Harry Connick, Jr. Brings the Music to the JDRF Los Angeles Annual Imagine Gala on May 4

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- JDRF Los Angeles announces that multi-talented singer, musician, composer, actor, and TV personality Harry Connick, Jr., one of  today's most influential entertainers, will headline the annual Imagine Gala on May 4, 2019 at The Beverly Hilton Hotel. JDRF (formerly Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) is dedicated to improving lives and curing Type 1 diabetes in children and in adults. Over 600 entertainment executives, celebrities, top business executives, community and civic leaders, medical professionals and philanthropists are expected to attend and to support JDRF's life-saving research to cure, treat, and prevent type 1 diabetes (T1D).

"Harry Connick, Jr. has exemplified excellence in every aspect of the entertainment world, and we are honored to have his support at the JDRF Image Gala, one of the premiere benefits in Los Angeles," said Judy Ranan, Executive Director, JDRF Los Angeles. "He has received multiple Grammy and Emmy Awards as well as Tony nominations for his live and recorded musical performances, his achievements on the screen and his appearances on Broadway as both an actor and a composer."

In addition to Connick's featured performance, honors will be presented to Marc and Robyn Sidoti. When their daughter was diagnosed in 2016 with T1D, Marc and Robyn made it their mission to help eradicate the disease.  Marc is a board member of the JDRF LA Chapter and Robyn is a member of the Imagine Gala committee.

The evening will include entertainment, a cocktail reception, dinner, silent and live auction items, culminating in its signature call-to-action, Fund A Cure. Fund A Cure is a unique opportunity for 100% of donations received to go to ground-breaking research.  Since its inception in 1970, JDRF has funded virtually every major breakthrough in diabetes research.  The path to a cure for diabetes is as complex as the disease itself, but tremendous progress is being made daily and the goal is in sight.

To learn more about the Imagine Gala, please email Serena Bernolak or call 213-233-9910.

Join JDRF's generous presenting sponsor, Medtronic, along with many other partners and donors, in supporting the 2019 Annual JDRF Los Angeles Chapter's Imagine Gala.

• To purchase tickets, tables and sponsorships please visit www.jdrflaimaginegala.org
• To make a donation, visit www.jdrflaimaginegala.org

About Harry Connick, Jr.: Over the past three decades, Connick has established himself as a musician, singer and composer par excellence, a legendary live performer and a best-selling artist with millions of recordings sold around the world.  The foundation of Connick's art is the music of his native New Orleans, where he began performing as a pianist and vocalist at the age of five.  Highlights of his music career include several multi-platinum recordings such as "When Harry Met Sally," "Blue Light, Red Light (Someone's There)," "When My Heart Finds Christmas," "Come by Me," and "Only You." 

Connick has appeared in 19 films including Dolphin Tale with Morgan Freeman, Hope Floats with Sandra Bullock, P.S. I Love You with Hilary Swank, Bug with Ashley Judd, and Copycat with Sigourney Weaver, and on television (American Idol, Will & Grace, South Pacific and his Emmy® Award winning concert specials). In the fall of 2016, he launched Harry, a national daytime television show featuring his touring band, which earned 11 Daytime Emmy nominations in its two seasons, including two nominations for best host, and a Critics' Choice nomination for best talk show.  On Broadway, Connick received Tony nominations as both a lead actor in The Pajama Game and as a composer/lyricist for Thou Shalt Not.

Despite his busy career, Connick has always found the time to be charitable and has done some of his most important work in his efforts to help New Orleans rebuild after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. He, along with friend Branford Marsalis, conceived of "Musicians' Village," a community in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans.  Musicians' Village provides homes for Katrina-displaced musicians and its focal point, the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, is an after-school teaching facility for children, a performance hall and recording studio for indigent musicians, and a gathering place for the community. 

Connick's honors, including induction into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame, Honorary Doctorates from Tulane and Loyola Universities and the Jefferson Award for Public Service, have not led Harry Connick, Jr. to slow his creative pace; they only confirm his determination to apply his talents in ways that prove inspirational to other artists and publicly spirited citizens.

About JDRF:
JDRF is the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes (T1D) research. Our strength lies in our exclusive focus and singular influence on the worldwide effort to end T1D. We are improving lives today and tomorrow by accelerating life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent, and treat T1D and its complications.

JDRF has led the search for a cure for T1D since our founding in 1970. In those days, people commonly called the disease "juvenile diabetes" because it was frequently diagnosed in, and strongly associated with, young children. Later, to emphasize exactly how we planned to end the disease, we added a word and became the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Today, we know an equal number of children and adults are diagnosed every day. Thanks to better therapies, which JDRF funding has been instrumental in developing and making available, people with T1D live longer and stay healthier while they await the cure.

The Los Angeles chapter is a local resource for JDRF information and events in the area. By connecting with the JDRF Los Angeles Chapter, people touched by or living with T1D are able to find support, community and ways to join the fight to end T1D.  Several of the annual events hosted by the JDRF Los Angeles Chapter are the Imagine Gala, the JDRF One Walk, the Ride to Cure Diabetes and the Type 1 Nation Summit.

CONNECT WITH JDRF Los Angeles Chapter: 
Imagine Gala: http://www/.jdrflaimaginegala.org 
Website: https://www.jdrf.org/la/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JDRFlosangeleschapter/ 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jdrf_la?lang=en 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jdrflosangeles/   

JDRF Contact:                                              
Serena Bernolak                                 
JDRF Los Angeles                              
[email protected]                                    
(213) 233-9910

SOURCE JDRF Los Angeles