Manhattan Transfer headlining Long Island Cares benefit concert

Eight-time Grammy Award-winning vocal quartet The Manhattan Transfer headlines this year's benefit concert for Long Island Cares and its Harry Chapin Food Bank, Thursday at The Space at Westbury.

Opening is veteran comedian Bobby Collins, a New Hyde Park Memorial High School alumnus.

Tickets for the event, which helps fund the Hauppauge-based nonprofit providing food locally to people impacted by hunger and food insecurity, are on sale at Ticketmaster.com. The food bank was founded in 1980 by legendary signer-songwriter Chapin, who as an adult lived in Point Lookout and in Huntington, and who was killed in a collision on the Long Island Expressway in 1981 en route to a benefit concert.

The Manhattan Transfer, currently on its 50th Anniversary and Final World Tour, was formed by Tim Hauser in New York City in 1969, with that first iteration breaking up and reforming three years later as the core group of Hauser, Laurel Massé, Janis Siegel and Alan Paul. Cheryl Bentyne succeeded Massé in 1978, and Trist Curless joined in 2014 following Hauser's death.

The quartet, which helped revive harmonized vocal jazz and 1940s-style pop for modern audiences, became the first group to take Grammy Awards in both the pop and jazz categories in the same year, winning in 1981 for best pop vocal performance by a duo or group with vocal, for "Boy from New York City," and best jazz vocal performance, duo or group, for "Until I Met You (Corner Pocket)." They had won best jazz fusion performance, vocal or instrumental, the year before, for their biggest hit, "Birdland."

Their most recent album, last year's "Fifty," earned the group its 14th Grammy nomination, with a nod for best jazz vocal album.