Latest news with #Sellars
Boston Globe
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Already at the top of the opera world, Matthew Aucoin has composed his most audacious piece yet
Now, at 35, Aucoin has produced a singular musical work that is being hailed as revolutionary, an uncategorizable vocal symphony that represents a major departure — not just for Aucoin, but perhaps for operatic music more broadly. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Aucoin will conduct the 70-minute piece, 'Music for New Bodies,' with players from the company he cofounded, the American Modern Opera Company, at Tanglewood on Aug. 7. Advertisement Matthew Aucoin (conducting, bottom center), led instrumentalists and vocalists during the New York premiere of "Music for New Bodies" at the Lincoln Center. Lawrence Sumulong/Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Sellars, who is staging the work at Tanglewood, said Aucoin's composition is closely attuned to the current cultural moment, as many people are distracted, overwhelmed, and apprehensive in their personal lives, while also coping with the existential upheaval brought on by generational challenges such as climate change or artificial intelligence. He compared 'New Bodies' to the work of Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, a pivotal figure in the creation of what is today called 'opera.' Advertisement 'In the history of music, there's this moment where music has to step in for things that we are still not able to describe because they're too new,' said Sellars, who called it an emergent consciousness. 'Matt's piece is one of those turning-point pieces, which just begins to look forward and resists looking backwards. It's trying to open into a way larger realm of experiences that we all know, and yet we have received inadequate language to describe.' Traveling between the personal, the commercial, the mythic, and the cosmological, 'New Bodies' is musically dense. It pushes performers to the edge of what's technically possible, while also drawing on a wide range of musical traditions, from Gustav Mahler to synth pop. The work grew out of a conversation Aucoin had with Sellars after the director saw a short piece by Aucoin that set to music a poem by Jorie Graham, a Pulitzer-winning poet at Harvard University and one of Aucoin's early mentors. Working without a traditional commission, Aucoin said he was free to develop 'New Bodies' without many of the logistical constraints that follow a commission, when music must carry the opera's narrative, scene changes, and other practical considerations. 'I think what defines this piece is creative freedom,' said Aucoin, who will conduct 'New Bodies' at Tanglewood. 'We basically just made the piece that we wanted to make, and then found people to present it.' Sellars called the creative process 'one of the things you dream of for a composer — not just write music to order, but really to explore with an open-ended sense of searching.' Opera director Peter Sellars, shown working with young musicians during a rehearsal of "Music for New Bodies" in 2024, called the work a "turning point." MERIDITH KOHUT/NYT 'Matt was on his own: He had no deadline, no assignment, and he could write something that was not following anybody's instructions or that needed to respond to anybody's programming needs,' he said. It's a 'piece of music that is appearing spontaneously from something that's on his mind and in his heart.' Advertisement The resulting work sets to music a number of Graham's poems from the past decade or so, when she underwent cancer treatment. Enlisting five singers, a chamber orchestra, and electronics, 'New Bodies' wrestles with questions of mortality, ecological devastation, technology, and the medical industrial complex. The singers frequently shift perspectives, alternately inhabiting the voice of a cancer patient, medical professionals, chatbots, the natural world, and even cancer-fighting pharmaceuticals as they make their way through her body. At a Lincoln Center performance earlier this month, varying hues of light raked the stage as Sellars had instrumentalists play alongside vocalists, forming and re-forming temporary musical clusters to create a dynamic soundscape. At the Lincoln Center performance, Sellars had instrumentalists play alongside vocalists, forming and re-forming temporary musical clusters to create a dynamic soundscape. CREDIT: Lawrence Sumulong/Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Aucoin said one aim of the piece 'was to try to capture what it's like to be alive right now in all of its contradictory, overwhelming intensity.' 'It might feel like a total fever dream to some people because the music and the poetry are our guide,' he said. 'But that felt, in a way, more honest to being alive right now than telling a nice, neat story.' With no explicit plot, 'New Bodies' loosely follows a woman after she learns she has an aggressive form of cancer. It articulates the emotional chaos that follows the initial diagnosis, as the speaker considers nonreligious forms of immortality such as cryofreezing and grows anxious when she struggles to recognize what she sees in the mirror. Advertisement The piece then leaves the human realm, traveling to the bottom of the sea, where it sings of ecological degradation: 'There is nothing in particular you want—you just want.' When the music surfaces, the woman is undergoing a potentially life-saving (or ending) surgery. The score turns synthetic and cheery as she succumbs to the anesthesia, a trippy passage where the voice of the drugs seems to speak from inside her body. As she emerges from this journey, the protagonist can hear a calmer, more powerful voice: the Earth and the forces that created it. 'Our rule was: Let's follow the music,' said Aucoin. 