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      The Artists We Lost in 2022, in Their Words

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      Music innovators who sang of coal country and “Great Balls of Fire.” An actress who made a signature role out of a devilish baker who meets a fiery end. The trailblazing heart of “In the Heat of the Night.”The creative people who died this year include many whose lives helped shape our own — through the art they made, and through the words they said. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their own voices.Sidney Poitier.Sam Falk/The New York Times“Life offered no auditions for the many roles I had to play.”— Sidney Poitier, actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“People in the past have done what we’re trying to do infinitely better. That’s why, for one’s own sanity, to keep one’s own sense of proportion, one must regularly go back to them.”— Peter Brook, director, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Ronnie Spector.Art Zelin/Getty Images“Every song is a little piece of my life.”— Ronnie Spector, singer, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Yuriko.Jack Mitchell/Getty Images“Dance is living. Dance is, for me, it’s survival.”— Yuriko, dancer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Kirstie Alley.Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“The question is, how do you create with what you have?”— Kirstie Alley, actress, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)Carmen Herrera.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“Every painting has been a fight between the painting and me. I tend to win. But you know how many paintings I threw in the garbage?”— Carmen Herrera, artist, born 1915 (Read the obituary.)“I decided that in every scene, you’re naked. If you’re dressed in a parka, what’s the difference if you’re dressed in nothing at all, if you’re exploring yourself?”— William Hurt, actor, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Takeoff.Rich Fury/Getty Images For Global Citizen“You gotta have fun with a song, make somebody laugh. You gotta have character. A hard punchline can make you laugh, but you gotta know how to say it.”— Takeoff, rapper, born 1994 (Read the obituary.)“I love watching people get hit in the crotch. But only if they get back up.”— Bob Saget, comedian and actor, born 1956 (Read the obituary.)Olivia Newton-John.Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA, via Shutterstock“I do like to be alone at times, just to breathe.”— Olivia Newton-John, singer, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Movies are like clouds that sit over reality: If I do cinema well, I can uncover what is beneath, my friends, my allies, what I am, where I come from.”— Jean-Luc Godard, director, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Sam Gilliam.Anthony Barboza/Getty Images“The expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political.”— Sam Gilliam, artist, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“Everyone says that I was a role model. But I never thought of it when I was doing the music and when I was performing. I just wanted to make good music.”— Betty Davis, singer-songwriter, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Nichelle Nichols.Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images“The next Einstein might have a Black face — and she’s female.”— Nichelle Nichols, actress, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“If I could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, it would be with Albert Einstein at Panzanella.”— Judy Tenuta, comedian, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)“In time, writers learn that good fiction editors care as much about the story as the writer does, or almost, anyway. And you really often end up, the three of you — the writer, and the editor, and the story — working on this obdurate, beautiful thing, this brand-new creation.”— Roger Angell, writer and editor, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Jennifer Bartlett.Susan Wood/Getty Images“I spent 30 years trying to convince people and myself that I was smart, that I was a good painter, that I was this or that. It’s not going to happen. The only person that it should happen for is me. This is what I was meant to do.”— Jennifer Bartlett, artist, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Christine McVie.P. Floyd/Daily Express, via Hulton Archive and Getty Images“I didn’t aspire to be on the stage playing piano, let alone singing, because I never thought I had much of a voice. But my option was window-dresser or jump off the cliff and try this. So I jumped off the cliff.”— Christine McVie, musician and songwriter, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“Sometimes you have to put yourself on the edge. You go to the precipice and lean over it.”— Maria Ewing, opera singer, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Taylor Hawkins.John Atashian/Getty Images“There’s so much in what I do that is beyond hard work — there’s luck and timing and just being in the right place at the right time with the right hairdo.”— Taylor Hawkins, drummer, born 1972 (Read the obituary.)“I was primarily an actress and not a pretty face.”— Angela Lansbury, actress, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)“I always try to improve upon what I’ve done. If something’s not working, I’ll change it to make it better. I’m an artist and a performer above all, and I don’t limit myself.”— Elza Soares, singer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Leslie Jordan.Fred Prouser/Reuters“I’m always working, always. I got to keep the ship afloat.”— Leslie Jordan, actor, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“The reward of the work has always been the work itself.”— David McCullough, historian and author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“To me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear.”— Barbara Ehrenreich, author, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)James Caan.Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Passion is such an important thing to have in life because it ends so soon, and my passion was to grow up with my son.”— James Caan, actor, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)Tina Ramirez.Michael Falco for The New York Times“Words are unnecessary when movement and feeling and expression can say it all.”— Tina Ramirez, dancer and founder of Ballet Hispánico, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Claes Oldenburg.Tony Evans/Getty Images“I haven’t done anything on the subject of flies. It’s the sort of thing that could interest me. Anything could interest me, actually.”— Claes Oldenburg, artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“A skull is a beautiful thing.”— Lee Bontecou, artist, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“I like to write strong characters who are no better or worse than anybody else on earth.”