newyorker--2020-09-21--The 2020 Emmys: A Big Night for “Schitt’s Creek,” “Watchmen,” and Tuxedo-Print Hazmat Suits

“ This .
.
.
this is so freaking weird , ” Regina King observed on Sunday night , midway through the seventy-second annual Primetime Emmy Awards .
King was not referring to the bow-tie-wearing alpaca that accompanied Randall Park in presenting a writing award .
After all , using a cute animal in a costume to lighten the mood is one of Hollywood ’ s oldest tricks .
What threw King , who had just won an acting prize for “ Watchmen , ” was the simple act of receiving her statuette , which this year involved a stranger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her house .
Like nearly every other human activity—first dates , history class , Passover seder—the Emmys had to adjust to pandemic life and its unique spatial constraints , not to mention the triviality of holding an awards show during our year of perpetual horrors .
“ What is happening tonight is not important , ” the host , Jimmy Kimmel , assured us in his opening monologue .
“ It ’ s not going to stop COVID-19 .
It ’ s not going to put out the fires .
But it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by strutting out onto an auditorium stage , with the camera cutting , shockingly , to a vast audience of laughing , gussied-up celebrities all sitting together , unmasked .
This was , of course , a fakeout : the footage was from the pre-COVID world , and , soon enough , the audience vanished like a field of dreams , leaving Kimmel in an empty room with cardboard cutouts in place of people .
It was a spooky sight , worthy of a dystopic sci-fi series , though the mood quickly turned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night , ” Kimmel lamented , in his solitude .
How was this going to work , exactly ?
Some presenters joined Kimmel in his sleek nowhereland , among them Jennifer Aniston , Tracee Ellis Ross , and the alpaca .
Everyone else was beamed in from home , or , in the case of the “ Schitt ’ s Creek ” crowd , from a well-appointed party tent in Canada .
For the first hour of the ceremony , it was nothing but “ Schitt ’ s Creek , ” which swept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ categories for its sixth and final season , after a grand total of zero awards in previous years .
“ The Internet ’ s about to turn on me , ” the show ’ s co-creator and star Daniel Levy said when he returned to the mike his third time , wearing a Thom Browne kilt suit .
By his fourth speech , he was imploring the audience to vote and apologizing : “ I ’ m so sorry for making this political , but I had to.
” How very Canadian .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” bonanza , most of the other awards went to “ Watchmen , ” in the limited-series categories , and “ Succession , ” in drama .
( I guess we ’ re pretending that “ Succession ” isn ’ t a dark comedy ? )
All three are worthy victors , though the timeliness of “ Watchmen , ” in particular , came through in the acceptance speeches .
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II , who won a supporting-actor award , talked about “ the lasting scars of white domestic terrorism ” and dedicated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women in my life.
” The show ’ s creator , Damon Lindelof , wore a T-shirt commemorating the 1921 Tulsa massacre , which is central to the plot , and urged his colleagues to “ stop worrying about getting cancelled and ask yourself what you ’ re doing to get renewed.
” Like all of us , the Emmys had to grapple with more upheavals than the ceremony could reasonably handle .
Jesse Armstrong , the creator of “ Succession , ” may have given the best summation of the spirit of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ un-thank-yous ” : to the virus , to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson , and to the media moguls who inspired his show .
Or it may have come from the “ Watchmen ” screenwriter Cord Jefferson , who thanked his shrink , Ian , and added , “ Therapy should be free in this country.
” Don ’ t we know it .
Television this year has been more than an art form in its late-renaissance phase : it ’ s had to substitute for other activities that we ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve been forced into prolonged couch-potato mode .
The new reality offered the stale awards-show format a rare chance at freshness , though Kimmel and company held on to some old traditions : comic bits that sagged ( mostly involving hand sanitizer and swabs ) and a few that were downright cringe-worthy ( Kimmel threatening to call ICE on John Oliver ) .
Other time-honored award traditions were transposed seamlessly , as when Laura Linney , Sandra Oh , and Jennifer Aniston—who all lost the dramatic-actress award to Zendaya , of “ Euphoria @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home , as expertly as if they ’ d been on aisle seats .
You had to wonder about the nominees who didn ’ t bother to show up , even from the comfort of their own homes , among them Meryl Streep , Ted Danson , and Jeremy Irons .
Were they out walking the dog ?
Elsewhere , the ceremony took some novel turns .
Throughout the night , “ real ” Americans , among them a rancher in Montana and a nurse in New York City , presented supporting-actor awards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the roll call at the Democratic National Convention .
It was a nice idea , even if it carried a whiff of self-important inoculation against the perception of self-importance .
Shouldn ’ t Hollywood be giving them some accolades , instead of the other way around ?
Still , there was something sweet and fittingly incoherent about a third-generation “ lady truck driver ” ( her words ) announcing an award for Uzo Aduba , for playing Shirley Chisholm in “ Mrs .
America.
” Aduba , like Regina King , accepted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Breonna Taylor T-shirt .
It ’ s hard to think of a better time capsule for whatever we ’ re all living through .
Before the camera cut away from Aduba , you could hear her call out , “ Mommy !
” That was where the Emmys got really good : spotting the nominees in their native habitats , all dressed up with nowhere to go .
Some , like Zendaya , sat in bejewelled splendor in front of the camera , with their families and “ teams ” cheering on from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prize , for “ Succession , ” a phone rang offscreen , and someone in the room had to run off and answer it .
It was a good night for Room Rater , the Twitter account that scores homescapes that appear on TV .
( Tyler Perry got a perfect ten , for his “ epic library.
” ) Amy Sherman-Palladino , the creator of “ The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel , ” kept up her kooky-headwear routine at home , wearing a top hat festooned with carnival masks , while her husband @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( The two were nominated against each other , for the direction of different episodes of the same comedy series . )
Billy Porter , of “ Pose , ” let his regal train flow from an armchair , though it longed for a red carpet .
No one accepted an Emmy in pajamas , but Julia Garner , who won a supporting-actress award , for “ Ozark , ” appeared in flapper cosplay , with her husband , the singer-songwriter Mark Foster , in a silky red robe .
As far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ winner—Andrij Parekh , who got a directing prize , for “ Succession ” —spoke from a bedroom .
Even so , the ceremony could have let even more oddness into the frame .
My favorite moment of the night appeared not on ABC but on the Twitter feed of Ramy Youssef , the star of “ Ramy , ” who lost an acting prize to Eugene Levy ( “ Schitt ’ s Creek ” ) .
Moments later , Youssef posted a video , captioned “ when you lose the emmy , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outside his door , waving a sad little goodbye as he walked off with the unearned statuette .
The indignities of fame , circa 2020 , could not have been captured with more succinct cruelty .
I wanted to know everything about this prize deliverer , surely Hollywood ’ s idea of an essential worker .
For sheer comic timing , whoever it was deserves to keep that Emmy .

