Aurelia Butler

The singer and songwriter, 62, takes her time between releases, making sure she has something to say in her music. She has found inspiration once again.While writing songs for her seventh album, “Workin’ on a World,” Iris DeMent recalled a vivid memory from her childhood, when she was first struck by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.It was the late 1960s, not long before his assassination, and she was 5 or 6 years old. Her very large family — she has 15 siblings — had just moved from Paragould, Ark., out to California. “There were a gazillion people living in our house,” she said from her home in Iowa City, Iowa. “The TV was playing, and I heard this booming voice. This was back when TVs were on the floor, so when I turned, I was suddenly eye to eye with Dr. King.”Even as a child, she understood something important was happening. “I remember looking around our living room and thinking, ‘I hope the grown-ups are listening to this man.’”DeMent name-checks Dr. King on “How Long,” a gospel song from “Workin’ on a World” about the arc of the moral universe taking a long, long time to bend toward justice. On new tracks that sound like old hymns, she sings about the people she considers her heroes: Dr. King, of course, but also John Lewis, Mahalia Jackson and the Chicks. “It dawned on me that a lot of what I’ve done with my songs is, I’ve tried to get what I think needs to be heard out to the grown-ups,” she said. “It’s a blessing to be of use in that way.”DeMent, 62, has been making herself useful for 30 years now. Her philosophical 1992 debut, “Infamous Angel,” which opened with an inquiry into the afterlife and closed with her mother singing “Higher Ground,” showcased her high, keening voice, the kind you’d hear from a church pew rather than the radio. Her lyrics sounded like down-home poetry, plain-spoken in their wisdom, and her music drew from many different styles — country, bluegrass, old-time folk, older-time church music — without falling squarely into any one genre or market.“There’s love and there’s hate. There’s good and there’s evil. Which side are you on? Figure it all out now and go.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesVery quickly, she found herself celebrated by some of her heroes, including Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris and John Prine (who even wrote liner notes for “Infamous Angel”). Just as quickly she found herself overwhelmed by the demands of the music industry. After two follow-up albums — the melancholy “My Life” in 1994 and the scowling “The Way I Should” in 1996 — she very purposefully slowed her schedule down. “I realized that it wasn’t working for me,” she said. “I could succumb to making records that aren’t like who I am and what I was put here to do, or I could pull back and protect my calling.”DeMent learned to take her time, typically pausing for roughly eight years between releases. It makes for a small but weighty catalog: In this century she’s made four albums, only two of which included original songs. “Lifeline,” from 2004, was a collection of old Pentecostal hymns, and for “The Trackless Woods,” from 2015, she set to music poems by the writer Anna Akhmatova — a project inspired by her Russian-born adopted daughter. (That year, her 1992 track “Let the Mystery Be” was used as the Season 2 theme for “The Leftovers.”)During that downtime she occasionally tours, and she’s always writing, always singing around the house and playing music with her husband, the folk musician Greg Brown. And she often wonders if she’ll never release another album, if no more songs will demand to be set loose in the world.“I don’t think it’s because I have a high standard, but I do have a certain standard,” she explained matter-of-factly, as though that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. “It takes me a long time to get 10 or 12 songs that I have faith in. I don’t always know if I’ll make another record, because I don’t know if I’ll find those 10 or 12 songs.”For the new album, DeMent tried something that hadn’t clicked before: co-writing. “I’ve never really written with people,” she said. “John Prine and I tried to write a song together, and we have some great stories to tell but no songs. If I can’t write a song with John, then who can I write a song with? It just wasn’t my thing.” But she had better luck with her stepdaughter, Pieta Brown, a distinguished singer-songwriter in her own right. Together they penned the family remembrance “I Won’t Ask You Why” via text. “I sent her a melody and a title asking, ‘Hey, do you feel anything from this?‌’” DeMent said. “And about one in the morning, she sent me all the things she was feeling. Six verses in all.”Still, despite recording that and other songs in multiple Nashville sessions with the producers Jim Rooney (who worked on her debut) and Richard Bennett (Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris), DeMent didn’t think she had enough faithful songs for an album. Brown finally coaxed DeMent into taking the next steps. “I just asked her if I could listen to those first sessions,” she said in a phone interview. “It was winter, and I spent hours driving around the tundra of Iowa listening to these songs. It seemed like she was communicating something massive and important that everybody should hear. So I called her and texted her, ‘You have a record!’”“Workin’ on a World” is an album about DeMent’s ongoing quest to find her place, about passing the wisdom of the generation that came before her to the one that follows. On the title track she declares, “I get up in the mornin’ knowing I’m privileged to be workin’ on a world I may never see.”