Bernie Williams has rocked with Twisted Sister and shared a stage with the New York Philharmonic.
He’s performed at Abbey Highway, Café Carlyle and Yankee Stadium, the place he’s delivered renditions of the nationwide anthem on his electrical guitar.
He even carried out with a tribe of Nubians on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt.
However nothing fairly compares to what’s subsequent for the previous Yankees heart fielder.
Williams is about to co-headline a Jan. 13 live performance at Carnegie Corridor with famend tenor Jonathan Tetelman in a efficiency fusing sports activities and classical music.
The live performance marks Williams’ Carnegie Corridor debut and is billed as a mix of opera, jazz, Flamenco and extra mainstream materials such because the Beatles and “Maria” from “West Side Story.”
Williams, who’s a classically educated guitarist, and Tetelman, a powerhouse vocalist, are set to be joined by a band that features a string part from the Metropolitan Opera.
“It has proven to be challenging because of the scope and how ambitious we want this project to be,” Williams mentioned.
“I mean, you’re talking about [Giacomo] Puccini and really hardcore opera and paring it down with the Beatles, and maybe things that [Andrea] Bocelli could sing. … It’s very eclectic, so it makes it very ambitious. Our idea is to try to do good by the music, not just to have a jack of all trades and master of none.”
The live performance additional bolsters the musical résumé of Williams, who spent his full 16-year MLB profession from 1991-2006 with the Yankees and performed a central function in 4 World Collection championships.
Even throughout his baseball profession, Williams maintained his love of music, which began when his father taught him a couple of guitar chords when he was 7 or 8 years outdated and solely strengthened as he attended a performing arts highschool in his native San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“For all practical purposes, I thought I was going to be a musician, but I was playing baseball on the side. I was playing little league on the side, and then when I turned 15, 16 years old, I started being looked at by professional teams,” Williams mentioned.
“I ended up signing with the Yankees to play this great career in New York … but through my whole journey in baseball, I never left the guitar. I never said, ‘Well, this is something I did when I was a young kid. I’m just gonna forget about it and just kind of move into this.’ I always kept it with me.”
Williams hit .297 with 287 residence runs, 1,257 RBI and an .858 OPS throughout his MLB profession, and he earned 5 All-Star alternatives and 4 Gold Glove awards. The Yankees retired his No. 51 in 2015.
However being in New York additionally proved helpful with Williams’ different pastime, because it launched him to new music genres.
Williams launched his debut studio album, “The Journey Within,” in 2003 whereas he was nonetheless a member of the Yankees. He acquired a Latin Grammy nomination for his second album, “Moving Forward,” which got here out in 2009.
Bernie Williams and Jonathan Tetelman (Courtesy of AllStar Encore)
“It wasn’t until I came to New York when I actually became more cognizant of blues and rock and jazz,” Williams mentioned.
“It was all about the traditional music of Puerto Rico back then, and classical music, where I kind of grew up listening to it because of the high school experience. But it wasn’t until I came here when I started really playing electric guitar and playing with a stomp box pedal and listening to what overdrive sounded like.”
Seven years after his ultimate season with the Yankees, Williams enrolled within the Manhattan College of Music as a 45-year-old freshman.
That four-year program allowed Williams to pursue a school diploma, a lot to the delight of his mom, but additionally to earn credibility in music and discover his goal as a performer.
“Training to be a musician, it could be about competition, but not really. I wasn’t really [trying] to be the best guitar player and being in the Hall of Fame of guitar players. That was not what was driving me. I had all of that in the baseball world,” Williams mentioned.
“[I realized] I could be the best [guitar] player that I could be and enjoy the journey in more of a spiritual kind of way. … Expressing my creativity and being an artist in this journey, and the more I put into it, the more I can get out of it. And to me, it was all about being able to perform with everybody, regardless of the genre, and feel like I belong.”
Bernie Williams in 2004.(Photograph by Al Bello/Getty Photographs)
That sentiment is on the crux of Williams’ Carnegie Corridor live performance.
The present is the wedding of two powerhouses of their respective fields, with the unity achieved via sports activities serving as a theme. José Reyes and Stephon Marbury are among the many particular friends who’re set to contribute to the efficiency.
“The more that I start talking about this, I start really realizing the scope and the magnitude and the ambitiousness of this project,” Williams mentioned.
“It could be overwhelming at times, but I think we’re going to have a good mix of music that is going to make it available for people that maybe are just so hardcore classical music listeners … and, conversely, people that are in the pop world, jazz world.”
It’s a efficiency 5 many years within the making for Williams, going all the way in which again to his father’s impromptu guitar classes in Puerto Rico.
“When you play baseball, you kind of have your worth given to you by your stats. How good you were is kind of predicated upon your numbers,” Williams mentioned.
“As a musician, on the other hand, I think I kind of value how successful I am by the places I play at and the people I play with. So with that said, this opportunity to play at Carnegie Hall with Jon Tetelman … has to be right up there with everything that I could ever ask for.”
