This coming March 15th will be the Music of Paul McCartney, the 18th annual tribute at Carnegie Hall which I have produced as a fundraiser for music education programs for underserved youth. In 17 years, we’ve produced 16 amazing nights where 20 artists each play one song of our honoree’s music—the series has paid tribute to Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Prince and so many others. We have been lucky to have had Bruce Springsteen, REM and David Byrne come to their night--surprising the audience, and playing the encore to a delighted audience.
We charge a variety of prices for tickets and keep our costs to a bare minimum allowing us to cover the expensive production and union fees of Carnegie and eek out a net profit which we give 100% to about 10 very worthy organizations. Carnegie Hall is one of the most storied venues in the world and we are honored to put on this series. But it does take an army of people, including most of the musicians, many of our staff at City Winery, to essentially volunteer or work for cost in order to carve out a profit which we donate. It started in 2004 when I was on the board of the Music-For-Youth Foundation, a group of music industry “machurs” (Yiddish for powerful big shots who control things), who were raising money from a few industry luncheons and dinners honoring the legends of the business. It was part of the UJA Federation, an incredibly important philanthropic agency that has tentacles in many parts of society—a huge machine of fundraising and giving. Anyway, the music organization’s primary income was coming from the record industry which in 2000-2003 was in dramatic decline with little sales, fighting a digital war, and lots of chaos in the status quo.
I was one of the youngest and newest at a board meeting up in some fancy midtown board room with the heads of Sony, Warner, BMG, BMI, ASCAP, all the big lawyers, etc. and the question came up, “how are we going to keep giving money out to these music education programs if we can’t raise more money from the luncheons?”. I sheepishly raised my hand for the first time and said, why don’t we put on a concert everyone, you all control the biggest names, let’s do this….Everyone looked at me like I was totally nuts, “what, put on a concert, without sponsorship, you will lose your shirt.” Slightly embarrassed and not sure what to say as I was running a small club downtown that hardly made any money, “how about I put on a show at Carnegie Hall, I’ll give 100% of the profit to the organization and I’ll cover 100% of the loss if any, a no-lose proposition for you all. I just need you to all buy some tickets and maybe help with some talent.” Everyone agreed, and I don’t think I imagined it, but most everyone said under their breath, “what a dumb schmuck, good luck kid.”. Whatever.
Anyway, the first year was the Music of Joni Mitchell. It was magical. She could not make it (that is another story), but sent yellow roses to all the performers, which is now a tradition I continue from the side of the stage. We were able to net $100,000 dollars and gave it to the Music-for-Youth foundation. Unfortunately, within a year, that organization was swallowed up by the UJA and I was not that thrilled with not seeing the funds going directly to the organizations anymore, so I pulled out of the deal after the second year’s Music of Elton John and started doing this independently, writing checks directly to same organizations MFY was funding including: Little Kids Rock (now called Music Will), Mr. Hollands Opus, Midori & Friends, Young Audiences NY, The Orchestra Now, D’Addario Foundation, Center for Arts Education, Church Street School of Music, Grammy in the Schools, Save the Music, SAFA, Newport Festivals Foundation.
Sometimes a few of the organizations will change, but for the most part, I have stayed consistent to music education programs, even when some big-name performers would like to do this with their pet charities. Or we get asked to do this annual tribute for a recent hurricane, fire, famine, war, or the many plagues hitting our world now, we can do other fundraisers. For this annual spring tribute to the great living songwriters, music education needs the help especially in underserved markets. Music and Arts programs are generally the first to get cut in public schools or after school programs when there are financial challenges and given all the competing charitable organizations and need out in the constantly changing world, it is nice to have a single focused and consistent area of support.
These shows are tight productions. We bring in a house band (this year, the great Steve Jordan is musical director, who just replaced Charlie Watts on the recent Rolling Stones dates
), have a couple of rehearsals and use City Winery now during the days before as a rehearsal studio (the rent, food, and setting being as cheap as we can find) We hit right at 8:02pm and have the encore by 10:25pm, with the stage cleared by midnight to not be charged overtime. We keep the segues between songs as short as possible, with a little off stage introduction by our voice of god. Sadly, for 12 years in a row, that voice was Rita Houston from WFUV who dies in 2020 from a battle with Cancer. Our 2020, 2021, and 2022 shows of the Music of Carly Simon kept getting postponed due to Covid and we eventually decided to move on. We are very lucky to get Kristine Stone of SiriusXM to become our voice of the show.
This upcoming Paul McCartney show is going to be incredible. So far confirmed is: Bettye Lavette, Lyle Lovett, Cactus Blossoms, Peter Asher, Lake Street Dive, Shovels & Rope, Glen Hansard (of Swell Season), Allison Russell and Ingrid Michaelson. We have several more artists to announce next week and will have it fully programmed with 20 different groups by end of January. There are a few special big names we hope will confirm. It’s hard not to love the Beatles and Paul’s songwriting after collaborating with John Lennon as also been amazing. Picking the 20 songs is easy, there is such a wealth of material.
Anyways, this was not supposed to be an ad for the show, but explain how after practicing, practicing, and practicing the art of frugality, one gets to Carnegie Hall. I think the truth also is our afterparty at City Winery, I don’t charge myself that much to host it, and the 400 VIP ticket holders get treated to a fun night, and they in turn, help contribute the extra dollars for us to raise the funds every year. We are just the platform, the producers, but it’s all the musicians, all the fans that in the end make these evenings a huge success. I am grateful to be part of it and look forward to many more years of this series.