JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER TO SALUTE TONY BENNETT

The late Tony Bennett will be saluted at Jazz at Lincoln Center's 2024 gala, which will take place 4/17 at Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York. The evening will be anchored by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

Special guests performing Bennett favorites will include singers Rubén Blades, Kristin Chenoweth, Norm Lewis, Kurt Elling, Ekep Nkwelle, Robbie Lee and Bernadette Peters, pianist Bill Charlap and tap dancer Jared Grimes. Click here for concert-only tickets and contact [email protected] for details on the gala, which comprises post-show dinner and dancing and an afterparty at Dizzy's Club with the Danny Jonokuchi Big Band. You won't even have to leave your heart in San Francisco (unless you really want to).

Although he sang in multiple genres throughout his legendary career, Bennett was closely associated with jazz by virtue of his stewardship of the Great American Songbook. He started heading in a jazzy direction with 1957’s The Beat of My Heart, which featured legendary musicians such as Art Blakey, Nat Adderly and Herbie Mann. A year later he recorded with Count Basie, and his touring shows for decades would be heavily jazz-influenced.

When he left longtime label Columbia, Bennett formed the jazz label Improv and released two albums with the pianist Bill Evans that were among the most critically lauded of his career. Improv went out of business in the mid-1970s and Bennett went more than a decade without recording any music.

Bennett, who died in July 2023 at the age of 96, also recorded with Duke Ellington, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck, among other jazz greats. In 2006, he received the National Endowment for the Arts' Jazz Master honor.