“It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that song saved my life,” DeMent said. “Seeing my country embrace what it embraced in 2016 made me wonder truly and utterly how I was going to live. I don’t say that lightly. I just couldn’t comprehend it. But that song steadied me. I was singing it at home at the piano long before I recorded it. I would get up in the morning and sing it to get myself going, to get clarity. It was comforting in the way that even painful truths can carry comfort.”The album is full of what might be called marching songs, which are meant to inspire listeners, to show them the hard road ahead and to spur them along — or, as she put it, “to fortify you in your fight against evil.” That idea is rooted deep in DeMent’s experience growing up in church, and it has inspired all of her albums to some extent, but especially the politically agitated “The Way I Should” and “Lifeline,” a collection of old hymns.“That’s what I like about my Pentecostal upbringing,” DeMent said. “I’ve left most of it behind, but our songs were painting that picture of hell, the fiery furnace that awaited us, all the bad stuff coming down the line. So picture it. Get a really good vivid image. Then figure out what you’re going to do.“Some things aren’t that complicated,” she continued. “There’s love and there’s hate. There’s good and there’s evil. Which side are you on? Figure it all out now and go.” More

On his first visit to the city since being named the New York Philharmonic’s next music director, he eagerly played the role of celebrity conductor.Gustavo Dudamel, groggy after a late-night flight from Los Angeles but still in good spirits, wandered into a roomful of New York Philharmonic employees, board members and donors on Monday afternoon and beamed.“I feel like Mickey Mouse,” he said as people approached to shake hands and pose for photos.It was Dudamel’s first visit to New York since being named the Philharmonic’s next music and artistic director — a post he will assume in 2026, after the conclusion of his tenure at the Los Angeles Philharmonic — and he was already playing the role of celebrity conductor.During his two-hour appearance at David Geffen Hall, the Philharmonic’s home, Dudamel, 42, offered few specifics about his vision, saying he needed more time to get to know the city and the orchestra. But he put on full display some of the qualities that made him the Philharmonic’s choice: charisma, charm and an ability to bring fresh excitement to classical music.He took part, with childlike giddiness, in a contract-signing ceremony. (“Are these presidential pens?” he asked as he prepared to put his name on the five-year document, which he had already signed electronically earlier this month, when the Philharmonic, in a major coup, poached him from Los Angeles.)He took questions from the Philharmonic’s leaders and the news media, weighing in on the future of classical music; his tenure at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which he has led since 2009; and his sports allegiances. (After initially declining to take sides in Mets versus Yankees, he said he was a fan of the Cardenales de Lara of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, his hometown; but also of the Los Angeles Dodgers, because of their Brooklyn heritage; and finally he declared, with an air of hesitation, “I love the Yankees, too.”)Dudamel with Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive. “I always said you would have a ticker-tape parade when you came to New York,” she said.James Estrin/The New York TimesAnd he mingled with the orchestra’s musicians, praising their sound; discussing Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, which they will perform together in May; and thanking them for the gifts they had provided while the orchestra worked to woo him. (He told the cellist Maria Kitsopoulos that her homemade cheesecake was a crucial reason he had decided to move to New York.)Christopher Martin, the orchestra’s principal trumpet, who helped lead the search for a music director, embraced him. Among the orchestra’s players, Dudamel was the favorite from the start.“This is like a dream, seeing you here,” Martin said. “Nobody can believe it.”Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, who hired Dudamel in Los Angeles in 2007, when he was 26, and spent the past year trying to lure him East, led a conversation with Dudamel on the stage of Geffen Hall before he took questions from the media.“I always said you would have a ticker-tape parade when you came to New York,” she said after cheers and whistles erupted in the hall.Dudamel said it was too early to lay out his plans for the orchestra, saying he did not want to impose his vision yet. But he reiterated his interest in creating an education program in New York similar to Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, known as YOLA, which is modeled on El Sistema, the Venezuelan social and artistic movement in which he trained.He quoted the Spanish poet and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in describing the need to do more to connect with residents, particularly in poor neighborhoods: “The freedom of the people is in their culture.” When a reporter suggested he might call the New York version of his youth orchestra “YONY,” Dudamel smiled, saying, “I love the name.”“This is part of my DNA: to work with young people, to work with communities, to bring the orchestra to the community,” he said. “The New York Philharmonic, as the center of the artistic and musical life of this city, has to play a role, a very important role, in education.”Dudamel will be the first Hispanic leader of the Philharmonic in a city where Latinos make up about 29 percent of the population. When a reporter from Telemundo, the Spanish-language network, asked what Dudamel made of this milestone, he said he had not given it much thought. Then he said he hoped his journey from Barquisimeto to some of the world’s most prestigious stages would be an inspiration.