Grace performs at the Kennedy Center Honors
Grace performed for Francis Ford Coppola at the Kennedy Center Honors 2024. The other honorees this year were the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval, and the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, N.Y. The host of the evening was Queen Latifah. The show was broadcast on CBS on December 22.
In a red carpet interview with AP, Grace explained how she got the gig: "I was at a dinner recently, and there was this woman performing, and I looked at my manager, and I was like ‘I should be performing!’. Then we heard of this, and I said, ‘Remember the last gala we were at, we should just throw it out’. I thought it would be maybe like a dinner, and I would perform. But they came back to us and said ‘Actually, we would love that, in fact, we would like you to do the entire tribute’
Grace said that she was very nervous "I was in rehearsal, and I almost couldn’t hold the microphone because my hands were trembling so badly. I get butterflies, I couldn’t sleep last night." In an interview just before this, Grace said that she was performing with a full orchestra and that at rehearsals, it was the first time she had heard strings live. (strictly speaking, not quite true: she was accompanied by a cello 13 times from 2016 to 2017, including twice on AGT (for Light The Sky and Clay), and she was accompanied by a violin as late as November 19, 2024, at the Grammy Museum Spotlight event). (Incidentally, the interviewer from AP did not appear to know that Grace had done anything since AGT and might not even have known that she was in Megalopolis)
Grace performed "The Impossible Dream” from the Musical "The Man of La Mancha", a song that has been covered by a host of legendary singers, among them Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Jaque Brel, Andy Williams, Sammy Davis Jr., Roberta Flack, Tom Jones, Elvis, Jeniffer Hudson, and not least Aretha Franklin, who performed it live at civil rights ikon Roas Parks’ funeral. Grace is a big fan of Aretha, and that may be where she got the inspiration to sing that song.
Billboard described Grace’s performance as “a raspy, rousing version”.Variety called it: “a touching version of 'The Impossible Dream'”Sound producer Ruben "Jigga” Pinto-Castillo (who also did the sound production for the Today Show performance) posted a short clip to IG stories of a bit of the applause after Grace's performance.
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"The Kennedy Center Honors recognizes artists who have made an extraordinary impact on the cultural life of our nation and continue to have an immeasurable influence on new generations. A brilliant and masterful storyteller with an unrelenting innovative spirit, Francis Ford Coppola’s films have become embedded in the very idea of American culture; a social and cultural phenomenon since 1965" (Kennedy Center homepage)
The ensemble
Before the performance, Grace sat at a table on stage with the others who gave tribute to Coppola that evening: Coppola’s granddaughter Gina Coppola, his nephew Jason Swartzman, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro, Coppola’s sister Talia Shire, Al Pacino, and Laurence Fishburne. The table and backdrop were intended to show a dinner of friends and family in an Italian landscape.
Tommy Brannigan from Grace’s management team posted a short video where he panned acroos the room. We have stitched it together to give panoramic view of the audience.
The dresses