'It felt exciting to locate that question through Jory Graham's poetry, because she's been writing from this predicament of having cancer and wondering what it means to have a body and to be mortal in a moment when we seem really interested as a species in living virtually and surpassing having a body.' Critics have compared 'New Bodies' to Mahler's sprawling 'Das Lied von der Erde' ('The song of the Earth'), but Aucoin, who once played keyboards in an indie band, has channeled a broad range of influences — jazz, percussion, even the quartz action of a clock — that goes far afield of traditional orchestral music. 'A lot of us today grew up playing jazz and improvised music,' said Aucoin, who, like other young composers, is seeking to push the boundaries of the art form. 'We have experience playing various kinds of pop, or at least hearing a huge range' of music. 'It's never made sense to me to say, 'Well, I must brand myself in a narrow way.' ' Aucoin, who is the son of Globe theater critic Don Aucoin, has been on Advertisement "New Bodies" grew out of a conversation Aucoin had with Sellars after the director heard an earlier piece by Aucoin that featured Graham's poetry. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff He first got to know Graham when he took her poetry workshop at Harvard. (Both Sellars and Aucoin graduated from Harvard, and all three artists have received MacArthur 'genius' awards.) The poet gave Aucoin her blessing when he asked to set more of her work to music, giving him free rein to work with the material. 'My work of imagination was already done,' said Graham, who added that 'New Bodies' is a collage that combines portions of multiple poems and books. 'If my words inspire them, that's a contagion: I need them to do whatever they need to do.' Despite the work's range, Sellars said 'New Bodies' retains a feeling of human warmth. 'The beauty of what Matt and Jorie are doing is that it is personal, and it is intimate,' he said, calling it a balm in an era of 'giant, obnoxious public address.' 'It has this sense of a private and unique moment that turned into an immense project.' For Graham, who attended the Lincoln Center performance, the title of the work could not be more apt. 'It made every part of my body have to come into operation,' she recalled, adding the performance engaged not only her intellect, but also the part of the body 'that absorbs and distinguishes between shades of colors and all those instruments and voices.' Advertisement 'It's a music that will give you a new body,' she said, 'and certainly a body, I think, more capable of resistance to some of the ways in which our era wishes to shut it down.' Malcolm Gay can be reached at
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I want everybody to know Gullah belongs to all of us': V.P of Gullah Festival
BEAUFORT S.C. (WSAV)– The 40th annual 'Original Gullah Festival' that is full of culture and history offered kicked off day one of three. Gullah Geechee culture comes from the people who are descendants of enslaved Africans that were then brought to the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina. Thats why the founder of Low Country Gullah, Luana Graves Sellars said it is important for the low country to have events like this. 'It's important to know about the history of our area, because we all love it here and the land has been protected for generations because the Gullah love the land,' Sellars said. 'That's why it's important to not only know about the history that's here, but also to know about the contributions that the Gullah people have given to the area.' The festival hosted workshops that people can sign up for, which include doll making, basket weaving, quilt making and etc. 'For us of African American descent, Gullah Geechee descent to be able to celebrate our rich cultural heritage,' Patrice Cole, teacher at the doll making workshop said. 'You know, that's why even within the doll making using the traditional African textiles, it's just it makes our spirit sing.' This event is going on from May 23-25 with a full schedule each day starting at 10 a.m. and is located at the Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park in Beaufort. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NZ Herald
21-05-2025
- NZ Herald
Auckland woman Rangimaria Sellars jailed for stabbing taxi driver in Christchurch
'That strongly brings into consideration the need to protect the public from you,' he said as Sellars stood in the dock at Manukau District Court. 'This is an example of extreme violence.' Court documents state the attack, which resulted in six stab wounds and necessitated emergency surgery, took place inside a Toyota Prius about 10.15pm on October 10 last year in Christchurch. 'The victim ... had picked [up] the defendant from somewhere in the city,' the agreed summary of facts for the case states. 'Whilst en route, the defendant disclosed she did not have the money to pay for her fare.' The driver was nearly at the airport already but pulled into the Spitfire Square carpark, across the street from the airport, to discontinue the ride. Sellars then asked to be taken to the police station. 'Using a knife she had concealed in her clothing, the defendant stabbed the victim several times,' court documents state - causing two wounds to his abdomen, two to his forearm and single wounds to his thigh and right hand. The victim, who went to a nearby McDonald's restaurant for help, had to undergo surgery almost immediately after arriving at Christchurch Hospital. He was 'covered in blood' as emergency responders carried him out of the restaurant on a stretcher, a witness previously told the Herald. Sellars was arrested about 15 minutes after the incident at a nearby hotel. She later told police she had stabbed the stranger because he touched her leg. But CCTV footage from inside the car makes it clear that's not true, Christchurch-based Crown prosecutor Gail Barrett pointed out while attending the hearing via an audio-video feed. 