Kennedy Center Honors and Blackwing Pencils

The Kennedy Center Honors and Blackwing Pencils

The Kennedy Center Honors, which recognizes a select few recipients for their sterling contributions to culture through a lifetime in the performing arts, airs tonight on CBS throughout the United States. Though the awards gala actually took place on December 4, tonight viewers can watch the best and the brightest in the performing arts salute honorees Meryl Streep, Yo Yo Ma, Barbara Cook, Neil Diamond and Sonny Rollins.

Looking back at past 34 years of honorees reveals a surprising number of Blackwing pencil users as well. 1993 Honoree Stephen Sondheim is a well-documented aficionado of Blackwing pencils, as was frequent collaborator Leonard Bernstein, who received his Kennedy Center Honor in 1980. A selection of worn-down Blackwing pencil stubs was even included in a Carnegie Hall exhibit of Bernstein memorabilia. Sadly playwright and fellow Blackwing user Arthur Laurents, who collaborated with Sondheim and Bernstein on classics like “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” passed away before receiving the Kennedy Center Honor he so richly deserved.

Composers who pick up a Blackwing pencil today are also tracing the lines left behind by legendary musicians and Kennedy Center honorees like Aaron Copland (1979) and Gian Carlo Menotti (1984). In his autobiography, 2001 honoree and musical giant Quincy Jones specifically recalled using the iconic pencil when composing one of his earliest pieces, “Suite for the Four Winds”:

“Up and down the streets I went, in and out of clubs, upstairs into jook joints, downstairs into empty clubs, working on it bit by bit on every piano I could find. That piece was the most valuable thing I owned. I carried it around every day with me like money, scrawling on it, fixing it, changing it, carrying it under my sweater with a Blackwing No. 2 pencil in my pocket to make continual fixes.”

Blackwing users aren’t just the domain of musical Kennedy Center honorees; the Blackwing was the tool of choice for the dramatized versions of Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in “All the President’s Men” – Blackwing Pages includes some excellent screen captures here. Bradlee was played by 1999 honoree Jason Robards, and Woodward was portrayed by 2008 recipient Robert Redford. The Center has yet to reward Dustin Hoffman, who played Bernstein, but hopefully that honor is coming, unless they haven’t forgiven him yet for “Ishtar.” Or “Meet the Fockers.”

Of this year’s honorees, the one with the closest connection to Blackwing would be Barbara Cook; renowned for her clear, bright, “sun-drenched” coloratura soprano voice, Cook is legendary for her performance as Cunegonde in Bernstein’s operetta retelling of Voltaire’s “Candide.” In her show-stopping rendition of the aria “Glitter and be Gay,” Cook sang three jaw-dropping E-flats above high-C, as well as 21 high-Cs throughout the entirety of the show. After a prolonged absence from Broadway stage, Cook returned to the boards in 2010 in “Sondheim on Sondheim.”

In fifty years, who will be receiving America’s highest artistic honor, and how will Blackwing be a part of it? It’s up to the next generation of Blackwing legends to decide.