Kennedy Center honors

Maestro Zubin Mehta is among the five stalwarts from the arts and entertainment field named to receive this year’s Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievements in the performing arts. Besides Mehta the four others are musical theater composer and producer Andrew Lloyd Webber; actress, country singer and songwriter Dolly Parton; singer, songwriter and producer Smokey Robinson, and film director and producer Steven Spielberg, according to a write up in The Times of India of September 8, 2006.

"This year we honor five extraordinary international artistes whose abundant contributions to their fields are remarkable…Mehta’s profound artistry and devotion to music make him a world treasure,” Kennedy Center chairman Stephen Schwarzman’s statement on their website was quoted in the local dailies. "They have transformed the culture of our country and of the world,” he added.

Zubin Mehta: world treasure

The Honors, in their 29th year, are a celebration of culture and glamor in the nation’s capital with receptions at the White House and the State Department. The presentation will be at the Center’s Opera House on December 3, 2006, mentions the write-up.

Mehta’s congenial presence at the Navroz function in California in 2005 made Adi B. Gandhi recall, "When our children played Chhaiyé Hamé Zara­thoshti, he applauded and (thereafter) conducted the same song twice to give confidence to our children…”

In the course of his inspirational talk Mehta urged the gathering to protest in writing against the film Alexander knowing that the supposedly "great” ruler had destroyed our scriptures and many Zoroastrians. Considering that director Oliver Stone subsequenty amended the objectionable scenes in the movie is to the credit of both these worthies, believes Gandhi.