THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME® AND MUSEUM’SALL FOR THE HALL FUNDRAISERRETURNS TO LOS ANGELES ON SEPTEMBER 23
Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson and Taylor Swift Set to Perform at Club Nokia
The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum’s All for the Hall fundraiser will return to Los Angeles for a second consecutive year. The event, which will take place on Thursday, September 23, at Club Nokia, will again follow a “guitar pull” format featuring performances by Country Music Hall of Fame members Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson, superstar Taylor Swift, and a very special fourth chair that must remain anonymous.
The evening offers a unique opportunity to see these acclaimed singer-songwriters interact with one another as they take turns swapping songs, stories and personal recollections. The “guitar pull” is a Nashville specialty; it originated in the homes of Nashville songwriters who gathered to try out new compositions for their peers. Nashville’s most storied guitar pulls were hosted by Johnny and June Carter Cash. The hallmarks of a great guitar pull are spontaneity and camaraderie.
The Museum launched All for the Hall, its first-ever non-bricks-and-mortar fundraising campaign, in 2005. The campaign addresses the Museum’s need for long-term financial security and will provide a safety net for the institution and its work. This is the fourth year the Museum has taken its “annual giving” event on the road, hosting previous All for the Hall events in New York in 2007 and 2008 and in Los Angeles in 2009.
“This year especially, the event will provide much needed support as Nashville works to recover from the devastating impact of a once-every-500-years flood,” said Director Kyle Young. “While our exhibits and collections are all on upper floors and never in danger, flood waters did reach ‘five feet high and rising’ in our ground-floor Ford Theater.”
Last year’s event, also held at Club Nokia, featured performances by Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam and Melissa Etheridge; special guests included Chris Isaak, who also acted as host, Kara DioGuardi and Michael McDonald.
“Our All for the Hall Los Angeles debut gave us an opportunity to focus on West Coast country music history and remind our guests that these artists and executives and their songs are a part of the story we both preserve and teach at the Museum,” said Young. “By design, guitar-pull content is unplanned and unrehearsed. It was very exciting to see West Coast country spontaneously become the theme of the 2009 performances, which included musical salutes to Gram Parsons, Buck Owens and Cindy Walker, among others,” he said. “We are grateful for our warm welcome last year and look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones in September.”
Describing last year’s event, Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Any visitor to the [Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum] realizes that music also can take the form of a joke, a nursery rhyme, a prayer, a come-on or a campfire tale…Harris, Yoakam, Melissa Etheridge and Vince Gill touched upon all those forms, showing the flexibility of ‘country’ as they did so…” (10/2/09).
Guests at the 2009 event included legendary producer (and former Elvis Presley and Emmylou Harris pianist) Tony Brown; recording artist and songwriter Sarah Buxton; Desperate Housewives actor James Denton; eclectic singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones; renowned western tailor Manuel; actress-writer-director Marianna Palka; actress Mary Kay Place, star of television’s Big Love; and film-theater-television actor Jason Ritter, son of the late actor John Ritter and grandson of Country Music Hall of Fame member Tex Ritter.
All for the Hall Los Angeles patrons are offered their choice of seating for 10 for $10,000, or seating for five for $5,000. Individual tickets are available at $1000 per seat. A cocktail reception and dinner will precede the guitar pull. To purchase tickets or for more information, patrons may contact Holly Lane athlane@countrymusichalloffame.org or telephone (615) 416-2035 or (800) 852-6437.
All for the Hall Los Angeles is chaired by AEG Live Chairman Tim Leiweke and produced by CAA’s Rod Essig and Vector Management’s Ken Levitan. The event is made possible by the generosity of AEG Live and Club Nokia LA Live. The 2010 host committee for All for the Hall Los Angeles includes Orly Adelson (dick clark productions), Thomas Carroll (SunTrust Bank), Jay Faires (Lionsgate), John Frankenheimer (Loeb & Loeb LLP), Gary Haber (Haber Corporation), Henry Juszkiewicz (Gibson Guitar Corporation), Levitan, Cameron Strang (New West Records) and Jody Williams (BMI).
All for the Hall Los Angeles’s supporting sponsor is Greenberg Traurig LLP.
About the Performers
Emmylou Harris introduced country music to a broader audience by building bridges to folk, gospel, rock and alternative music. She has sold millions of albums worldwide and claimed 12 Grammys in a career that now stretches over four decades. Elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008, she remains an inspiration to new generations of artists. Harris is a champion of many humanitarian causes, including landmine removal and animal rescue. Her latest album, 2008’s All I Intended to Be, included contributions from Buddy Miller, Gill and Dolly Parton.
Kris Kristofferson has enjoyed a distinguished career that has encompassed the authorship of such classic American songs as “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “For the Good Times,” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”; stardom in such feature films as Lonestar, The Blade Trilogy, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and A Star Is Born; honors including three Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe Award; and years of outspoken political and social activism. Last year, the legendary songwriter was feted as a BMI Icon at the performing rights organization’s Country Awards. Kristofferson is a member of the Songwriter Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Taylor Swift is a four-time Grammy winner, the top-selling digital artist in music history, has had singles top both the country and pop radio charts, and had the #l best-selling album in any genre of music in both 2008 and 2009. This year, at age 20, she became the youngest artist in history to win the music industry’s highest honor, the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Also at the 2010 Grammys, she took home the awards for Country Album of the Year, Best Country Song and Best Country Female Vocal Performance. Her six-times platinum Fearless album is the most awarded album in country music history. In 2009, Taylor was named Artist of the Year at the American Music Awards and Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards. Taylor’s record sales top 13 million albums and 25 million song downloads. Her 40-date Fearless 2010 North American tour sold out arenas and stadiums in 32 cities.
About the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum
Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum’s mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, Historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print®.
More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is available at www.countrymusichalloffame.org or by calling (615) 416-2001.
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