“This . . . this is so freaking weird,” Regina King observed on Sunday night, midway through the seventy-second annual Primetime Emmy Awards. King was not referring to the bow-tie-wearing alpaca that accompanied Randall Park in presenting a writing award. After all, using a cute animal in a costume to lighten the mood is one of Hollywood’s oldest tricks. What threw King, who had just won an acting prize for “Watchmen,” was the simple act of receiving her statuette, which this year involved a stranger in a tuxedo-print hazmat suit materializing at her house.
Like nearly every other human activity—first dates, history class, Passover seder—the Emmys had to adjust to pandemic life and its unique spatial constraints, not to mention the triviality of holding an awards show during our year of perpetual horrors. “What is happening tonight is not important,” the host, Jimmy Kimmel, assured us in his opening monologue. “It’s not going to stop COVID-19. It’s not going to put out the fires. But it’s fun.” Kimmel opened the show by strutting out onto an auditorium stage, with the camera cutting, shockingly, to a vast audience of laughing, gussied-up celebrities all sitting together, unmasked. This was, of course, a fakeout: the footage was from the pre-COVID world, and, soon enough, the audience vanished like a field of dreams, leaving Kimmel in an empty room with cardboard cutouts in place of people. It was a spooky sight, worthy of a dystopic sci-fi series, though the mood quickly turned to shtick. “Just like prom night,” Kimmel lamented, in his solitude.
How was this going to work, exactly? Some presenters joined Kimmel in his sleek nowhereland, among them Jennifer Aniston, Tracee Ellis Ross, and the alpaca. Everyone else was beamed in from home, or, in the case of the “Schitt’s Creek” crowd, from a well-appointed party tent in Canada. For the first hour of the ceremony, it was nothing but “Schitt’s Creek,” which swept every single comedy award—winning a record-breaking seven categories for its sixth and final season, after a grand total of zero awards in previous years. “The Internet’s about to turn on me,” the show’s co-creator and star Daniel Levy said when he returned to the mike his third time, wearing a Thom Browne kilt suit. By his fourth speech, he was imploring the audience to vote and apologizing: “I’m so sorry for making this political, but I had to.” How very Canadian.
After the “Schitt’s Creek” bonanza, most of the other awards went to “Watchmen,” in the limited-series categories, and “Succession,” in drama. (I guess we’re pretending that “Succession” isn’t a dark comedy?) All three are worthy victors, though the timeliness of “Watchmen,” in particular, came through in the acceptance speeches. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who won a supporting-actor award, talked about “the lasting scars of white domestic terrorism” and dedicated his Emmy to “all the Black women in my life.” The show’s creator, Damon Lindelof, wore a T-shirt commemorating the 1921 Tulsa massacre, which is central to the plot, and urged his colleagues to “stop worrying about getting cancelled and ask yourself what you’re doing to get renewed.” Like all of us, the Emmys had to grapple with more upheavals than the ceremony could reasonably handle. Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” may have given the best summation of the spirit of 2020 when he offered a series of “un-thank-yous”: to the virus, to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and to the media moguls who inspired his show. Or it may have come from the “Watchmen” screenwriter Cord Jefferson, who thanked his shrink, Ian, and added, “Therapy should be free in this country.” Don’t we know it.
Television this year has been more than an art form in its late-renaissance phase: it’s had to substitute for other activities that we’ve been deprived of, as we’ve been forced into prolonged couch-potato mode. The new reality offered the stale awards-show format a rare chance at freshness, though Kimmel and company held on to some old traditions: comic bits that sagged (mostly involving hand sanitizer and swabs) and a few that were downright cringe-worthy (Kimmel threatening to call ICE on John Oliver). Other time-honored award traditions were transposed seamlessly, as when Laura Linney, Sandra Oh, and Jennifer Aniston—who all lost the dramatic-actress award to Zendaya, of “Euphoria”—broke out their gracious-runner-up smiles from home, as expertly as if they’d been on aisle seats. You had to wonder about the nominees who didn’t bother to show up, even from the comfort of their own homes, among them Meryl Streep, Ted Danson, and Jeremy Irons. Were they out walking the dog?
Elsewhere, the ceremony took some novel turns. Throughout the night, “real” Americans, among them a rancher in Montana and a nurse in New York City, presented supporting-actor awards, in what felt like a reprise of the roll call at the Democratic National Convention. It was a nice idea, even if it carried a whiff of self-important inoculation against the perception of self-importance. Shouldn’t Hollywood be giving them some accolades, instead of the other way around? Still, there was something sweet and fittingly incoherent about a third-generation “lady truck driver” (her words) announcing an award for Uzo Aduba, for playing Shirley Chisholm in “Mrs. America.” Aduba, like Regina King, accepted her award from home, in a Breonna Taylor T-shirt. It’s hard to think of a better time capsule for whatever we’re all living through.
Before the camera cut away from Aduba, you could hear her call out, “Mommy!” That was where the Emmys got really good: spotting the nominees in their native habitats, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Some, like Zendaya, sat in bejewelled splendor in front of the camera, with their families and “teams” cheering on from sofas. As Armstrong accepted the best-drama prize, for “Succession,” a phone rang offscreen, and someone in the room had to run off and answer it. It was a good night for Room Rater, the Twitter account that scores homescapes that appear on TV. (Tyler Perry got a perfect ten, for his “epic library.”) Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” kept up her kooky-headwear routine at home, wearing a top hat festooned with carnival masks, while her husband, Daniel Palladino, wore a fedora. (The two were nominated against each other, for the direction of different episodes of the same comedy series.) Billy Porter, of “Pose,” let his regal train flow from an armchair, though it longed for a red carpet. No one accepted an Emmy in pajamas, but Julia Garner, who won a supporting-actress award, for “Ozark,” appeared in flapper cosplay, with her husband, the singer-songwriter Mark Foster, in a silky red robe. As far as I could tell, only one winner—Andrij Parekh, who got a directing prize, for “Succession”—spoke from a bedroom.
Even so, the ceremony could have let even more oddness into the frame. My favorite moment of the night appeared not on ABC but on the Twitter feed of Ramy Youssef, the star of “Ramy,” who lost an acting prize to Eugene Levy (“Schitt’s Creek”). Moments later, Youssef posted a video, captioned “when you lose the emmy,” which showed one of those tuxedo-hazmat-suit people outside his door, waving a sad little goodbye as he walked off with the unearned statuette. The indignities of fame, circa 2020, could not have been captured with more succinct cruelty. I wanted to know everything about this prize deliverer, surely Hollywood’s idea of an essential worker. For sheer comic timing, whoever it was deserves to keep that Emmy.


newyorker--2020-09-21--Kavanaugh Warns That Expanding Size of Supreme Court Would Require More Kegs

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Responding to speculation that Democrats might seek to expand the size of the Supreme @ @ @ @ @ that doing so would require an increased number of kegs .
Kavanaugh expressed concern that @ @ @ @ @ Court Justices without acquiring additional kegs might result in a “ replay of the regrettable @ @ @ @ @ One time during Beach Week , I was throwing this rad party with P.J .
@ @ @ @ @ said .
“ Out of nowhere , Tobin shows up and brings four of his @ @ @ @ @ that would have been fine if Tobin ’ s friends drank a normal amount , @ @ @ @ @ party , ” he said .
“ It was a classic Tobin move.
” Kavanaugh @ @ @ @ @ of the Court without a commensurate increase in kegs would set “ a very dangerous @ @ @ @ @ new Justices are anything like Tobin ’ s buds , the situation will be heinous @ @ @ @ @

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to speculation that Democrats might seek to expand the size of the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh warned that doing so would require an increased number of kegs.
Kavanaugh expressed concern that increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices without acquiring additional kegs might result in a “replay of the regrettable Beach Week incident.”
“One time during Beach Week, I was throwing this rad party with P.J. and Squee,” he said. “Out of nowhere, Tobin shows up and brings four of his friends.”
“Well, that would have been fine if Tobin’s friends drank a normal amount, but those dudes liked to party,” he said. “It was a classic Tobin move.”
Kavanaugh said that expanding the size of the Court without a commensurate increase in kegs would set “a very dangerous precedent.”
“If the new Justices are anything like Tobin’s buds, the situation will be heinous,” he said.


newyorker--2020-09-21--A New Rabbi Schleps Through the Village to Meet Her Flock

Calamity can lead to clarity .
According to the Pew Research Center , nearly half of Americans who attend religious services at least once a month report that the coronavirus pandemic has bolstered their faith .
In May , President Trump encouraged houses of worship to reopen .
( He was miffed that governors seemed to be giving preferential treatment to “ liquor stores and abortion clinics.
” ) But the setting—indoors , lots of singing—presents a challenge .
Clergy are left to minimize the risks .
At the Village Temple , on Twelfth Street , the doors remain , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Its new rabbi , Diana Fersko , must lead the congregants , remotely , through catastrophe , and she must also figure out how to meet them .
( Like medical residents , new rabbis start work on July 1st . )
In her first sermon , delivered over Zoom , Fersko recited some lines from the Torah about God seeing Adam in the Garden of Eden and concluding , “ It is not good for man to be alone.
” “ An emotional switch went off , and I knew I needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She conceived of a neighborhood amble , the Shabbat Walk , with stops on stoops and in lobbies , to get to know her flock .
On a recent Saturday , Fersko , wearing a tallis and a leopard-print mask , hit the streets .
She squinted at a list of addresses .
“ There ’ s a temple member who was actually born during the Spanish flu of 1918 .
Can you imagine ?
Kind woman and a great Jew.
” On lower Fifth Avenue , Mimi Abrams stepped out from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our first stop , ” Fersko said .
“ I wish I could give you a hug , ” Abrams said .
“ Your last two sermons have blown us away.
” “ It ’ s tough on Zoom , ” Fersko said .
“ Normally , in a room , you feel the vibe.
” Abrams brought her hands up to either side of her mask and mimed a smile .
“ Can we take a selfie together ?
” she asked .
A few blocks south , Fersko counselled a congregant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Jerry Arbittier , who had neatly parted gray hair , sat in an armchair in his lobby .
His family has belonged to the temple since 1964 , but for a brief interlude with a charismatic rabbi uptown .
“ I go to services to relax , to get away , ” he said .
“ It ’ s like a meditation .
Sitting in front of a computer screen , when I ’ ve already been in front of one all day , doesn ’ t really do it.
” Fersko @ @ @ @ @ @ @ service en plein air .
“ Maybe , ” he said .
She eyed a leafy atrium through the lobby .
Later , on the street : “ Nice outdoor space .
I have to wonder , is that the scene of a future minyan ?
” As she headed west , a woman with a couple of shopping bags sized her up : “ Shabbat shalom !
” “ Good Shabbos !
” Fersko replied .
“ It ’ s so delightful to see people out and about , but it also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have lost loved ones .
“ As a rabbi , I ’ m around a lot of illness and death , ” Fersko said .
As she made her way into Chelsea , the tallis came off .
“ I ’ m shvitzing , ” she said .
Across the street , a woman wearing a subway-map-patterned mask beckoned .
“ O.K.
, we ’ re jaywalking.
” Emily Hacker and Anne Keating stood under a tree .
They had spent the bulk of lockdown with their daughter , Olivia , who recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ She took the Amtrak , ” Hacker said .
“ It worried me .
She texted , ‘ I wiped the seat , I washed my hands.
’ But still .
.
.
” “ We ’ d love for you to meet her on FaceTime , ” Keating said .
Hacker held up her cell phone to Fersko .
At her last stop , Fersko and a family of five fanned out in a parking space .
The kids ’ school years had been cut short in the spring .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are stage managers in the technical-theatre program at LaGuardia High School .
“ We were actually in rehearsal when the order came down to close theatres seating more than five hundred , ” Rachel said .
“ So that was super sad.
” It began to rain , and the group shuffled into their building .
The kids ’ mother gestured at the lobby ’ s seating area , which had been sealed off with caution tape , like a crime scene .
“ We have a lot of people who would come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and socializing , ” she said .
Fersko nodded .
For now , they stood .
♦

