After a week of preparations, George Clooney‘s star-studded Hope for Haiti Now telethon will air tonight at 8 P.M. EST on over 30 networks, including ABC, CBS, FOX, MTV, and Comedy Central. The two-hour telethon will be co-hosted by Clooney in L.A. and Wyclef Jean in New York, with the goal of raising donations for Haiti, which remains devastated following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12.
Hope for Haiti Now will also air on SIRIUS XM radio and stream online through sites like YouTube and Hulu, and there’s a huge roster of celebrities eager to help the cause. CNN’s Anderson Cooper will be contributing reports live from Haiti while Robert Pattinson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jon Stewart, and dozens of other A-listers man the phone banks. “It’ll be the biggest bank of faces that you recognize answering the phones,” Clooney told MTV News.
Then there’s the lineup of musical acts slated to perform, like Beyoncé, Coldplay, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, and a special onstage collaboration between Jay-Z, Rihanna, and U2‘s Bono and the Edge. The evening’s performances will be collected into an album that iTunes customers can start pre-ordering today for $7.99.
Those who want to donate early can begin doing so now. More information on how to donate, along with a full list of networks and websites that will be airing tonight’s telethon, can be found here.
A few additional Haiti gigs worth noting:
Radiohead will play a special show Sunday night (Jan. 24) at the 900-capacity Music Box in Los Angeles. Tickets are available via auction only at Ticketmaster — bidding will continue through 11 A.M. PST on January 23. “We’re in the middle of recording at the moment, so you’ll be catching us on the fly,” said a post on Radiohead’s website, “but if you’re up for it, then we are too.”
Los Angeles’ Largo nightclub is hosting three nights of Haiti relief shows, with the first one featuring the fairly reclusive Fiona Apple on Saturday night (Jan. 23). Frequent Apple collaborator Jon Brion will be part of her backing band. Comics Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, and Ed Helms will perform on Sunday night, while Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis headlines on Monday. Tickets for all three shows can be purchased by phone: (310) 855-0350.Another big benefit is planned for Wednesday, January 27, in Brooklyn, as Jimmy Fallon hosts a gig at the Bell House featuring Ted Leo, the Walkmen, fun., the Wrens, Sondre Lerche, Michael Showalter, and A.C. Newman of the New Pornographers playing the songs of Australian ’60s pop band the Seekers with Nicole Atkins and Rhett Miller of the Old 97s. Tickets are still available here.
