Live from Lincoln Center

Live From Lincoln Center is an ongoing series of musical performances produced by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in conjunction with Thirteen/WNET in New York City.

A series of concerts, ballets, operas, and recitals telecast, as the title says, live from Lincoln Center, it was created and developed by Executive Producer John Goberman and premiered on January 30, 1976 with a concert featuring André Previn and Van Cliburn. It is aired by PBS stations nationwide periodically rather than on a regular schedule. It has presented historic performances by such artists as Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Sir James Galway, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Audra McDonald, the New York City Ballet, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the American Ballet Theatre, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Opera to millions of home viewers. It has won thirteen Emmy Awards and fifty-three Emmy Award nominations, as well as two George Foster Peabody Awards. Two recordings made from concerts presented on the show have won Grammy awards.

Announcer Martin Bookspan was with the program from its premiere in 1976 until his 2006 retirement, when Fred Child, announcer for NPR's Performance Today, took over. Several personalities, among them Dick Cavett, Hugh Downs, Sam Waterston, Garrick Utley, Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, and Beverly Sills, have served as host for the series, with Downs staying the longest. Ms. Sills was the host from 2000 until two months before her death in 2007. In recent years the host position has been filled by artists such as Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Lesley Stahl. The program was principally directed by Kirk Browning from its inception in 1976 until 2008. Since 2008 Alan Skog has been primary director.

With commercial television networks no longer airing as many classical music programs as they once did, Live from Lincoln Center, along with its companion program Live from the Met (also on PBS), has become the primary source of classical music on American television. Recently though, even the Lincoln Center telecasts have become less numerous, and some PBS affiliates, who are allowed the option of not showing some PBS programs, often air other material, such as Antiques Roadshow, in the time slot that PBS airs Live from Lincoln Center in New York. In an article written especially for the Wall Street Journal, media critic Terry Teachout criticized PBS for this.

Notable broadcasts

• 1976: Swan Lake, The Barber of Seville
• 1978: The Saint of Bleecker Street
• 1979: Street Scene
• 1980: A Tribute to John Huston, Isaac Stern's 60th Birthday Celebration
• 1981: Beverly! Her Farewell Performance, An Evening with Danny Kaye
• 1982: A Tribute to Billy Wilder, James Galway Plays Mostly Mozart
• 1983: A Tribute to George Balanchine, Marilyn Horne's Great American Songbook
• 1985: Great Russian Theater Music, Juilliard at 80, Aaron Copland's 85th Birthday
• 1986: Candide
• 1987: A Comedy of Errors by The Flying Karamazov Brothers
• 1989: Ray Charles in Concert, A Classical Jazz Christmas with Wynton Marsalis
• 1990: Yo-Yo Ma in Concert, A Little Night Music
• 1991: Mozart Bicentennial Birthday Serenade
• 1992: New York Philharmonic 150th Anniversary
• 1994: Jessye Norman: Women of Legend, Fantasy, and Lore
• 1997: A Celebration of the American Musical
• 1999: Uptown Blues: Ellington at 100
• 2002: Porgy and Bess (New York City Opera version), Contact
• 2003: Marsalis at The Penthouse
• 2004: Jazz At Lincoln Center Grand Opening of Frederick P. Rose Hall - One Family of Jazz
• 2005: American Songbook - Passion, Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert
• 2006: The Light in the Piazza, The Juilliard School: Celebrating 100 Years, American Songbook: Audra McDonald & Friends Build A Bridge, Audra McDonald Sings the Movies
• 2007: Mozart Dances, Red Hot Holiday Stomp
• 2008: Madama Butterfly
• 2009: New York City Ballet: Romeo + Juliet, Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma, New York Philharmonic New Year's Eve: "Hampson, Gershwin, Copland, and Broadway"
• 2010: Joshua Bell with Friends @ The Penthouse, South Pacific, Baroque Holiday with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
• 2011: Wynton at 50, George Balanchine's The Nutcracker

External links

• Live From Lincoln Center homepage
• Live From Lincoln Center on Facebook
• Live From Lincoln Center on Twitter
• PBS Video: Live From Lincoln Center
• "Live From Lincoln Center at the Internet Movie database