— Charles Fuller, playwright, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Ray Liotta.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty Images“One review said I played a sleazy, heartless, cold person who you don’t really care about. Great! I love it; that’s what I played.”— Ray Liotta, actor, born around 1954 (Read the obituary.)Jerry Lee Lewis.Thomas S. England/Getty Images“There’s a difference between a phenomenon and a stylist. I’m a stylist, Elvis was the phenomenon, and don’t you forget it.”— Jerry Lee Lewis, musician, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“All of us have something built into our ears that comes from the place where we grow up and where we were as children.”— George Crumb, composer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Anne Heche. SGranitz/WireImage, via Getty Images“People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.”— Anne Heche, actress, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)Louie Anderson.Gary Null/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“That’s my goal every night: Hopefully at some point in my act, you have forgotten whatever trouble you had when you came in.”— Louie Anderson, comedian and actor, born 1953 (Read the obituary.)“Adult human beings live with the certainty of grief, which deepens us and opens us to other people, who have been there, too.”— Peter Straub, author, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Ned Rorem.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“I believe in the importance of the unimportant — in the quotidian pathos.”— Ned Rorem, composer, born 1923 (Read the obituary.)Gilbert Gottfried.Fred Hermansky/NBC, via Getty Images“I don’t always mean to offend. I only sometimes mean to offend.”— Gilbert Gottfried, comedian, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“Merce Cunningham is quoted somewhere as saying he wanted a company that danced the way he danced. I kept doing the same thing. And I began to wonder why I was insisting that they be as limited as I am.”— David Gordon, choreographer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Hilary Mantel.Ellie Smith for The New York Times“The universe is not limited by what I can imagine.”— Hilary Mantel, author, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“Getting the right people with a shared vision is three-quarters of the battle.”— Anne Parsons, arts administrator, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)Paula Rego.Rita Barros/Getty Images“My paintings are stories, but they are not narratives, in that they have no past and future.”— Paula Rego, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Javier Marías.Quim Llenas/Getty Images“When you are addressing your fellow citizens, you have to give some hope sometimes, even if you want to say that everything is terrible, that we are governed by a bunch of gangsters. In a novel, you can be much more pessimistic. You are more savage, you are wilder, you are freer, you think truer, you think better.”— Javier Marías, author, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)“Art is not blameless. Art can inflict harm.”— Richard Taruskin, musicologist, born 1945 (Read the obituary.)“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker. I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”— Pablo Milanés, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Peter Bogdanovich.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Success is very hard. Nobody prepares you for it. You think you’re infallible. You pretend you know more than you do.”— Peter Bogdanovich, director, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Loretta Lynn.CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images“I think the highest point of my career was in the late ’70s. I had No. 1 songs, a best-selling book and a movie made about my life. But I think it was also the lowest point for me as well. Life gets away from you so fast when you move fast.”— Loretta Lynn, singer-songwriter, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)Thich Nhat Hanh.Golding/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.”— Thich Nhat Hanh, monk and author, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images; Anthony Barboza/Getty Images; Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images; Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images. More

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      New Year’s Eve in New York City: What to Do, See and Eat

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      Ring in the holiday just like the old days — in person.I’m going to close out 2022 by opening my front door and having fun in person. Unlike last New Year’s Eve, New York is back in the business of live entertainment for New Year’s Eve. I might have to wear a mask, but like Whitney Houston, I want to dance with somebody.Here’s a guide to what’s going on in New York City, from the festivities in Times Square and midnight concerts to cooking classes and family-friendly events. We have you covered, whether you’re still reveling at sunup or in bed by countdown.Ball Drop and FireworksIf you want to watch the ball drop in person, start planning your night now. For everything you need to know, visit the Times Square Alliance, which will host a free live webcast on New Year’s Eve starting at 6 p.m.; you can also stream the festivities at TimesSquareBall.net.For broadcasts from Times Square, you have two options: “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest,” with Ciara singing at midnight (8 p.m. on ABC); CNN’s live New Year’s Eve show, hosted by Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen with performances by Usher, Ellie Goulding and Patti LaBelle (8 p.m.).If you want to venture outside Manhattan, or if you live in Brooklyn, for the first time since 2020 Grand Army Plaza will host an evening of music before fireworks at midnight. Fireworks also go off in Central Park at that time (more on that below).For the best views of fireworks set off near Liberty Island, try the water. Circle Line offers a three-hour party cruise, leaving from Pier 83 in Manhattan, and Empress Cruises hosts a party on its boat called the Timeless, leaving from Pier 36. Both events include food, an open bar, music and panoramic views of fireworks.Pop and Rock ConcertsTrey Anastasio of Phish at Madison Square Garden.Chad Batka for The New York TimesAs midnight inches closer, let music set the mood. Gogol Bordello brings its Eastern European punk-swing sounds to the Brooklyn Bowl, and the producer-composer Flying Lotus leads a night of electronic music at Webster Hall. Or say goodbye to 2022 with the jam bands Phish, at Madison Square Garden, or Gov’t Mule, at the Beacon Theater. On the dance floor is where you’ll be when !!! plays the Sultan Room; same with Reggae Fest Live at the King’s