The New Yorker:

The Composer Laureate twins Adeev and Ezra Potash team up with the actor Martin Starr to build the perfect gummy.

By Hannah Goldfield

Earlier this year, the identical twins Adeev and Ezra Potash, who are from Omaha, Nebraska, were named that state’s first-ever Composer Laureates. As adolescents, Adeev (trumpet) and Ezra (trombone) caught the attention of Warren Buffett, who hired them to play at Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings; in high school, they were encouraged to apply to conservatories by Wynton Marsalis, with whom they have since performed. As adults, they’ve recorded and released three albums and written scores for “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” If there’s anything they’re more devoted to than music, it’s candy. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, the brothers, wearing matching cherry-red-and-lime-green eyeglasses, browsed the pick-and-mix bins at Kändi, a Swedish-style sweets shop in Los Angeles. They were joined by the actor Martin Starr, the co-founder of their new candy company, Sweet Stash, and by Ellen Van Dusen, of the cult housewares line Dusen Dusen, who’d designed the brightly colored packaging for their first product: a bag of multi-flavored gummies in the shape of music notes, called Jams, which débuted this month.

“Ez and I don’t like marshmallow candy as much, so we won’t even make it to that side,” Adeev said, gesturing toward the bins farthest from the door. The indifference extended even to Bubs, foamy, marshmallow-adjacent disks from Sweden that surged on TikTok last year, causing a global shortage. “I like the texture of Bubs, for sure, for, like, an intermezzo,” Ezra said. “After you get a couple sour, you want a traditional non-citric sugarcoated item. If you just do sour, sour, sour, the effect—”

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