This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Gigs & Festivals
U2, Springsteen etc, to perform at presidential celebration
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 14 January 2009
A host of big stars are to appear at a celebration of the inauguration of US president-elect Barack Obama.
Amongst those set to perform at the event, set to take place on 18 Jan at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, are U2, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Sheryl Crow and Mary J Blige.
Obama is expected to attend the show, ahead of his inauguration on 20 Jan. Artists will perform songs suited to the occasion, rather than playing their own songs, and the music will be interspersed with readings and suchlike.
Executive producer George Stevens Jr has said that all the acts were extremely keen to perform at the event, once he’d been given the go ahead by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
He told the Associated Press: “On that first day, we asked Springsteen, Bono and Garth Brooks within a period of 45 minutes and got three `yeses’. The list of stars is impressive, but this is not a showbiz, glitzy occasion. It’s going to be rooted in history, remembering the great president [Lincoln] who led us through difficult times”.
Elsewhere in inauguration celebration news, Sting and Elvis Costello are to appear at a charity concert marking the event on 20 Jan at Washington’s Harman Center of the Arts.
