• Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea opened its third season on Sunday, June 28, 2026, at LTV Studios in Wainscott with Broadway's Norm Lewis.

• LTV Studios presented Jean Shafiroff with the 2026 Frances Ann Dougherty Award for Broadcast Philanthropy during the evening.

• The eight-show season, produced by Donna Rubin and Josh Gladstone, runs through August 29 and closes with Tony Award winner Donna McKechnie.

• Guests included Joy Behar, Alex Donner, and Eleanor and Howard Morgan.

Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea opened its third season on Sunday, June 28, at LTV Studios in Wainscott, with Tony Award nominee Norm Lewis headlining the first of eight concerts that run through August 29. The evening carried a second headline: series producers Donna Rubin and Josh Gladstone welcomed Jean Shafiroff to the stage, where LTV Studios presented her with the 2026 Frances Ann Dougherty Award for Broadcast Philanthropy.

Lewis is one of American theater's most celebrated baritones, and his East End appearances are rare. His stage credits include “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess,” which earned him a Tony nomination, “Les Misérables,” “Ragtime” at Lincoln Center, and the title role in “The Phantom of the Opera,” where he became the first Black actor to play the part on Broadway.

The setting matched the billing. The Songbook series converts LTV's working television studio into a black-box cabaret room with café-style seating, modular staging, and a baby grand piano, a configuration that puts the audience close enough to hear a lyric land without amplification doing the work. The evening opened with a summer reception featuring spirits from BottleHampton and passed hors d'oeuvres from East Hampton Kitchen before guests found their seats.

Now in its third year, the series has grown from a local experiment into one of the East End's dependable summer rituals: an eight-show run that trades arena scale for proximity, with material drawn from the American songbook and the performers who know it best.

The Frances Ann Dougherty Award for Broadcast Philanthropy honors leadership, generosity, and a lasting commitment to strengthening the community through the power of media. It is named for the wife of LTV founder Frazer Dougherty.

Shafiroff, a philanthropist, author, and television host, was recognized for her years of support for LTV and for the continued success of “Successful Philanthropy,” the program she hosts on charitable leadership and civic engagement. She serves on the boards of eight charitable organizations, chairs as many as ten charity galas a year, and wrote “Successful Philanthropy: How to Make a Life By What You Give.”

Guests included Joy Behar, Alex Donner, and Eleanor and Howard Morgan, with New York State Assembly members Tommy John Schiavoni and Rebecca Seawright among those photographed during the evening.

The season continues with Ann Hampton Callaway on July 11 and Klea Blackhurst and Billy Stritch performing the songs of Hoagy Carmichael on July 18. David Alpern hosts Maria Abous and Eric Yves Garcia in an evening devoted to Lorenz Hart on July 25, followed by “A Swell-egant, Elegant Party,” hosted by Laurence Maslon and starring Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano, on August 1.

KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler, joined by Stephanie Pope and Christine Pedi, perform a program co-sponsored by the Mabel Mercer Foundation on August 22, and Tony Award winner Donna McKechnie, the star of “A Chorus Line,” closes the season on August 29.

Three seasons in, the Songbook series has become the East End's answer for Broadway-caliber programming without the drive west: legendary material, interpreted up close, in a room built for listening. It also keeps the Hamptons' performance calendar tied to its philanthropic one, a fitting arrangement for LTV, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization whose founding family lends the evening's award its name. For an audience that could see any of these performers in Manhattan, the draw is the setting: talent of this caliber in a room this size, in the town where the audience already summers. The 2026 season runs through August 29 at LTV Studios in Wainscott; details at ltveh.org.