The New York Pops is heading into its 2026–27 season with James Bond, Broadway stars, holiday glamour and the cinematic worlds of John Williams and Steven Spielberg. Under Music Director and Conductor Steven Reineke, the orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with five programs that move easily between Broadway, Hollywood and popular music—exactly the territory The New York Pops has made its own.

The season begins October 23 with 007: James Bond Forever, featuring Tony Award winner Lena Hall. Few film franchises have produced music as instantly recognizable as Bond, where the songs have become almost as important as the Aston Martins, villains and martinis. From Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones to Adele and Billie Eilish, Bond music has always demanded singers with personality, and Hall certainly has that. With a voice capable of moving from rock to Broadway without losing its edge, she is an inspired choice for an evening devoted to 007.

On November 20, Broadway takes center stage with One Night Only: An Evening with Denée Benton and Jordan Donica. Benton, the Tony-nominated star of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, and Donica, whose Broadway credits include The Phantom of the Opera and Camelot, join The New York Pops for an evening built around two formidable voices. It is also the kind of pairing Carnegie Hall does particularly well: performers we know from the theatre given the room—and the orchestra—to show us something beyond the roles in which we first discovered them.

Christmas arrives December 18 and 19 with Sleigh Bells Ring, starring Tony Award winner Lindsay Mendez and Derek Klena. The Pops’ holiday concerts have become a New York tradition, and this year’s combination is particularly appealing. Mendez brings one of Broadway’s most distinctive voices and a wonderfully grounded sense of humor, while Klena has the soaring leading-man vocals the season practically demands. Add a full orchestra, Carnegie Hall dressed for Christmas and two nights just before the holiday, and this has all the makings of one of December’s lovelier escapes.

The new year introduces two powerhouse voices on February 5, 2027, with Introducing…Jimmie Herrod and Marisha Wallace. Herrod, who reached a huge national audience through America’s Got Talent, possesses a remarkable range, while Wallace has established herself as a force on both the West End and Broadway. The evening is part of The New York Pops’ Debut Series, placing the spotlight on artists ready for a major Carnegie Hall moment.

The Carnegie Hall season concludes March 5 with John Williams and Steven Spielberg: Movie Magic. This one barely needs explaining. Williams and Spielberg created one of the great director-composer partnerships in film history, producing music and images that became inseparable from one another. Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List—for generations, we have heard Williams’ music and immediately seen Spielberg’s worlds. Hearing those scores played by The New York Pops in Carnegie Hall should be glorious.

Deborah Cox

Before all of that, however, The New York Pops goes underground—quite literally. On October 5, Grammy and Tony-nominated singer Deborah Cox headlines the annual New York Pops Underground cabaret fundraiser at 54 Below. Cox, currently appearing on Broadway in Titanique as the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown and serving as a co-producer of the production, has built a career that crosses R&B, dance music and Broadway. Her extraordinary “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, while her dance career has produced 13 No. 1 hits on the Hot Dance Club Play chart.

The evening begins with a 6 p.m. reception followed by dinner, wine pairings and the 6:30 p.m. performance. Also appearing will be the PopsEd Alumni Ensemble, made up of young musicians who previously participated in The New York Pops’ Kids on Stage program. That connection is important: proceeds from the evening support PopsEd, the organization’s music-education programs, which have reached more than 100,000 New York City students since 1991.

What makes this Pops season particularly attractive is its range. Bond one month, Broadway the next, Christmas in December, emerging voices in February and Spielberg and Williams in March. It doesn’t require audiences to choose between popular culture and great musicianship. The New York Pops has long understood that the two were never mutually exclusive in the first place.

In a city where fall calendars become impossible almost overnight, consider this your warning: Carnegie Hall just gave us five dates worth putting on the calendar before Fashion Week makes us forget what month it is.

The New York Pops 2026–27 season and tickets

New York Pops Underground with Deborah Cox

From Rockefeller Center’s celebrated Christmas Tree to the decorated streets of Little Italy and the year-round Christmas world on Mulberry Street, New York is preparing to reaffirm its place as one of the world’s great Christmas cities in 2026.