Theater, featuring Serani and Wayne Wonder. And listen up, Gen X: The Gowanus performance space Littlefield hosts “New Year’s Eve with the Smiths,” a concert by the Smiths Tribute NYC, an homage to the ’80s British band.Dance (and Skate) PartiesLooking for something more offbeat? The immersive Romp on 26th: A New Year at Chelsea Table + Stage features an evening of burlesque by Seedy Edie and Audrey Love, who will perform throughout the evening. (Black tie is suggested.) Shoot for the moon at the Bushwick entertainment venue House of Yes, which describes its queer-friendly Gala Galactica party as “a celebration of all things cosmic”; recommended looks include “interstellar shine” and “alien superstar.” Nowadays, a club in Ridgewood, Queens, hosts New Year’s Nonstop, an almost 24-hour dance party that kicks off at 8 p.m. and continues until New Year’s Day afternoon.For old-school fun, lace up your skates with Skate Crates, a roller skating club that’s taking over an event space in Midwood, Brooklyn, for its New Year’s Eve Celebration Skate; there will be a vegetarian/vegan menu and a midnight toast, but bring your own skates. Royal Palms, a 21+ shuffleboard club in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is hosting its Flamingo Formal, a not-too-formal dance party with the option to play on one of its regulation-size courts.More Shows: Classical, Jazz and ComedyNot much of a dancer? You’ve got options too. A classical music holiday tradition for over 30 years, New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace returns to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, featuring Holst’s “St. Paul’s Suite” and the premiere of Joseph Turrin’s “Lullaby for Vaska.”For jazz lovers, the trumpeter Chris Botti plays two shows as part of his annual holiday residency at the Blue Note. And the singer-comedienne Sandra Bernhard takes the mic at Joe’s Pub for two performances.The comedy club Caroline’s, which recently announced it was closing, will present its final two shows at its home near Broadway and 50th St. And the nonagenarian singer Marilyn Maye performs twice at the Birdland Jazz Club in Times Square, including at the 7 p.m. show, allowing enough time to get home before the neighborhood goes haywire.Family-Friendly EventsThe Rockettes in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesParents will appreciate early-bird opportunities to welcome Baby New Year. The Staten Island Children’s Museum hosts a four-hour Noon Year’s Eve Dance Party, with a balloon drop at noon. The Long Island Children’s Museum, in Garden City, N.Y., hosts its own ball drops at noon and 4 p.m., along with crafts and a dance party.For live entertainment, there are many options. Circus Abyssinia: Tulu, a new production from the Ethiopian troupe of aerialists and jugglers, has a noon matinee at the New Victory Theater. Blue Man Group is hustling, with three shows at the Astor Place Theater, and it’s a two-matinee day for the Rockettes in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. New York City Ballet offers a 2 p.m. “Nutcracker” at the Koch Theater.Cooking ClassesTreats at Raaka Chocolate in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIf you need a thoughtful hostess gift for a New Year’s Eve party, or if you want to stuff your own face, try a dessert class. Raaka Chocolate offers three afternoon truffle-making sessions at its chocolate factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn. You’ll cut and hand roll ganache, learn to temper chocolate — that’s the tricky part — and then decorate with unroasted cacao powder and gold powder. You’ll leave with your own box of about 15 handmade dark chocolate truffles that are single origin, vegan (they’re made with coconut milk) and gluten-free.Milk Bar NYC is offering an afternoon birthday cake assembling class, no baking required. You’ll learn how to cut cake rounds and stack each layer with frosting and crumbs to make a 6-inch cake, then use scraps from the cake to make truffles — all to take home. The class will be held at Milk Bar NYC’s flagship store in NoMad.Midnight Run and HikesBear Mountain Inn at Harriman State Park, an hour’s drive north of New York City.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesFor something more venturesome, Adventure Untamed, a group that organizes guided outdoor experiences for New Yorkers, offers a New Year’s Eve day hike in Harriman State Park, about an hour’s drive from New York City, with a stop for hot chocolate afterward at the cozy Bear Mountain Inn in Tomkins Cove, N.Y.To welcome 2023 the heart-racing way, do the New York Road Runners Midnight Run in Central Park, a four-mile race that starts when the fireworks go off at midnight. The course is a real beauty: It takes you from Bethesda Terrace, past the Reservoir and back down again. More

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      Kim Simmonds, a Key Figure in the British Blues Movement, Dies at 75

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      His band, Savoy Brown, never had a hit single, but it showcased his skills as a guitarist and songwriter and remained active for more than 50 years.Kim Simmonds, a fleet and commanding guitarist who for over 50 years led one of Britain’s seminal blues bands, Savoy Brown, died on Dec. 13 in Syracuse, N.Y. He was 75.His wife and manager, Debbie (Lyons) Simmonds, confirmed the death, in a hospital. Mr. Simmonds, who lived in nearby Oswego, had announced in August that he had Stage 4 signet ring cell carcinoma, a rare form of colon cancer that is seldom detected early enough to be treated successfully.Though Savoy Brown never had a hit single, and though only two albums from the group’s vast catalog broke Billboard’s Top 40, it held an important place in the British blues movement of the 1960s alongside bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After and the early Fleetwood Mac.Mr. Simmonds changed the band’s lineup often, bringing to mind a subway turnstile at rush hour, making it difficult to build an audience. The most notable firing happened in 1970, when he got rid of all the other members — who then went on to form a far more commercially successful band, Foghat. In all, more than 60 musicians played under the Savoy Brown banner.“I don’t want to stand still,” Mr. Simmonds told the website Music Aficionado in 2017. “Once I’ve climbed a mountain, I want to climb another. If a band weren’t willing to do that, I would get another band.”Throughout all the personnel changes, he maintained a musical vision anchored in the skill of his guitar work, the melodicism of his songwriting and his commitment to American blues.As a guitarist, he could be stinging or sweet, lithe or robust. He also drew attention for the speed of his playing, and for his ability to spin long solos without losing the melodic thread or breaking a song’s momentum. In addition to the blues, his music drew from jazz and — most notably on Savoy Brown’s highest-charting album (it reached No. 34 in Billboard), “Hellbound Train” (1972) — R&B.Savoy Brown at a festival in Sussex, England, in 1970. From left: Roger Earl, Dave Peverett, Mr. Simmonds and Tony Stevens. The band changed personnel frequently over the years, with Mr. Simmonds the only constant.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesKim Maiden Simmonds was born on Dec. 5, 1947, in Caerphilly, Wales, to Henry Simmonds, an electrician, and Phyllis (Davies) Simmonds, a homemaker. As a child, he was drawn to the early rock ’n’ roll albums owned by his older brother, Harry, who later worked for Bill Haley’s British fan club.“My brother took me to see all the rock ’n’ roll movies,” Mr. Simmonds told the magazine Record Collector in 2017. “I grew up with all that: Little Richard, Bill Haley and, of course, Elvis.”By age 10 he had moved with his family to London, where his brother took him to jazz record stores that sold blues albums. The singer and pianist Memphis Slim — “one of the sophisticated blues guys that could keep one foot in the jazz world and one foot in the blues world,” he told Record Collector — became a favorite.He bought his first guitar at 13 and began imitating the blues licks on the records he loved. So intent was he on a music career that he never completed high school.A chance meeting at a record shop in 1965 with the harmonica player John O’Leary led to the formation of what was initially called the Savoy Brown Blues Band. (The first word in the name echoed the name of an important American jazz and R&B label.) The group’s initial lineup featured six players, two of them Black — the singer Brice Portius and the drummer Leo Manning — making them one of the few multiracial bands on the British rock scene of the 1960s.While playing gigs with Cream and John Lee Hooker, the band developed a reputation for its intense live performances, leading to a contract with Decca Records in 1967. The band’s debut album, “Shake Down,” consisted almost entirely of blues covers. By its second album, “Getting to the Point,” issued in 1968, most of the lineup had changed. The most significant additions were the soulful singer Chris Youlden (who also wrote memorable original songs, often with Mr. Simmonds) and the forceful rhythm guitarist and singer Dave Peverett.Mr. Simmonds in performance in Nashville in 2017.Rick Diamond/Getty Images for IEBAHalf of the band’s third album, “Blue Matter,” issued in 1969, was recorded live, highlighted by a revved-up version of Muddy Waters’s “Louisiana Blues,” which became a signature piece. Its 1970 album, “Raw Sienna,” forged a dynamic new direction that reflected the emerging jazz-rock movement, best evidenced by Mr. Simmonds’s Dave Brubeck-like instrumental, “Master Hare.” When Mr. Youlden elected to leave for a solo career, Mr. Peverett stepped up impressively to sing lead on the band’s “Lookin’ In” album later that year.Mr. Simmonds’s desire to add more R&B influences led to the firings that paved the way for Foghat. The resulting sound on the album “Street Corner Talkin’,” released in 1971, earned heavy play on FM radio in the U.S., where the band enjoyed a larger following than in its native country.Though Savoy Brown’s subsequent albums weren’t as commercially successful, Mr. Simmonds kept producing them at a steady clip, resulting in a catalog of more than 40. His last releases, both in 2020, were a studio album, “Ain’t Done Yet,” and a set of live performances from the 1990s, “Taking the Blues Back Home.” He also released six solo albums.In addition to his wife, his survivors include their daughter, Eve Simmonds, and two children from a previous marriage, Tabatha and Justin Simmonds.Addressing his dedication to Savoy Brown in whatever form it took, Mr. Simmons told Music Aficionado: “A famous poet once said, ‘The deed can never be done without need.’ There’s something in me that’s gotta come out.”He added: “Throughout it all — the changes, the music, the 50 years — the one tie-in is my guitar playing. That’s what keeps it all going.” More

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      25 Years After ‘Titanic,’ Quebec’s Love for Céline Dion Will Go On

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      The outpouring that greeted the singer’s announcement that she has a rare neurological condition showed how both Céline fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved.MONTREAL — It was a Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of euphoric revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Céline Dion tribute party. One young man vogued in a homemade version of the gold-tinted headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore at the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gawked at a mini-shrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing her hairstyles through the decades.“In an era of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” Simon Venne, the voguer, a 38-year-old stylist, gushed. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province of Dion’s birth, was conflicted about Dion’s rise to global superstardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has unabashedly embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French language broadcaster, parses her life on a podcast translated as “Céline—She’s The Boss!”; a recent docuseries called “It’s Cool to Like Céline Dion” explored her appeal to millennials, and Céline Dion drag competitions have been surging.Dion’s emotional announcement this month that she is suffering from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, forcing her to postpone upcoming tour dates, was met with an extraordinary outpouring. Québécois politicians from across the political spectrum, including both Quebec’s premiere, François Legault, and the head of a party advocating Quebec’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans commiserated over social media. A headline in Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper, called her “Céline, Queen of the Québécois.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had attained the status of untouchable icon after years of being panned by critics and mocked by others.“It’s like hearing your aunt is sick,” Venne, the feathered fan, said. “Céline is famous around the world, but here she is family.”A sold-out Céline Dion tribute party in Montreal drew fans who dressed like her, gawked at Dion-inspired wigs, and danced and sang along to her music. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intensity of the reaction here — 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” which helped make Dion’s bombastically exuberant “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous — shows how much Céline fandom and ideas of Québécois identity have evolved over time as the province, like its most famous daughter, has come of age.The Unsinkable Celine DionThe Canadian superstar has won over fans with her octave-hopping renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On.”Rare Disorder Diagnosis: Celine Dion announced that she had a neurological condition known as stiff person syndrome, which forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.A Consummate Professional: At a concert in Brooklyn in 2020, the pop diva was fully in command of her glorious voice — and the crowd gathered to bask in it.Adored by Fans: Dion can count on some of the most loyal supporters in the industry. In return, she gives all of herself to them.From the Archives: Dion achieved international stardom in the 1990s after charming audiences in French Canada and France. Here is what The Times wrote about her in 1997.During a recent visit to Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of road in the gritty working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit to liking her music.“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past, and everything old and vintage is in fashion,” said Gabriel Guénette, 26, a university student and sometime Uber delivery man, explaining why he and his friends were singing “The Power of Love” during karaoke nights. Dion’s unbridled message of hope and optimism, he added, resonated during these uncertain times.Older residents in Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline — and recall her days as a shy teenager who performed French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters at her family’s restaurant. Younger residents — including Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the same high school Dion did — grew up singing her songs.Across Quebec, a Francophone province of 8.5 million people that has been buffeted by centuries of subjugation and fears of being subsumed by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Even as many fans ardently embraced her, she was dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of poutine, the Québécois snack of French fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy drunkenly and guiltily consumed at 3 a.m.Some elites balked at her success, seeing in her sprawling working class family, her garish outfits and her broken English an uncomfortable mirror of an old Quebec they preferred to forget. Some considered her quétaine, cheesy in Québécois argot.Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, her hometown.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesOlder residents in Charlemagne still call her “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesAnd her singing in English has, at times, been an affront to hard-core Francophone nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 after singing “The Power of The Dream,” the single word reverberated across the province, an affirmation that French Canada had gone global.Martin Proulx, a producer who hosted the podcast, “Céline, She’s the Boss!” recalled that as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to her “Let’s Talk About Love” album on his Sony Walkman. “It wasn’t cool to love Céline when I was in high school — kids my age were listening to hip-hop and heavy rock and she was for soccer moms who watched Oprah,” he recalled.Now, he said, he could proudly proclaim his ardor, in part because a more confident Quebec has shed some of its past complexes. The younger generation of Québécois, he said, seems less hung up than their parents or grandparents on issues of language and identity, and more likely to embrace Dion’s global stardom, financial success and bilingualism as a template for their own international aspirations.“We used to roll our eyes — now we think she’s pure genius,” Mr. Proulx said. “She never changed. We did.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Quebec-born music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said that his first memory of Dion was from 1984, when he was eight years old. Dion, who was 16, sang a song about a dove in front of Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Nézet-Séguin said he had surged with pride that she was a fellow Quebecer, and said that he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.“When I think about a diva, I think about personality, having something recognizable artistically, and one can’t deny the virtuosic aspect of Céline’s singing,” he said.Bennett’s Dion collection is extensive.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesHe even has a custom Dion sport coat.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intense interest in Dion is hardly limited to Quebec. “Aline,” a highly unusual, fictionalized film drawn from her life, drew buzz at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. When a musical parody of “Titanic” called “Titanique” recently moved to a larger Off Broadway theater in New York, its producers promised “More shows. More seats. More Céline.” And Dion is set to appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in a romantic comedy called “Love Again” that is expected in theaters in North America in May.The fascination with Dion endures in part because her Cinderella story never grows old. The youngest of 14 children of an accordion-playing butcher and a homemaker from Charlemagne, Dion’s first bed as a child was a drawer. At the age of 12, she co-wrote her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” with the help of her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a cassette demo to the impresario René Angélil, who became her manager and, later, her husband.Dion had a complete makeover, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, cap her teeth, perm her hair, and take voice and dance lessons. A star was born.When Angélil died in 2016, two days before his 74th birthday, his two-day, meticulously choreographed funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags were lowered at half-mast across Quebec. Dion, veiled in black, stood by her husband’s open coffin for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.Nearly every inch of Mario Bennett’s cramped basement apartment is decorated with Céline Dion memorabilia. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesIn the years since, Dion recast her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic hoodie she wore in Paris in 2016 broke the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the camp-themed Met Gala, in an Oscar de la Renta clinging champagne-colored bodysuit embellished with silvery sequins. Her zany, self-deprecating appearance on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019 from Las Vegas, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow at the Bellagio Hotel fountain, helped some people who had made fun of her realize that she was in on the joke.Now her fandom seems as strong as ever.Mario Bennett, 36, who works in a concert hall, began covering every inch of his cramped basement apartment with Céline Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic. He said that throughout his life, Ms. Dion’s powerful voice had been a clarion call to dream big. Among his prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible Céline doll, wearing a mini version of the midnight blue velvet gown that the singer wore to the Oscars in 1998.“She makes me feel that anything is possible,” he said.Guy Hermon, an Israeli drag queen who emigrated to Montreal a decade ago and absorbed Quebec culture — and the French language — by trying to embody Dion, said he had never been a fan of her music but invented his Dion alter ego, “Crystal Slippers” out of necessity on the Dion-obsessed Québécois drag circuit.After years of mimicking Ms. Dion, he said he had come to appreciate her. “She just wants everyone to be happy,” he said. More

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      Dino Danelli, Whose Drums Drove the Rascals, Is Dead at 78

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      His percussion virtuosity was a key to the band’s many hits of the late 1960s, including the chart-topping “Good Lovin’,” “Groovin’” and “People Got to Be Free.”Dino Danelli, whose hard-charging, high-energy drumming powered the Rascals to a string of hits in the late 1960s, including the No. 1 records “Good Lovin’,” “Groovin’” and “People Got to Be Free,” died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 78.Joe Russo, a close friend and the band’s historian, confirmed the death, at a rehabilitation center. He said Mr. Danelli had been in declining health for several years.The Rascals (billed on their first three albums as the Young Rascals) were among the first American bands to emerge in response to the so-called British Invasion of 1964.Formed in New Jersey in 1965, the quartet — featuring Felix Cavaliere on organ and vocals, Eddie Brigati on vocals, Gene Cornish on guitar and Mr. Danelli on drums — drew on a range of influences, including doo-wop, jazz and soul.Mr. Danelli, a protégé of the great jazz drummers Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, merged percussive virtuosity with a rock sensibility. Like Ringo Starr of the Beatles, he set the template for the rock drummer archetype: disciplined and precise, but with a flair that drew the crowd’s eye. He would twirl his sticks — a trick he learned from his sister, a cheerleader — and throw them in the air, before catching them without dropping the beat.Mr. Danelli was responsible for the band’s first big hit. He was a fan of obscure soul records, and one day at a record shop in Harlem, he found a single by the Olympics, “Good Lovin’,” written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick, which reached No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965.“We said, ‘Let’s try it, let’s put a new version to it,’” he said in a 2008 interview with the drummer Liberty DeVitto. “It was just a lucky find.”The Rascals played the song during a 1966 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It soon topped the charts and — with its opening shout of “One, two, three!” — became one of the best-known songs of the decade.Onstage, the band dressed in the sort of foppish outfits favored by several other white acts of the mid-1960s: knee-high socks, short ties, floppy collars. But it was the first white band signed by Atlantic Records, home of Ray Charles, and it was among the few American rock bands to be accepted by Black crowds.The members included a clause in their contracts stating that they would perform only if a Black act was on the bill with them — a fact that meant large swaths of the South remained off limits.As the Rascals evolved, their sound mellowed and they turned out summer-vibe classics like “Groovin’,” which hit No. 1 in 1967, and “A Beautiful Morning,” which reached No. 3 in 1968. That same year, shocked by the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, they released “People Got to Be Free,” a paean to racial harmony — written, like the earlier two songs, by Mr. Cavaliere and Mr. Brigati. It also reached No. 1.The Rascals dissolved in the early 1970s; Mr. Brigati left in 1970 and Mr. Cornish a year later. Mr. Cavaliere and Mr. Danelli stayed for two more albums before the band broke up.Mr. Danelli played in a series of bands through the 1970s, and in 1980 he joined Steven Van Zandt, the lead guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in a side project called the Disciples of Soul.Mr. Van Zandt had grown up as a die-hard Rascals fan. In 1997 he delivered the speech inducting the band into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, calling Mr. Danelli “the greatest rock drummer of all time.”The Rascals, then known as the Young Rascals, appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in March 1966. From left: Mr. Danelli, Eddie Brigati, Ed Sullivan, Gene Cornish and Felix Cavaliere.CBS, via Getty ImagesDino Danelli was born on July 23, 1944, in Jersey City, N.J., the son of Robert Danelli and Teresa Bottinelli.He is survived by his sister, Diane Severino.He began playing drums at an early age and, after dropping out of high school, moved to Manhattan, intent on pursuing a music career. He picked up gigs in the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village, finagled a room at the Metropole Hotel in Times Square and met Mr. Rich and Mr. Krupa, who both took him under their wing.He traveled to California, Las Vegas and New Orleans for work, including a stint with the jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, before returning to New York. He met his future bandmates at a venue in Garfield, N.J., called the Choo Choo Club, and after playing together in another band, they formed the Young Rascals.The band got back together for a few reunion shows in the 1980s, and then in the 1990s, minus Mr. Brigati, performed under the name the New Rascals. At Mr. Van Zandt’s urging, the four original members played a 2010 charity show together, and in 2012 Mr. Van Zandt wrote and produced a “bioconcert” called “The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream” — a multimedia show featuring performances by the band and clips from its 1960s heyday.It ran for 15 shows on Broadway, then toured the country for several months. More

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      The Weeknd’s ‘Avatar’ Anthem, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Rosalía and Cardi B, Saint Levant & Playyard, Little Simz and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.The Weeknd, ‘Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)’The mournful-yet-heroic tone of so many blockbuster soundtrack themes perfectly suits the Weeknd, who has made it his signature to merge pride, weakness, repentance and persistence. “I thought I could protect you from paying for my sins,” he sings, with quivering sincerity, in this song from “Avatar: The Way of Water.” He’s buttressed by a galloping, crashing, trance-adjacent beat and pulsing synthesizers from Swedish House Mafia, along with urgent strings and Balkan-tinged choral harmonies that are probably from the soundtrack’s composer, Simon Franglen. The song makes war, death, loyalty and love converge: “My love for you is greater than their armies and their powers from above,” the Weeknd vows. JON PARELESRosalía featuring Cardi B, ‘Despechá Rmx’Cardi B closes out her year of exuberant guest appearances with one final victory lap. As she did on GloRilla’s “Tomorrow 2” and Kay Flock’s “Shake It,” Cardi plays chameleon on this remix of Rosalía’s breezy “Despechá,” blending in with her surroundings while at the same time showing off her ample stylistic range. She sounds particularly unfettered on the second verse — “Don’t need your drama, don’t need your stress” — shifting into a weightless, breathy register to meet Rosalía’s soft touch. Cardi B saying “motomamis” does not quite top Cardi B saying “coronavirus,” but it comes close! LINDSAY ZOLADZDecisive Pink, ‘Haffmilch Holiday’Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV — two solo artists with a new collaborative project they call Decisive Pink — create a substantive, thoroughly hypnotic track out of what easily could have been a throwaway concept: an ode to their preferred German coffee shop order, the haffmilch. (“I don’t want a Frappuccino drowning in a caramel swirl,” Deradoorian insists; “Neither do I,” NV agrees.) Built on an insistent drum machine beat and prismatic layers of modular synths, the song gradually becomes something more expansive. “I just want silence, I want to play,” the two sing together on the chorus, as if setting a morning intention to cultivate creative exploration and independence throughout the coming day. “Dancing outside on the grass, my own holiday.” ZOLADZBarrie, ‘Doesn’t Really Matter’Barrie asks, politely but pointedly, “Won’t you take your hand off of my back?” as she begins “Doesn’t Really Matter.” Without a drumbeat — just guitars, bass, keyboards and stacked vocal harmonies that look back to the Beach Boys — Barrie pushes away unwanted advances with far more sweetness than they deserve. PARELESSaint Levant & Playyard, ‘I Guess’It’s one thing to go viral. Another thing to set out to go viral. Another thing to desire to go viral. And a whole other thing to make art predicated upon the very concept of virality, that seems to take the essence of shocking shareability as its raison d’être. Such was the case with Saint Levant’s “Very Few Friends” — or, rather, with the 10 or so seconds of it that became a TikTok sensation last month. Here’s Saint Levant sitting in a chair wearing a tank top, looking rakish and unhurried. Flowers (dead?) next to him. Pants tight, necklace dangling. Black Birkenstocks so you know he’s not pressed. His rapping, such as it is — very much in the mold of the Streets, or after-hours Drake, or Barry White intros — is almost comically erotic: intense eye contact, gratuitous detail, oily and damp. Twelve million TikTok views and counting: It did what it was meant to do. (The whole song, rapped in English, French and Arabic, works, too.)“I Guess” is Saint Levant’s follow-up, and he’s doubling down. Joined by Playyard, who rounds out the song with rangy, lithe R&B, Saint Levant remains committed to the bit. In the video, he stares so hard that the camera blushes. “Said I like the way that you talk to me/I like the way you go far for me,” he raps. “I like the way that you look in my eyes and say you wanna get on top of me.” The very light vocal wah-wahs in the background recall the gentleness of the Boyz II Men parts on LL Cool J’s “Hey Lover.” At every turn, there’s a caress waiting, even if it’s a gambit for affection: “I got a lot on my mind, and I gotta share the pain,” Saint Levant avers. The overall effect is viscous, heart-palpitating, spent. JON CARAMANICAFlorence + the Machine featuring Ethel Cain, ‘Morning Elvis’A live recording of the Florence song featuring Ethel Cain, who underscores and amplifies its gothic underbelly. Florence Welch’s singing is slightly more woozy on this version, but Cain moves the song from the realm of theater to the preserve of dreams. CARAMANICACentral Cee, ‘Let Go’The latest entry in the Year of Very Obvious Samples (or Interpolations) is the latest from Central Cee, already a contestant for his clever flip of “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” on “Doja.” “Let Go” doesn’t try quite as hard — it plays on the melancholy Passenger ballad “Let Her Go.” But the lyrics, about failing to get over a woman, are both vividly raunchy and also uncommonly wounded: “I don’t even take my socks off/And I don’t even know why I did it/As soon as I’m finished, I’m gettin’ them dropped off.” CARAMANICALittle Simz, ‘Gorilla’Words are weapons for the English rapper Little Simz, who has just surprise-released an album, “No Thank You.” In “Gorilla,” her delivery — as usual — is utterly deadpan and matter-of-fact, over a track that starts with a horn fanfare, narrows down to a bass-and-drums vamp and brings in a pushy string section, as she calmly asserts her dominance: “My art will be timeless/I don’t do limits.” PARELESAndy Shauf, ‘Catch Your Eye’A dreamlike serenity is undercut with unsettling desperation in “Catch Your Eye,” the latest single from the Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf’s forthcoming album, “Norm.” “Words under my breath float through the ceiling,” he sings softly to an object of unrequited affection, as an airy synthesizer riff evaporates like smoke. “I need to meet you/I need to catch your eye.” ZOLADZ More

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      Quinta Brunson, Jack Harlow and More Breakout Stars of 2022

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      Here are the actors, pop stars, dancers and artists who broke away from the pack this year, delighting us and making us think.For many of us, 2022 was the year we emerged more fully from our pandemic cocoons, venturing out to movie theaters, museums, concerts — exploring our entertainment with eager, if weary, hearts and eyes before returning home to our TVs. Along the way, artists and performers across the world of the arts had, for the first time in years, the chance to connect more closely and fully with audiences, and deliver big. Here are seven stars who captured our attention in this moment and gave us a fresh perspective.TelevisionQuinta BrunsonIn 2014, Quinta Brunson had a viral Instagram hit on her hands: a series of videos called “The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date.” At BuzzFeed, where she was first paid for taste-testing Doritos, she made popular comedic videos for the site and then sold the streaming series “Broke” to YouTube Red. In 2019, she starred in and wrote for the debut season of HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”That trajectory set her up to deliver a rare feat: a warmhearted but not saccharine network sitcom with a pitch-perfect ensemble cast that has managed to delight critics and audiences — all while illuminating the problems of underfunded public schools. The mockumentary-style comedy, “Abbott Elementary,” which she created and stars in, debuted on ABC in December 2021 and was nominated for seven Emmy Awards this year, of which it won three.