Westbury Music Fair
Venue | 2016In 1956, three partners and music-fair impresarios—Frank Ford, Lee Guber, and Shelly Gross—stepped out of a car to inspect an underdeveloped industrial site in Westbury that would, that same year, become the Westbury Music Fair. A brilliant, multicolored striped tent, constructed in Chicago, and 1,700 chairs from New England were set up for the venue’s first production, The King and I, starring Charles Korvin and Constance Carpenter. For 10 years, the Westbury Music Fair presented the best of Broadway on Long Island with top-name talent in starring roles. In 1966, the tent gave way to a state-of-the-art, fully enclosed theatre-in-the-round, enabling the Westbury Music Fair to provide entertainment year-round. The first entertainer to perform in the new facility in 1966 was Jack Benny with special guest Wayne Newton. Among the many artists to appear at Westbury over the years were Judy Garland (1967), The Who (1968), and Bruce Springsteen (1975), as well as noted regulars Tony Bennett, Tom Jones, Don Rickles, Diana Ross, and many more. Now owned and operated by Live Nation, the Westbury Music Fair is called the NYCB Theatre at Westbury and continues to present the best in live entertainment.