Sabrina Carpenter, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bradley Cooper, and Adam Blackstone are Philly Grammy winners
Classical singers Karen Slack and Michelle Cann, the Crossing choir, and John Legend also took home their own gilded gramophones.
On Sunday night, Beyoncé finally won the elusive album of the year award, Kendrick Lamar picked up five awards for his anti-Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” and Bucks County native Sabrina Carpenter led the list of Philly-area winners, which also included conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and actor Bradley Cooper at the 67th annual Grammy awards.
Beyoncé won for her 2024 Cowboy Carter, which also won best country album. She became the first Black woman to win that trophy, and only the fourth Black woman to win album of the year, an honor she had been nominated for four previous times and lost.
Lamar, who is set to headline the Super Bowl halftime show when the Eagles face the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans on Sunday, won song and record of the year — two of the Grammys’ four major categories, alongside album of the year and best new artist. The latter went to Chappell Roan, who used her acceptance speech to call on record labels to provide health insurance for artists.
Carpenter won best pop vocal album Grammy for Short n’ Sweet, beating out Berks County native Taylor Swift, and Roan, among others.
While accepting the award — still out of breath after performing her hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” on the Trevor Noah-hosted show in Los Angeles — Carpenter thanked her mother, Elizabeth, “for driving me to every voice lesson in Bala Cynwyd.”
Carpenter was one of the top Grammy nominees cited in six categories.
Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music and artistic director, and Jenkintown’s Cooper won a Grammy for the sound track of Maestro, the film on the life of conductor, composer, and Curtis Institute of Music alum Leonard Bernstein.
Cooper and Nézet-Séguin won in the best compilation soundtrack for visual media category. The soundtrack of the Bernstein biopic was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Philadelphians bass player-producer Adam Blackstone, the Crossing choir, and singers Karen Slack and Michelle Cann also won Grammys announced in the pre-telecast awards show on Sunday in Los Angeles.
University of Pennsylvania grad John Legend won his 13th Grammy, taking home a best arrangement, instrumental or a cappella, for a version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” with Jacob Collier and Tori Kelly in the awards ceremony, which was livestreamed on YouTube from the Nokia Theatre.
Philadelphians Slack and Cann won in the best classical solo vocal category for Beyond the Years — Unpublished Songs of Florence Price. Slack, a soprano, is a laureate of Astral Artists and a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music; Cann is a Curtis graduate and piano professor at the school.
“When I started my career as an opera soprano, I never imagined standing here on this stage today, because back then, this award only went to very famous superstar singers on major classical labels,” Slack said while accepting the award with Cann.
“But today I get to be here, among the greats who have come before me to represent the inimitable Florence Price, a trailblazing Black woman who wrote extraordinary music in a time when it was believed that only European and male composers belonged in the concert hall.”
She then thanked her supporters and “the incredible Michelle Cann and my friends in Philly. C’mon!”
Philadelphia’s Crossing choir and conductor Donald Nally won for best choral performance — the group’s fourth Grammy. Ochre, the album with vibraphone player Dan Schwartz, includes works by Ayanna Woods, George Lewis, and Caroline Shaw.
Trenton native Blackstone won as a producer of Hell’s Kitchen, the Alicia Keys musical that garnered a best musical theater Grammy. He said he was “so honored” to accept the award and speak on Keys’ behalf, citing her as “the executive producer, composer, lyricist, and everything for Hell’s Kitchen.”
“I just want to say thank you to all the open minds and the DEI program that allowed me, a little kid from church, to live out my dreams on Broadway,” Blackstone went on to say.
In the preshow ceremony, Carpenter’s “Espresso” won a best remixed recording Grammy for producers Mark Ronson and FNZ. And in another Carpenter adjacent victory, the songwriter of the year, nonclassical award went to Amy Allen, who cowrote all 12 songs on Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet, and collaborated on songs by Leon Bridges and Olivia Rodrigo.
Americana singer Sierra Ferrell was a big winner in the early ceremony winning four awards. Lamar won three, as did singer-guitarist St. Vincent. Late President Jimmy Carter won a posthumous Grammy for narrating Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration.
» READ MORE: Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, and Bucks County’s Sabrina Carpenter: Who’s taking the Grammy home?
Jazz singer Samara Joy won best jazz vocal album for A Joyful Holiday and jazz performance for “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me” with Sullivan Fortner.
The Bronx-born singer shouted out “Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, the patriarch and matriarch of my family,” as well as the “the Savettes of Philadelphia,” the gospel group “who trickled all the musical legacy down to my cousins and my aunts and uncles. … It means everything to be able to highlight the stock I come from and to highlight who inspires me the most.”
» READ MORE: Beyoncé has announced her Cowboy Carter tour. But is she coming to Philly?
Beyoncé, who led the way with 11 nominations, raised her record Grammy total to 35 with her three wins, including one with Miley Cyrus for best country performance for a duo or a group for “II Most Wanted,” from Cowboy Carter.
On Saturday night, she announced a Cowboy Carter tour, and on Sunday after the Grammys she released a poster for the concert trek, officially called the “Cowboy Carter Chitlin’ Circuit Tour,” which listed nine cities, though not Philadelphia.