“This can be a model so that girls, boys, young people, can have the certainty that dreams can always be achieved,” he said. “You have to work deeply, have a lot of discipline, and a lot of love for what you do, but it can be achieved.”Throughout the day, a recurring topic was Dudamel’s hair, which has been a subject of fascination since he broke onto the international scene in his early 20s.During a reception, a board member, Angela Chen, asked why he kept it shorter now, compared with his early days. “It feels more fresh this way,” he said, moving his fingers through his famous curls, which have started to gray. “One day it will be very white.”Sort of presidential: Dudamel at the ceremonial signing, with the board co-chairs, Peter May, left, and Oscar Tang. Behind him are Gary Ginstling, the orchestra’s executive director, and Deborah Borda.James Estrin/The New York TimesAt the news conference, Dudamel said he was no longer a “young promise” but that he still felt connected to the energy of his youth.“When I was 24 — 23, 24, 25 — it was crazy; I was a wild animal, not only because of my hair,” he said. “I keep that wild animal Gustavo that is always there — only with less hair.”Dudamel at moments seemed to be still processing his coming move to New York, which he has described as one of the most difficult decisions of his life.When he saw the actor and filmmaker Bradley Cooper, a friend, before the news conference, he said being in New York felt surreal.“I don’t know where to place myself right now,” he told Cooper.On his phone, he showed Cooper a photograph he had seen in Geffen Hall of Leonard Bernstein, a storied predecessor at the Philharmonic with whom he is often compared. (Cooper is directing and starring in a coming film about Bernstein.) In the photo, Bernstein is standing in an elevator after a performance with his eyes closed.“That says everything,” Dudamel said. “That exhausted look. He gave everything for music.”At the end of his visit, Borda led Dudamel on a tour of Geffen Hall, which reopened last fall after a $550 million renovation. As Dudamel looked on, she scrolled through a digital display of the Philharmonic’s past music directors — Toscanini, Mahler, Pierre Boulez, Bernstein — comparing the length of their tenures. They stopped by the new restaurant adjacent to the lobby; on the way out, Dudamel, a whisky fan, marveled at a bottle of 18-year-old Macallan.In a brief interview before leaving, Dudamel said he was exhausted but happy to finally celebrate his appointment with the orchestra, which he has conducted 26 times since making his debut in 2007.“I feel that I am blessed in life to have the opportunity to come here — to have the opportunity to extend the family that I have built in Los Angeles,” he said. “There’s a connection between all of this. It’s a big step. It’s beautiful.” More

“SOS” is now the longest-running No. 1 album by a woman since Adele’s “25” seven years ago.SZA, SZA, SZA, SZA, SZA, SZA, SZA, SZA, SZA.For a ninth time, “SOS,” the latest release by the R&B singer-songwriter SZA, is No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, making it the longest-running chart-topper by a woman in seven years — since Adele’s “25” notched 10 weeks at the top in late 2015 and early 2016.In its 10th week out, “SOS” had the equivalent of 93,000 sales in the United States, a figure that includes its 127 million clicks on streaming services, according to the tracking service Luminate. Released in early December, “SOS” has dipped from No. 1 only once, when the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together took the top spot with a blitz of sales of collectible CDs.Since “25,” a handful of other albums have had runs at No. 1 of at least nine weeks, but none were by female artists: the “Encanto” soundtrack (nine); Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” (10); and Drake’s “Views” and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” (13 apiece).And in the time since “25,” the recorded music industry has been through a complete format transformation. When Adele released her album, she declined to make the entire thing available for streaming, and it racked up CD sales figures that seem unthinkable now — five million units sold in its first six weeks alone. (“25” was not available on streaming outlets for its first seven months.) By contrast, virtually all of the consumption of “SOS” has come via streaming; last week, only about 500 copies of the album were sold as a complete package.Also this week, Rihanna’s latest album, “Anti” (2016), rose 42 spots to No. 8 after her performance in the Super Bowl halftime show.The pop-punk-etc. band Paramore opened at No. 2 with its sixth studio album, “This Is Why,” which had the equivalent of 64,000 sales. Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 3.Wallen’s “Dangerous” is No. 4 — its 110th week on the chart and 107th in the Top 10. In the 67-year history of Billboard’s album chart, only two titles have had longer stays in the Top 10: the “My Fair Lady” Broadway cast recording, released in 1956 (173 weeks), and the soundtrack to “The Sound of Music,” from 1965 (109 weeks). In recent weeks, Wallen’s album has passed the “West Side Story” soundtrack (106) and the cast recording of “The Sound of Music” (105).Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is No. 5 in its 41st week on the chart. More