There is a particular moment each year when Christmas begins to feel real in New York City. It comes before December, before many families have decorated their own trees, and before the busiest weeks of holiday travel have filled Manhattan. It is the arrival of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, one of the most recognizable seasonal traditions in the United States.

For 2026, that moment is still waiting for its official date. As of September 7, Rockefeller Center has not announced the arrival date, origin, dimensions, or lighting date of the 2026 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Its official holiday information continues to advise visitors to check back later in the year for details. That uncertainty is part of the annual anticipation. Somewhere, a tree will be selected for a journey that will place it at the center of New York’s Christmas season.

The timing can nevertheless be understood through the long-established rhythm of the celebration. In 2025, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree arrived on November 8 after being cut on November 6. The 75-foot Norway spruce traveled from East Greenbush, New York, to Manhattan before crews raised it at Rockefeller Center. Its arrival effectively opened another chapter in the city’s holiday calendar.

When the 2026 tree finally arrives, expected during the traditional November period unless Rockefeller Center announces a change, it will represent far more than the installation of an exceptionally large evergreen. The arrival has become a public signal that New York is moving into its most elaborate season of decoration, shopping, entertainment and family traditions.

That importance begins with history. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree tradition reaches back to 1931, when workers constructing Rockefeller Center placed a modest Christmas tree at the site. The formal tree-lighting tradition followed in 1933. What started during a formative period in the development of Rockefeller Center gradually became an international symbol of Christmas in New York.

The Tree That Announces Christmas in New York

The scale has changed considerably since that first tree. Recent Rockefeller Center trees have been monumental evergreens requiring careful transportation, cranes, specialized crews and weeks of preparation. The 2025 Norway spruce stood 75 feet tall, measured approximately 45 feet across and weighed about 11 tons.

It was subsequently covered with more than 50,000 multicolored LED lights connected by approximately five miles of wire. Above it stood the Swarovski star designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, an approximately 900-pound creation containing three million crystals across 70 illuminated spikes.

Those numbers explain the physical scale of the attraction, but they do not fully explain its cultural importance. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree matters because people have incorporated it into their personal understanding of New York.

Generations have seen it in photographs, television broadcasts, films and family albums. Visitors have stood beneath it as children and returned years later with children of their own. New Yorkers pass through Rockefeller Center during ordinary working weeks and then watch the same urban space assume a completely different identity for the holidays.

The transformation is particularly effective because Rockefeller Center already possesses such a strong architectural identity. The tree rises above the famous skating rink while the surrounding buildings create a defined urban setting. The Channel Gardens and their Christmas angels establish the ceremonial approach toward the tree. Fifth Avenue and its holiday displays are nearby, while Radio City Music Hall and its seasonal programming extend the celebration through Midtown.

The result is one of the most concentrated Christmas experiences in the city. A visitor can encounter the Rockefeller Center tree, ice skating, decorated storefronts, illuminated façades, holiday shopping and major seasonal entertainment within a relatively compact part of Manhattan.

That concentration helps explain why the arrival of the tree receives such attention. New York does not wait until the lighting ceremony to become interested in it. The transportation and installation are events in themselves. Watching an enormous tree enter Manhattan and be raised into position reveals the considerable work behind an image that eventually appears effortless.

Why the 2026 Arrival Matters

The 2026 tree will join a tradition approaching a century of continuous cultural relevance. Its precise story will depend on the tree Rockefeller Center ultimately selects and the family or property from which it comes.

Rockefeller Center’s head gardener, Erik Pauze, has played a central role in finding the trees for decades. The search extends well beyond Manhattan, with potential candidates evaluated for size, shape, health and their ability to withstand transportation and installation.

The individual history of each selected tree has increasingly become part of the celebration. These are mature trees that have often stood beside homes and within communities for generations before being chosen for Rockefeller Plaza. Their journey converts something deeply local into something seen by millions.

