business

In the middle of Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations,” from 1823, the pianist’s left hand starts rocking up and down the keyboard in a pattern that sounds uncannily like boogie-woogie from the 1930s and ’40s. For a choreographer courageous enough to tackle that score, this is low-hanging fruit. It’s easy to be witty by having the dancers … Read more

David Raven, who was better known as Maisie Trollette and was believed to be the oldest drag performer in Britain, died on Wednesday in Brighton, England. He was 91. His death was confirmed by a friend, Scott St. Martyn, who said that Mr. Raven had been living in a nursing home. Mr. Raven performed as … Read more

Sofia Gubaidulina, a Tatar-Russian composer who defied Soviet dogma with her openly religious music and after decades of suppression moved to the West, where she was feted by major orchestras, died on Thursday at her home in Appen, Germany. She was 93. Carol Ann Cheung, of Boosey & Hawkes, Ms. Gubaidulina’s American publisher, said the … Read more

Jennifer Johnston, an admired Irish novelist whose precise, carefully woven fictions depicted historic fault lines in her country’s upper crust and frailties in its latter-day middle class, died on Feb. 25 in Dun Laoghaire, outside Dublin. She was 95. Her death, in a nursing home, was announced by President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland, who … Read more

We recommend a bounty of good fiction this week, with a collection by Torrey Peters, a mystery by Deanna Raybourn and new novels from Chaim Grade, Karen Russell and others. In nonfiction, we like a journalist’s look back at a little-remembered episode of police brutality from the 1980s and a damning, juicy tell-all by a … Read more

The Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York has selected Denise Markonish as its next chief curator, the organization announced Thursday. Currently the chief curator at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass., Markonish will begin her new job stewarding the art program for the 6.2-acre park, which is used by 60,000 people daily, in June. … Read more

As a teenager, I had a recurring dream of visiting my grandmother, only to find her gone, and everything — her street, her rowhouse — looking just a little bit off. Confused, I would sit down on her front step and think, “This is just a dream. I’ll sit here until I wake up.” That … Read more

“The Parenting,” a raunchy, gross-out horror-comedy directed by Craig Johnson, has plenty of toilet humor and gay jokes stuffed into its tedious running time, few of them clever or funny. Its best bit is in the setup: After a family is killed at home in the early 1980s, the house sits empty until the present … Read more

It’s a little hard to get a grasp on what “An Unfinished Film” is at first. This semifictional drama opens with a film crew booting up a 10-year-old computer, hoping their footage will still be there. And after a little finagling, the screen springs to life. Director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui) watches, rapt, as a younger … Read more

“Black Bag” is the third movie written by David Koepp and directed by Steven Soderbergh that’s been released since 2022, and it’s a banger. It’s also sleek, witty and lean to the bone, a fizzy, engaging puzzler about beautiful spies doing the sort of extraordinary things that the rest of us only read about in … Read more