With songs like “Don’t You Just Know It,” “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” and “Sea Cruise,” he put a firm backbeat behind joyful nonsense.Huey “Piano” Smith, whose two-fisted keyboard style and rambunctious songs propelled the sound of New Orleans R&B into the pop Top 10 in the late 1950s, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. He was 89.His daughter Acquelyn Donsereaux confirmed his death.Mr. Smith wrote songs that became cornerstones of New Orleans R&B and rock ’n’ roll perennials, notably “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Sea Cruise.”As a pianist and bandleader, Mr. Smith was known for strong left-hand bass lines, splashy right hand and forceful backbeat. He didn’t take center stage; his band, the Clowns, was fronted by a group of dancing lead vocalists, among them Bobby Marchan, who often performed wearing women’s clothes.Mr. Smith’s lyrics were full of droll wordplay and irresistible nonsense-syllable choruses. “I use slangs and things like that,” he was quoted as saying in John Wirt’s biography, “Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rockin’ Pneumonia Blues” (2014), “When you put the music with words and things together, the songs just make themselves. And after you listen at it, it says something its own self, that you hadn’t planned.”Mr. Smith’s songs have been covered by Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Johnny Rivers, Patti LaBelle, Deep Purple and many others. But he struggled to collect royalties through more than a decade of lawsuits, and in the 1990s he filed for bankruptcy. His song “Sea Cruise” was handed over by his label to a white singer, Frankie Ford, whose voice was overdubbed atop the backing track recorded by Mr. Smith and his band.A publicity photo of Mr. Smith from early in his career. He and his group, the Clowns, had a national hit in 1957 with “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.”Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesHuey Pierce Smith was born on Jan. 26, 1934, in New Orleans, the son of Arthur Smith, a roofer and sugar cane cutter, and Carrie Victoria (Scott) Smith, who worked at a laundry. He taught himself to play boogie-woogie piano, strongly influenced by the New Orleans master Professor Longhair, and by his teens he was performing regularly at the Dew Drop Café, a top Black club in what was still a segregated city. He formed a duo with Eddie Lee Jones, who performed and recorded as Guitar Slim and who gave him the “Piano” moniker. He also backed Lloyd Price and other New Orleans performers onstage.Mr. Smith also became a regular session player at J&M, the recording studio owned by Cosimo Matassa, where the sound of classic New Orleans R&B was forged. His piano opens the Smiley Lewis hit “I Hear You Knocking,” and he was also heard on recordings by Earl King, Little Richard and many others.He formed the Clowns in 1957 and had a nationwide hit that year with “Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” (later versions often rendered it as “Rockin’”), which reached No. 5 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart and No. 52 on the pop chart. A medical-minded follow-up, “Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas and the Sinus Blues,” didn’t fare as well.With his new career as a bandleader thriving, Mr. Smith married Doretha Ford in 1957. They had five children before they divorced in the mid-1960s.Mr. Smith and the Clowns reached the pop Top 10 in 1958 with the wry “Don’t You Just Know It.” The title was a phrase often used by the band’s bus driver, Rudy Ray Moore, who would go on to a career as a bawdy comedian and the star of the “Dolemite” movies.That same year, Mr. Smith recorded “Sea Cruise.” Johnny Vincent, the owner of his label, Ace Records, was a partner in a distribution company, Record Sales Inc., with Johnny Caronna. The day after Mr. Smith recorded the music for “Sea Cruise,” planning to have the Clowns add vocals, Mr. Caronna claimed the song for a teenage singer he was managing, Frank Guzzo, professionally known as Frankie Ford.According to Mr. Wirt’s biography, Mr. Smith was told, “Johnny Vincent agreed that if you can sell a million on this record, Frankie can sell 10 million” — and, he later recalled, “It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that.”Mr. Vincent, who died in 2000, also claimed co-writing credits on many songs Mr. Smith wrote and recorded for Ace, including his hits, although he later relinquished those credits. Mr. Smith moved to Imperial Records as the 1950s ended, but he returned to Ace to record a rollicking holiday album, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” on which he declaimed the title poem over a jaunty horn section.With the British Invasion of the 1960s, guitar-driven rock supplanted piano-centered New Orleans R&B on the pop charts. Mr. Smith continued to record on the Pitter Pat and Instant labels through the late 1960s, under his own name and others, and he had some regional hits. He also wrote and produced songs for other performers, notably Skip Easterling, who had a hit across the South in 1970 with Mr. Smith’s funk reworking of the Muddy Waters standard “Hoochie Coochie Man.”Mr. Smith married Margrette Riley in 1971. She survives him, along with his children Ms. Donsereaux, Sherilyn Smith, Huerilyn Smith, Hugh Smith, Katherine Smith, Tanisha Smith, Tyra Smith and Glenda Bold; his stepson, James L. Riley Jr.; 18 grandchildren; and 47 great-grandchildren.Barely able to make a living from his music in the early 1970s, Mr. Smith turned to other work. He started a gardening business, Smith’s Dependable Gardening Service. He also became a Jehovah’s