'It does show that this was an unprovoked assault on a taxi driver as a vulnerable person,' she said. The driver, 36, did not attend today's hearing in person and so did not read his written victim impact statement, although the judge referred to it extensively before announcing the sentence. He told the court the victim thought he was going to die that night. He ended up spending five days in hospital with significant injuries, and could no longer do simple things for himself like cook and shower. His abdominal wounds meant he could no longer sit for long stretches, making his job impossible. 'He says he was told he was lucky to survive this attack,' Judge Patel noted. 'By day, he thinks of someone attacking him and by night ... he dreams about somebody attacking him again.' The victim was fortunate to have family who came to New Zealand and helped him. 'Before this incident he thought the people of Christchurch were good people, but now he has a different view,' the judge also noted. 'He says he needs to be more careful and aware of his environment.' Sellars faced up to 14 years' imprisonment after pleading guilty in Christchurch District Court in November to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. She entered the plea via audio-video feed from Auckland. Today's sentencing was then transferred to Auckland so she could attend in person. Defence lawyer Hannah Kim acknowledged the victim hadn't touched her client, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. But her aggression that night was still motivated by fear due to Sellars' traumatic past as a victim of abuse, she argued. She pointed to a psychological report that outlines how Sellars established poor coping mechanisms in her youth that led to trouble with the law. She suffers depression, is hyper-vigilant of threats and hears voices, although she's currently on medication to suppress the voices, the lawyer said. She asked the judge for a starting point of between three and three-and-a-half years before allowing reductions for her guilty plea, background and remorse. She acknowledged, however, that a sentence of imprisonment was inevitable. The judge, however, agreed to the Crown's suggestion of a four-and-a-half year starting point. He then allowed a 25% reduction for her very early guilty plea a 5% for her background - noting that the reduction had to be tempered by her long history of violence. Her criminal history included common assault charges dating back to 1995, followed by assault with a stabbing instrument in 2001 and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm in 2003. Sellars had been serving a 13-year sentence when she was released on parole in 2022, but she was recalled to prison after committing new crimes and had only been released again weeks earlier. Her lawyer noted that, other than the stabbing, her more recent crimes had involved burglary and dishonesty but not violence. Judge Patel increased her sentence by two months to reflect her criminal history, resulting in an end sentence of three years and four months' imprisonment. He noted that, upon her most recent release from prison, Sellars reported feeling she hadn't 'received the professional support that you needed.' The judge ordered that the psychological report that had been prepared for the sentencing be provided to the Parole Board with the hope that measures can be taken to support her better next time.
NBC News
21-04-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Helene-hit farmers are still scrounging for recovery funds six months on
The White House didn't comment on Stein's request but said the administration would continue to support farmers. 'President Trump cares deeply about our farmers and all Americans impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which is why he personally evaluated the damage and led a historic recovery effort,' spokesperson Anna Kelly said. 'He will continue to ensure our farmers have the policies and resources they need to feed the world.' Local aid organizations say they're still responding to elevated food insecurity throughout the region. 'The flow of aid from the government — both state and federal government — has not yet scaled to the situation at hand,' said Paula Sellars, deputy director of the local nonprofit group Bounty & Soul. We're seven months out, and the large dollars have not yet trickled down to the local person. Paula Sellars, deputy director of Bounty & Soul The organization partners with over 70 regional farms to provide free food to communities around Black Mountain and Swannanoa, but Sellars said it has been a heavy lift to expand operations while local growers that supply the group are still getting back on their feet. Fortunately, Bounty & Soul has seen an outpouring of generosity from people looking to help, and 'the scale of what we're doing has increased tremendously,' she said. Sellars estimated the group's food purchasing budget has swelled by 340% since Helene. Before the hurricane, Bounty & Soul would typically organize six food markets a week for those in need; now it runs 10, serving over 25,000 people every month. While the organization still buys produce from local farmers, it has had to supplement that with purchases from wholesalers to handle higher demand. And Sellars said she knows Bounty & Soul can't meet the needs of western North Carolinians solely through private donations, which are liable to wane as time goes on. 