(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing 1/9/2024: 2023 Kennedy Center Honors [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-01-09 Gerardo Dottori: Alba Lunare (1930) Good evening, Kibitzers! I’m starting this diary on Sunday night, after the snowstorm which I found only moderately satisfactory. I wondered what weather might be forecast for tonight, Tuesday, in the greater Boston area. I see it is a 100% chance of heavy rain, with 50 mph wind gusts and temperatures in the upper 30s. I’m kind of sorry I asked. [Monday night: now there’s officially a flood watch and a high wind watch in effect for Tuesday night. It seems we expect 1-2 inches of rain overnight, while the temperatures rise from the mid-30s to the low 50s, a good reason for high winds. Okay then!] The 46th annual Kennedy Center Honors award show took place IRL on December 3, and was broadcast right after Christmas. That means the YouTube clips are up now, so looking at some seemed like an entertaining way to waste some time. The Kennedy Center was created as the National Cultural Center, by legislation signed by President Eisenhower in 1958 that made it a public-private partnership, to be sustained by private funds. President and Mrs. Kennedy were major supporters and fundraisers for this effort. Accordingly, the center was re-named the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in 1964. The Center opened on the Potomac in 1971. The Kennedy Center Honors have been presented annually since 1978, to five honorees every year. You can see more about the many, many offerings of the Center on their website. This year’s honorees were Billy Crystal, Renée Fleming, Sir Barry Gibb, Queen Latifah, and Dionne Warwick. The host of the show was previous honoree Gloria Estefan, and the show was again, after an unaccountable lapse during 2017-2020, attended by the President and First Lady, who hosted a reception at the White House prior to the event, at which those pretty medals were distributed. The Kennedy Center YouTube channel doesn’t have clips of everything, because the show belongs to CBS/Paramount+ and they would like you to please pay them to watch the whole program. They have a decent selection on YouTube; I am not posting speeches, though, just music. But we’ll just start with the overview, which samples some things we’ll see and some we won’t. If they ever honor me (ha!), I wanna borrow Renee Fleming’s dress! (Not the one in the thumbnail. You’ll see the one.) [3:13] There are two songs posted honoring Renee Fleming; this is You’ll Never Walk Alone, sung by Tituss Burgess, Susan Graham, and Christine Baranski. [3:37] And this is the aria Song to the Moon, from Antonín Dvořák’s opera Rusalka, which is sung in Czech. The singers are Julia Bullock, Ailyn Pérez, Angel Blue, and Nadine Sierra. [2:50] Billy Crystal isn’t a musical honoree, but a segment of only standup routines doesn’t really fit their show, so Lin-Manuel Miranda instead offers a musical tribute in the form of a “Billy Crystal-style Oscar medley”. [2:57] Queen Latifah is honored with her song Ladies First, performed by MC Lyte, Monie Love, and D-Nice. [1:32] Ben Platt sings the first of two of Barry Gibb’s songs, Nights on Broadway. [2:25] Michael Bublé sings How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. [2:22] Dionne Warwick is honored with two songs she made famous. This is Gladys Knight singing I Say a Little Prayer for You. [2:39] And this is Cynthia Erivo singing the stuffing out of Alfie. I confess I did not really know Cynthia Erivo’s work before I watched this, but I see now that I should pay better attention. [3:33] Since there aren’t quite as many of these as I usually like to pack a diary with, I’m going to roll in a few notable ones from years past. This is such a wonderful performance from two great Broadway stars that I am forced to put it here. In 1998, songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb were honored with a performance of Wilkommen, from Cabaret, by the then-current and original portrayers of the Emcee, Alan Cumming and Joel Grey, with dancers from the then-current production of Chicago. Introduction by Walter Cronkite. (If you close your eyes at about 1:53, as Joel Grey is introduced and they cut to Kander and Ebb for a reaction, and then don’t look till Grey begins to sing, you can avoid briefly seeing the leering face of co-honoree Bill Cosby, which was what made me hesitate to post this to begin with.) [3:38] The performance clips distributed and posted by the Kennedy Center are directly from the show as broadcast, and it’s obvious that many songs have been shortened. Silly me, I’d assumed that they were just arranged in shortened versions to fit in the TV show. But no, that is not the case. They are apparently performed full length in the live show, edited down when the show is assembled for broadcast, and the full performance video given to the performers. Thus, Lenny Kravitz is able to share on his own channel his unedited Whole Lotta Love from the 2012 honors for Led Zeppelin; the edited one is maybe half that length. [4:48] Yet, as much as I wanted to include that song, it just felt wrong not to include the massive Stairway to Heaven from the same show, with Ann and Nancy Wilson, drummer Jason Bonham, the Joyce Garrett Youth Choir, and guitar solo by Shane Fontayne. [6:55] There’s almost no way that performance could not be the finale, but there is one way that I know of, and that’s this clip from 2016, honoring Carole King. 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