The 2024 Kennedy Heart honorees, clockwise from left, The Apollo theater; the Grateful Lifeless (Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann); jazz trumpeter, pianist and composer Arturo Sandoval; blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist, Bonnie Raitt; and director and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
Apollo Theater / Jay Blakesberg / Jeremy Lock / Ken Friedman / Chad Keig/The Kennedy Heart Honors
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Apollo Theater / Jay Blakesberg / Jeremy Lock / Ken Friedman / Chad Keig/The Kennedy Heart Honors
The recipients of the forty seventh Kennedy Heart Honors have been introduced.
The award for lifetime creative achievements will acknowledge director and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola; blues singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt; jazz trumpeter, pianist and composer Arturo Sandoval; the Apollo Theater; and the 4 surviving members of countercultural rock band the Grateful Lifeless.
Guitarist Bob Weir, who collaborated with the Nationwide Symphony Orchestra to convey the Lifeless’s catalog to the Kennedy Heart in 2022, informed NPR he was speechless — and profusely thanked the devoted Deadheads who’ve sustained the band for practically six many years, in addition to his late bandmates Jerry Garcia and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan.
“Not so way back, we had been form of outsiders. Now all of that is type of modified,” Weir mentioned. “We have been accepted into the American musical custom, which is the place we have all the time been.”
The Honors increase cash for the Kennedy Heart whereas recognizing artists who’ve performed a key position within the improvement of American tradition. The annual ceremony is slated for Sunday, Dec. 8 and can air on CBS on Dec. 23.
“An excellent and masterful storyteller with an unrelenting progressive spirit, Francis Ford Coppola’s movies have turn out to be embedded within the very concept of American tradition; a social and cultural phenomenon since 1965, the Grateful Lifeless’s music has by no means stopped being a real American unique whereas inspiring a fan tradition like no different,” mentioned Kennedy Heart Chairman David M. Rubenstein in a press release asserting the winners.
“Bonnie Raitt has made us love her many times along with her inimitable voice, slide guitar, and limitless musical vary encompassing blues, R&B, nation rock, and people; ‘an envoy of each music and humanity,’ Arturo Sandoval transcended literal borders coming from Cuba 30+ years in the past and in the present day continues to bridge cultures together with his intoxicating mix of Afro Cuban rhythms and trendy jazz; and on its ninetieth anniversary, The Apollo, probably the most consequential, influential establishments in historical past, has elevated the voices of Black leisure in New York.”
