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☆ Tony Bennett, Champion of the Great American Songbook, Is Dead at 96
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Bruce Weber | More About Bruce Weber | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Tony Bennett, a singer whose melodic clarity, jazz-influenced phrasing, audience-embracing persona and warm, deceptively simple interpretations of musical standards helped spread the American songbook around the world and won him generations of fans, died on Friday in New York City. His publicist, Sylvia Weiner, announced his death. In February 2021, his wife, Susan Bennett, told AARP The Magazine that Mr. Bennett learned he had Alzheimer’s disease in 2016. He continued to perform and record despite his illness; his last public performance was in August of that year, when he appeared with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall in a show titled “One Last Time.”Mr. Bennett’s career of more than 70 years was remarkable not only for its longevity, but also for its consistency. In hundreds of concerts and club dates and more than 150 recordings, he devoted himself to preserving the classic American popular song, as written by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others.

Persons: Tony Bennett, Sylvia Weiner, Susan Bennett, Bennett, Lady Gaga, Mr, Bennett’s, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Gaga, — Organizations: Radio City Music, Paramount, Times Locations: New York City, American

☆ Tony Bennett, Always a Class Act
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Jim Windolf | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Like his singing voice, Tony Bennett’s personal style was supple, straightforward and sure of itself. He resisted the temptation to change his approach to music when rock overtook the pop charts, and he largely stayed away from many sartorial trends that came and went during his seven decades in show business, wisely sticking with tuxedos and smartly tailored suits, many of them from the Italian fashion brand Brioni. For more casual moments, he went with slacks and a blazer, sometimes with a handsome dark turtleneck in place of a button-down shirt and tie. Paradoxically enough, by sticking with the style that allowed him to feel most himself when it came to both music and fashion, Mr. Bennett managed to avoid the trap of becoming associated too strongly with any one era. In recent decades, when men’s fashion magazines celebrated the ring-a-ding-ding style of the 1950s and early 1960s in backward-looking fashion spreads, they tended to focus on Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and other dyed-in-the-wool members of the Rat Pack.

Persons: Tony Bennett’s, Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Organizations: slacks

☆ Tony Bennett Dies at 96: Photos From His Career
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Wsj Staff | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

After a stint in the Army around the end of World War II, he caught the attention of comedian Bob Hope, right, who brought him on tour. In 1950, he signed with Columbia Records, the home of Frank Sinatra. It was Hope who christened Bennett, replacing his stage name, Joe Bari, with an abbreviation of his given name. Everett Collection

Persons: Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Hope, Bennett, Joe Bari Organizations: Army, Columbia Records, Everett

☆ Forget What the Song Says. Tony Bennett’s Heart Never Left New York.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( James Barron | More About James Barron | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

There were the famous New York places where he was celebrated, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where his 75th birthday party wasn’t referred to as a birthday party. There were the canvases he painted in every Manhattanite’s backyard. And there were the New York stages he appeared on, from the Paramount Theater when he was in his 20s to Carnegie Hall in his 30s to Radio City Music Hall in his 90s. Tony Bennett may have become famous for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” but his own heart was unquestionably a New Yorker’s. He had that New York cool, decade after decade — the kid from Astoria, Queens, who made a go of it in Manhattan.

Persons: Tony Bennett, ” Organizations: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paramount Theater, Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall Locations: New York, Central Park, New, San Francisco, York, Astoria , Queens, Manhattan

☆ Billy Joel Will End Madison Square Garden Residency in 2024
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Ben Sisario | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The roster of special guests has included Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, Olivia Rodrigo and Joel’s daughter Alexa Ray Joel. The residency has continued on a roughly monthly schedule since its inception, aside from an 18-month break during the Covid-19 pandemic, returning in November 2021. According to the trade publication Pollstar, Joel’s residency has played to nearly 1.7 million people through its 89th performance in April, and sold $207 million in tickets. The idea for the residency came about following Celine Dion’s two record-breaking runs in Las Vegas, which started in 2003 and ultimately sold about $660 million in tickets. Last year, for example, Harry Styles played 15 dates at the Garden and, in late 2022 and 2023, another 15 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.