Rabbi Diana Fersko Illustration by João Fazenda
Calamity can lead to clarity. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans who attend religious services at least once a month report that the coronavirus pandemic has bolstered their faith. In May, President Trump encouraged houses of worship to reopen. (He was miffed that governors seemed to be giving preferential treatment to “liquor stores and abortion clinics.”) But the setting—indoors, lots of singing—presents a challenge. Clergy are left to minimize the risks. At the Village Temple, on Twelfth Street, the doors remain, for the most part, closed. Its new rabbi, Diana Fersko, must lead the congregants, remotely, through catastrophe, and she must also figure out how to meet them. (Like medical residents, new rabbis start work on July 1st.) In her first sermon, delivered over Zoom, Fersko recited some lines from the Torah about God seeing Adam in the Garden of Eden and concluding, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
“An emotional switch went off, and I knew I needed to be aggressive,” Fersko said. She conceived of a neighborhood amble, the Shabbat Walk, with stops on stoops and in lobbies, to get to know her flock. On a recent Saturday, Fersko, wearing a tallis and a leopard-print mask, hit the streets. She squinted at a list of addresses. “There’s a temple member who was actually born during the Spanish flu of 1918. Can you imagine? Kind woman and a great Jew.” On lower Fifth Avenue, Mimi Abrams stepped out from under an awning and waved. “Our first stop,” Fersko said.
“I wish I could give you a hug,” Abrams said. “Your last two sermons have blown us away.”
“It’s tough on Zoom,” Fersko said. “Normally, in a room, you feel the vibe.” Abrams brought her hands up to either side of her mask and mimed a smile. “Can we take a selfie together?” she asked.
A few blocks south, Fersko counselled a congregant who had so far resisted Zoom services. Jerry Arbittier, who had neatly parted gray hair, sat in an armchair in his lobby. His family has belonged to the temple since 1964, but for a brief interlude with a charismatic rabbi uptown. “I go to services to relax, to get away,” he said. “It’s like a meditation. Sitting in front of a computer screen, when I’ve already been in front of one all day, doesn’t really do it.”
Fersko asked whether he’d attend a service en plein air. “Maybe,” he said. She eyed a leafy atrium through the lobby. Later, on the street: “Nice outdoor space. I have to wonder, is that the scene of a future minyan?” As she headed west, a woman with a couple of shopping bags sized her up: “Shabbat shalom!”
“Good Shabbos!” Fersko replied. “It’s so delightful to see people out and about, but it also drives home the sadness.” Many congregants have lost loved ones. “As a rabbi, I’m around a lot of illness and death,” Fersko said.
As she made her way into Chelsea, the tallis came off. “I’m shvitzing,” she said. Across the street, a woman wearing a subway-map-patterned mask beckoned. “O.K., we’re jaywalking.”
Emily Hacker and Anne Keating stood under a tree. They had spent the bulk of lockdown with their daughter, Olivia, who recently returned to her home in Philadelphia. “She took the Amtrak,” Hacker said. “It worried me. She texted, ‘I wiped the seat, I washed my hands.’ But still . . .”
“We’d love for you to meet her on FaceTime,” Keating said. Hacker held up her cell phone to Fersko.
At her last stop, Fersko and a family of five fanned out in a parking space. The kids’ school years had been cut short in the spring. The two eldest, Rachel and Marc, are stage managers in the technical-theatre program at LaGuardia High School. “We were actually in rehearsal when the order came down to close theatres seating more than five hundred,” Rachel said. “So that was super sad.”
It began to rain, and the group shuffled into their building. The kids’ mother gestured at the lobby’s seating area, which had been sealed off with caution tape, like a crime scene. “We have a lot of people who would come down and spend the whole day sitting and socializing,” she said. Fersko nodded. For now, they stood. ♦


newyorker--2020-09-21--The L.A. Philharmonic’s Emotional Return to an Empty Hollywood Bowl

At nine-thirty on the morning of August 1st , thirty-eight members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic gathered onstage at the Hollywood Bowl , in the Hollywood Hills , to play the final movement of Maurice Ravel ’ s “ Mother Goose ” Suite .
It was the first time that an appreciable number of L.A. Phil musicians had played together since the covid-19 lockdown began , in mid-March , and elaborate preparations were necessary to insure safe conditions .
All performers and staff were tested beforehand , and their temperatures were taken upon entrance to the Bowl .
Socially distanced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backstage marked one-way lanes .
Members of the wind and the brass sections , who can not wear masks as they play , sat behind custom-built three-sided Plexiglas enclosures .
Musicians were placed much farther apart than usual .
They would have to find new ways of following one another once the performance unfolded .
After this low-key frenzy came the relatively normal moment when Gustavo Dudamel , the orchestra ’ s music and artistic director , gave the downbeat for the first bar of the Ravel : pianissimo C major in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” or “ Slow and serious.
” Later , I asked several of the musicians what they had felt .
Carolyn Hove , the orchestra ’ s veteran English-horn player , told me , “ I wasn ’ t the only one who teared up at that first chord—an incredible relief of being able to make music again with my colleagues.
” Ben Hong , the associate principal cellist , said , “ There was something so incredibly poignant about playing that piece , in that moment .
Looking out and seeing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the audience , it was just for us .
It was maybe the purest musical experience I ’ ve had in the Bowl , or anywhere.
” Dudamel said , “ That first chord—we were in tears .
The music was very tender , but there was also such a power in it—proof that we as a group of human beings could move forward.
” The L.A. Phil wasn ’ t performing solely for its own benefit , though .
The orchestra is launching a series of nine online videos , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weekly on September 25th .
The project is described as a “ collection of concert films and interviews , essays , and artwork , ” interspersing orchestra outings with sessions by the jazz artist Kamasi Washington , the singer Andra Day , and the band Chicano Batman .
The repertory includes Beethoven ’ s Seventh Symphony , Gershwin ’ s “ Rhapsody in Blue , ” the Adagietto from Mahler ’ s Fifth Symphony , and recent pieces by Thomas Adès , Gabriela Ortiz , and Jessie Montgomery .
All performances in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days in early August .
I observed two days of the sessions and felt my own rush of emotion at seeing an orchestra in person for the first time since early March .
I ’ d watched dozens of estimable performances online , but it was another matter to be in the presence of live musicians .
The first piece I heard was Adès ’ s “ Dawn , ” a freshly composed pandemic-era score , subtitled “ Chacony for Orchestra at Any Distance.
” Free of Adès ’ s customary harmonic and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , wistful , gently swaying miniature , its slow triple meter recalling Satie ’ s “ Gymnopédies.
” The physical warmth of the sound , resonating in the Bowl ’ s amphitheatre , was what I had been missing in months of listening to broadcasts and Webcasts .
Adès ’ s music blended into the morning light , swelling to brief brilliance and then flickering into silence .
Since the pandemic struck these shores , the situation for American classical music , as for the rest of the performing arts , has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and opera houses have been almost completely inactive throughout the spring and summer .
Some of them have effectively given up the idea of a fall 2020 or a spring 2021 season .
How many institutions will be able to return to what they were—or return at all—is an open question .
Feelings of frustration and despair are heightened when musicians look across the ocean to Europe , where both outdoor and indoor performances have resumed .
The Salzburg Festival succeeded in putting on a month of concerts and opera , including a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Elektra.
” Hove , who is in her thirty-third season with the L.A. Phil , told me , “ What hurts so much is that it didn ’ t have to be like this .
We could have nipped it in the bud , and we could all be going back to work in October .
But , because the handling of this at the federal level has been so catastrophic , this is where we are .
And what ’ s so unsettling , so very unsettling , is we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end .
I think especially about the younger people , the freelance musicians , the dancers , the singers .
.
.
” Her voice trailed off .
“ It ’ s a bit scary .
It ’ s a lot scary.
” Performing-arts institutions faced enormous financial setbacks from the moment the shutdown began .
The L.A. Phil faced a bigger problem than most , being more dependent on ticket revenue than many ensembles its size .
Ordinarily , this is a sign of the orchestra ’ s robust health—it relies less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic the abrupt end of performances created a deficit that grew by the day .
With the cancellation first of the spring season and then of the lucrative summer Bowl season , the orchestra was facing a shortfall of more than eighty million dollars .
Many employees were laid off or furloughed ; others received pay cuts ; musicians ’ salaries were reduced to sixty-five per cent of minimum scale .
During the spring and the summer , I checked in several times with Chad Smith , who had become the C.E.O @ @ @ @ @ @ @ October .
A Pennsylvania native who trained as an opera singer , Smith has been with the orchestra almost continuously since 2002 , when , at the age of thirty , he arrived to work on its new-music series and on classical programming at the Bowl .
He played a decisive role in establishing the L.A. Phil ’ s reputation as one of the world ’ s most adventurous major orchestras—arguably , the boldest of all .
“ This isn ’ t how I envisioned my first year going , ” Smith told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during a walk in the area of Lake Hollywood .
“ We had all these big plans , but right now it ’ s just a question of keeping our heads above water .
Everything we ’ re doing , from morning until night , is just about figuring out a plan on the financial front—above all , a plan for our musicians.
” By early summer , an emergency budget was in place , allowing Smith and his staff to begin thinking about concerts again .
At first , they thought that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a socially distanced audience , but an acceleration of the pandemic in Los Angeles County in June and July ruled that out .
The events would have to be virtual , and Smith wanted to find a fresh approach to the format .
“ Online is its own medium , and we have to adapt to it , ” he said .
“ It can ’ t be a few fixed cameras and closeups for solos .
We have to give a sense of our mission as an orchestra .
With so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why this music , now ?
” When the lockdown began , the L.A. Phil had just completed a survey of the symphonies of Charles Ives—Deutsche Grammophon recently released a digital album of those concerts—and was in the middle of an ambitious festival , Power to the People !
, emphasizing African-American music and themes of musical activism .
One “ SOUND/STAGE ” program will have the same title , and it will reprise Jessie Montgomery ’ s “ Banner , ” a skeptical musical fantasia on the national anthem .
Orchestras have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wake of Black Lives Matter protests ; the L.A. Phil has less ground to make up in that regard .
It also has the advantage of a conductor who speaks to a wide audience with unusual urgency .
Dudamel stayed in Los Angeles throughout the early months of the pandemic .
The conductor who first thrilled audiences with his boyish energy fifteen years ago is now a bit gray around the temples ; from certain angles , he is almost statesmanlike .
He has undergone upheavals political and personal .
In 2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Venezuela effectively broke off his relationship with his native land .
Nonetheless , he remains ebullient , and in rehearsal he seemed to be releasing pent-up conductorial energy , peppering his remarks with lively metaphors and inside jokes .
“ O.K.
, good , we all finished pretty much at the same time , ” he told the players , who responded with laughter .
In quest of more characterful phrasing in “ Rhapsody in Blue , ” he said , “ It needs more cigar.
” Looking out at the scattered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he asked , “ Is everyone comfortable ?
Do you have your wine and popcorn ?
”