“I think a lot of people are enjoying having something that is light and nuanced,” Brunson, 32, told The New York Times Magazine earlier this year. “‘Abbott’ came at the right time.”MoviesStephanie HsuIn “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Stephanie Hsu plays a despairing daughter named Joy and the chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.A24When Stephanie Hsu was a child, she told her mother that she wanted to be an actor. Her mother “pointed at a TV screen and said, ‘There’s nobody that looks like you — that seems impossible,’” Hsu, 32, told Variety this year. Turns out, her presence onscreen was both possible and unforgettable, particularly her jaw-dropping performance in this year’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a mind-twisting acid trip through the multiverse (and the human condition) that was a box-office hit and had critics raving.In “Everything,” her first feature film, Hsu nailed the complex role of both a depressed, despairing daughter (opposite Michelle Yeoh as her mother) and the maniacally evil, chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.“I think it’s so rare that you get to experience the scope of range within one character in one movie,” Hsu told The Times.Next up for the actress is a role in the Disney+ action-comedy series “American Born Chinese”; in Rian Johnson’s Peacock series, “Poker Face,” alongside Natasha Lyonne; and in “The Fall Guy,” an action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.Pop MusicJack HarlowThe rapper Jack Harlow, who released the album “Come Home the Kids Miss You” in May, earned three Grammy nominations in November.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThose on TikTok probably first caught wind of the rapper Jack Harlow in 2020 with his viral track “Whats Poppin.” But it wasn’t until his verse on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” last year — the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 — that his star really began its ascent.The Highlights of 2022, According to Our CriticsCard 1 of 3Salamishah Tillet. More

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      Suspected Crush at London Concert Leaves 3 Critically Injured

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      The police responded to reports that a large crowd had tried to force its way into the O2 Academy Brixton, one of Britain’s most popular music venues.A large crowd tried to force its way into the O2 Academy Brixton, a popular concert venue in London, to attend a sold-out performance by Asake, a Nigerian Afrobeats singer.Kirsty O’Connor/Press Association, via Associated PressThree people remained in critical condition on Friday after suffering injuries believed to have been caused by a crush the night before during a packed London concert at one of Britain’s leading music venues, the capital’s police force said.A large crowd tried to force its way into the concert, a sold-out performance on Thursday evening by Asake, a Nigerian Afrobeats singer and songwriter, at the venue, the O2 Academy Brixton, prompting the emergency services to respond and forcing the concert to end early.Video from the scene showed crowds surging through the venue’s main entrance as cheers and screams rang out through the throng of fans stretched out into the main road, as well as the police struggling to maintain control even as they wielded batons.“This is so dangerous,” one person can be heard saying.Ade Adelekan, a commander for the Metropolitan Police, the force that serves London, said that the authorities had opened an investigation and that it would be “as thorough and as forensic as necessary.”A total of eight people were taken to the hospital, with four originally considered to be in critical condition. It was unclear on Friday whether the injuries had occurred inside or outside the venue.Speaking outside the Brixton police station on Friday afternoon, Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove of the Metropolitan Police said that more than 4,000 people had “attended last night.”The show was advertised as sold out, and the venue has a capacity of nearly 5,000, according to its website. It was not clear whether the chief superintendent was referring to just people with tickets or also including those who tried to enter venue without them, and the police did not respond to questions about the matter.Video footage and testimonies from people who said that they were at the venue on Thursday evening showed chaotic scenes.Akin Oluwaleimu, 53, went to the concert with his 14-year-old daughter, where they encountered a “rowdy” atmosphere outside, according to the BBC, adding that he saw two women who had fainted and were carried away. “We didn’t get inside,” he said. “When we were leaving we were told the show had been stopped.”The episode led to the abandonment of the concert, the last of three sold-out shows at the venue by the 27-year-old Asake, whose much-anticipated debut album this year was well received in both Britain and the United States.“My heart is with those who were injured last night,” Asake said in a statement posted on Instagram, noting that he had not heard from the O2 Academy Brixton about what had caused the disruption. He said he was sorry that the concert had been cut short. “I pray you get well soonest,” he added.The O2 Academy Brixton did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said in a Twitter post that he was “heartbroken that this could happen to young Londoners enjoying a night out in our city.”“I won’t rest until we have the answers their loved ones and the local community need and deserve,” he added.During his statement outside Brixton police station on Friday, Chief Superintendent Wingrove confirmed that an incident captured on video in which a police officer was “apparently seen to push a member of the public” was under internal review. He also said that another member of the public had been arrested in connection with an assault on a police officer. The police station in Brixton, South London, lies only about 100 yards from the venue, and a cordon was in place Friday, with the normally bustling road alongside closed to traffic.Above the building’s entrance, a “sold out” sign was still visible, and garbage lay strewn across the street outside.London is home to a large African community, and the Afrobeats genre has grown increasingly popular in the capital in recent years, with artists frequently selling out packed shows. More