Persons: ”, Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, Olivia Rodrigo, Joel’s, Alexa Ray Joel, Celine Dion’s, Joel, “, ” Dennis Arfa, Harry Styles Organizations: MSG, York State, New York Times, Kia Locations: “ Allentown, “, York, Las Vegas, Vegas, ”, Inglewood , Calif

CNN —Harry Belafonte, the dashing singer, actor and activist who became an indispensable supporter of the civil rights movement, has died, his publicist Ken Sunshine told CNN. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Belafonte, left, plays a school principal in a scene from the film "See How They Run" in 1952. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Belafonte poses with the Emmy Award he won in 1960 for the musical special "Tonight With Belafonte." Fred Sabine/NBCU/Getty Images Belafonte and other recipients of Albert Einstein Commemorative Awards display their medallions after being honored in 1972. He is survived by his wife Pamela, his children Adrienne Belafonte Biesemeyer, Shari Belafonte, Gina Belafonte, David Belafonte, two stepchildren Sarah Frank and Lindsey Frank and eight grandchildren.

☆ Tony Bennett at 90: ‘I Just Love What I’m Doing’
▼ + stars: | 2016-12-14 | by ( John Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“I can’t believe that all this is happening,” Mr. Bennett said. (It didn’t hurt that his last NBC special, for his 80th birthday, won seven Emmy Awards.) “Tony Bennett Celebrates 90: The Best Is Yet to Come” is built around a September concert at Radio City Music Hall that featured singers such as Stevie Wonder, Michael Bublé, Leslie Odom Jr. and Lady Gaga saluting him. There are interview segments with Mr. Bennett scattered in, and a show-within-a-show comedy sketch starring Alec Baldwin, who reprises his “Saturday Night Live” impersonation of a blithely clueless and hyper-ebullient Tony Bennett. ”Indeed, it seems quite fun to be Tony Bennett.

Persons: ” Mr, Bennett, “, Bob Hope, Doug Vaughan, Tony, ”, “ Tony Bennett, Stevie Wonder, Michael Bublé, Leslie Odom Jr, Lady Gaga, Billie Joel, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Alec Baldwin, Tony Bennett, Mr, Baldwin, I’d Organizations: NBC, Radio City Music

☆ Tony Bennett Finds His Heart in Central Park
▼ + stars: | 2015-11-29 | by ( Alex Vadukul | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Tony Bennett sat on a green bench in the morning calm of Central Park, painting the fiery foliage of a tree reflecting against a duck pond. He wore a green tracksuit and sneakers. His brush hand zoomed across the sketchbook in his lap. He tuned out the city, sitting by a southern entrance to the park this month. “Excuse me, sir?”Mr. Bennett glanced up and then gazed down again.

Persons: Tony Bennett, —, ”, Mr, Bennett glanced Locations: America

☆ Lady Gaga Brings Thrill to Tony Bennett’s Immutable Style
▼ + stars: | 2015-06-22 | by ( Stephen Holden | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

An irresistible force and an immovable object: that would be Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett on Friday evening at Radio City Music Hall where they sang more than 30 standards, separately and together, before a respectful multigenerational audience that tilted older. The immovable object was Mr. Bennett, a living monument at 88, who, when he moved across the stage, proceeded slowly, cautiously and with dignity. With his customary grace and humility, Mr. Bennett embodied the patriarch of American popular song he has been for the last two decades. Around him fluttered that irresistible force, Lady Gaga, 29, an eccentric living bauble, in a succession of extravagant showgirl outfits and wigs. The chemistry between the performers in this Cheek to Cheek tour is noticeably different from the cuddly granddad and granddaughter intimacy of their videos.

Persons: Gaga, Tony Bennett, Bennett, Lady Gaga, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Mike Renzi, Cheek Organizations: Radio City Music, Broadway

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