The tradition also continues after the decorations are removed. Rockefeller Center states that the 2026 tree is planned to be donated to Habitat for Humanity after the season. The wood is milled, treated and used as lumber for home building, continuing a practice that gives the tree a practical purpose after its public display concludes.

That final chapter distinguishes the Rockefeller tree from a temporary decorative installation. Its life at the center of Manhattan is spectacular but relatively brief. The material eventually leaves Rockefeller Center and becomes part of homes built through Habitat for Humanity.

For New York, however, the arrival remains the beginning rather than the conclusion. Once the tree is standing in Rockefeller Plaza, the visual language of Christmas spreads across Manhattan with increasing intensity.

Fifth Avenue becomes one of the principal stages. Department stores and luxury retailers prepare elaborate windows and façades. Hotels install trees and floral displays in their lobbies. Restaurants introduce seasonal decorations. Public plazas gain lights, wreaths and oversized ornaments. Radio City Music Hall becomes inseparable from the annual Christmas Spectacular and the Rockettes.

Yet some of New York’s most appealing Christmas experiences occur beyond Midtown.

Little Italy Brings Christmas to Mulberry Street

Travel downtown to Little Italy and the holiday changes character.

Here, Christmas belongs to narrower streets, restaurants, storefronts and the neighborhood scale of Mulberry Street. Little Italy has long understood the importance of decoration as part of its identity, and during the holiday period the familiar blocks can become another destination for visitors seeking Christmas in Manhattan.

Lights and seasonal decorations across Little Italy bring the celebration closer to street level. Instead of encountering a single monumental centerpiece, visitors experience Christmas while walking past restaurants, cafés and businesses.

Mulberry Street is especially important because it already carries such a strong association with Italian-American New York. During Christmas, traditional neighborhood identity and contemporary tourism meet in the same few blocks.

For families, that combination can make Little Italy a natural extension of a Rockefeller Center visit. Midtown presents the grand public image of Christmas in New York. Little Italy offers a more intimate version built around food, shopping, decorated streets and neighborhood businesses.

And then there is a place where the calendar almost becomes irrelevant.

At 142 Mulberry Street, Christmas in New York, also known through listings as Christmas and City, maintains a year-round holiday world in the heart of Little Italy. The store is devoted to ornaments, decorations, artificial trees, gifts and New York-themed Christmas pieces.

The concept feels particularly appropriate on Mulberry Street. New York has always been a city where specialized shops can become destinations in their own right, and a store dedicated to Christmas throughout the year turns the holiday into something visitors can enter even outside November and December.

Inside, the emphasis extends well beyond a conventional selection of ornaments. Christmas trees, decorative pieces, snow globes and seasonal merchandise create an immersive retail environment, while New York imagery connects the products directly to the city outside.

That connection is important. A New York Christmas ornament is more than generic holiday decoration when it incorporates the Statue of Liberty, a yellow taxi, the skyline or another recognizable city symbol. It becomes a souvenir tied to a specific trip and a particular Christmas memory.

For international visitors, especially, these objects allow the experience to travel home. The Rockefeller tree itself cannot be taken away, and the lights of Manhattan disappear once the trip ends. An ornament purchased on Mulberry Street can return to the family Christmas tree every December.

The year-round character of the Mulberry Street Christmas destination also says something interesting about New York’s relationship with the holiday. Christmas here has developed into an important part of the city’s cultural and tourism identity, extending beyond the weeks immediately surrounding December 25.

Why New York Remains a Great Christmas City

Calling New York one of the world’s great Christmas cities is supported by the extraordinary variety of experiences concentrated within it.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is central, but it does not stand alone. There is The Rink below it. There are the angels along the Channel Gardens. There is Radio City Music Hall nearby. Fifth Avenue adds major retail displays. Neighborhoods create their own traditions. Little Italy brings the season into its restaurants, shops and streets, while Mulberry Street can offer Christmas merchandise throughout the year.

The city also benefits from the fact that many of these traditions are genuinely old. Rockefeller Center’s tree originated in 1931. Its formal lighting tradition dates to 1933. These celebrations have survived enormous changes in New York while remaining recognizable from one generation to another.

