Names and faces
■ Billy Joel is rescheduling his January concert at Madison Square Garden as covid-19 cases continue to surge. The Piano Man had been scheduled to perform at the famed New York arena on Friday, but that show will now take place Aug. 24 instead. “Nothing is more important to me than the safety and well-being of my band, crew, and the fans; so due to unfortunate covid-related circumstances, we made the decision to reschedule the January 14th concert at MSG,” Joel said in a statement Wednesday. Joel, known for hits such as “Piano Man,” “New York State of Mind” and “Uptown Girl,” began his residency at Madison Square Garden in January 2014. He resumed his monthly residency at the Garden in November after pausing performances there for more than a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. His next scheduled show at the venue is set to take place Feb. 12. Tickets for the January show will be valid for the rescheduled date in August, organizers said. Fans who bought their passes through Ticketmaster or Madison Square Garden can also get a refund within the next 30 days. People who bought tickets from a third party will need to go back to their point of purchase for a refund.
■ A rare short story by Toni Morrison, titled “Recitatif,” which follows the lives of two women from childhood to their contrasting fortunes as adults, is being released as a book, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Known as a novelist for classics as “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon” and “The Bluest Eye,” the Nobel laureate, who died in 2019, also completed plays, poems, essays and short stories. “Recitatif,” written by Morrison in the early 1980s and rarely seen over the following decades is coming out Feb. 1. Zadie Smith contributes an introduction and the story’s audio edition is read by the actor Bahni Turpin. Autumn M. Womack, a professor of English and African American Studies at Princeton University (where Morrison taught for years) said that although Morrison never published a collection of her short fiction, “Recitatif” was included in the 1983 release “Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women,” co-edited by the poet-playwright Amiri Baraka and now out of print. “One of the main takeaways from it (‘Recitatif’) is that you’ll begin to think of her as someone who experimented with form. You’ll get away from the idea that she was solely a novelist and think of her as someone who was trying all kinds of writing,” Womack said. The story tells of a series of encounters between Roberta and Twyla, one of whom is Black, the other white, although readers are left to guess which is which.