundly, profoundly, profoundly changed my life,” said Mr. Chappelle, who is an amateur jazz pianist. “Duke Ellington was a guy who traveled all around the world just based off his talent. And as kids, we knew that it was possible, just because his energy was in the air.”

Though he mostly stuck to the teleprompter, Mr. Chappelle did throw in a few ad-libs. (“You can’t get one of the greatest comedians in the world to just read a teleprompter,” he said.)

He took light aim at President Trump.

“It’s up to us. We got to keep this tradition alive. This is one of the best things we got going in America,” he said. “You see what Trump did at the Kennedy Center? You’re next. He’ll come here, ‘I got to make jazz great again.’ Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Around 9:15 p.m., the members of the orchestra led a second-line procession that snaked through the atrium, as a dozen trumpeters, drummers and saxophonists played “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Afterward, a few hundred dinner guests tucked into plates of roasted branzino, chatting at tables with views of Columbus Circle.

Around 10 p.m., they began filtering down a hallway lined with a metallic gold curtain into Dizzy’s Club, an intimate space with bamboo walls and windows overlooking Central Park.

They danced until after midnight, as the Norman Edwards Jr. Excitement Band played swing standards like “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and the lights of Manhattan twinkled behind them.

“It’s heartening to see so many different generations here,” Ms. Ellington said. “Music is the only thing that’s going to really keep us going. We need it now more than ever.”

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Lifestyle

Soleil, a Belgian sheepdog, takes Best in Show at the National Dog Show

Published

5 hours ago

November 27, 2025

Press Room

The Belgian Sheepdog, Soleil, and handler Daniel Martin of Princeton, N.C., won Best in Show at the 24th Annual National Dog Show presented by Purina.

National Dog Show

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National Dog Show

Soleil, a Belgian Sheepdog, has won Best in Show at the 2025 National Dog Show, beating out more than 1900 dogs in this year’s competition.

The pitch black, six-year-old Soleil appeared calm despite all the activity around her as the crowd and her handler, Daniel Martin from Princeton, North Carolina accepted the award.

Martin says Soleil’s attitude and movement helped her clinch the title. “She’s the professional,” he said. “She loves the crowd and the big arena. Fantastic day.”

At that National Dog Show in Philadelphia, a Beauceron, Bergamasco Sheepdog and Entlebucher Mountain Dog stand for judging. Three members of the Herding Group, the 2025 winner, a Belgian Sheepdog named Soleil, won Best in the Herding Group before going on to be named Best in Show.

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Soleil beat out six other finalists at the annual canine competition, hosted by the Kennel Club of Philadelphia and broadcast by NBC on Thanksgiving Day from a group of seven categories. That includes the Working, Non-Sporting, Sporting, Terrier and Toy Groups. Soleil is part of the Herding Group. George, an American Foxhound part of the Hound Group, won the Reserve Best in Show.

“Soleil was just ‘on’ today,” Martin added. “I knew that this would be a fierce, intense competition. Soleil loves the energy and she feels it. That’s her magic.”

Charlie Olvis, the judge of the competition, praised Soleil, saying she was “on.”.

“Didn’t put its foot down wrong. Didn’t miss a beat. And it is in drop-dead gorgeous condition,” Olvis said.

The American Kennel Club describes the Belgian Sheepdog as highly trainable herders that are “bright, watchful and serious-minded”, adding that “these sensitive souls crave human companionship and abhor neglect”. Their average lifespan is between 10 and 14 years.

The National Dog Show was founded in 1879 and has been held annually since 1933. It’s been televised since 2002, and has become a popular Thanksgiving tradition, with an estimated 20 million animal lovers tuning in to watch, according to Purina, which presented the show.

A number of additional competitions are held behind the scenes including a barking contest.

Lifestyle

The Products Creating Dialogue with Consumers

Published

7 hours ago

November 27, 2025

Press Room

The Products Creating Dialogue with Consumers

At The Business of Fashion’s annual VOICES gathering, Certilogo founder Michele Casucci and fashion designer Patrick McDowell joined BoF’s Alice Gividen on stage to explore how technology can deepen trust and transparency between brands and their communities.

Lifestyle

‘Stranger Things’ is back. Does everything old still feel new?

Published

24 hours ago

November 27, 2025

Press Room

‘Stranger Things’ is back. Does everything old still feel new?

The first batch of episodes in Stranger Things‘ final season are out on Wednesday. Above: Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers.

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The first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 are out on Netflix now. This piece discusses details from the show; if you’d rather avoid those, come back after you’ve watched.

There is a certain kind of magic to a show like Stranger Things, which somehow manages to re-engage fans with every new season — despite a sense it is often telling the same story, over and over again.

After more than three years away, Netflix has turned its final season into its holiday gift to the world, releasing four episodes on Wednesday, three on Christmas Day and the series finale on New Year’s Eve. Still, whether this truly feels like a holiday present may depend on how eager viewers are to dive into yet another adventure hanging the world’s fate on a bunch of teenagers from small town Indiana.

Creators Matt and Ross Duffer — known collectively as the Duffer Brothers — have their work cut out this time around as showrunners and regular writers and directors.

But the real question is whether the Duffer Brothers can come up with a finale that truly feels like a satisfying conclusion, after nine years of gory jump scares, inexplicable plot twists, extra-dimensional bad guys and pink-laced, ’80s nostalgia that helped redefine the streaming age.

