Elton John to receive US honour

Elton John is to be honoured by one of America’s leading arts institutions.

Warren Beatty, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Joan Sutherland and John Williams have also been chosen to receive the 27th Kennedy Centre Honours for 2004.

The Washington centre’s chairman, Stephen A. Schwarzman, described John as “a pop music icon who also composes stunning musical film and theatre scores”, Beatty as ”a film artist whose talents are astonishingly diverse”, Davis and Dee as “a greatly revered couple of stage and screen”, Sutherland as “an operatic superstar of unsurpassed artistic achievement” and Williams as “one of the most influential American composers of the past four decades”.

The honours will be awarded at a Washington dinner given at the State Department by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on December 4.

The John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts on the bank of the Potomac River calls itself the country’s busiest US arts facility, with more than 3,300 performances a year, including films, plays, musicals, ballet, jazz, the Washington National Opera, the National Symphony Orchestra, classical soloists and smaller ensembles.