The Kennedy Center Socially Distanced Honors

These were accumulated and broadcast yesterday, so I watched the result. I enjoy the disparate styles and specialties of the honorees, and this was a good year for that.

There was a classical musician, as there is about half the time. This year it was the violinist Midori, whom I've heard live once. She got a reasonable ration of tribute performances: fellow former child prodigy Yo-Yo Ma in some solo Bach, Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony (a married couple, by the way) in a bit of Bach two-violin concerto, Hilary Hahn in part of Bernstein's Symposium (definitely not one of his populist works), and a young violinist named Randall Goosby in a Paganini caprice.

Of the other honorees:

• Nobody else sings classic Joan Baez songs as well as she does;
• It was worth honoring Dick Van Dyke for the acappella rendition of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang theme song alone;
• I'd not previously heard of Debbie Allen nor known her work, but I enjoyed her choreographic style;
• Garth Brooks was the final honoree and took the most honoring. Judging from the clips provided, I wouldn't enjoy his stage shows, but his songs (all new to me) were all right, and a couple of them made admirable socio-political points, which allies him with Joan Baez more than I'd have expected.