About the Jazz at Lincoln Center 2018 Annual Gala
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2018 Gala celebrates our milestone 30th anniversary and showcases the depth, beauty, and diversity of jazz as an art form. Our 30th Anniversary Gala is anchored by New York’s House Band—the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis—and features some of the greatest living jazz vocalists and instrumentalists, including Jon Batiste, Dianne Reeves, Joey Alexander, Jimmy Heath, Paquito D’Rivera, Bill Charlap, Renee Rosnes, and Marcus Roberts. The 2018 Jazz at Lincoln Center Award for Artistic Excellence will be presented to NEA Jazz Master, Kennedy Center Honors recipient, and multi-Grammy Award-winning icon Tony Bennett. Proceeds from this glamorous event help make possible the thousands of unique performances, education programs, and resources produced annually by Jazz at Lincoln Center, which reach more than two million people all over the world.
About Jazz at Lincoln Center
The mission of Jazz at Lincoln Center is to entertain, enrich and expand a global community for Jazz through performance, education and advocacy.
We believe Jazz is a metaphor for Democracy. Because jazz is improvisational, it celebrates personal freedom and encourages individual expression. Because jazz is swinging, it dedicates that freedom to finding and maintaining common ground with others. Because jazz is rooted in the blues, it inspires us to face adversity with persistent optimism. Proceeds from the Gala will allow Jazz at Lincoln Center to continue its ground-breaking projects and programming that bring jazz education into the lives of hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic young people and adults in New York, across the nation, and all over the world.