Gladys Knight performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2021, paying tribute to one of the honorees, Garth Brooks, with a rendition of his song “We Shall Be Free.” But when she returns to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this December, she will have a different role: She will be seated in the balcony, wearing a medal designating her as one of this year’s five honorees.
“Y’all blowing my mind,” Knight, the esteemed R&B, pop and soul artist said of her recognition by the Kennedy Center.
She will be celebrated at a gala Dec. 4 at the 45th annual Kennedy Center Honors along with the actor and filmmaker George Clooney; the contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Amy Grant; the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León and the band U2.
Deborah F. Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, said that making the choices had been a challenge, as always. “There’s so many deserving individuals and ensembles, and there are only five slots each year,” she said in an interview. “So it is a really, really, really hard thing to do, and yet a great privilege.”
Clooney, who has starred in films as varied as “Out of Sight,” “Michael Clayton,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in “Syriana,” said in a statement that the honor was a “genuinely exciting surprise.”
“Growing up in a small town in Kentucky I could never have imagined that someday I’d be the one sitting in the balcony at the Kennedy Center Honors,” he said.
The Kennedy Center said that the event, which will be broadcast by CBS at a later date, would be produced this year by Done+Dusted.
Grant, a singer and songwriter, helped bring contemporary Christian music to the mainstream, earned platinum and gold records and came to wider prominence with a 1985 performance at the Grammy Awards. Grant, known as the “Queen of Christian Pop” said in an interview that she was grateful for the recognition.
“I haven’t had anything hit me ever that’s made me feel so full of wonder,” Grant said.
She said that she hoped to reach a diverse audience of listeners. “One of the reasons I loved singing about faith was because I wanted to create a welcome table where everybody felt included,” she said. (And who might she like to see at the Honors, singing one of her songs? Katy Perry, singing her 1992 hit “Breath of Heaven,” she said.)
U2, the Irish rock band featuring Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., recalled in a statement coming to America for the first time in 1980, and playing their first show on this side of the Atlantic at the Ritz in New York. “But even in the wilder thoughts, we never imagined that 40 years on, we would be invited back to receive one of the nation’s greatest honors,” they said.
León, a Cuban-born composer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for her work “Stride,” said she had been shocked to learn she was being honored.
“To tell you the truth, I couldn’t get out of the chair,” León said. “I hung up, I was like, ‘this is not happening. No, no, no, this is not happening.’ It’s sort of a reaction that you’re in disbelief of what you hear.”
León, a composer, conductor and educator, has had her work performed at the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and numerous other ensembles. She expressed gratitude to her grandparents in Cuba who, despite struggling to make ends meet, enrolled her at a music conservatory in Havana when she was four and then bought her a used piano to practice on. She said she called herself the “family project.”
Knight, who also began her musical career at age four performing gospel, called the honor breathtaking. The seven-time Grammy winning artist who has released multigenerational hits from “Midnight Train to Georgia” to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” said she sings with the hope to move the spirit and touch the heart, whether the vehicle is R&B, pop or gospel.
“That’s what I love about music, you don’t have to do one thing” Knight said, “You can tell the world so many things about you as a person.”
