Good morning. It's Thursday. We'll find out what's going on at the high school in Queens founded by one Anthony Benedetto. You know him as Tony Bennett. We'll also get details on what prosecutors say was a murder-for-hire plot directed by an Indian government official against a Sikh separatist in New York. |
 | | Tony Bennett at his 90th birthday celebration at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in 2016.Amy Lombard for The New York Times |
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For students at a high school rehearsing for a tribute concert tomorrow, there are reminders that Tony Bennett left his heart in Astoria, Queens. There is the striking metal lettering on the school's marquee that reads "Tony Bennett, Founder." And there are the charts the band will play — copies of the actual sheet music used when Bennett performed songs like "New York, New York" with Lady Gaga. |
"They're the professional charts," said Ella Rubin, a trombonist who is in 12th grade at the school, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. (Bennett, who died in July at 96, named it for that other great crooner.) |
"I have a lot of experience playing jazz," Rubin said. "I can definitely tell the difference between the average high school piece they would have us playing and these." |
But the principal, Gideon Frankel, said there would be a difference between this concert and many past performances at the school. "Tony won't be here," he said. "We're used to having him in the audience." |
For almost 20 years, Bennett was a presence at the public school, which opened in 2001. "He would drop by often and hold court with students," Frankel said. "He would sing a tune if we had students in the auditorium. Sometimes he would just drop by to hang out. He brought Billy Joel. He brought Lady Gaga. He brought others." |
Frankel said the last performance Bennett attended was in 2018, during the last full academic year before the pandemic, when the students staged the musical "Ragtime." "He sat through the whole thing for two and a half hours and gave a standing ovation at 92," Frankel said. |
For the tribute concert on Friday, student performers will be joined by alumni of the school and by Aran Bell and Catherine Hurlin, principal dancers with the American Ballet Theater. They will perform "Fly Me to the Moon," a ballet choreographed by Jessica Lang to a medley of songs that Bennett recorded. The school expects Bennett's wife, Susan Benedetto, who founded the school with him, to attend. The concert is sold out, but it will be livestreamed at www.fssahs.org. |
Heidi Best, the school's choir director and the musical director for the concert, said it was not the first time students had paid homage to Bennett since his death. "We had a small group sing at the U.S. Open in Tony's honor," she said. And a student cabaret show in October showcased "all Tony's songs and Sinatra's songs," she said. |
"It was good to hear those songs coming from the kids," she said. "The material is ageless and wonderful but not always a thing you hear on the radio anymore. His passing away has brought it all back." |
Rubin, the trombonist, said she would have known about Bennett even if his name were not on the school's marquee. She remembered going to the Toys"R"Us store in Times Square as a child. "We would hear Lady Gaga all the time, we would hear Tony Bennett, we would hear all these classic New York songs," Rubin said. |
Best, the musical director, said that when Lady Gaga visited the school, "she said she felt like she was cheating on her Gaga persona, singing these songs" with Bennett. |
And how about Frankel? Was he a Tony Bennett fan before he became the principal? |
"There's only one way to answer that," he said, laughing. |
He had been a student at the Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan. "Certainly I was a fan of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack as a vocal student, as a music student — how could you not be?" |
It's a sunny day in the high 40s. At night it's partly cloudy, with temperatures in the high 30s. |
In effect until Dec. 8 (Immaculate Conception). |
- Jonathan Majors trial: The actor was charged in March with misdemeanor assault and harassment. He went on trial on Wednesday, seeking to keep his career alive in an unusual proceeding.
- Subway shooting in Brooklyn: During the evening rush hour on Tuesday, a gunman shot a 17-year-old boy and a man in his 40s inside a moving subway car, the police said.
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U.S. charges an Indian man with plotting to kill a Sikh activist in New York |
 | | Jackie Dives for The New York Times |
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It was a grubby New York hit job with international implications, as my colleagues Jesse McKinley, Julian E. Barnes and Ian Austen write. An indictment released on Wednesday said the plot was devised by the Indian official and linked to an assassination in Canada, an allegation that could complicate relations among Washington, Ottawa and New Delhi. |
The indictment included a photo of a roll of hundred-dollar bills that prosecutors said was an advance payment for the New York job. But the supposed hit man was in fact working for the federal government. |
The intended target was identified by U.S. officials as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel for the New York-based group Sikhs for Justice. Pannun is an outspoken proponent of independence for the northern Indian state of Punjab, which is home to a large number of Sikhs, a powerful minority group in India. The separatists want a sovereign state called Khalistan. |
The Indian government employee who directed the plot has described himself as a "senior field officer" with responsibilities in "security management" and "intelligence," according to the indictment. It said he had also mentioned serving in India's Central Reserve Police Force and "receiving 'officer training' in 'battle craft' and 'weapons.'" He was not identified by name in the indictment. |
It said that in May he recruited Nikhil Gupta, 52, to "orchestrate" the assassination in New York. Gupta "described his involvement in international narcotics and weapons trafficking" in communications with the Indian official and turned to someone he believed was a criminal associate to find a hit man. |
That person was a confidential source working for the federal government, and the supposed hit man hired by Gupta was an undercover law enforcement officer, prosecutors said. |
Gupta arranged for an associate to deliver $15,000 in cash as an advance payment for the murder in June. Gupta was detained in the Czech Republic later that month and now faces charges of "murder for hire and conspiracy to commit murder for hire," prosecutors said. Each count carries a potential sentence of 10 years in prison. |
The attempted hit outlined in the court papers presents a new challenge to a key element of President Biden's foreign policy agenda: positioning India as a geopolitical counterweight to Russia and China. |
That effort was strained in September, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused the Indian government of involvement in the killing of the Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia, also in June. Trudeau's remarks fueled concerns about India's commitment to democracy and its dependability as an ally of the West. The new allegation that someone in the government of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, was plotting to kill a critic on U.S. soil could be even more damaging. |
I'm from Toronto, and my oldest friend lives in London. Every couple of years, we meet in New York for a week of fun. |
Last summer, we were in a gallery in the West Village checking out prints based on posters for old Bob Dylan concerts. |
After a while, we got to talking with the proprietor. He asked when in our lives we first came to the city. |
My friend surprised me by saying that when he was 10, his parents brought him to New York to see a specialist because they were concerned that he was short and not growing. |
"How tall are you?" the gallery owner asked. |
"Five-foot-4" my friend said. |
"You'll be all right," he finally said. |
My friend and I are in our late 60s. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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