New York, NY (March 11, 2026)—Carnegie Hall looms large in the lore of Billy Joel. It was where Phil Ramone first saw Joel in concert; impressed by the powerful show, the producer agreed to produce what would become the artist’s breakthrough album, The Stranger. Carnegie Hall was also across the street from where Joel’s classic “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” was set (today, the eatery, Fontana di Trevi, is long gone).
And now on Thursday night, the music of the Piano Man will resonate throughout Carnegie Hall once again when the venerable venue hosts its 21st annual “Music Of” concert—an all-star, three-hour tribute concert presented by promoter/City Winery founder Michael Dorf. Behind the mixing desk will be City Winery’s National Production & Technical Director since 2009, Marc Colletti.
At press time, the lineup will include Rob Thomas (Matchbox 20), Alexa Ray Joel, Pat Monahan (Train), Gavin DeGraw, Marc Roberge (O.A.R.), Matt Nathanson, Rufus Wainwright, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tanya Tucker, The War And Treaty, Bettye LaVette, Itzhak Perlman, Andrew McMahon (Jack’s Mannequin), Sammy Rae, Jon McLaughlin, Wyclef Jean and Neal Francis, Natalie Merchant and Lawrence.
Unsurprisingly, both the official concert and its rehearsal show, being held tonight at City Winery, have been sold out for months. All net proceeds—$100,000 annually and over $2.2 million in total—will be go to nearly 20 music education non-profits. Past honorees have included Paul McCartney, Aretha Franklin, Prince, Bob Dylan and R.E.M., among others.
Keeping tabs on production for both performances is Colletti. As City Winery’s National Production & Technical Director since 2009, Colletti typically designs and builds the technical systems in all 12 venues along with managing their production teams, but for the annual “Music Of” show at Carnegie Hall, he dons far more hats. “I execute all the production advancing for these shows, overseeing all the technical side of it—scheduling, backline, coordinating with the artists,” he said, rattling off his responsibilities. “I’ll also mix the show and the rehearsal show the evening before.”
Having tackled the “Music Of” shows for the better part of a decade, Colletti has grown familiar with the challenges they entail, and it’s never a rote process. “Every year is its own unique thing,” he confirmed. “Typically, most of the acts are individual artists, duos or trios; we give them the option to play with the house band or come and do their own thing. Because it was such a great backing band this year, most all of the artists said, ‘Yes, of course, I’ll use the band.’” The musicians in question have toured with Billy Joel for decades—musical director and keyboardist David Rosenthal, Mark Rivera, Crystal Taliefero, Tommy Byrnes, Andy Cichon, Chuck Burgi and Carl Fischer.
Since the Carnegie Hall concert has so many moving parts, tonight’s rehearsal show at City Winery is crucial, said Colletti. “It’s really a rehearsal day into a rehearsal show,” he explains. “We’ll load into City Winery early around 8 o’clock, wire the stage, load-in backline, pin it up, ring out the wedges, soundcheck the house band, have a quick lunch and then we’re rocking with 15- or 20-minute soundcheck and rehearsal slots all day until doors at six o’clock.”
Once the show concludes around 11, everything will move uptown to Carnegie Hall to be loaded in Thursday morning. “We try to have everything pinned and line-checked by 11 a.m. in order to get a house band soundcheck in before the noon dark stage and lunch,” Colletti explained. “After one o’clock, we’re rolling with soundchecks for every single artist. We’re very flexible, because it’s an important 10-15 minutes for each artist. We make sure we accommodate them but also stay on schedule, because if we don’t, the train can go off the track really quick.”
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The production uses each venue’s house system—consoles, P.A., mics, lighting, snakes and the rest. “Usually, the backline and instrumentation is all we’ll bring in,” said Colletti, “although Carnegie Hall has a beautiful Steinway D 9-foot concert grand piano that we’re always happy to use. That’s the Ferrari of pianos!”
Given that the shows are held in such acoustically different venues, Colletti builds each night’s mixes from scratch. “It is definitely a rehearsal for me to understand where the solos are, how hard the drummer’s hitting and things along those lines,” he confirmed. “When you’re doing the music of artists like Billy Joel or Led Zeppelin, you know the music, but you need to know how the band is playing it and how all the guest acts are approaching it. It’s definitely a rehearsal for the technicians as well.”
Come showtime at Carnegie Hall, Colletti will slip behind the Yamaha CL5 console at front-of-house, and send mixes to the newly installed d&b audiotechnik KSL P.A., based around left-right hangs each containing three KSLi8s, a KSLi12 and a KSLi-Sub, while a center cluster features seven KSLi8s, three KSLi12s, and pairs of Yi7Ps and XSLi-Subs. Front fills, box fills and delays are all 44S boxes, and the entire system is powered by D40 and 10D amplifiers controlled via R1 software.
At stageside, engineer Jacob Almanzar will tackle monitor mixes on another CL5 desk, sending mixes to various Meyer Sound speakers including UM-1P and UM-100P wedges, and Shure Axient Digital IEM systems.
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Carnegie Hall first opened in 1891, and the Stern Auditorium’s famously clear acoustics were designed to cover all 2,790 seats long before loudspeakers existed. With that in mind, Colletti’s house mix uses the P.A. system only for reinforcement.
“The hall sounds so beautiful and it’s renowned for the fact that someone can acoustically play a violin at the front of the stage and you hear it all the way up at the top level—that soundwave just keeps traveling!” said Colletti. “As a result, the louder the show, the more challenging it can be to mix; if you introduce a lot of stage monitors and loud P.A., there’s not a lot to stop those waves.”
That informs how he mixes the show there. “You wouldn’t want to come in and start throwing reverbs on everything,” he said, adding, “with a hard hitter, that snare drum is usually shining through acoustically; you don’t want to pump it through the P.A. too hard, as then you’ve got to bring everything else up to get over it.”
Fine tuning the house mix, however, has its rewards, as Colletti is the first to point out: “It’s a very fun problem to solve—in my experience, when you hear the walls kind of singing back at you and you hear the reverberation that hall is so famous for, you’ve found the sweet spot for that room.”
All that hard work will turn into two nights of rousing, you-had-to-be-there performances (the shows are recorded for archival purposes, but not for broadcast). After handling all the logistics, speedy rehearsals and more, the result is not only money for music education, but also the experience of seeing world-class musicians doing what they do best. As Colletti noted, “In both venues, with the rehearsal show and Carnegie, we want to make the artists as comfortable as possible, so that they’re not thinking about the sound other than in a good way. A big part of it is getting them happy, helping them get in the pocket and letting them do their thing. Happy musicians make good music!”