At nine-thirty on the morning of August 1st, thirty-eight members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic gathered onstage at the Hollywood Bowl, in the Hollywood Hills, to play the final movement of Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite. It was the first time that an appreciable number of L.A. Phil musicians had played together since the covid-19 lockdown began, in mid-March, and elaborate preparations were necessary to insure safe conditions. All performers and staff were tested beforehand, and their temperatures were taken upon entrance to the Bowl. Socially distanced changing areas had been organized. Signs backstage marked one-way lanes. Members of the wind and the brass sections, who cannot wear masks as they play, sat behind custom-built three-sided Plexiglas enclosures. Musicians were placed much farther apart than usual. They would have to find new ways of following one another once the performance unfolded.
After this low-key frenzy came the relatively normal moment when Gustavo Dudamel, the orchestra’s music and artistic director, gave the downbeat for the first bar of the Ravel: pianissimo C major in the strings, marked “Lent et grave,” or “Slow and serious.” Later, I asked several of the musicians what they had felt. Carolyn Hove, the orchestra’s veteran English-horn player, told me, “I wasn’t the only one who teared up at that first chord—an incredible relief of being able to make music again with my colleagues.” Ben Hong, the associate principal cellist, said, “There was something so incredibly poignant about playing that piece, in that moment. Looking out and seeing nobody in the Bowl—it wasn’t for the audience, it was just for us. It was maybe the purest musical experience I’ve had in the Bowl, or anywhere.” Dudamel said, “That first chord—we were in tears. The music was very tender, but there was also such a power in it—proof that we as a group of human beings could move forward.”
The L.A. Phil wasn’t performing solely for its own benefit, though. The orchestra is launching a series of nine online videos, “SOUND/STAGE,” which will begin airing weekly on September 25th. The project is described as a “collection of concert films and interviews, essays, and artwork,” interspersing orchestra outings with sessions by the jazz artist Kamasi Washington, the singer Andra Day, and the band Chicano Batman. The repertory includes Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and recent pieces by Thomas Adès, Gabriela Ortiz, and Jessie Montgomery. All performances in the series were rehearsed and filmed over five days in early August.
I observed two days of the sessions and felt my own rush of emotion at seeing an orchestra in person for the first time since early March. I’d watched dozens of estimable performances online, but it was another matter to be in the presence of live musicians. The first piece I heard was Adès’s “Dawn,” a freshly composed pandemic-era score, subtitled “Chacony for Orchestra at Any Distance.” Free of Adès’s customary harmonic and rhythmic complexities, it is an airy, wistful, gently swaying miniature, its slow triple meter recalling Satie’s “Gymnopédies.” The physical warmth of the sound, resonating in the Bowl’s amphitheatre, was what I had been missing in months of listening to broadcasts and Webcasts. Adès’s music blended into the morning light, swelling to brief brilliance and then flickering into silence.
Since the pandemic struck these shores, the situation for American classical music, as for the rest of the performing arts, has been one long, deepening agony. Orchestras and opera houses have been almost completely inactive throughout the spring and summer. Some of them have effectively given up the idea of a fall 2020 or a spring 2021 season. How many institutions will be able to return to what they were—or return at all—is an open question. Feelings of frustration and despair are heightened when musicians look across the ocean to Europe, where both outdoor and indoor performances have resumed. The Salzburg Festival succeeded in putting on a month of concerts and opera, including a production of Richard Strauss’s gargantuan “Elektra.”
Hove, who is in her thirty-third season with the L.A. Phil, told me, “What hurts so much is that it didn’t have to be like this. We could have nipped it in the bud, and we could all be going back to work in October. But, because the handling of this at the federal level has been so catastrophic, this is where we are. And what’s so unsettling, so very unsettling, is we have no idea when it is going to end. I think especially about the younger people, the freelance musicians, the dancers, the singers . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It’s a bit scary. It’s a lot scary.”
Performing-arts institutions faced enormous financial setbacks from the moment the shutdown began. The L.A. Phil faced a bigger problem than most, being more dependent on ticket revenue than many ensembles its size. Ordinarily, this is a sign of the orchestra’s robust health—it relies less on the largesse of big donors—but during the pandemic the abrupt end of performances created a deficit that grew by the day. With the cancellation first of the spring season and then of the lucrative summer Bowl season, the orchestra was facing a shortfall of more than eighty million dollars. Many employees were laid off or furloughed; others received pay cuts; musicians’ salaries were reduced to sixty-five per cent of minimum scale.
During the spring and the summer, I checked in several times with Chad Smith, who had become the C.E.O. of the L.A. Phil only last October. A Pennsylvania native who trained as an opera singer, Smith has been with the orchestra almost continuously since 2002, when, at the age of thirty, he arrived to work on its new-music series and on classical programming at the Bowl. He played a decisive role in establishing the L.A. Phil’s reputation as one of the world’s most adventurous major orchestras—arguably, the boldest of all. “This isn’t how I envisioned my first year going,” Smith told me, ruefully, in May, during a walk in the area of Lake Hollywood. “We had all these big plans, but right now it’s just a question of keeping our heads above water. Everything we’re doing, from morning until night, is just about figuring out a plan on the financial front—above all, a plan for our musicians.”
By early summer, an emergency budget was in place, allowing Smith and his staff to begin thinking about concerts again. At first, they thought that the orchestra could return to the Bowl with a socially distanced audience, but an acceleration of the pandemic in Los Angeles County in June and July ruled that out. The events would have to be virtual, and Smith wanted to find a fresh approach to the format. “Online is its own medium, and we have to adapt to it,” he said. “It can’t be a few fixed cameras and closeups for solos. We have to give a sense of our mission as an orchestra. With so much out there to be consumed, why this music, now?”
Cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
When the lockdown began, the L.A. Phil had just completed a survey of the symphonies of Charles Ives—Deutsche Grammophon recently released a digital album of those concerts—and was in the middle of an ambitious festival, Power to the People!, emphasizing African-American music and themes of musical activism. One “SOUND/STAGE” program will have the same title, and it will reprise Jessie Montgomery’s “Banner,” a skeptical musical fantasia on the national anthem. Orchestras have been scrambling to diversify their programming in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests; the L.A. Phil has less ground to make up in that regard. It also has the advantage of a conductor who speaks to a wide audience with unusual urgency.
Dudamel stayed in Los Angeles throughout the early months of the pandemic. The conductor who first thrilled audiences with his boyish energy fifteen years ago is now a bit gray around the temples; from certain angles, he is almost statesmanlike. He has undergone upheavals political and personal. In 2017, his criticism of the Maduro regime in Venezuela effectively broke off his relationship with his native land. Nonetheless, he remains ebullient, and in rehearsal he seemed to be releasing pent-up conductorial energy, peppering his remarks with lively metaphors and inside jokes. “O.K., good, we all finished pretty much at the same time,” he told the players, who responded with laughter. In quest of more characterful phrasing in “Rhapsody in Blue,” he said, “It needs more cigar.” Looking out at the scattered technicians and staff in the Bowl, he asked, “Is everyone comfortable? Do you have your wine and popcorn?”
In Dudamel’s dressing room, he talked about the orchestra’s predicament and promise. “Now is the time to experiment, and there is no choice but to experiment,” he said. “We have to cross a lot of bridges to arrive at normality. And I wish that we do not arrive to the previous normality. My wish is that we arrive to a new normality, where the things that we do make more sense to the community.” He pointed out that although the orchestra had been publicly dormant for several months, its musicians had been active in teaching and mentoring members of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, which is modelled on El Sistema, the youth-orchestra system in Venezuela where Dudamel got his start as a conducting prodigy.
“I think—no, I know—that the orchestra will come back from this stronger and better than before,” he told me. “They have learned a new way to play, spread out like this onstage, listening harder to one another. Once we get back together, sitting close again, there will be an incredible new energy. I am sure of this, I can already hear it.”
The L.A. Phil has released two previews of its “SOUND/STAGE” series, including the finale of “Mother Goose.” The videos, directed by James Lees and Charlie Buhler, of the Los Angeles production company Doomsday Entertainment, have a great deal more motion than one is accustomed to with classical-music performances. Camera operators slink around onstage and capture tight closeups of the players. Drones deliver vertiginous overhead perspectives and wide-angle shots with downtown Los Angeles in the background.
At times, the filming proved distracting for the players. Carolyn Hove told me that she was worried that a camera operator might trip and fall onto one of her colleagues. For her, this added yet another challenge to the peculiarity of playing in a spread-out formation, behind a plastic shield. “My sound was just bouncing back at me,” Hove said. “I couldn’t really hear much. I had to trust in the fact that Gustavo looked pretty pleased.” Ben Hong commented that it felt more like playing in a string quartet: “When you can hear only yourself and the people right around you, you take more responsibility that each note is well placed and well played. When you’re in a big section, there’s strength in numbers, and you can hide in that. This time, I felt this isolation onstage, and that’s what we’re all going through—the isolation of this time.”
Strikingly, the videos don’t try to hide the strangeness of the moment. A palpable melancholy hangs over the sight of the musicians playing inside an empty amphitheatre—an atmosphere that all the players I talked to commented on. The violinist Bing Wang, who is the associate concertmaster, told me, “Just driving to the Bowl that first day, with no traffic in Hollywood, and seeing the place so deserted—it was very sad, very emotional.” The videos somehow register the orchestra’s yearning to be reunited with its audience—a perhaps subliminal signal for viewers to do what they can to support the institution in a period of crisis.
Each of the episodes doubles as a kind of digital magazine, and comes with interviews and additional materials. In an episode titled “Finales,” Dudamel converses with the Mexican film director Alejandro Iñárritu. Sitting alone in the seats at the Bowl, speaking in Spanish, they talk about the nature of endings, and Dudamel asks whether the director knows in advance how a film he’s making will end. Iñárritu answers that he has a sense of purpose but not a precise destination in mind. Otherwise, he says, “instead of being a traveller, you become a tourist, you know?”
Dudamel, for his part, muses on “Mother Goose.” Ravel wrote it for four-hand piano, finishing it in 1910, and when he orchestrated it, a year later, the finale took on new poignancy and depth. “One of the crescendos is one of the most emotional crescendos in the history of music,” Dudamel says. “Ravel didn’t perhaps know where he was headed. He had the seed there, but he didn’t know what that music would become.” The camera then follows the conductor as he walks down a hallway and onto the stage, into a strange new world. ♦