That continuity matters in a city defined by constant redevelopment. Stores change, buildings rise, restaurants open and close, and neighborhoods evolve. The annual return of the Rockefeller tree provides a familiar point in the calendar.

Its arrival says that another New York Christmas is beginning.

For 2026, the suspense remains. Rockefeller Center has yet to disclose the tree that will occupy this famous position. Its hometown, dimensions, age and arrival date remain to be announced.

That makes September an early stage in the story. The decorations have not reached their full seasonal scale, and the Rockefeller tree has not made its journey to Manhattan. Yet the infrastructure of Christmas is already present in New York’s identity.

Little Italy provides a perfect example. Walk Mulberry Street and the relationship between New York and Christmas can be encountered even without waiting for the Rockefeller tree. A dedicated Christmas store keeps ornaments, decorated trees and seasonal objects on display throughout the year, while the neighborhood prepares for the period when holiday decoration becomes part of the larger street experience.

When November arrives and the Rockefeller Center tree eventually makes its entrance, the two sides of New York Christmas will begin to connect again.

There will be the monumental Christmas of Rockefeller Center, engineered on a scale appropriate for one of Manhattan’s most famous public spaces. Then there will be the neighborhood Christmas of Little Italy, experienced through storefronts, restaurants, lights and the familiar path along Mulberry Street.

Together they illustrate why Christmas in New York has such reach. The holiday is expressed through major institutions and small businesses, famous landmarks and neighborhood streets, carefully engineered installations and individual ornaments purchased as souvenirs.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree remains the clearest symbol of that season. Its annual arrival changes the city’s calendar because New Yorkers and visitors recognize what follows. Installation leads to decoration. Decoration leads to the lighting. The lighting opens the busiest weeks of the Christmas season.

In 2026, another tree will take its place in that sequence. Another group of visitors will see Rockefeller Center decorated for the first time. Others will return because seeing it has become part of their own family tradition.

Many will continue downtown afterward, trading the scale of Rockefeller Plaza for the streets of Little Italy. Mulberry Street will provide its own expression of the season, with restaurants, decorations, shops and a Christmas destination where ornaments and New York holiday souvenirs fill the interior.

That journey from Rockefeller Center to Little Italy captures the range that makes Christmas in New York distinctive. One destination delivers an internationally recognized civic tradition. The other places the holiday inside one of Manhattan’s historic neighborhoods.

The eventual announcement of the 2026 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree will provide the details everyone is waiting for. Until Rockefeller Center officially releases them, any specific 2026 arrival date would be premature. Based on the established annual schedule, attention will turn increasingly toward November, when the great evergreen traditionally enters Manhattan and preparation begins for its lighting.

When it happens, the arrival will represent another continuation of a New York tradition that began with construction workers and a modest tree in 1931. Nearly a century later, the event commands international attention while retaining an uncomplicated central idea: placing a Christmas tree in the middle of the city for people to enjoy together.

From the immense spruce at Rockefeller Center to the smallest ornament on Mulberry Street, New York gives Christmas room to exist at every scale. That combination of history, public celebration, neighborhood character, retail creativity and family tradition is why the city remains one of the defining destinations of the Christmas season.

Labor Day has become the unofficial farewell to summer—a final long weekend of beaches, barbecues and the terrible realization that September has arrived. But underneath the holiday is something considerably more important: the people who built, cleaned, taught, carried, cooked, stitched, drove, served and kept this country moving. American music has always told their stories, and musical theatre has done it particularly well. So before we say goodbye to summer, T2C turns up the volume with ten songs about work, money, ambition, exhaustion, dignity and that glorious fantasy every worker has entertained at least once: telling the boss exactly where the job can go.

1. “I Hear America Singing” — Working
This is where I would begin. Stephen Schwartz’s musical adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Working is built around the voices of ordinary American workers, and this number makes labor itself the American chorus. Different jobs, different lives, different dreams—but together they create the sound of a country.

