Live From Lincoln Center

Live From Lincoln Center is an ongoing series of musical performances produced by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in conjunction with Thirteen/WNET in New York City.

A series of concerts, ballets, operas, and recitals telecast, as the title says, live from Lincoln Center, it was created and developed by Executive Producer John Goberman and premiered on January 30, 1976 with a concert featuring André Previn and Van Cliburn. It is aired by PBS stations nationwide periodically rather than on a regular schedule. It has presented historic performances by such artists as Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Sir James Galway, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Audra McDonald, the New York City Ballet, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the American Ballet Theatre, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Opera to millions of home viewers. It has won thirteen Emmy Awards and fifty-three Emmy Award nominations, as well as two George Foster Peabody Awards. Two recordings made from concerts presented on the show have won Grammy awards.

Announcer Martin Bookspan was with the program from its premiere in 1976 until his 2006 retirement, when Fred Child, announcer for NPR's Performance Today, took over. Several personalities, among them Dick Cavett, Hugh Downs, Sam Waterston, Garrick Utley, Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, and Beverly Sills, have served as host for the series, with Downs staying the longest. Ms. Sills was the host from 2000 until two months before her death in 2007. In recent years the host position has been filled by artists such as Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Lesley Stahl. The program was principally directed by Kirk Browning from its inception in 1976 until 2008. Since 2008 Alan Skog has been primary director.