Music Legend Herb Alpert Is the Business Journal’s Philanthropist of the Year

Trumpeter and A&M; Records co-founder Herb Alpert, 85, who rose to fame in the 1960s with his Latin-flavored band Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, has never let age stop him from launching concert tours around the world with his wife, Grammy Award-winning singer Lani Hall.

Still, Alpert admits the global pandemic has slowed them down.

“We have been doing 50 concerts a year for 13 years,” Alpert said. “We had to cancel our last tour after the Covid came into our lives. We were supposed to go through Canada, the Midwest, the East Coast and then we were on to London to play at a famous jazz club there, Ronnie Scott’s.”

The tour, which was to begin in April, is now postponed indefinitely.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to do that, but it’s a strange time right now,” Alpert observed with massive understatement.

While strange times may have sidelined the tour, Covid-19’s devastating effect on the performing arts, and particularly arts education, has energized the couple’s philanthropic efforts via the Herb Alpert Foundation, which launched in 1988 and is based in Santa Monica.

“Instead of going backward, we went forward,” Alpert said from the couple’s Malibu home, by phone due to social distancing concerns. “Artists are the heart and soul of our democracy. I really believe that.

Read the full article HERE