Witness and gave up drinking and smoking.Meanwhile, the value of his old songs was increasing. In 1972, Johnny Rivers’s remake of “Rocking Pneumonia” reached No. 6 on the pop chart. Dr. John included a medley of Mr. Smith’s songs on his album “Dr. John’s Gumbo,” and Ace Records rereleased Mr. Smith’s songs on compilation albums. Mr. Smith performed occasionally as the 1970s ended. At the New Orleans club Tipitina’s and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1979 and 1981, he reunited with singers from the Clowns’ peak years. At the 1981 festival, his musicians included the Meters’ rhythm section: George Porter on bass and Zigaboo Modeliste on drums.Mr. Smith moved to Baton Rouge in 1980 and stopped performing soon after that. His catalog continued to be heard — in cover versions, on movie soundtracks, in commercials and in reissues — but bad deals deprived him of much of his royalty income.In a series of lawsuits from 1988 to 2000, Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation — a company Mr. Smith had engaged in 1982 to help collect back royalties and then fired in 1984 — demanded and won a 50 percent share of Mr. Smith’s ongoing royalty income from four of his biggest songs, including “Rocking Pneumonia.”Mr. Smith declared bankruptcy in 1997; by then, he had pawned his piano. When full rights to the four songs were sold for $1 million to the publisher Cotillion Music in 2000, Mr. Smith remained entitled to foreign royalties but netted less than $100,000 to escape bankruptcy.The Rhythm & Blues Foundation gave Mr. Smith its $15,000 Pioneer Award in 2000, and he gave his last major performance at the foundation’s gala. He was inaugurated into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 2001.Mac Rebennack, the New Orleans pianist, guitarist and singer who recorded as Dr. John, received vital early songwriting guidance from Mr. Smith, according to Mr. Wirt’s biography. “Anyone who can talk can write a song,” he recalled being told. “So whatever you got to say, play good music and say it. You just put it where you need to say it.”Mr. Smith, Mr. Rebennack said, also advised, “If you don’t have a song that’s got some kind of simple melody people can hum, sing with and roll with, it’s like, what do you got?” More

There was singing, dancing and bell ringing in Central Park for an artist who has lived long past the days when she was often vilified.At 90, Yoko Ono has outlasted her detractors, just as she more or less predicted she would in “Yes, I’m a Witch,” a defiant song she recorded in the 1970s.“I’m not gonna die for you,” Ms. Ono sang. “You might as well face the truth / I’m gonna stick around / For quite a while / Yes, I’m a witch.”To commemorate her 90th birthday on Saturday, more than 50 artists and fans gathered at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park to take part in “Morning Piece for Yoko Ono,” a 1960s-style art happening that doubled as a celebration.Many of those who showed up said they had become aware of Ms. Ono decades ago, around the time when she was newly married to John Lennon and the Beatles were breaking up.“I was a big Beatles fan when I was 10, 11, 12,” said the abstract painter Jean Foos, 69, “and I heard a lot of negative stuff about her. But once I came to New York and heard her music, I loved her.”The artist Jean Foos, right, posed for a photo with a Yoko Ono banner.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesStaring at a black-and-white image of Ms. Ono printed onto a banner that hung from a wire on the bandshell stage, Ms. Foos mentioned “Season of Glass,” the album that Ms. Ono released in 1981, less than six months after Mr. Lennon was murdered.“For years in my studio, I would listen to ‘Season of Glass’ over and over,” Ms. Foos said, “especially while grieving different sad things that happened in my life. I just love her so much.”Carla Saad, a restaurateur who described herself as a “huge Beatles fan,” arrived with her 6-year-old son, Harrison Moscona. “I think Yoko is a wonderful artist,” Ms. Saad, 40, said. “She’s amazing, revolutionary, and I don’t think she’s given enough credit.”Her son, who was named after George Harrison, said, “I want to see Yoko — now!”Ms. Ono, who has not appeared in public in recent years, was not there. In 2019, at the Women’s March in Manhattan, she was photographed in a wheelchair. Two years before that, she mentioned that she was suffering from an illness, without specifying what it was. Representatives for Ms. Ono did not reply to emails seeking comment.Phillip Ward, left, and Jennifer Barton, the organizers of “Morning Piece for Yoko Ono.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe event on Saturday was conceived by the writer and curator Phillip Ward in the spirit of Ms. Ono’s conceptual art projects. He organized it with the public relations executive Jennifer Barton. In social media posts before the event, Mr. Ward and Ms. Barton asked participants to “say something nice about Yoko,” “bring your bells” and “make a wish.”A playlist of 39 tracks, including “Yes, I’m a Witch,” boomed out of the sound system as the celebrants gathered in the sunshine on a 32-degree morning. Around 10:30, the artist and activist Peter Cramer climbed onto the stage and grabbed the microphone, announcing, “I’ve got a song about Yoko. It’s called ‘She Thinks She’s Jackie Onassis.’”He danced and rang hand bells as he sang in a sharp falsetto voice: “Yoko! Oh, no! Oh, no! She thinks she’s Jackie Onassis!” A few people who appeared to be tourists stopped and stared at him. Moments after his brief performance, Mr. Cramer, 66, made it clear that he was a fan.