Tony Bennett, 94, diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease
Tony Bennett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The 94-year-old singer revealed his diagnosis, first made in 2016, in an article by John Colapinto for the US magazine AARP. He also wrote on Twitter: “Life is a gift – even with Alzheimer’s.”
His wife Susan Benedetto, 54, is now his primary caregiver. Colapinto writes: “Although [Bennett] can still recognise family members, he is, according to Susan, not always sure where he is or what is happening around him. Mundane objects as familiar as a fork or a set of house keys can be utterly mysterious to him.”
Bennett is preparing to release another album of duets with Lady Gaga, following 2014’s Cheek to Cheek, recorded between 2018 and 2020 as he began to suffer from the illness. “In raw documentary footage of the sessions, he speaks rarely, and when he does his words are halting; at times, he seems lost and bewildered,” Colapinto writes, adding that he was unable to interview Bennett because of his condition.
Gayatri Devi, the doctor who diagnosed him, says Bennett has “cognitive issues, but multiple other areas of his brain are still resilient and functioning well. He is doing so many things, at 94, that many people without dementia cannot do. He really is the symbol of hope for someone with a cognitive disorder.”
Bennett is a 19-time Grammy winner whose career stretches back to the late 1940s when he returned from the second world war, and became a teen idol in the 1950s with his classy, unhurried ballads. Collaborations with pianist Bill Evans deepened his jazz songcraft after the pop revolutions of the 1960s took over, and he has maintained a successful career and global touring ever since.
As well as his enduring partnership with Lady Gaga, he has also collaborated with other younger artists in recent years, including Amy Winehouse, Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé.
Remarkably, he is still able to sing a wide range of his old repertoire, performing for Colapinto for an hour. Colapinto writes: “Neuroscience even today cannot explain how a man whose speaking voice has become so hesitant – whose memory of events, people and places has largely vanished – can, at the sound of a musical cue, lift his voice in song with such beauty and expression.”