The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum marked a milestone Tuesday night, Feb. 13, staging its tenth All for the Hall benefit, this one at PlayStation Theater in New York’s Times Square. This is the fifth time the event has come to New York. Country Music Hall of Fame member Vince Gill led a star-studded evening that featured an all-female lineup, extending across genres and including Country Music Hall of Fame member Emmylou Harris with Kesha and Maren Morris. The artists, all of whom have strong ties to Nashville and its songwriting tradition, drew enthusiastic ovations from the audience. To date, All for the Hall concerts in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville have netted over $4.3 million in support of the museum’s educational initiatives, which directly serve more than 100,000 people annually.
Gill has hosted or co-hosted every All for the Hall concert since he founded the campaign by asking artists to contribute the proceeds from a performance to benefit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
The concerts have been modeled after a Nashville tradition called a “guitar pull,” a casual affair in which songwriters take turns presenting works while the other participating songwriters listen or add accompaniment.
The first standing ovation of the evening came for a group of students making their Times Square performance debut. Fifth graders from P.S. 169 Baychester Academy, located in the Bronx, performed “We Are the Song.” The students wrote the lyrics and set them to music with help from hit country singer Carly Pearce (“Every Little Thing,” “Hide the Wine”), Grammy-winning songwriter Liz Rose (“Girl Crush,” “You Belong with Me”) and songwriter-guitarist Phil Barton (“A Woman Like You”).
The song provided a vibrant example of the inspiring work done by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Words & Music program, which pairs songwriters with students from schools across the United States. The program gives students a chance to express themselves while learning and participating in the creative process of songwriting. In partnership with fellow non-profit organization Education Through Music, a foundation that promotes the integration of music into the curricula of inner city schools, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s education department will continue to work in New York City’s public schools throughout the 2018–19 school year.
The All for the Hall series, produced by museum board members Rod Essig, Ken Levitan, Gary Overton and Jody Williams, launched in 2005 and began traveling to New York in 2007 and has notched ten shows. The series has alternated between New York and Los Angeles, with Gill and Harris as hosts in an acoustic format. With Keith Urban, Gill also co-hosts a regular All for the Hallconcert in Nashville at Bridgestone Arena. The series has gained a reputation for one-of-a-kind concerts.
A sampling of past performers includes Jason Aldean, Gregg Allman, Zac Brown, Sheryl Crow, Rodney Crowell, Melissa Etheridge, Levon Helm, Kris Kristofferson, Kacey Musgraves, Jason Mraz, Brad Paisley, Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, Chris Stapleton, Taylor Swift, James Taylor, Carrie Underwood, Dwight Yoakam, and many others.
Tuesday night’s All for the Hall New York concert illustrated the intertwined relationship of country and other forms of popular music. The museum explores those connections and highlights the cultural impact of American music across genres and generations in exhibits, publications and educational programs.
For a full account of the show, visit www.countrymusichalloffame.org
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