“When I was a teenager,” he said, “I was in love with the Beatles — but I found that her music was much more in your face. I was getting into the whole punk scene, and it seemed a little more appropriate. It was aware of the troubles of the world in a way that appealed to my ear.”Peter Cramer, left, and Pascal Perich rang hand bells in honor of Yoko Ono.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAt a table near the stage, celebrants wrote messages to Ms. Ono on cardboard tags and picked up white carnations and button-size hand mirrors that said “Morning Piece for Yoko Ono” on one side. After the event, Mr. Ward and Ms. Barton delivered a white bag filled with the messages to the service entrance of the Dakota, the grand apartment house overlooking Central Park that has been Ms. Ono’s main residence since 1973.In his birthday message to the artist, Pascal Perich, a 51-year-old photographer, said he wrote “We are all dancing in the stars” in French, his native language. Asked to explain what he meant by that, he said, “It was just the first thing that came to my mind.”“I just love Yoko and Yoko’s work,” Mr. Perich continued. “She’s like the hummingbird that takes the little drop of water to the giant forest fire. And the animal tells him, ‘What you are doing is for nothing.’ And the hummingbird says, ‘No, I am just doing my part.’”The writer and musician Jesse Paris Smith, who is the daughter of the singer, songwriter and author Patti Smith and her late husband, the musician Fred “Sonic” Smith, also wrote a message. “I said, ‘Yoko is a true warrior of hope, peace and love for us all,’” Ms. Smith, 35, said. “When I think of her, I think of these wonderful universal truths. It might seem corny or cheesy, but it’s so deeply needed, and she embodies all of those things.”The artist Jack Waters, 68, said that “Grapefruit,” Ms. Ono’s 1964 collection of instructional poems, was a “seminal piece for me,” despite the fact that he didn’t really understand it when he first came across it as a teenager. “I think Yoko made her biggest impression on Beatles fans, but I grew up in a family where there was a lot of art and culture, so we knew her for her artwork,” he said.A pocket mirror that reads “Morning Piece for Yoko Ono” was given to fans.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesPascal Perich wrote a note to Yoko Ono.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMany of the poems in “Grapefruit” ask readers to imagine different scenarios. In an interview with the BBC two days before his death, Mr. Lennon acknowledged that the book had directly inspired “the lyrics and the concept” of his 1971 ballad “Imagine” and expressed the regret that he had not properly acknowledged his wife’s contribution at the time. In 2017, the credits were formally changed to list Ms. Ono as the song’s co-writer.In recent years, she has gained new fans and greater respect among critics. The shift came partly as a result of “Yes Yoko Ono,” a retrospective that had its debut in 2000 at the Japan Society in New York before it moved to other cities. In The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman wrote that the exhibition revealed Ms. Ono to be “a mischievous, wry conceptual artist with a canny sensibility” who was “way ahead of her time in giving acute visual form to women’s issues.”Another wave of appreciation came with the 2021 release of Peter Jackson’s documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” In his depiction of the group’s rehearsals, recording sessions and rooftop performance in January 1969, Ms. Ono made for a riveting presence.As the author Donald Brackett details in “Yoko Ono: An Artful Life,” a biography published last year, Ms. Ono was once the target of frequent misogynist and racist attacks in British and American publications. “It was horrifying,” Mr. Brackett said in a phone interview, describing the press accounts he came across during his research.John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the 1968 launch of “You Are Here,” their joint art exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery in London.Mirror Syndication International/Mirrorpix, via Getty ImagesMs. Ono stayed the same over the years, unwaveringly fierce in her art and mostly mild in her public statements. Little by little, many of the skeptics came around. “She once said, ‘You change the world by being yourself,’” Mr. Brackett said. “And she has undergone an evolution, maybe even a transformation, both as a pop culture figure and as a figure in the art world.”In March 1965, when the Beatles’ jaunty “Eight Days a Week” was the No. 1 song in the United States, Ms. Ono performed “Cut Piece” at the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. She knelt on the stage, stoic, as audience members one by one cut off her clothing with fabric shears. That performance puzzled some of those who saw it at the time but is now considered groundbreaking. In “Yoko Ono’s Art of Defiance,” an essay published last year in The New Yorker, the cultural historian Louis Menand called “Cut Piece” “a truly great work of art.”Jennifer Barton, left, and Jesse Paris Smith sang Yoko Ono songs into the microphone as part of the 90th birthday celebration.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs a child, Ms. Ono survived the Allied bombings of Tokyo, the city of her birth. That gave her something in common with Mr. Lennon, who was born during a lull in the Germans’ aerial attacks on Liverpool. Perhaps as a result of their common early experience, Ms. Ono and Mr. Lennon repeatedly explored the idea that the inner life is at least as important as the outside world. Mr. Lennon hit on this theme in the Beatles’ songs “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Rain” and “There’s a Place,” and Ms. Ono seems to have made it a part of her art from the very beginning.