Film on music executive Davis to open Tribeca festival

The Tribeca Film Festival will open this year with a documentary and concert to celebrate Clive Davis, the legendary music executive who signed stars from Janis Joplin to Whitney Houston.

The New York festival, co-founded by Robert De Niro in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, will open on April 19 with the premiere of "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives."

The screening at Radio City Music Hall will be followed by a concert by artists signed by Davis including Aretha Franklin, Jennifer Hudson and Earth, Wind & Fire, the festival announced Thursday.

Davis, 84, was raised in a humble home in Brooklyn and worked his way to Harvard Law School and a legal career, through which he became the surprise president of Columbia Records at age 35.

He became famous for his skill at identifying artists who would go on to massive careers who also included Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Aerosmith.

Davis remains a music executive at Sony, which bought Columbia Records in 1988, and is host of an annual party of A-listers on the eve of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.

The film will be based on his 2013 autobiography, "The Soundtrack of My Life," which also drew attention for Davis's coming out in it as bisexual.

The documentary is directed by relatively unknown Chris Perkel, who worked with Cameron Crowe on his 2011 film "Pearl Jam Twenty" on the grunge band.

His first feature as a director was "The Town That Was," a documentary about a 1962 fire that obliterated the mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania.