Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll find out why 25 pianos are going to spend three weeks outdoors, in parks and public spaces across the five boroughs. We’ll also get details on the Long Island Rail Road strike, which began Saturday.
Want to play the “Moonlight” Sonata in moonlight? “Here Comes the Sun” as the sun actually comes up?
In late spring or early summer in New York City, you have been able to do so since 2010, if you knew the music. Now Sing for Hope, the nonprofit that puts pianos in parks and public spaces for what it calls “residencies,” is at it again. It has 25 pianos that will be available for anyone to play beginning Monday.
All 25 will be together in an “interactive, open-air gallery” at 28 Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. At noon, there will be a program with the Broadway star Laura Linney and Ray Angry of the Roots, among others. Then, the pianos will be packed up for delivery to the places around the city where they will spend three weeks in the open.
The pianos aren’t basic black: They have been painted, some by visual artists, two by cast members from Broadway shows like “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.”
They are old uprights that have been reconditioned. They may not be concert hall-ready after a few days: Heat and humidity can make a piano sticky. Rain can be ruinous, though Sing for Hope has “rain jackets,” and people to stretch them over the pianos when the weather turns hostile.
The pianos will be on the streets until June 7. Then — after being tuned again and repaired, if necessary — they will be placed in schools, hospitals and community centers.
A 9/11 origin story
Sing for Hope began informally after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, when the two women who founded it, Monica Yunus and Camille Zamora, were students at the Juilliard School. They found themselves “trying to figure out what on earth is the point of being a musician when the world feels like it’s ending,” Zamora recalled this week. They heard that all 11 firefighters from Engine 40/Ladder 35 had died after going to the World Trade Center that morning. Another, diagnosed with kidney cancer years later, died in 2017.
Yunus and Zamora started performing on the street after the 9/11 attacks and went on to build their careers. They organized Sing for Hope in 2006 and, in 2010, they had the pianos-in-the-streets idea. For the first couple of years, they worked with Luke Jerram, a British artist, but later parted ways with him.
Piano lessons
Putting pianos on streets and in the parks, they learned to be ready for anything. In 2010 someone dismantled a piano, piece by piece, putting the keys in one pile, the hammers in another and the strings in another. In 2011, a piano in the Bronx went missing. Someone apparently wheeled it off in the middle of the night.
During the pandemic, Sing for Hope changed from a mostly volunteer operation to what Zamora called “an all-paid model” that sent performers to the Javits Center for two hours a day while vaccines were being dispensed.
Yunus said the change had involved Sing for Hope in “finding new ways to employ artists when, for example, there may not be as many recital series that pay as there used to be 20 years ago.” The group now pays freelance musicians for appearances at city-run hospitals and at the Moynihan Train Hall (as well as Union Station in Washington and in other cities).
But, for the next three weeks, the focus will be on the pianos in parks and public spaces.
“One of the things that we’re very proud to have figured out is how to keep the pianos basically healthy,” Zamora said. Another, she said, is that “everybody is a musician, and we’ve always held to that. Everybody has that creative spark.”
Weather
A sunny day is ahead with temperatures near 81. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 68.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Friday (Shavuot).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“She didn’t have to say anything. We were like, oh, OK, this is happening, like, now.” — Wynton Sharpe, a lawyer for Samantha Randazzo, a defendant waiting to appear before a judge in Brooklyn on low-level charges. She gave birth in the courtroom.
The latest New York news
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Mamdani’s plans for Black New Yorkers: Mayor Zohran Mamdani has more explicitly attempted to address specific concerns of Black New Yorkers with his policy agenda.
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A fiercely competitive primary: The candidates to succeed Representative Jerrold Nadler for New York’s 12th Congressional District and Representative Nancy Pelosi for California’s 11th will gain a base from which to influence the trajectory of the Democratic Party, as well as a bullhorn to share their views on the biggest issues in the country.
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A fourth trial for Weinstein?: Two hours after a mistrial was declared in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial, the Manhattan district attorney said he was considering whether to ask a jury to consider the charge for a fourth time.
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Frenzy at watch stores: Swatch, the Swiss watchmaker, closed dozens of its stores after crowds prompted police intervention at stores from London to New York. Officers managed a chaotic scene at a mall on Long Island, and at least one arrest was made in Manhattan.
The first weekday of the L.I.R.R. strike
The last time there was a morning like today, Bill Clinton was president, Mario Cuomo was governor of New York and Rudolph Giuliani was mayor of New York City. This is the first morning in nearly 32 years that the Long Island Rail Road, a lifeline for 300,000 daily commuters, has been shut down by a strike.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that operates the railroad, says it will run free shuttle buses starting this morning from six locations in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The buses will go to two subway stations in Queens every 10 minutes and will make return trips tonight if the strike continues through the day.
Nassau commuters can also take the county bus service known as NICE to the No. 7 train in Flushing, Queens, or to the Jamaica Bus Terminal, where they can catch an F train. Or they can drive to Citi Field in Queens, park for $6 and transfer to the No. 7 train at the Mets-Willets Point station.
The strike came after three years of failed contract negotiations and a spurt of last-minute bargaining last week. The talks between the unions that represent about half of the railroad’s work force and the M.T.A. collapsed over wages.
My colleague Stefanos Chen writes that the unions were willing to accept a 9.5 percent wage increase covering the last three years, the same increase that the agency had offered several other transit and civil service unions.
But the L.I.R.R. unions also wanted a 5 percent raise in the current year, which went beyond what the M.T.A. had offered the others.
The M.T.A. countered by proposing a smaller raise for 2026 and a lump-sum payment. The railroad unions and the M.T.A. were about 1 percentage point apart on wage increases for this year when they walked out at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. The union also balked at a proposal involving health care costs for new employees.
The L.I.R.R. workers have not received raises since 2022. “Waiting for years for a raise is not fair, sustainable or realistic in an era of record inflation and rising housing costs,” the unions representing machinists and communications workers said on Sunday.
METROPOLITAN diary
Hail and hearty
Dear Diary:
It was a bitter cold day on the Upper East Side. My husband and I were leaving the hospital after his cataract surgery.
There were snowbanks lining the streets, and a nurses’ strike was in full swing, making the corner of 68th Street and York Avenue very chaotic. My husband had a huge eye patch on and was walking a bit unsteadily as I tried unsuccessfully to hail a cab.
Suddenly, I heard a man’s loud voice behind me.
“Hey! Hey!” he shouted.
I didn’t dare turn to see whatever seemed to be angering him.
Then I heard him shout again: “Taxi! Taxi!”
I’ll let him get the next cab, I thought to myself. He didn’t sound like someone to be messed with.
The next thing I knew, a huge construction worker wearing a hard hat and a neon vest was running past us. He ran into the middle of the street, stopping all traffic and approaching a parked cab.
He banged on the window and spoke to the driver. Then he pointed at me.
“This is your cab, lady!” he said. “But stay right there, I’m coming to get you.”
Within seconds, he was at our side and escorting us to the cab.
As he loaded us in, he addressed my husband.
“You’re going to be OK, buddy,” he said reassuringly. “I’m praying for you today.”
— Emily Baker
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
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