Jazz at Lincoln Center is celebrating the late singer Tony Bennett and jazz pianist Bill Charlap at its annual gala.
LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 15: Musician Bill Charlap (L) and singer Tony Bennett, winners of Best ... [+]
Taking place April 17, the gala will feature a concert celebrating Bennett’s music that will be hosted by Josh Groban and anchored by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Performers will include vocalists Rubén Blades, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth, Norm Lewis, Kurt Elling, Ekep Nkwelle, Robbie Lee and Shenel Johns; pianist Charlap; and tap dancer Jared Grimes
Songs may include “The Best is Yet to Come,” “Watch What Happens,” “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “It Amazes Me” and “All the Things You Are.”
Bennett, who was also a painter, passed away last July.
The gala also will honor Grammy Award-winning pianist Charlap with its award for artistic excellence, which Bennett won in 2018. Calling him “one of the world’s premier jazz pianists,” Jazz at Lincoln Center said Charlap “has produced concerts for performing arts organizations across the country, and from 2004 - 2023, has served as artistic director of New York City’s Jazz in July festival at 92NY. Through mentorship and his service as the director of jazz studies at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey since 2015, Charlap exemplifies commitment to education and the jazz tradition.”
Jazz at Lincoln Center also will present its Ed Bradley Award for leadership in jazz to Tim Jackson, former artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival, and to Randall Kline, founder of SFJAZZ.
The concert will be livestreamed April 17 and available on demand through April 23 on the orchestra’s Jazz Live app.
Speaking to Forbes.com last week, Charlap said he was “very good friends” with Bennett “for over thirty years.”
“Over the years, every now and then we would do various things together, private parties, special projects,” he explained. They also recorded together, including the 2015 album, “The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern,” also featuring Charlap’s wife, the jazz pianist Renee Rosnes, and the two other members of his current trio, Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums. This album won a Grammy Award for best traditional pop vocal album.
Speaking of their recording sessions, Charlap said, “Tony just comes in and does it.”
He also called him a “very accomplished painter,” a skill, Charlap said, “informed the way he sang.” Bennett, he added, “was a great communicator.”
Charlap owns sketches Bennett did of him and his trio, as well as a pastel he did that illustrates the cover of the first album of the trio.
Charlap also said he was “very touched and overwhelmed” to be honored by Jazz at Lincoln Center.
“It’s very nice to be witnessed by the people you respect,” he added.
Charlap, who was the opening act at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center when it opened, said he and Marsalis are “dear friends. I feel quite close to the organization. I think they are champions.”
Blue Note Records will release a new album featuring Charlap’s trio at the end of the summer.