“I remember, when we were evacuated during the war, my brother was really unhappy and depressed and really hungry, because we did not have very much food,” she said in a 2013 interview. “So I said, ‘OK, let’s make a menu together. What kind of dinner would you like?’ And, he said, ‘Ice cream.’ So I said, ‘Good, let’s imagine our ice-cream dinner.’ And we did, and he started to look happy. So I realized even then that just through imagining, we can be happy. So we had our conceptual dinner, and this is maybe my first piece of art.”Ms. Ono was among a pioneering group of artists who worked out of former factories and warehouses in Lower Manhattan. While living on Chambers Street in 1961, she came up with the conceptual art piece “Painting to Hammer a Nail,” which instructs the viewer to hammer nails into a canvas.The abstract painter Martha Edelheit, 91, was part of that scene. At the celebration on Saturday, she recalled her first encounter with Ms. Ono: “I walked in when she was doing an art exhibit — I think she was hammering nails into a wall.” Ms. Edelheit, who has a solo exhibition at the Eric Firestone Gallery in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan through next month, added, “I’ve always loved what she’s done for the world as an artist.”The artists Ethan Shoshan and Martha Edelheit paid their respects to Ms. Ono on Saturday.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesJim Fouratt, a gay rights activist and nightlife impresario, said he got to know Ms. Ono because of his role in the music world. At the Central Park happening, he recalled a time in the 1980s when she attended a show by the singer-songwriter Diamanda Galás at a club he ran, Danceteria.“Diamanda was never nervous about anybody,” Mr. Fouratt, 81, said. “But that night it took her 15 minutes to get on the stage because Yoko had planted herself right there. When it was over, and Yoko went backstage, all Diamanda could do was throw her arms around her, and she started to cry. It was a beautiful moment — that kind of recognition of a strong woman doing exactly what she wanted to do. That was the sisterhood between those two women.”In his message to Ms. Ono, Mr. Fouratt wrote: “Never look back. The adventure is the future.”The artists and fans in Central Park weren’t the only ones sending best wishes to Ms. Ono. Her son, Sean Ono Lennon, had set up a website, Wish Tree for Yoko Ono, that allowed people to send their messages online. By Monday afternoon, the site had collected more than 8,400 statements from her fans.It was not clear to people at the Saturday event if Ms. Ono was at the Dakota or at another one of her residences. “I don’t know if a lot of people know what’s going on with Yoko right now,” Mr. Fouratt said.Death was the theme of the Yoko Ono exhibition “Ex It,” which was installed last year at the Bank of Lithuania in Kaunas, Lithuania. The show comprised 100 wooden coffins of different sizes. In keeping with most of the artist’s other works, “Ex It” was hopeful: Each coffin had a fruit tree growing out of it.Ms. Edelheit, in the red hat, wrote a message to Ms. Ono at a table near the bandshell.Nina Westervelt for The New York Times More

At 50, the bassist is always focused on the next gig and fresh collaborations. His 18th album as a band leader is due this month.On a Friday night in late January, it was almost showtime at the Village Vanguard, but Christian McBride, the eminent jazz bassist, had not yet arrived.Earlier that evening, he had enthused about the gig — part of a week of sold-out shows with a new quintet led by the pianist Brad Mehldau — in between sips of Sandeman port and puffs of Mac Baren pipe tobacco at the Carnegie Club, a Midtown smoking lounge. “It’s starting to sound like a band,” he said.As the set time approached, he was navigating heavy Times Square traffic in his Lincoln S.U.V., air-drumming along to Bernard Purdie fills on the SiriusXM station Soul Town. Slipping into the venue just a few minutes late, he demonstrated what he’d said earlier, in his smooth rumble of a voice, about not requiring any preshow rituals: “I can show up and hit.”McBride’s assurance now seems like a given. At 50, he boasts one of the most impressive résumés of any jazz musician in his age bracket: eight Grammy wins; hundreds of recording credits alongside names such as Willie Nelson, Paul McCartney, Abbey Lincoln, Queen Latifah and his high school classmate Questlove; and prominent roles such as the host of NPR’s Jazz Night in America and the artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival.He leads a portfolio of groups, including a brassy, hard-swinging big band, the elegant hard-bop quintet Inside Straight and the quartet New Jawn, which is heard on the freewheeling “Prime,” McBride’s 18th album as a leader, out later this month. And among fellow musicians, he’s cultivated a level of intergenerational good will that few other artists, inside or outside jazz, can claim.