newyorker--2020-09-21--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

The Erratics , by Vicki Laveau-Harvie ( Knopf ) .
This atmospheric memoir finds the author returning home to Alberta , Canada , to help her sister manage their aging parents .
They must put their lying , manipulative mother in an institution , in order to excise her from the life of their vulnerable , enabling father .
The mother is the book ’ s hollow center ; a compassionless parent and a compulsive scammer , she invents family members and then kills them off for sympathy .
Laveau-Harvie does not dig much into the reasons for this cruelty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finding that her early years are “ like the blank bit that airplanes routinely plummet through and recover from.
” The result—the rare memoir unobsessed with memories—is sometimes infuriating but always enthralling .
Deep Delta Justice , by Matthew Van Meter ( Little , Brown ) .
In 1966 , as school integration roiled the South , the mother of Gary Duncan , a nineteen-year-old African-American in Plaquemines Parish , Louisiana , told him , “ Trouble is easy to get into but hard to get out of.
” This history revisits the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ battery , after he touched a white boy ’ s arm while intervening in a fight .
The case was driven by a cigar-chomping , Panama-hat-wearing local politician , “ the most notorious racist in the state ” ; with the help of a Columbia-educated civil-rights lawyer , it went all the way to the Supreme Court , which exonerated Duncan .
Van Meter argues that the case was an exemplar of a “ criminal procedure revolution ” that brought federal standards to state courts .
A Country for Dying , by Abdellah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Emma Ramadan ( Seven Stories ) .
In this novel of intersecting lives , set in Paris , Zahira , a Moroccan immigrant and a sex worker , is haunted by her father ’ s suicide and the disappearance of her aunt .
Her trans friend , born Aziz , longs for the surgery that will allow him to become Zannouba .
The city appears both as a glittering , bourgeois metropolis and as a colonial power that consumes the lives of immigrants .
The characters take comfort in their shared experiences of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must seem , I always feel a certain pleasure with them , ” Zahira says of her clients .
“ I feel like a sister to these Arab and Muslim men.
” Owed , by Joshua Bennett ( Penguin ) .
Themes of praise and debt pervade this rhapsodic , rigorous poetry collection , which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S .
Poems like “ The Book of Mycah ” and “ Owed to the Plastic on Your Grandmother ’ s Couch ” exalt childhood memories , but also bear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s devotionals are demands , too : “ The Next Black National Anthem ” and “ America Will Be , ” along with a series called “ Reparation , ” riff on the idea of compensation for historical and ongoing harm .
Bennett conjures a spirit of kinship that , illuminated by redolent imagery , borders on mythic , and boldly stakes claim to “ some living , future / English , & everyone in it / is immortal .
”

The Erratics, by Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Knopf). This atmospheric memoir finds the author returning home to Alberta, Canada, to help her sister manage their aging parents. They must put their lying, manipulative mother in an institution, in order to excise her from the life of their vulnerable, enabling father. The mother is the book’s hollow center; a compassionless parent and a compulsive scammer, she invents family members and then kills them off for sympathy. Laveau-Harvie does not dig much into the reasons for this cruelty, or into her own backstory, finding that her early years are “like the blank bit that airplanes routinely plummet through and recover from.” The result—the rare memoir unobsessed with memories—is sometimes infuriating but always enthralling.
Deep Delta Justice, by Matthew Van Meter (Little, Brown). In 1966, as school integration roiled the South, the mother of Gary Duncan, a nineteen-year-old African-American in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, told him, “Trouble is easy to get into but hard to get out of.” This history revisits the prosecution of Duncan on a charge of battery, after he touched a white boy’s arm while intervening in a fight. The case was driven by a cigar-chomping, Panama-hat-wearing local politician, “the most notorious racist in the state”; with the help of a Columbia-educated civil-rights lawyer, it went all the way to the Supreme Court, which exonerated Duncan. Van Meter argues that the case was an exemplar of a “criminal procedure revolution” that brought federal standards to state courts.
A Country for Dying, by Abdellah Taïa, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan (Seven Stories). In this novel of intersecting lives, set in Paris, Zahira, a Moroccan immigrant and a sex worker, is haunted by her father’s suicide and the disappearance of her aunt. Her trans friend, born Aziz, longs for the surgery that will allow him to become Zannouba. The city appears both as a glittering, bourgeois metropolis and as a colonial power that consumes the lives of immigrants. The characters take comfort in their shared experiences of alienation. “As strange as it must seem, I always feel a certain pleasure with them,” Zahira says of her clients. “I feel like a sister to these Arab and Muslim men.”
Owed, by Joshua Bennett (Penguin). Themes of praise and debt pervade this rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S. Poems like “The Book of Mycah” and “Owed to the Plastic on Your Grandmother’s Couch” exalt childhood memories, but also bear witness to oppression and loss. Bennett’s devotionals are demands, too: “The Next Black National Anthem” and “America Will Be,” along with a series called “Reparation,” riff on the idea of compensation for historical and ongoing harm. Bennett conjures a spirit of kinship that, illuminated by redolent imagery, borders on mythic, and boldly stakes claim to “some living, future / English, & everyone in it / is immortal.”


