On July 25 the Kennedy Center announced the 41st Annual Kennedy Center Honors recipients for their lifetime artistic achievement will be Cher, Philip Glass, Reba McEntire, and Wayne Shorter. The creators of "Hamilton" will also receive special recognition as trailblazers for their groundbreaking work.
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The class of 2018 honorees will participate in the Dec. 2 Kennedy Center Honors tribute gala, broadcast on CBS on Dec. 26.
Nominated for Best New Artist at the 8th GRAMMY Awards in Sonny & Cher, Cher went on to win Best Dance Recording at the 42nd GRAMMY Awards for "Believe" and is preparing an ABBA cover album to go with her role in July 2018's Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
Reba McEntire is one of the great voices of country music. Her crossover appeal can't separate her magnetic personality from the sonic impact of her ballads and rhythmic lyricism. The most recent of her three GRAMMY wins was at the 60th GRAMMY Awards earlier this year, in the category Best Roots Gospel Album for Sing It Now: Songs Of Faith & Hope. Both Cher and McEntire have moved millions with their music as songwriters as well.
Jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter has won 10 GRAMMY Awards, most recently Best Improvised Jazz Solo at the 56th GRAMMY Awards for "Orbits," the lead track on his 2013 album Without A Net with the Wayne Shorter Quartet. In 2015 Shorter received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award. His work spans Art Blakey, Miles Davis, as well as Shorter's later fusion supergroup Weather Report.
Influential and admired classical composer Philip Glass was already well established by 1985 when his album Satyagraha was nominated for Best Contemporary Composition at the 28th GRAMMY Awards. His piece "I Knew Her" from the 2007 movie Notes On A Scandal was nominated at the 50th GRAMMY Awards for Best Instrumental Composition. He has received four GRAMMY nominations to date.
"Hamilton" enjoys special status at the Kennedy Center because it has been celebrating a "Summer of 'Hamilton'" with multiple events. In a first, this year it receives unique recognition as a creative work. Multiple GRAMMY winners Alex Lacamoire and Lin-Manuel Miranda will receive the special honor as well as the now-iconic Broadway show's choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and director Thomas Kail.
"The world looks to America for its creative instincts and artistic courage," said Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter. "This year's slate of honorees represents the pinnacle of our nation's originality and the rich mosaic of diverse perspectives and art forms that has come to define who we are as a people."
