Musical Collaborator of the Month: Lady Gaga

The Year of Tony Bennett is proud to announce that Lady Gaga is the musical collaborator of the month: October 2017.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, in Manhattan, New York to a Catholic family with Italian and French Canadian roots. Her parents are Cynthia Louise (née Bissett) and internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta. Brought up in the affluent Upper West Side of Manhattan, she says that her parents came from lower-class families and worked hard for everything. From age 11, she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private, all-girls Roman Catholic school.

Gaga began to play the piano at the age of four, wrote her first piano ballad at 13, and began playing at open mic nights a year later. At her high school, she played the lead roles of Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; she also studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for ten years. In 2003, at age 17, Gaga gained early admission to Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21)—a music school at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and lived in a NYU dorm. At NYU, she studied music and improved her songwriting skills by studying art, religion, social issues and politics. During her second semester of her sophomore year in 2005, she withdrew to focus on her music career.

She grew rapidly in the music industry and released a number of popular songs, all the while building her brand and learning the music business. This work culminated in the release in 2011 of her second album Born This Way, which sold over a million copies in its first week.

In 2011, she recorded her first song with Tony Bennett: “The Lady is a Tramp” from Duets II. The two enjoyed working together so much that they did an entire album together: Cheek to Cheek, released in 2014.

Lady Gaga is one of the best-selling musical artists of all time; she also continues to grow artistically and musically. She has won three Brit awards, six Grammys and awards from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and many other recognitions.

She is also well-known for her philanthropic work and social activism. She founded the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on promoting young empowerment and combatting bullying. She also an outspoken support of LGBT rights.