newyorker--2020-09-21--The Race to Redesign Sugar

The Race to Redesign Sugar

Every workday , at ten o ’ clock , at noon , and at three in the afternoon , Eran Baniel receives an alert on his phone : the call to taste .
When I joined him on a Monday morning in January , in an office park a few miles east of Tel Aviv , he was sitting at a desk with two white china plates of Petit Beurre cookies in front of him .
The cookies looked identical , but a label identified the plate on Baniel ’ s left as 792 , and the one on his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is our preferred platform , ” Baniel told me , breaking off a corner of a 792 cookie and crunching it thoughtfully .
“ It ’ s fast to make and fast to taste.
” He sipped some water , took a leftover shard of 431 , and invited me to join him as he repeated the process .
The second cookie tasted better somehow—a little more buttery , maybe—but that was not what Baniel was assessing .
The two sets of cookies had been made with the same recipe , except that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sugar .
The question that Baniel had to answer was : which ?
Baniel , a former actor now in his mid-seventies , has expressive eyebrows and a theatrical baritone .
In 2014 , he became the founding C.E.O .
of DouxMatok , an Israeli startup that is now releasing its first product : sugar crystals that have been redesigned to taste sweeter , so that you can put forty per cent fewer of them in a Petit Beurre and it will still taste as sweet as the original .
The company has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that gestures toward the disbelief that greets any suggestion that we might be able to have our cake while eating only half the sugar , too .
At the company ’ s headquarters , every available surface seemed to be laden with Incredo-sweetened treats—cookies , chocolates , gummy bears , jars of cocoa-hazelnut paste .
In blind tastings conducted by a consumer-research company , more than two-thirds of a panel of ordinary consumers said they preferred the Incredo Petit Beurres to the full-sugar ones , and seventy-four per cent indicated that they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nutella than the real thing .
It won ’ t be long before they can : later this year , Incredo will enter commercial production with Südzucker , Europe ’ s biggest sugar producer , as well as with one of the leading refined-sugar distributors in North America , whose identity , I was told , had to remain undisclosed .
Such secrecy is unsurprising in an industry dominated by multinational corporations all spending large amounts on research and development in pursuit of the same goal : to continue selling countless sweet things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sugar .
In 2015 , the World Health Organization recommended that no more than ten per cent—and , ideally , less than five—of an adult ’ s daily energy intake should come from sugar .
In other words , an average adult , with a daily consumption of two thousand calories , ought to consume no more than six teaspoons of sugar a day—the amount found in a generous schmear of Nutella , and quite a bit less than the contents of a can of Coke .
The following year , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to disclose their products ’ added-sugar content on the Nutrition Facts label .
Some governments have gone further .
Many countries , especially in Europe and South America , have begun placing health-warning labels on , and taxing , products containing more than a teaspoon or two of sugar per three ounces—a category that includes many things that people think of as innocuous , such as breakfast cookies , oatmeal muffins , and nutrition bars .
These measures seem to be having an impact .
Recent surveys report that seventy per cent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their diets , and U.K. shoppers rate sugar content as the most important factor in making healthy food choices .
As public opinion turns against sugar , food companies have outdone one another in pledges to cut the quantities of it that appear in their products .
Pepsi has promised that by 2025 at least two-thirds of its drinks will contain a hundred calories or fewer from added sweeteners .
A consortium of candy companies , including Mars Wrigley , Ferrero , and Russell Stover , recently declared that by 2022 half of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two hundred calories per pack .
Nestlé has resolved to use five per cent less added sugar by the end of this year—though , as of January , it still had more than twenty thousand tons of the stuff left to eliminate .
The problem is that sugar isn ’ t easy to replace .
Despite scientists ’ best efforts in the past century , none of the artificial alternatives that have been developed are quite as irresistible , let alone as versatile in the kitchen .
The looming impact of new nutrition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public sentiment , has led to something of a panic in the industry , and a flurry of innovation .
The new race—in which DouxMatok is only one of several competitors—is not to develop a substitute for sugar but to design a better sugar altogether .
DouxMatok ’ s method of restructuring sugar crystals was invented by Baniel ’ s father , Avraham , an industrial chemist .
He patented the technique five years ago , when he was ninety-six ; today , at the age of a hundred and one , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during my visit , Eran sifted through a pile of his father ’ s memorabilia—black-and-white photographs , identification cards , university certificates—to find illustrations for a forthcoming presentation about the company .
Many of the photographs were new to Eran , and , as he tried to place them , the outline of his father ’ s life emerged : a six-year-old Polish boy sent to boarding school in what was then the British Palestine Mandate ; a student at the University of Montpellier ; a promising young scientist , strikingly handsome , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Palestine Regiment so that he could make bombs in the basement of a paint factory near Haifa .
After the war , Avraham helped found the newly formed State of Israel ’ s national mining institute .
In the following decades , he was granted more than two hundred patents , for processes that ranged from turning wood chips into biofuel to synthesizing a key ingredient in carpet fibres .
“ The first chemical technology sold abroad by Israel was from my father , ” Eran told me—a method for producing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fertilizer manufacturers in the nineteen-fifties .
Avraham began thinking about sugar in the late nineties , while he was serving as a consultant to a British food company that was launching a new artificial sweetener in the United States .
Early sales had been slow , and consumer research seemed to show that children , in particular , remained resolute in preferring real sugar .
Avraham was reminded of something he ’ d noticed back in the nineteen-forties , when sugar was strictly rationed .
His neighbor , an elementary-school teacher , had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he might be able to get hold of some cornstarch so that she could make a pudding .
Her theory was that its thick and sticky texture would coat the tongue , helping her students ’ meagre allowance of sugar seem more satisfying .
After helping his neighbor , Avraham made some pudding himself , and found that she was right : up to a point , the more viscous he made it the sweeter it tasted .
Sixty years later , he began to wonder whether the best way of reducing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by reformatting it .
Sucrose is delivered to the taste receptors on our tongues by saliva , as sugar crystals dissolve in our mouth , but only about a fifth of the sugar in a typical bite of cookie actually connects with a receptor .
The rest of it is washed down into our bellies—calories we consume but never taste .
“ Statistically , it goes everywhere you don ’ t want , ” Eran told me .
Searching for a way to tickle the sweet receptors more effectively , Avraham tried blending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he hit on the idea of mixing sugar with tiny grains of silica , a common ingredient in the food industry .
( Silica passes through the human digestive system without being metabolized . )
Each silica grain is less than a fiftieth the diameter of human hair—invisible to the eye and undetectable on the tongue .
DouxMatok ’ s production process embeds them throughout each sugar crystal , like blueberries in a muffin .