“Christian is among the cats who are sure about things,” the guitarist Pat Metheny, a collaborator on and off since the early 1990s, wrote in an email. “There isn’t a moment of indecision or waiting around with Christian. He’s on it and aware of everything that is happening and adjusting and allowing for the moment, but always with a vision of the tune, the changes, the time, and most importantly, the spirit of it all.”The drummer Savannah Harris works with McBride in a new, not-yet-named project that the bassist has called his Gen Z band. “There’s a few people of his generation that are key folks in that they both hold the respect of the arts institutions and hold the respect of their peers and the generations beneath them in the streets,” she said, characterizing McBride as one of those “bridge” figures. “And of the people that I’m thinking of,” she continued, “he might have the most traffic on his bridge.”Though he began garnering wide notice in the early to mid-90s, McBride stresses that his ascent was gradual. “Revisionist history says that my career started with a bang,” he said with a laugh. “No, it started with a very slow burn.”His prospects were shaky in the spring of 1990, when, on the cusp of his 18th birthday, he dropped out of the Juilliard School after two semesters, in part to pursue a gig with the vocalist Betty Carter that ended up falling through. He began working with older masters such as the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard but had to contend with the hazing that was then a rite of passage within jazz. He retains numerous stories of humiliations endured when he was first establishing himself on the scene, like the time a veteran saxophonist pop-quizzed him during a jam session, calling out chords from what turned out to be a nonexistent tune.But McBride had a sturdy inner core. Growing up in Philadelphia, he’d often been the target of bullying. “I was always getting teased about my size, my teeth — ’cause I had big teeth — ‘fat boy,’ all that kind of stuff,” he recalled in the kitchen of his Montclair, N.J., home, while Ella Fitzgerald, his 15-year-old beagle and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel mix, snored peacefully in her bed and pregame coverage of that week’s NFC Championship matchup played silently on ESPN. “But the thing that made it bearable was basically my family,” a loving, tight-knit unit centered on his mother, grandparents and uncle.“‘I’m going to be better than you,’” McBride recalled thinking of those who mocked him. “‘I’m going to work hard and I’m going to have good grades and I’m going to get out of school and do something.’ So I think there was a part of me that knew to play the long game.”Once he picked up the electric bass at age 9 — inspired by his father, Lee Smith, a bassist for acts such as the Delfonics and Mongo Santamaria, and encouraged by his great-uncle, Howard Cooper, who worked with avant-garde musicians around town — McBride began treating it as a life’s calling. Soon moving on to the upright, studying classical technique and performing in a local big band, he arrived in New York in 1989 with an unimpeachable work ethic that has never wavered.“Say what you want to,” he said at the Carnegie Club, “you can’t get me on the hours put in.”McBride’s dedication still impresses even his closest collaborators. The drummer Brian Blade has played with him since the early ’90s, notably in a quartet led by the saxophonist Joshua Redman, also including Mehldau, that has reactivated during the past few years. “I still wonder every time we play together — rather, I look in wonder as a witness to Christian’s gift working, and the care and attention which he has obviously given much time to cultivating,” Blade said. “He’s not resting on what he did yesterday; he’s still pushing forward. And in turn, it gives me that same spark and fire.”Early on, McBride was pegged as a so-called Young Lion, a diligent acolyte of time-tested, bebop-derived jazz. But while he established himself through work with esteemed elders like Hubbard, the saxophonist Joe Henderson, the drummer Roy Haynes and the pianist McCoy Tyner, he revealed the breadth of his personal pantheon on his own albums: On “A Family Affair” from 1998, he played as much funky electric bass as woody upright, nodding to an elemental James Brown obsession, while the sprawling “Live at Tonic” from 2006 found him staking out territory somewhere between the Meters, Herbie Hancock’s early-70s Mwandishi band and Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys.New Jawn is one of McBride’s most satisfying bands. Featuring Marcus Strickland on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, Josh Evans on trumpet and Nasheet Waits on drums, it’s a quartet without a chordal instrument that convincingly encompasses elastic post-bop, dirge-like abstraction and strutting funk, sometimes uniting diverse strategies within the same piece. McBride credits Waits, best known for his role in the pianist Jason Moran’s acclaimed, long-running Bandwagon trio, with fueling the quartet’s adventurous spirit.“Sometimes we’ll be swinging really hard,” he said, “and the next thing I know, ohhh, here we go — and then we’re gone.”That love of collaboration has brought him wildly different opportunities. He spoke admiringly of a recent first performance alongside Billie Eilish at a 2022 tribute to the singer Peggy Lee. (“She knew that material like the back of her hand, so I’ve got nothing but big-time, hard-core dap for her.”) And he reflected on the “torturous” but ultimately rewarding task of reconciling the disparate approaches of the saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins from behind the bass when Coleman sat in at Rollins’s 80th birthday concert in 2010.For a musician like McBride, who has seemingly played with everyone by age 50, who’s left?“I have three people left on my bucket list,” he answered without hesitation. “Gladys Knight, Dolly Parton and Mary J. Blige.”“I want to write for them,” he added. “I would want to do a big-band project with each of them.” Then he doubled back to clarify his answer, showing the combination of determination and nonchalance that’s become a trademark of his. “I mean, it kind of wouldn’t matter,” he said. “I want to just play some notes with them.” More