The class announced by the arts center Thursday also includes some famous human names: renowned filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola; blues-rock star Bonnie Raitt; celebrated Cuban American trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval; and beloved band the Grateful Dead, whose living honorees are Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir.
Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter said there isn’t a theme when selecting the honorees, but one often emerges organically. This year, that accidental theme is “a reflection of American culture through its music and how music is used to create American culture,” she said, pointing to the Grateful Dead as a cultural institution, the Apollo as a musician maker and the use of music in Coppola’s films.
The Dec. 8 ceremony will take place in the 2,364-seat Opera House, where celebrity guests, top secret until the night of, will celebrate the honorees from the stage. The center has not decided whether the evening will follow tradition and include a host (last year’s was previous honoree Gloria Estefan). The show will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount Plus on Dec. 23.
The Apollo — which launched the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight, among many others — is the first physical institution to receive the honor, but the Kennedy Center has zagged before. In addition to honoring full bands (Led Zeppelin, U2, the Eagles), it has celebrated “Sesame Street” (all of it) and the cast of the Broadway sensation/D.C. catnip “Hamilton.”
The honor will cap a year-long 90th birthday celebration for the theater, which included its first major expansion a few doors down on 125th Street with the opening of the Apollo Stages at the Victoria. Plans are also underway for a full-scale restoration of its historic theater, which includes an expansion of the lobby and a new cafe.
“This is a wonderful spotlight on the exciting work that continues to happen at the Apollo Theatre as we propel ourselves forward for the next 90 years,” Ebanks said. “The work continues.”
Ask any cinephile, and they’ll probably tell you that Francis Ford Coppola directed not one but two of the best American movies: “The Godfather” and “The Godfather: Part II.” They might mention that “The Godfather” came out only a year after his first of five Oscars wins, this one as a screenwriter for the 1970 film “Patton.” Oh, and he released “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse, Now” that same decade.
Ask any grocery store oenophile, and they’ll probably tell you about the affordable wines produced by the Sonoma Valley vineyard he nurtured and sold in 2021.
Even so, he figured his chance at the Kennedy Center Honors had passed.
“I sort of assumed it wasn’t going to come to me, because it hadn’t,” Coppola said. “I was surprised. I just figured whoever makes the decision must have changed or something, because for years, I was congratulating my younger colleagues.”
On Dec. 8, he’ll join other directors of his generation in receiving the honor, including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. He paid tribute to Scorsese during the “Goodfellas” director’s own Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in 2007.
It’s one of two major moments for Coppola this year. His longtime passion project “Megalopolis,” an epic sci-fi drama with a stunning ensemble cast that he spent $120 million of his own money to make, debuted at Cannes in May and is scheduled for theatrical release in September.
Coppola is particularly thrilled to be recognized alongside fellow Bay Area figures, the Grateful Dead. “I even looked like Jerry Garcia,” he said. “We were always confused, one for the other.”
Bob Weir isn’t particularly fond of awards shows. “If I was given the choice in the matter, I’d probably duck the ceremony and just pop into the White House and receive the honor,” he says. “But that’s not how it’s done.”
Instead, Weir will be in the balcony with the remaining members of the band he co-founded in 1965 California: the Grateful Dead, a countercultural force that helped define that decade’s psychedelia movement, the rock band that blended wide-ranging genres from rock to jazz to reggae and earned an incredibly loyal fan base: the Dead Heads.
“There are a lot of honors that I’ve received and stuff like that, that I can live without, that I just don’t relate to. In this particular case, I’m thinking this one does kind of ring true,” he said. “My muse has always been the American musical tradition.”
By the time founding member Jerry Garcia died in 1995 — a year after the band was the inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — the group had attracted the most concertgoers in the history of the music business. It disbanded after Garcia’s death, and still holds the world record for most concerts: 2,318.
Since then, the band has reformed in various iterations, including the Dead and Dead & Company, inviting other artists like John Mayer to join the lineup. The Grateful Dead is more cultural institution than band, a groovy slice of American history, nonconformists who will now sit next to the president of the United States while luxuriating in praise.
Original bandmates Garcia and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who died in 1973, will be in Weir’s heart — and, he said, hopefully represented onstage.
“We’ve already looked into this, so there’s not posthumous presentation, so that’s not a move on the board,” he says. “But I’m busy scheming away on ways to bring their presence to that night’s storytelling.”
Bonnie Raitt attended the first Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, when her father paid tribute to Richard Rodgers. She took the stage twice over the years, as she paid tribute to Mavis Staples and Buddy Guy — but she never expected to be in the balcony.
“Most of the time, it’s people with decades of hit records or many, many hit movies or successful novels,” Raitt said. “I basically welled up with tears when the reality of it set in. I don’t know what’ll be more wonderful: the actual awards, or hearing about it for the first time.”
For nearly two decades, only those in the know knew about Bonnie Raitt. The rock-blues (-country-folk-R&B) guitarist and songwriter released her first album in 1971 and remained a cult favorite until her 1989 album, “Nick of Time.”
Now 74, she’s won 13 Grammys and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Rolling Stone has dubbed her among both the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time.”
Toss in her environmental and social activism — which includes helping found MUSE, or Musicians United for Safe Energy, in 1979 — and you’d be hard-pressed to explain how she’s only being honored by the Kennedy Center now.
“I’m so proud to be representing how musicians can make a difference,” Raitt said. “And, you know, as a lead guitar player and woman, there aren’t that many of us around. I’m happy to be acknowledged for that as well.”
But she might be most looking forward to seeing old friends, the ones she doesn’t get to connect with as tours take her around the country.
“To have them all in one town for the same two days is unbelievable,” Raitt said. “What do you call Disneyland for artists who don’t get to hang out with friends? This would be it.”
The Honor is yet another laurel for 74-year-old Arturo Sandoval, widely considered one of the world’s greatest trumpet players and composers. If there’s an accolade to be given, Sandoval’s probably received it. A Grammy? Try 10. Billboard Awards? How about six? An Emmy? Why not? The Presidential Medal of Freedom? Bestowed by Barack Obama.
He was born in 1949 in a small town outside Havana and grew up studying American jazz — and soon found international acclaim. During a 1990 tour with the U.N. Orchestra on an invite from his mentor and friend Dizzy Gillespie, he slipped into the U.S. Embassy in Rome to seek asylum, along with his wife and teenage son. They successfully defected from Cuba.
Sandoval might be touched by the Kennedy Center Honors, but he’s also motivated by it. What matters more than how “good you are as a baseball player or engineer or musician or whatever is how you behave as a human,” he said. “Your attitude, and how you treat people and help others.”
“I feel completely overwhelmed,” Sandoval added. “My English is not good enough to express my gratitude, my emotion.”
correction
A previous version of this article stated the Grateful Dead disbanded before Jerry Garcia’s death. It disbanded after. It has been updated.