Every workday, at ten o’clock, at noon, and at three in the afternoon, Eran Baniel receives an alert on his phone: the call to taste. When I joined him on a Monday morning in January, in an office park a few miles east of Tel Aviv, he was sitting at a desk with two white china plates of Petit Beurre cookies in front of him. The cookies looked identical, but a label identified the plate on Baniel’s left as 792, and the one on his right as 431. “Petit Beurre is our preferred platform,” Baniel told me, breaking off a corner of a 792 cookie and crunching it thoughtfully. “It’s fast to make and fast to taste.” He sipped some water, took a leftover shard of 431, and invited me to join him as he repeated the process. The second cookie tasted better somehow—a little more buttery, maybe—but that was not what Baniel was assessing. The two sets of cookies had been made with the same recipe, except that one batch contained forty per cent less sugar. The question that Baniel had to answer was: which?
Baniel, a former actor now in his mid-seventies, has expressive eyebrows and a theatrical baritone. In 2014, he became the founding C.E.O. of DouxMatok, an Israeli startup that is now releasing its first product: sugar crystals that have been redesigned to taste sweeter, so that you can put forty per cent fewer of them in a Petit Beurre and it will still taste as sweet as the original. The company has branded its sugar Incredo, a name that gestures toward the disbelief that greets any suggestion that we might be able to have our cake while eating only half the sugar, too.
At the company’s headquarters, every available surface seemed to be laden with Incredo-sweetened treats—cookies, chocolates, gummy bears, jars of cocoa-hazelnut paste. In blind tastings conducted by a consumer-research company, more than two-thirds of a panel of ordinary consumers said they preferred the Incredo Petit Beurres to the full-sugar ones, and seventy-four per cent indicated that they’d rather buy the Incredo version of Nutella than the real thing. It won’t be long before they can: later this year, Incredo will enter commercial production with Südzucker, Europe’s biggest sugar producer, as well as with one of the leading refined-sugar distributors in North America, whose identity, I was told, had to remain undisclosed.
Such secrecy is unsurprising in an industry dominated by multinational corporations all spending large amounts on research and development in pursuit of the same goal: to continue selling countless sweet things in a world that is increasingly wary of sugar. In 2015, the World Health Organization recommended that no more than ten per cent—and, ideally, less than five—of an adult’s daily energy intake should come from sugar. In other words, an average adult, with a daily consumption of two thousand calories, ought to consume no more than six teaspoons of sugar a day—the amount found in a generous schmear of Nutella, and quite a bit less than the contents of a can of Coke. The following year, the Obama Administration announced new rules requiring companies to disclose their products’ added-sugar content on the Nutrition Facts label. Some governments have gone further. Many countries, especially in Europe and South America, have begun placing health-warning labels on, and taxing, products containing more than a teaspoon or two of sugar per three ounces—a category that includes many things that people think of as innocuous, such as breakfast cookies, oatmeal muffins, and nutrition bars.
These measures seem to be having an impact. Recent surveys report that seventy per cent of Americans are concerned about the sugar in their diets, and U.K. shoppers rate sugar content as the most important factor in making healthy food choices. As public opinion turns against sugar, food companies have outdone one another in pledges to cut the quantities of it that appear in their products. Pepsi has promised that by 2025 at least two-thirds of its drinks will contain a hundred calories or fewer from added sweeteners. A consortium of candy companies, including Mars Wrigley, Ferrero, and Russell Stover, recently declared that by 2022 half of their single-serving products will contain at most two hundred calories per pack. Nestlé has resolved to use five per cent less added sugar by the end of this year—though, as of January, it still had more than twenty thousand tons of the stuff left to eliminate.
The problem is that sugar isn’t easy to replace. Despite scientists’ best efforts in the past century, none of the artificial alternatives that have been developed are quite as irresistible, let alone as versatile in the kitchen. The looming impact of new nutrition standards, combined with regulatory pressure and public sentiment, has led to something of a panic in the industry, and a flurry of innovation. The new race—in which DouxMatok is only one of several competitors—is not to develop a substitute for sugar but to design a better sugar altogether.
DouxMatok’s method of restructuring sugar crystals was invented by Baniel’s father, Avraham, an industrial chemist. He patented the technique five years ago, when he was ninety-six; today, at the age of a hundred and one, he has finally retired. At one point during my visit, Eran sifted through a pile of his father’s memorabilia—black-and-white photographs, identification cards, university certificates—to find illustrations for a forthcoming presentation about the company. Many of the photographs were new to Eran, and, as he tried to place them, the outline of his father’s life emerged: a six-year-old Polish boy sent to boarding school in what was then the British Palestine Mandate; a student at the University of Montpellier; a promising young scientist, strikingly handsome, exempted from serving in the British Army’s Palestine Regiment so that he could make bombs in the basement of a paint factory near Haifa.
After the war, Avraham helped found the newly formed State of Israel’s national mining institute. In the following decades, he was granted more than two hundred patents, for processes that ranged from turning wood chips into biofuel to synthesizing a key ingredient in carpet fibres. “The first chemical technology sold abroad by Israel was from my father,” Eran told me—a method for producing potassium nitrate that was licensed to Japanese fertilizer manufacturers in the nineteen-fifties.
Avraham began thinking about sugar in the late nineties, while he was serving as a consultant to a British food company that was launching a new artificial sweetener in the United States. Early sales had been slow, and consumer research seemed to show that children, in particular, remained resolute in preferring real sugar. Avraham was reminded of something he’d noticed back in the nineteen-forties, when sugar was strictly rationed. His neighbor, an elementary-school teacher, had asked him whether, as a chemist, he might be able to get hold of some cornstarch so that she could make a pudding. Her theory was that its thick and sticky texture would coat the tongue, helping her students’ meagre allowance of sugar seem more satisfying.
After helping his neighbor, Avraham made some pudding himself, and found that she was right: up to a point, the more viscous he made it the sweeter it tasted. Sixty years later, he began to wonder whether the best way of reducing sugar was not by replacing it but by reformatting it. Sucrose is delivered to the taste receptors on our tongues by saliva, as sugar crystals dissolve in our mouth, but only about a fifth of the sugar in a typical bite of cookie actually connects with a receptor. The rest of it is washed down into our bellies—calories we consume but never taste. “Statistically, it goes everywhere you don’t want,” Eran told me.
“Whose hair did I just find on your jacket?” Cartoon by Justin Sheen Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Searching for a way to tickle the sweet receptors more effectively, Avraham tried blending pure sucrose with various carriers. Eventually, he hit on the idea of mixing sugar with tiny grains of silica, a common ingredient in the food industry. (Silica passes through the human digestive system without being metabolized.) Each silica grain is less than a fiftieth the diameter of human hair—invisible to the eye and undetectable on the tongue. DouxMatok’s production process embeds them throughout each sugar crystal, like blueberries in a muffin.
Even though the resulting crystal is ninety-nine per cent sugar, the addition of silica has two outsized effects: the bond between the silica and the sugar comes apart in the mouth, exposing a vastly expanded surface area of sucrose to the liquefying powers of saliva; and the sucrose immediately surrounding each silica grain changes form. The atoms in a sucrose molecule are usually stacked in a well-ordered lattice, but when this structure becomes what scientists call “amorphous,” its atoms frozen in random chaos, it dissolves on the tongue much more quickly. Incredo’s exponentially more soluble structure rapidly saturates your taste buds, delivering an intense hit of sweetness. The best analogy is cotton candy: melting sugar into an amorphous state and spinning it into a tangle of fine strands produces a confection that seems much more cloying than chocolate or soda, despite containing a fraction of the sugar.
Once Avraham had a prototype, he enlisted Eran, who is an entrepreneur rather than a scientist. (He started out in show business, producing theatre collaborations between Israelis and Palestinians, and then moved on to urban lighting projects, including illuminating the walls of the old city of Jerusalem.) They secured patents on the technology, consulted with venture capitalists and major food companies, and, in 2014, founded DouxMatok. The name means “double sweet”—or, at least, it does if you know that matok means “sweet” in Hebrew and that doux, the French for “sweet,” sounds like the Hebrew du, which means “double.”
Until the late eighteenth century, when sugar production started to become mechanized, most people consumed very little of what nutritionists call “free” or “added” sugars—sweeteners other than, say, the lactose naturally present in milk and the fructose naturally present in fruit. In 1800, an average American would have lived and died never having encountered a single manufactured candy, let alone the array of sugar-sweetened yogurts, snacks, sauces, dressings, cereals, and drinks that now line supermarket shelves. Today, that average American ingests more than nineteen teaspoons of added sugar every day. Not only does most of that never come into contact with our taste buds; our sweet receptors are also less effective than those for other tastes. Our tongues can detect bitterness at concentrations as low as a few parts per million, but, for a glass of water to taste sweet, we have to add nearly a teaspoon of sugar.
“That makes sense for what the system was designed for,” Robert Margolskee told me. He is a biologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, where he studies the molecular mechanisms of sweet perception. Humans, he explained, evolved in an environment filled with substances that might make us sick or even kill us, and are therefore highly sensitized to unpleasant tastes that may signal danger. But the sweetest thing that early hominids would have been likely to come across was fruit or, occasionally, honey. So although we are now surrounded by cheap, plentiful sources of sweetness, our sugar receptors are still tuned to the level of a ripe banana. “It would be better if our sweet receptors got more sensitive so we would eat less sugar,” Margolskee said. “But that’s going to take another couple hundred thousand years at least.”
It has taken only a few decades for obesity rates to triple in America. In 1960, when national surveys began, fewer than fourteen per cent of adults were obese; today, that figure is forty per cent. Sugar is not entirely to blame for this increase—annual per-capita consumption of cheese, for example, has increased eightfold in the past century, and physical activity has undoubtedly declined. Still, as early as the nineteen-twenties, this mismatch between our saturated sugarscape and our insensitive sweet receptors led doctors and diet gurus to recommend low-calorie sugar replacements. Saccharin, a coal-tar derivative favored by Theodore Roosevelt, who was diabetic, was first marketed as early as the eighteen-eighties; during the past century, it has been joined by a half-dozen competitors, most notably aspartame, which appeared in the nineteen-eighties. (Donald Rumsfeld was in charge of launching it.)
Many of these so-called “non-nutritive sweeteners” have acquired a questionable reputation—frequently perceived as both tasting bad and being bad for you. In 1951, as diet soft drinks and desserts proliferated, the sweetener sodium cyclamate was banned by the Food and Drug Administration, because it caused bladder cancer in rats. Saccharin was later also banned for many years, after some worrying studies were published in the seventies, although the current consensus is that today’s artificial sweeteners are not carcinogenic at the levels at which they’re consumed.


S.O.S.