'The nonprofit sector is very much shouldering the burden of recovery in many of this region's smaller communities,' she said. Disasters tend to push out farmers who were already struggling financially, said Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, an industry news service. 'Somebody usually takes up the acreage and does the crops, but there's a shifting around between the people that were doing better and just want to keep on trying it and those that say, 'I was thinking about getting out anyway,'' Swanson said. Ager said he has been pushing fellow lawmakers to expedite more funding but warned that the state aid package 'is probably getting here a little bit too late to get some fields back up and running in time' for spring planting. State-level relief can be quicker to arrive than federal funding, which is usually administered through the Agriculture Department through local farm service agencies, he said. 'We're already slow in reality and should have done more sooner,' said Ager, also a fourth-generation farmer who raises beef and pork with his brother at Hickory Nut Gap Farms in Fairview. Helene knocked out power for a month at the property, downed trees and washed out roads. 'There was plenty of cleanup to do,' Ager said, but he added that he 'felt pretty fortunate' relative to what other growers endured. WNC Communities, a local agriculture nonprofit group, has been providing emergency disaster funding for farmers in recent months. 'We filled a gap where we knew that there wasn't going to be any other funding,' said Executive Director Jennifer Ferre, who estimated having doled out $2.1 million to 385 farmers so far. Like other local nonprofit groups, WNC Communities received an influx of private donations that it distributed quickly to help farmers restart operations as best they could. But there were limits to the organization's support — it could often help buy gravel to repair a road between pastures but not rebuild a collapsed barn, Ferre said. 'The need was so overwhelming,' she said. 'We had to look and try to prioritize what we thought was going to be able to help folks ... get back into business the quickest.' Ferre said she's also trying to be a resource for the farmers her group has assisted as new funding turns up. Applying for grants can be complicated, and it requires documentation of losses at a time when many farmers are simply trying to pay their bills. What farmers need is 'quick money,' said Laura Lauffer, director of the EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems program at North Carolina State University. By the time Helene hit, her initiative had already set up a program offering $3,000 business grants for regional farmers. Afterward, it streamlined the application process to get money out faster. 'We want to be really strategic,' Lauffer said, adding that the group is focused now on figuring out 'how we can have the most impact with this little bit of money.' The start of this year has brought substantial cuts at the Agriculture Department, including $1 billion in food bank and school lunch programs, as part of a sweeping Trump administration push to downsize government that has frequently generated chaos, confusion and policy reversals. The Agriculture Department 'is working diligently to roll out our portion of the disaster assistance across the U.S. over the coming months,' a White House spokesperson said in a statement. A spokesperson for the agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is focused on addressing the needs of impacted farmers and 'will ensure that those areas have the resources and personnel they need to continue serving the American people.' For now, the need gap remains. 'To legislators and those who are in positions of decision-making around disaster relief funding, I would just say: Please pick up the pace,' Sellars said. 'We're seven months out, and the large dollars have not yet trickled down to the local person.'
USA Today
19-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Social media reacts to Clemson landing 4-star wide receiver Gordon Sellars
Social media reacts to Clemson landing 4-star wide receiver Gordon Sellars Clemson's 2026 recruiting class just got another boost with the addition of a top offensive target. Four-star wide receiver Gordon Sellars out of Providence Day School (Charlotte, NC) gave his verbal pledge to the Tigers on Friday during an emotional ceremony at his high school. He chose Clemson over a list of finalists that included South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina A&T. Sellars has been a top Clemson target since the Tigers offered him last September during an unofficial visit. He returned for the rivalry game against South Carolina, took part in the Elite Retreat last month, and was back in town again for the spring game two weeks ago. Other spring visits included trips to Ohio State, Michigan, and South Carolina, along with a stop at Notre Dame on Tuesday after the Irish extended an offer last week. Recruiting services are high on the 6-foot-2 wideout. ESPN gives him his highest mark, ranking him No. 144 overall and No. 25 at his position. He's also the No. 9 player in North Carolina. The 247Sports Composite ranks Sellars as the No. 207 national prospect and No. 31 wide receiver, while On3's Industry Ranking puts him at No. 227 overall. Sellars is the 14th commitment in Clemson's 2026 class, which continues to sit comfortably inside the Top 5 nationally. He's the third wide receiver in the group, joining fellow four-stars Naeem Burroughs and Connor Salmin, who both committed during the Elite Retreat weekend. Sellars is expected to be the final wideout take in this cycle. Here is how social media reacted to Sellars committing to Clemson: Contact us @Clemson_Wire on X, and like our page on Facebook for ongoing coverage of Clemson Tigers news and notes, plus opinions.
