Timothy Shields and Emily Mann,
McCarter Theatre Center
McCarter Theatre Center’s annual Gala was held this past Saturday night featuring a performance by internationally renowned virtuoso classical pianist Lang Lang, who performed for a packed theatre as the centerpiece of the evening. Following a week of appearances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, his appearance at our 1,072 seat Matthews Theatre marks the smallest venue in which he’ll perform during the entirety of his 2016 world tour.
This is the fourth time that Lang Lang has performed at McCarter in his storied career. Saturday’s appearance was in a way a tribute to the abilities of our venerable Special Programming Director Bill Lockwood to spot world-class talent — Lang Lang thrilled Princeton audiences with his talent quite early in his stellar career.
The theme of the evening was Truman Capote’s epic Black & White Ball and dinner guests arrived sporting masks and vintage 1960s fashion. The seated dinner for 380 guests was catered by Jimmy Duffy’s Catering and the post-performance party featured late-night Southern comfort food, cocktails, desserts, music, and plenty of dancing.
We offer our very sincere thanks to the greater Princeton community for the tremendous support of this outstanding event.
Special thanks go out to our fantastic Gala Committee and to Gala Committee Co-Chairpersons — Tory Hamilton, Cheryl Goldman and Paula Chow— who orchestrated a festive and glittering evening for our guests.
We would also like to thank Sebastian Clarke of Rago Arts and Auction Center for conducting our live auction and Viburnum Designs of Princeton for assisting with our centerpieces.
Lending their support to this year’s Gala as Gold level sponsors were six very generous corporations: Bloomberg, BNY Mellon, Cure/PURE NJ, Maiden Re, Mathematica Policy Research, and Saul Ewing LLP. We are deeply grateful for that support, and for that of many other corporate and individual sponsors and advertisers.
We also want to give a special thanks to Princeton University for its longstanding support of this event and the theatre throughout the season.
The proceeds of this event are used to further McCarter’s artistic and educational programming throughout our region. More than 100,000 people annually — from the five-county region and beyond — see a show at McCarter or participate in a McCarter class or workshop.
We’re so deeply grateful!
Timothy J. Shields, Managing Director
Emily Mann, Artistic Director
McCarter Theatre Center , Princeton
