"I just wanted to do something that I think would have made her proud and and honor her memory by performing in a place that she always wanted me to play and to write something that’ll last forever in her honor,” Connick said during an interview after Wednesday's news conference.
Harry Connick Jr. will premiere a composition for the 100th anniversary of his mother's birth for Carnegie Hall's 2025-26 season, which celebrates the Declaration of Independence with a festival titled: “United in Sound: America at 250.”.
Works by Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Philip Glass, Wynton Marsalis and Julia Wolfe are featured as well as underrepresented composers such as Amy Beach, Florence Price and William Dawson.
He will play piano in the performance for his Carnegie main stage debut on May 22, 2026, exactly 100 years after the birth of Anita Frances Livingston.
Conductor Marin Alsop, pianist Lang Lang, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and violinist Maxim Vengerov will be the artists of Carnegie's Perspectives series.
