Jackson Browne, Patti Austin, Seth MacFarlane & More to Fete Lyricist Alan Bergman on His 100th Birthday
The Sept. 11 event will serve as a benefit for the Jazz Bakery, of which Bergman is a founding board member.
Lyricist Alan Bergman turns 100 on Sept. 11, and he’ll be celebrating in style. Many of his friends and admirers will perform at a concert in his honor that night at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California.
The roster includes Patti Austin, Shelly Berg, Aloe Blacc, Jackson Browne, Peter Erskine, Michael Feinstein, David Finck, Mitch Forman, Jason Gould, Dave Grusin, Tamir Hendelman, Trey Henry, Roger Kellaway, Seth MacFarlane, Serge Merlaud, Greg Phillinganes, Paul Reiser, Lee Ritenour, Sheléa, Tierney Sutton and Lillias White.
In addition, there will be video appearances by Bill Charlap, Natalie Dessay, Pat Metheny, Neima Naouri and Barbra Streisand, who paid tribute to Bergman and his late wife Marilyn on her Grammy-nominated 2011 album What Matters Most – Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of Alan & Marilyn Bergman.
The event will serve as a benefit for the Jazz Bakery, of which Bergman is a founding board member. The nonprofit listening room is one of the most respected jazz spaces in Los Angeles.
Marilyn Bergman died in 2022 at age 93. In the years since, Alan Bergman has continued to write, record and perform. His most recent collaboration is with guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, who is set to record an album of nine Bergman/Metheny songs later this year.
The Bergmans are probably best-known for writing exquisite ballads such as “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” “Pieces of Dreams” and “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?,” but they couldn’t be typecast. They also wrote witty and zesty theme songs for such TV series as Maude, Good Times and Alice.
The Bergmans won three Academy Awards, including best original song for “The Windmills of Your Mind” from The Thomas Crown Affair and “The Way We Were” from the movie of the same name, and three Grammy Awards, including song of the year for “The Way We Were.”
The Bergmans received 15 Oscar nominations for best original song, a total equaled or bettered by only four songwriters in history – Sammy Cahn (26), Johnny Mercer (18), Diane Warren (16) and Paul Francis Webster (16). The Bergmans collaborated on their Oscar-nominated songs with seven different composers – Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, Maurice Jarre, Marvin Hamlisch, David Shire, John Williams and Dave Grusin.
In 1983 they became the first (and remain the only) songwriters to be nominated for three Oscars for best original song in one year for “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” from Best Friends, “It Might Be You” from Tootsie and “If We Were in Love” from Yes, Giorgio.
They also won four Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
The Bergmans were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980 and received that organization’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award, in 1997. They received a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 2013.
The Bergmans also received lifetime achievement awards from the National Academy of Songwriters and the National Music Publishers Association. They received honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and the University of Massachusetts. Alan Bergman’s alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recognized him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Two of the artists who are on the bill for the upcoming birthday event shared comments in a statement.
Five-time Grammy nominee and Great American Songbook ambassador Michael Feinstein said, “The songs Alan and Marilyn have written are part of a pantheon of enduring music that will live long beyond Alan’s Centenary, for they are timeless expressions of the human condition, and will never grow old. The love that they fundamentally lived, expressed and demonstrated in life, imbues their work with a special eloquence and truth. It is an honor to celebrate Alan on his 100th!”
Actor, comedian and writer Paul Reiser, who has received 11 Primetime Emmy nominations, commented, “My goal in life is to try to be even a small fraction of the man – and artist – that my dear friend Alan Bergman is. (I may need more than 100 years to get there, but… working on it.)”
In addition, Ruth Price, founder of the Jazz Bakery, said “100 years on this planet is no small achievement, but to have graced those years with such love, beauty and art speaks to a life extraordinarily well-lived. Alan is incomparable, and I love him for all kinds of reasons.”
Julie Bergman, Alan’s daughter, said, “I can think of no better way to celebrate my father than with an evening of music performed by some of his closest collaborators and friends. He is an extraordinary man and to honor him this way is the best gift I could think of.”
Tickets, priced at $100, $200 and $300, are available here.
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