Hi , my name ’ s Greg .
How can I help you ?
Hi , Greg , my name ’ s Noah .
I ’ m having trouble with my computer .
O.K.
, Noah , let ’ s try this .
Do you see the System Preferences ?
It should be four down from View .
Click on the Apple icon and scroll down to System Preferences .
Do you see something that looks like a pie ?
Here ’ s what I want you to do .
Do you see a chair ?
Is there another chair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ O.K.
?
I want you to look underneath it .
Are you underneath it ?
: ) Let ’ s try this .
Is there a couch ?
Hmm .
.
.
What ’ s in the other direction ?
O.K.
, let ’ s try something else .
Is your System Preferences open ?
Should I get back in my chair ?
See if your S.P .
is opened up on your desktop .
Oh , wait , I just figured that out .
O.K.
, what operating system are you working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you see the wall in front of you ?
Go over to it .
Are you there ?
Yes , just had to come back and get the computer .
Put your hand on the wall .
I ’ m here .
O.K.
, I want you to update your system .
How do I do that ?
Are you able to lick your computer ?
Now , press very hard on the wall .
Something did , yes .
Good .
Here ’ s what you need to do .
Walk in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re inside the wall .
Where are you now ?
There should be a lever .
Yes , let me just pull— Oh , I don ’ t .
.
.
let me see .
.
.
I think actually .
.
.
Yes , there ’ s now a gnome .
Do not ask him to take you to the cyclops .
Oh , sorry , I asked him .
What did he say ?
!
In the meantime , scroll over to your Apple menu .
You with me ?
Are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : ) Hold on , the gnome is saying something .
.
.
O.K.
, do you have Apple Pay ?
He says I must answer a riddle if I want to pass .
O.K.
, what is the riddle ?
“ What has four suns but only one moon ?
” Do you know the answer to the riddle ?
Is it an anagram ?
He ’ s cursing and waving a scythe at me .
O.K.
, I gave him my watch , which has calmed him down momentarily .
Do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I ’ m trying to talk him down .
Hit him with your computer .
HIT HIM WITH YOUR COMPUTER .
He ’ s stunned , but not for long , I fear .
Go back to the menu bar .
Do you see a skull icon ?
He ’ s coming at me with the scythe !
O.K.
, on your right , do you see a chest ?
Next to the human skeleton , yes .
Do you see a broadsword ?
Kill the gnome with it .
Can you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Are you sure the gnome is dead ?
Because they ’ re tricksters and sometimes they play dead in order to surprise attack you at a later date .
He ’ s turning very old all of a sudden .
No , this is very bad luck .
And it means the cyclops will be coming posthaste .
I want you to look around the neck of the dead gnome .
O.K.
, I ’ m at the neck of the gnome corpse .
Is there a locket around his neck ?
Let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
O.K.
, good .
I want you to drink that .
Have you shrunk down ?
You can answer me by jumping on the Y key with all of your might .
O.K.
, here ’ s what I want you to do .
Are you able to communicate with your thoughts ?
No , why would I ?
Did you hear that ?
Now , do you see the headphone jack to the right of your computer ?
Go inside .
And hurry—the cyclops can ’ t be too far behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metal and wires and things .
Now , I want you to evaporate into pure energy .
How do I do that ?
You tell me .
: ) Your corporeal body will be gone forever , but your soul and being will live on .
Is your screen still frozen ?
I hope this has been helpful .
Would you mind taking a short survey to let us know how we ’ re doing ?
♦

Hi, my name’s Greg. How can I help you?
Hi, Greg, my name’s Noah. I’m having trouble with my computer.
What’s the trouble, Noah?
My screen is frozen.
O.K., Noah, let’s try this. Do you see the System Preferences?
No, where’s that?
In the toolbar.
Where’s the toolbar?
Under the Elements column.
I see something called View.
It should be four down from View.
O.K.
Found it?
Yes.
Click on the Apple icon and scroll down to System Preferences.
O.K.
Do you see something that looks like a pie?
There’s nothing there.
. . .
Here’s what I want you to do. Do you see a chair?
I’m sitting in one.
. . .
Hello?
Is there another chair?
There’s another chair, yes.
. . .
It has cushions. Is that O.K.?
. . .
Hello?
I want you to look underneath it.
O.K.
Are you underneath it?
I’m under the chair.
Why?
I thought I was supposed to . . .
:) Let’s try this. Is there a couch?
Yes.
Hmm . . . What’s in the other direction?
A window.
O.K., let’s try something else. Is your System Preferences open?
Should I get back in my chair?
The original chair, yes.
O.K., I’m here.
See if your S.P. is opened up on your desktop.
S.P.?
. . .
Oh, wait, I just figured that out.
:)
Just a minute. O.K., it’s open.
. . .
Hello?
O.K., what operating system are you working on?
I don’t know.
O.K., Noah, do you see the wall in front of you?
Yes.
Go over to it.
. . .
Are you there?
Yes, just had to come back and get the computer.
No worries.
I’m at the wall.
Does it open?
The wall?
:)
It doesn’t.
Put your hand on the wall.
O.K. It’s on.
Say “Open sesame.” :)
O.K.
Did a secret portal open?
No.
. . .
Hello?
I’m here. O.K., I want you to update your system.
How do I do that?
Are you able to lick your computer?
I mean, yeah, but . . .
Lick the screen.
Just, like . . . lick?
Yes.
O.K.
. . .
It tastes like—
Citrusy?
No, like a—
Now, press very hard on the wall.
O.K. I’m pressing.
Now, stamp your feet.
O.K.
Did it open?
Something did, yes.
Good. Here’s what you need to do. Walk in.
It’s narrow.
. . .
Hello?
Can you crawl?
I can try.
Let me know when you’re inside the wall.
O.K., I’m inside the wall.
. . .
Hello?
Where are you now?
As I said—
There should be a lever.
Yes, let me just pull—
DON’T PULL THE LEVER!
I already pulled the lever.
:(
Hello?
. . .
Hello?
Is there a gnome?
Oh, I don’t . . . let me see . . . I think actually . . . Yes, there’s now a gnome.
Do not ask him to take you to the cyclops.
Asking . . .
DO NOT.
Oh, sorry, I asked him.
What did he say?!
He’s considering it.
In the meantime, scroll over to your Apple menu.
O.K. . . .
You with me?
Yes.
Are all your updates up to date? :)
Hold on, the gnome is saying something . . .
No worries.
He’s asking for a gold coin.
O.K., do you have Apple Pay?
I don’t.
Scroll over to the—
He says I must answer a riddle if I want to pass.
Just a minute . . . :)
Hello?
. . .
Hello?
O.K., what is the riddle?
“What has four suns but only one moon?”
. . .
Hello?
. . .
He’s getting really angry.
I’m here.
Do you know the answer to the riddle?
Is it an anagram?
I have no idea!
. . .
He’s cursing and waving a scythe at me.
Let’s try this . . .
O.K., I gave him my watch, which has calmed him down momentarily.
Do you see the menu bar?
Uh, yeah . . .
Click on that.
O.K., I’m trying to talk him down.
Hit him with your computer.
Like, just . . . ?
HIT HIM WITH YOUR COMPUTER.
O.K., I did.
Did that work?
He’s stunned, but not for long, I fear.
Go back to the menu bar.
O.K.
Do you see a skull icon?
I do.
Click on that.
He’s coming at me with the scythe!
O.K., on your right, do you see a chest?
Next to the human skeleton, yes.
Open the chest.
O.K.
Do you see a broadsword?
Hold on . . . Yes.
Pick it up.
O.K.
. . .
Hello?
Kill the gnome with it.
Can you hold on a minute?
Of course.
I killed a gnome.
:) Are you sure the gnome is dead? Because they’re tricksters and sometimes they play dead in order to surprise attack you at a later date.
He’s turning very old all of a sudden.
That means he’s dead.
O.K., good, I guess?
No, this is very bad luck.
Oh, shit.
And it means the cyclops will be coming posthaste.
O.K.
I want you to look around the neck of the dead gnome.
Looking . . .
:)
O.K., I’m at the neck of the gnome corpse.
Is there a locket around his neck?
Let me . . . Yes . . .
Open it.
There’s some kind of potion?
O.K., good. I want you to drink that.
Really?
. . .
REALLY?!
Yes.
O.K.
. . .
It tastes horrible.
:(
What now?
. . .
I don’t feel anything.
You will.
I see a spinning ball.
On your screen?
In the air.
It’s working.
It’s working.
Spaghetti legs?
:)
I’ll wait.
c nag u aFegja”vk[[qrjAEI=
Have you shrunk down? You can answer me by jumping on the Y key with all of your might.
O.K., here’s what I want you to do. Are you able to communicate with your thoughts?
No, why would I?
:)
Did you hear that?
Yes.
I’m communicating with my thoughts!
Now, do you see the headphone jack to the right of your computer?
Yes.
Go inside. And hurry—the cyclops can’t be too far behind.
O.K.
There should be a lot of metal and wires and things.
Yes.
Now, I want you to evaporate into pure energy.
How do I do that?
You tell me. :)
O.K.
Your corporeal body will be gone forever, but your soul and being will live on.
Get ready, Greg.
I’m ready, Noah.
It’s happening, Greg.
Is your screen still frozen?
I AM THE SCREEN.
:)
. . .
I hope this has been helpful.
. . .
Would you mind taking a short survey to let us know how we’re doing? ♦