Empire teams up with Colin Cowie to deliver Dionne Warwick for the Star Studded Whitney Museum Gala

For the fourth year in a row, Empire Entertainment was hired by celebrity designer Colin Cowie Lifestyle and the Whitney Museum to contract and manage all talent and sound production in connection with the high profile Whitney Benefit Gala at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Each year this gala dinner draws New York City's elite art patrons as well as artists, celebrities and sponsors for a unique evening of entertainment. For this year's dinner Colin Cowie transformed the fourth floor gallery into an exquisite dining room based on the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly. Colin Cowie's unique design provided for square dining tables, dressed with gray linens and smoke colored glass, arranged symetrically on gray carpet at either side of the room. The center of the room was divided by an angular stripe of bold red carpet on which were placed unusually shaped tables, adorned in vivid matching red.

As with every Colin Cowie event, visual aesthetics are of the highest importance and Empire Entertainment's challenge was to seamlessly blend elements of audio production to the color scheme and design, keeping all such elements, including speakers, consoles, cables and gear out of site of the guests. To accomplish this Empire often runs cables days in advance under carpets and set installations and paints speaker cabinets and other equipment in matching colors to blend function with form. The results of this collaboration are visually astoundinging as well as fully functional.

For this year's gala dinner, Empire Entertainment secured legendary R&B singer Dionne Warwick to perform with piano accompaniment. Ms. Warwick performed favorites including "Alfi," "What The World Needs Now Is Love" (a duet with with Burt Bacharach) and "That's What Friends Are For." She also performed a special audience rendition of "Happy Birthday" to artist Ellsworth Kelly who came the the stage to be honored by the singalong. Guests including American Express Chairman Ken Chennault, Dan Aykroyd and Edgar Bronfman Jr. joined Dionne in serenading Kelly and the performance ended with a standing ovation. After the dinner, the after-party began on the lower level of the Museum for younger supporters of the museum. Mirroring the theme upstairs, the cafeteria was transformed into a night club with an energy that lasted early into the following morning.

Once again, Empire Entertainment provided invisible, high end sound coverage throughout all the rooms of the club. Yet, when one of the sponsor's talent cancelled due to illness, Empire moved swiftly to provide cutting edge entertainment with only two day's notice! Empire rose to the challenge and delivered Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, a youthful 11 piece band, and arguably the hottest new funk and soul act in New York City. If the evening's pulse was already heightened by Paris' DJ Kemedji, it was the Dap-Kings who moved the party to a frenzy. Even Colin Cowie himself couldn't resist the dance floor before jetting off the following morning to appear on Oprah Winfrey's show.

Empire is a major producer of not-for-profit events and is a loyal production and talent partner to world class event design firms such as Colin Cowie Lifestyle.