Gere hosts Carnegie concert for Ukraine
Actor Richard Gere hosted a benefit concert for Ukraine at Carnegie Hall that raised $360,000 for Direct Relief, a humanitarian organization providing medical aid.
Soprano Angel Blue, mezzo-sopranos Denyce Graves and Isabel Leonard, pianist Evgeny Kissin, violinists Midori and Itzhak Perlman, Tony Award-winner Adrienne Warren, singer Michael Feinstein, jazz vocalist Cécile Mclorin Salvant, mandolinist Chris Thile and Broadway actress Jessica Vosk were among the performers Monday night during a program whose themes included prayer and dreams.
“We recognize their fight as our fight for the right to self-determination, for freedom, for a more just and more secure
world based on wisdom and love,” Gere said from the stage. He quoted Leonard Bernstein, the conductor who led more than 400 performances at Carnegie: “Lenny said: ‘This will be our reply to violence. To make music more intensively, more beautifully, more devoted than ever before.’”
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, spoke in a recorded video and Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, spoke in person.
Graves choked up as she told the audience about her husband, Dr. Robert Montgomery, going to Ukraine to assist aid efforts and returning a day earlier.
The audience included Jamala, a Ukrainian singer whose “1944” won the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.