2. “9 to 5” — Dolly Parton or in my version the musical
Nearly half a century later, that opening typewriter rhythm still means business. Parton made workplace inequality funny, furious and irresistibly catchy. It also made its way to Broadway, so Dolly gets to belong to both sides of our playlist.

3. “A Shtetl Iz Amereke” — Ragtime
For the immigrant worker, America promised possibility—but possibility came with a price. Tateh arrives believing in that promise and discovers the grinding reality of factory labor. Ragtime understands that the American Dream and the American workplace have always had a complicated relationship.

4. “She Works Hard for the Money” — Donna Summer
Summer’s anthem was inspired by a real woman she encountered working as a restroom attendant late at night. Beneath the irresistible beat is something Labor Day ought to remember: dignity belongs to the worker regardless of the job.

5. “The Factory Girls/Come Up to My Office” — Parade
This takes the playlist somewhere darker. Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s musical places us inside an industrialized Atlanta where young women work in a pencil factory, reminding us that American labor history includes exploitation, dangerous workplaces and workers with very little power.

6. “Sixteen Tons” — Tennessee Ernie Ford
“I owe my soul to the company store” may be one of the most economical descriptions of worker exploitation ever put into a song. Coal, debt and a system designed to make sure the worker can never quite get ahead.

7. “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” — Americana
And here’s our Broadway history lesson. E.Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney’s Depression-era masterpiece originated in the 1932 Broadway revue Americana. Its worker helped build the railroads, buildings and country—and then found himself discarded when the economy collapsed. More than 90 years later, it still hurts.

8. “Take This Job and Shove It” — Johnny Paycheck
After all that exploitation, somebody was eventually going to quit. There is nothing subtle about this one, which is precisely why it belongs here.

9. “Brotherhood of Man” — How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Now we get wicked. Frank Loesser’s great corporate satire turns the workplace hierarchy into musical comedy as everybody scrambles up the ladder while pretending they’re all one happy corporate family. Broadway knew about office politics long before anyone invented LinkedIn.

10. “Bang the Drum All Day” — Todd Rundgren
And after celebrating the American worker, documenting exploitation, surviving the factory, climbing the corporate ladder and contemplating resignation, there is really only one sensible way to spend Labor Day.

Don’t work.

Turn up the music.

You’ve earned the day off.

When I heard that Karen Ziemba and Marc Kudisch were starring in L.B. Browne’s world premiere of Safe House at Theatre Row, I was excited. Put two seasoned stage actors of this caliber together in an intimate theatre and there is every reason to expect sparks. There are indeed some very fine performances here. The problem is that Browne’s drama, directed by Benjamin Viertel and produced by split/decision, is so packed with crises, secrets, politics, illness, trauma and family dysfunction that eventually the play begins collapsing under the weight of everything it wants us to carry.

An upcoming presidential election has left the country on edge, and Rock (Kudisch) is convinced that a second American Civil War is imminent. His response is to transform the basement of his suburban Pennsylvania home into a bunker, determined to protect his family from the catastrophe he believes is coming. What they don’t know is that Rock is facing another catastrophe entirely: more than a year earlier, he learned that he is dying from Huntington’s disease, a diagnosis he has kept secret from his wife and daughters. That alone is enough for a play.

Karen Ziemba, Anna Roman, Marc Kudisch Photos by Viktorija Mickute

However Safe House keeps going. Rock’s wife, Slipper (Ziemba), is a stay-at-home mother who has spent much of her life giving herself to her husband and family. Their high-achieving daughter Ashley (Anna Roman), a lawyer, has sacrificed much of her own life for her parents and has become wound so tightly that unhappiness seems to have settled permanently into her body. Their younger daughter Claire (Grace Church) left home at 15, an absence that appears to have torn the family apart, although the deeper question is whether these people were ever truly together in the first place.

