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Music legend Dionne Warwick dazzles at MCC’s annual Celebrity Forum

LOWELL — Dozens gathered in the Lowell Memorial Auditorium Thursday evening to see a performance by six-time Grammy Award-winner and recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Dionne Warwick for Middlesex Community College’s annual Celebrity Forum.

Warwick performed hits like “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “Close to You” and “What the World Needs Now,” among many others over the two-hour performance.

MCC President Phil Sisson said before Warwick’s performance that the annual Celebrity Forum is the college’s “lead fundraiser to support student scholarships.”

“This event is a critical source of support for our central mission of providing affordable access to high quality education for our very diverse community of learners that we serve each and every day,” said Sisson.

The show was opened up by the 83-year-old Warwick’s granddaughter, Cheyenne Elliott, who, along with her father, Warwick’s son David Elliott, also joined Warwick for a few songs near the end of the show. As Warwick took the stage, she said the evening’s fundraiser was “of great importance.”

“Not only to me, but to a lot of young citizens who have aspirations of continuing music,” said Warwick. “I know of the importance of scholarships, as that is what got me into college.”

After the performance, Warwick sat down with Sisson for a wide-ranging discussion of her life and career, from her roots being born into a deeply musical New Jersey family in 1940, to her advocacy during the AIDS epidemic and her later induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

“I actually read that your mother was quoted as saying, ‘She came out singing,’” said Sisson to Warwick.

Warwick told the story of the first time she sang gospel as a child.

“My grandfather was a minister. He brought me to his congregation, to his pulpit, and he decided he wanted me to sing. I was 6 years old,” said Warwick. “He had placed a bunch of books so I could stand on them and they could see me over the lectern, and I looked at him like he had lost his mind.”

She said she relented and sang for the congregation, and quickly became encouraged by the response she had received from the audience. As her professional career unfolded, she performed multiple times at the Apollo Theater in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, a venue that has a reputation for having tough crowds to please.

“If they don’t like you, they let you know. There is an old saying that if you can make it at the Apollo, you can make it anywhere in the entire world, and that is the gospel truth,” said Warwick.

Sisson pointed out that Warwick’s career goes beyond music, as she served as the U.S. ambassador of health to the United Nations during the AIDS epidemic, and as a U.N. global ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization.

“We noticed how many people in my industry were being affected by it,” said Warwick on the AIDS crisis. “As a result of me being nosy, I started inquiring with doctors about what we were going through here … I lost two people who were working for me: my hairdresser and my valet, before we even knew what it was. We thought it was a cancer of some sort.”

After reaching out for answers to a man who would become a household name decades later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, Warwick said President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the ambassadorship.

Warwick also recalled meeting Elvis Presley in Las Vegas for the first time, and had nothing but good things to say about the late king of rock. She recounted how Presley complimented her music, and how he announced at a show that any time his people saw one of her records in a store in or around Las Vegas, they would put a signed photo of him inside.

“I sold more albums in that time,” said Warwick as she was cut off by laughter from the audience.

Sisson pointed to Warwick’s love of education, and how her elementary school in East Orange, N.J., was renamed to the Dionne Warwick Institute.

“Education is one of the most valuable things we should all revere,” said Warwick. “Without it, we know nothing. With it we can know, and learn, everything.”

At the end of the conversation, Sisson presented Warwick with purple flowers, her favorite color. He then announced that in honor of Warwick and her dedication to education, a plaque will be installed on a seat in MCC’s Academic Arts Center in Lowell, which will read “Dionne Warwick: Award-winning singer, author and humanitarian.”

In a phone call Friday morning, Sisson said it was far too early to tell how much was raised from the Celebrity Forum this year, and that number will likely come sometime later in the spring, when the MCC Foundation has its next meeting.

“This is a premier event for us to raise scholarship dollars for a variety of different scholarships across the institution,” said Sisson. “It is important to know that a lot of our students do not have their financial needs met through financial aid, so now our scholarships are probably more important than ever.”