Washington (AP) The annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremony is taking place in Washington on Sunday night, bringing together cultural luminaries, celebrities, and a few unexpected visitors.
The Grateful Dead, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt, and director Francis Ford Coppola are this year’s honorees of the lifetime achievement award for artistic achievements.The Apollo, a renowned theater in Harlem that has produced generations of Black performers, is also receiving recognition.
At the event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, there will be individual tributes featuring performances and testimonies from other artists. The customary Saturday night event at the State Department included the presentation of medallions.
The awardees themselves are frequently kept in the dark about the tribute performances; this was the case in 2018, when Cyndi Lauper flatly misled her longtime friend Cher about her inability to attend. Lauper took the stage to sing “If I Could Turn Back Time,” a classic song by Cher.
A few of the most recent recipients have previously taken part in Kennedy Center tributes to friends and coworkers.
In 2007, Coppola gave a speech during the induction of fellow director Martin Scorsese. Sandoval participated in the homage to the jazz trumpet great Dizzy Gillespie, who served as his mentor. Raitt has participated in tributes to Mavis Staples and Buddy Guy. In the 1970s, when her father, Broadway actor John Raitt, was participating in a tribute to composer Richard Rogers, Raitt even went to the Kennedy Center Honors.
It is anticipated that the Grateful Dead tribute would also serve as a monument to Phil Lesh, the band’s founding bassist who passed away in October at the age of 84.
Additionally, this may be the only Kennedy Center Honors presentation free of political drama for some time to come.
Kennedy Center officials had to balance the custom of the president attending the ceremony with the outspoken hostility for Trump from some awardees during Republican Donald Trump’s first four years in office. Norman Lear, the honoree, vowed to skip his own ceremony in 2017 if Trump showed up. Throughout his first term, Trump, who assumes office in January, did not attend the ceremony.
Democratic President Joe Biden is to attend the Kennedy Center ceremony after hosting a reception for the honorees at the White House.
CBS will broadcast the program on December 22.
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