Glenn Steven Allen, Marc Kudisch Photos by Viktorija Mickute

Then Claire comes home. She is pregnant and wants an abortion. She has joined a cult. She has also blown up a gas line. Meanwhile, Rock is hallucinating conversations with his dead father (Glenn Steven Allen), a man he idolizes and mythologizes, as well as visions of the younger Claire (Julianna Layne). Huntington’s disease, political paranoia, impending civil war, a hidden terminal diagnosis, abortion, estrangement, religious extremism, domestic resentment, terrorism, parental failure, memory, inherited illness and hallucination are all competing for oxygen. There is simply too much here.

Julianna Layne, Marc Kudisch Photos by Viktorija Mickute

What makes that frustrating is that Browne has found an interesting central idea. Rock is building a physical safe house because he believes concrete, supplies and preparation can protect the people he loves. Yet everything threatening this family is already inside the house. The danger isn’t waiting beyond the front door. It lives in the secrets they keep, the things they refuse to say and the damage they have done to one another. That is the play I wanted Safe House to trust.

Kudisch carries much of the weight of the evening, and his work is intense, intelligent and carefully considered. He gives Rock enough conviction that his obsession with the bunker never becomes merely ridiculous. Even as the character’s world becomes increasingly unstable, Kudisch keeps searching for the man beneath the fear. It is the kind of grounded stage work that reminds us exactly why he belongs in the theatre.

Karen Ziemba,Marc Kudisch Photos by Viktorija Mickute

Ziemba brings warmth and an expressive emotional life to Slipper, particularly in the smallest reactions. Her face frequently tells us what the dialogue has not yet managed to say. Unfortunately, too much of that dialogue is difficult to hear. In a theatre this intimate, an audience should not be struggling to catch an actor’s words, and Ziemba frequently drops her volume to a level that leaves important moments disappearing before they reach us.

Roman brings welcome humanity to Ashley, a character who could easily have become simply the uptight, resentful daughter. Instead, we see the exhaustion underneath her rigidity. Church and Layne, both non-union performers, hold their own impressively beside the considerable Broadway veterans around them. Church has the particularly difficult assignment of making Claire credible despite the astonishing amount of narrative baggage Browne has placed on the character, while Layne gives the younger Claire an affecting presence. Justin Lee Miller rounds out the company in the roles of a doctor and police officer, and Glenn Steven Allen gives substance to the father Rock has turned into something larger than the man himself.

Viertel’s direction, however, compounds the play’s problems rather than clarifying them. This is a small theatre, yet the production does not consistently reach the back of the room. More importantly, the staging needs to help us navigate Browne’s many competing ideas, distinguishing the essential from the incidental. Instead, too much arrives with equal dramatic importance, leaving the audience to sort through an already overcrowded narrative.

At approximately 90 minutes, Safe House shouldn’t feel long. It does. Not because there isn’t enough happening, but because there is far too much. The play doesn’t need another idea. It needs the courage to surrender several of them.

Browne has something here, particularly in the contradiction embedded in her title. Rock believes he can build safety. Slipper believes devotion can preserve a marriage. Ashley believes responsibility can hold a family together. Claire has gone searching elsewhere for whatever she could not find at home. Every one of them is trying, in a different way, to create security. Yet this house has never really been safe.

That is where Safe House becomes most interesting. Strip away some of the political catastrophe, the accumulating revelations and the sheer abundance of issues, and underneath is a painful story about a family desperately preparing itself for a war outside while failing to acknowledge the one that has been raging inside for years.

Safe House: Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street, through September 13.

G.H. Harding

HONEY MONEY NO MORE? — News that Maria Bartiromo was fired from Fox reverberated around the world and generated a literal ton of ink.

Bryan Freedman

With high-powered pit-bull lawyer Bryan Freedman (fresh from the Blake Lively/Just Baldoni mess) on the case, who knows what will happen.

She first gained notoriety as ‘Money Honey’ and has been a star for years.

(Via Showbiz 411) Maria Bartiromo’s new Hollywood lawyer has something to say. Bryan Freedman says Maria was not fired by Fox News, that she’s still an employee, and all reports to the contrary are false.

You can see his statement below.

