Quincy Jones and Wicked: The musical numbers confirmed for the 2025 Oscars

This year, the long-awaited Oscars will feature powerful musical numbers that aim to continue the festive atmosphere that Ryan Gosling created when he performed 'I'm Just Ken' in 2024, according to Mandy Moore, supervising choreographer for this edition, in a press conference on Wednesday.

Therefore, Live performances of 'Wicked', an emotional musical number dedicated to Los Angeles and a tribute to Quincy Jones will be part of the 97th gala, The producers of this ceremony, Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan, confirmed to EFE.

Kapoor confirmed that the voices of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo will star in a number dedicated to 'Wicked', although without specifying which of the popular songs from the Broadway musical have been chosen; also, on Wednesday it was made public that Queen Latifah will be part of a posthumous tribute to producer and musician Quincy Jones, who died in 2024.

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"This year it's going to be a little bit more about the love of cinema, and one of those musical moments is going to touch on the theme of Los Angeles, you know the city that we love so much and what's happened here, we want to celebrate that we are the heart of Hollywood, there's so much cinema that's made here," says Kapoor.

This decision came in solidarity with those affected by the fires that hit the city of stars for three weeks in January and devastated the areas of Palisades and Altadena. "It's going to be a lovely moment," added the producer, who also said that The reconstruction efforts that have been carried out in the city throughout the gala will be addressed.

The musical numbers of this edition were one of the issues that posed the most challenges for the producers: "We had to rethink and reimagine how we could approach the ceremony in a different way," explains Kapoor. The intention was to put a special focus on the 23 award categories that will be presented during the broadcast, and with that, somewhat controversial decisions were made, such as removing live performances from the category of best original song.

These adjustments "were not just to the original song, but to all of them, and this year we wanted to focus on the composers and not just the songs," says Kapoor.

The executive producer of these awards explained that instead they are preparing a "beautiful film" to present the nominees of this edition, which includes artists such as Adrian Quesada and Abraham Alexander for 'Like A Bird' from 'Sing Sing' or Elton John and Brandi Carlile for 'Never Too Late' from 'Elton John: Never Too Late'.

"We have a beautiful film that's being made right now that gives a little glimpse into the process of writing the original songs in a really unique way," Kapoor said. The 97th Academy Awards will be held this coming Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

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