American opera singer and recitalist Jessye Norman delivers a powerful performance of "Amazing Grace" as a tribute to Bahamian-American actor and film director Sidney Poitier at the 1995 Kennedy Center Honors.
Jessye Norman was trained at Howard University, the Peabody Institute, and the University of Michigan. The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound," and wrote that "it has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls." Her operatic début came as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser. She went on to sing leading roles with many other companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Paris Opera, and the Royal Opera, London. She sang at the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan, at Queen Elizabeth II's 60th birthday celebration in 1986, and performed the La Marseillaise to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution on July 14, 1989. She sang at the 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Atlanta and for the second inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1997. She received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Medal of Arts, and was a member of the British Royal Academy of Music. In 1990, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar named her Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations.
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