Freedman also says there’s no truth to the reports that Bartiromo was acting as a double agent, feeding Donald Trump and Fox News with info about each other. Believe me, I know that when Fox News breaks up with you, it isn’t pretty. It’s not their style. In the end, they will have to pay out her contract. But for now, lots of posturing on both sides.

For many years, Maria Bartiromo hosted three number one rated television shows on Fox channels. She has been, without question, one of the hardest working journalists throughout her award-winning career.

The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false. Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth.

Bryan Freedman, Attorney for Maria Bartiromo

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Derrek Kupish/Shutterstock (14186545bu)
Patti Labelle
2023 CMT Smashing Glass – Tributes to Tanya Tucker and Patti LaBelle, Arrivals, Nashville, Tennessee, USA – 15 Nov 2023

PATTI LABELLE — Common, Patti LaBelle and Public Enemy are the artists who will be honored at the 2026 Black Music Action Coalition Gala, presented by Live Nation, taking place on September 24, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. She of course, front LaBelle with the late Nona Hendryx, but has remained a marquee-name for sure. So well deserved!

SHORT TAKES — (Via Billboard.com) Cassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy Award-winning jazz singer, songwriter and producer has died. She was 70. Dubbed America’s best singer by Time magazine in 2001, Wilson was best known for her genre-bending voice, which expanded the boundaries of traditional blues-based jazz and worked effortlessly across folk, pop, R&B, country and beyond. At the heart of all her work was her idiosyncratic contralto, a soulful sound distinctly tied to her roots … (Via Deadline) As Simon Cowell continues to recover from back surgery, another America’s Got Talent alum is returning to the judge’s table. On Wednesday’s episode of the NBC reality competition series, it was announced that Heidi Klum will fill in for Cowell next week during a special three-hour broadcast of the Season 21 quarterfinals. Klum served as a judge on America’s Got Talent from 2013 to 2018, before returning from 2020 to 2024. She exited the AGT judge’s table last year, shortly after she was invited back to host Project Runway for Freeform and Disney+ …

Mr T

On Friday’s Today Show, Al Roker caught with the infamous Mr. T from The A-Team. Who says you can’t get a doc made? Mr. T’s one is out now on Netflix … Much ink this week about Miley Cyrus changing her name to just Miley; and a new album appears with the single “Bass Persuades.” The song is typical high-energy Miley, but the video looks like a combo of the best parts of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video and Debbie Gibson’s “Electric Youth” video. Funny! …

Micky Dolenz on KTLA

Here’s Micky Dolenz at LA’s KTLA being interviewed in advance of his show at The United Theater Downtown in LA next Saturday, February 12; and his new EP Timeless, featuring the singles “Terri” and “Any Way You Want Me To.” February 12 is the official date of the Emmy-award winning TV-show The Monkees debuting on NBC. L-R-Standing-Jasmine Simpkins and Dolenz -sitting- Samantha Cortese and John Fenoglio … Anthony Pomes and his Doors-tribute band Carnival Dogs played My Father’s Place Friday night.

Eppy and Anthony Pomes aka “Inner Jim”

Here’s Inner Jim with Eppy … (via Deadline) Prime Video has opted not to proceed with a second season of the superhero series Spider-Noir starring Nicola Cage. Spider-Noir was the second series ordered and first to make it to the screen under a multi-title deal between Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures Television based on IP from Sony Pictures’ Universe of Marvel Characters. Too bad as I loved it and Cage was just superb as usual … Happy Bday Sharon White

 NAMES IN THE NEWS —– Anna Chan; Joe Lynch; Gary Graff; Paul Grein; Adam White; Anthony Pomes; Pierce Brosnan; Kevin Spacey; Kimberly Cornell; Amanda Naylor; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Gary Graff; John Hughes; Dan Mapp; Paul Pierce; Judy Kaufman; Marjorie Schwartz; Lora Evans; Ben Kenney; Angela Tarantino; Lee Jeske; Randy Alexander; Peter Shendell; Romeo Escobar; Oleg Cassini; and CHIP!

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