American pop music legend, jazz singer Tony Bennett (1926-2023) passed away on Friday, July 21, at the age of 96, according to foreign media.
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The musician, who Frank Sinatra once called “the best singer in the music industry”, was widely known for such hits as “The Way You Look Tonight”, “Body and Soul”, “(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco”, and many others.
In his more than 70-year stage career, Tony Bennett had sung with the already mentioned Frank Sinatra, the legendary “queen of soul” Aretha Franklin, the modern pop superstar Lady Gaga, and many other vocalists.
According to the BBC, millions of Tony Bennett’s records have been sold worldwide, while the musician himself has received 20 “Grammy” awards, including for lifetime achievement.
As music journalist Klaas Vävere writes on the National Encyclopedia’s online site, Tony Bennett’s career is often cited as a unique precedent for consistently high professional craftsmanship.
“Throughout his life, he remained faithful to the standard repertoire of American popular music and his unchanging manner of performance (liberated bel canto singing in a free-flowing tenor with jazz phrasing), Tony Bennett has become a venerable old master, a symbol of aging elegance and a popularizer of the Great American Songbook, in the perception of several generations,” writes Klaas Vävere. (The Great American Songbook is an informal canon of songs composed of pieces of traditional popular music composed in the first half of the 20th century and known throughout the world. They have undergone many interpretations by artists of different genres and generations.)
In the 1960s, Tony Bennett was an active supporter of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Later, the singer supported various foundations related to health and cancer research, as well as socially important initiatives.
In the late 1990s, Tony Bennett, together with his wife Suzanne Benedetto, founded the non-profit organization “Exploring the Arts”, which aims to promote art education in school curricula. Since 2001, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, founded by this organization, has been operating in Tony Bennett’s hometown of Queens, New York.
2023-07-21 13:22:33
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