Life under quarantine

This season begins, as always, with an intrepid band of young people working together to sidestep adult venality and cluelessness to save the world from a monstrous, super-powered entity. Courtesy of Netflix’s decision to release the first five minutes from the first new episode weeks ago, fans know this season begins with a horrific flashback. A young Will Byers — played by a younger actor camouflaged with digital technology to look like a de-aged Noah Schnapp — is captured in 1983 by murderous extra-dimensional psychic bad guy Vecna and connected by a pulsing umbilical to his hive mind.

Talk about foreshadowing. When the story picks up again four years later, Will’s hometown of Hawkins, Ind. is under quarantine, sealed off by the military. And Will has a mysterious connection with Vecna and his monstrous minions.

'Stranger Things' season finale succeeds by leaning into excess

Last season saw the horrific alternate dimension the Upside Down intrude into the real world. Now the military is regularly testing residents in Hawkins and guarding a portal between the worlds, which pulses and throbs like a gooey outtake from an Alien movie. Inexplicably, the military has required the town’s denizens to stay put, going to school and work like they don’t live at the epicenter of a psychic and extradimensional phenomenon that nearly engulfed the world.

Most of our heroes are trying to fly under the radar — spearheaded by can-do group leader Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer). Eccentric motormouth Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) and heroically coiffed Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) now run the local radio station, while Gaten Matarazzo’s angry nerd Dustin Henderson joins friends Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) and a more mature Will in navigating a high school where their fellow students resent their presence.

Millie Bobby Brown’s character, the psychic-powered orphan Eleven/Jane Hopper, is in hiding around Hawkins, hunted by authorities who believe she caused the problems with the Upside Down and might be key to understanding it. She’s in training to refine her powers with Winona Ryder’s Joyce Byers — Will’s mom — and father figure Jim Hopper, played by David Harbour.

And Sadie Sink’s character Max, the show’s flame-haired tomboy, remains in a coma after surviving an attack by Vecna last season aimed at helping him open a portal from the Upside Down to the real world.

David Harbour as Jim Hopper and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven.

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Making old plotlines feel new again

There is a lot about this new batch of episodes that reminded me of previous storylines, as this kooky new-school Scooby Gang repeatedly pulls off elaborate plans to get past the military, sneak inside the Upside Down and search for Vecna.

Once again, there’s a ruthless doctor empowered by the military to probe the Upside Down — this time, played by Terminator alum Linda Hamilton. Our young heroes keep devising elaborate-yet-successful plans to outwit the military and access the alternate universe where Vecna is hiding. We have generous sprinkles of ’80s pop culture, from a surprising reference to pop star Tiffany to the sly use of Diana Ross’ 1980 dance hit Upside Down.

There are also winking nods to movies, with scenes that recall moments from Aliens, Good Morning, Vietnam and even Home Alone. Deft as these touches are, however, they are also moves we have seen before in this show.

And there’s a series of attacks by Demogorgons — super strong, super-teethy humanoid creatures from the Upside Down controlled by Vecna — who motivate our heroes by targeting children in Hawkins for kidnapping. This seems a deliberate callback to the way Will’s abduction jumpstarted everything in the show’s first season.

Stranger Things often juxtaposes action sequences and physical danger with protagonists separating and reuniting emotionally. So the new episodes feature Eleven pushing back against Hopper’s efforts to keep her out of the fray and safe from capture by the military, while Steve struggles with feelings for ex-girlfriend Nancy, Robin bumbles a relationship with her girlfriend and Will is continually on the verge of declaring something about his romantic feelings. Again, little of this will seem new to longtime fans.

Last season, I noted the show’s tendency to resolve emotional conflicts with “confessional monologues” — where one character turns to another and neatly, emotionally explains exactly the problem in their relationship. This time around, those monologues have become arguments, with characters revealing themselves in irritating fights aimed at fracturing the team, even as they resolve to work together.

Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers.

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Still, the Duffers are so skilled at keeping the plot hurtling along — fueled by smart, suspenseful cuts between situations, sprinkled with lots of breathless exposition and meticulous planning — that many may not notice how much these new dangers feel like old storylines.

When it gets tough to suspend disbelief

Absurd as it may be to grouse about improbable storytelling in a series featuring psychic-powered villains from an alternate universe, it remains true that more fanciful moments play better when they are surrounded by stuff that feels grounded and authentic. So moments where Stranger Things loses that plot can be oddly annoying.

In one climactic moment, for instance, soldiers spend a lot of time shooting at Demogorgons after it is obvious bullets don’t stop them. Though one character wounded a Demogorgon with a broken wine bottle and another hurt it with a shotgun. Sigh.)

In a different scene, a Demogorgon is tearing up a screaming child’s bedroom while her mother is taking a bath, blaring an ABBA hit and zoning out. But, unless you’ve got headphones stapled to your head, it seems it would be tough to miss that kind of ruckus a few feet away.

It’s also tough to believe a military force that has spent millions occupying the town couldn’t figure out which local kids were close to Eleven and might understand a bit about this supernatural force which has impacted the world.

All of this produces a feeling that the Duffer Brothers have come up with a newly beguiling, action-packed way to lead viewers down a very familiar road. Critics have only seen the four episodes debuting Wednesday, so perhaps there are more surprising storytelling turns in episodes to come.

But, depending on how much you enjoy the journey, what they’ve pulled off so far could be achievement enough.