MIDTOWN — James Taylor and Paul Simon are among the musicians set to perform at Sunday's 10th Anniversary of 9/11 commemoration ceremony in Lower Manhattan, city officials announced Friday.
Taylor, the mellow-voiced crooner famed for songs like "You've Got a Friend," will be performing “Close Your Eyes” and Simon will sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water," according to a new, detailed schedule released by City Hall.
Celllist Yo-Yo Ma, who also appeared on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, will be performing “Sarabande” from Bach’s First Suite for Cello Solo, and solo flautist Emi Ferguson will provide a rendition of "Amazing Grace."
The final musical interlude will be a choral musical performance of "I Will Remember You."
The ceremony is set to begin just after 8:30 a.m. with a procession of sixty pipers and drummers from the FDNY, NYPD and the Port Authority Police Department.
The Brooklyn Youth Chorus will then perform the National Anthem before a city-wide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in observance of the time the first plane struck the North Tower.
It is the first of six moments of silence planned to mark the time the plane struck the South Tower, the times the towers fell, the time the plane struck the Pentagon, and the time United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Penn.
President Barack Obama will deliver the first reading of the service, which the mayor has said will be reserved for poetry. Afterwards, the first set of names of those who died in the attacks will be read.
Unlike previous years, the reading will include the names of 2,983 victims — from the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon, those killed on Flight 93, and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Former President George W. Bush, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former New York Gov. George Pataki, Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former New Jersey Gov. Donald DiFrancesco will also take part in readings through the ceremony.
The leaders will be joined by the family members of 9/11 victims as well as an honor guard with members of the FDNY, NYPD and PAPD, along with men and women from the five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, including the USS New York, which was forged out of World Trade Center steel.
The program is set to conclude at 1 p.m. with "Taps" performed by four trumpeters from the NYPD, FDNY, PAPD, and the U.S. Military.
