Two Latinos are among Kennedy Center honorees
WASHINGTON— When Herbie Hancock learned he was one of the five artists to be honored this year by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the surprise, he said, brought him to the verge of tears.
“And that doesn’t happen to me very often. To think that they would put me on the list with people I have loved and respected for so many years, it’s shocking,” said Hancock, a 73-year-old master jazz pianist who has played with Miles Davis and won 14 Grammys and an Oscar. “It was like a dream, hard to believe and humbling.”
Musicians Billy Joel and Carlos Santana, actress Shirley MacLaine and opera singer Martina Arroyo also will receive the 36th Honors medal in December, the Kennedy Center announced Thursday. The annual award is presented to artists for lifetime contributions to American culture.
The class of Honors recipients is the first since the Kennedy Center revamped its selection process this year, in response to criticism that the process lacked transparency and had yielded only two Latino winners.
The Honors medals will be presented at a dinner at the State Department on Dec. 7, followed the next day by a reception at the White House and tribute performances at the Kennedy Center. The performances will be taped and broadcast on Dec. 29 on CBS.
“It’s better than Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving and Valentine’s,” said Santana, 66, who is receiving the award 50 years after he arrived in San Francisco from Tijuana, Mexico.
MacLaine, 79, has won an Oscar, several Golden Globes and a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute for a career full of notable performances. But the Kennedy Center medal, she said, is special recognition.
“The others are for a part you did or for how you interpreted a character, but this is about how you’ve interpreted yourself,” she said.
Joel’s lyricism and skills on the piano have earned the 64-year-old the nickname “Piano Man” as he churned out decades of hits like the single “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me.”
Arroyo, 76, pursued opera against her mother’s urgings to find a more practical skill. She became a star in 1965 after she replaced Birgit Nilsson in a production of “Aïda.”
The Kennedy Center has been criticized for using a selection process that is too secretive and has yielded too few Latino recipients. Before Arroyo and Santana, actress Chita Rivera and opera star Placido Domingo were the only Latinos among 185 artists who had received the award.
After an internal review, the Kennedy Center expanded its artists’ committee, which picks the nominees, and began accepting recommendations from the public.
It also created a committee that includes two previous winners, Rivera and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, to narrow the list of nominees for the Kennedy Center board of trustees, which makes the final decisions.