Eighty-two years, 50 million albums sold worldwide, 15 Grammies along with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the accomplished painter born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Queens back in 1927 shows no signs of slowing.

There is no greater living arbiter of the American songbook than Tony Bennett. He’s become a brand name for a big, brassy voice capable of delivering standards with incomparable perfection. With a warm and smooth tenor—which over the years has subtly mellowed to a bright, husky baritone—and a unique gift for phrasing, one of Bennett’s greatest strengths as a singer might be his ability to imbue every word and note with thoughtfulness and sincerity. The other has been his savvy in picking the right material and making it his own.

Bennett is a true crooner who from the start eschewed the notion of imitating his idols—Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and particularly Frank Sinatra, who it seemed he was being groomed to replace at Columbia Records in the early 1950s. Bennett instead took his rich voice, sang the way he always has, and took almost every single he recorded to the charts.

By the late 1950s he’d found a mass audience as a hit-making perennial, yet Bennett wasn’t keen to be pegged simply as a pop singer. He flipped the script to prove to the world he was a jazz singer par excellence, cutting masterful records like Bennett and Basie Strike up the Band and Beat of My Heart. The 1960s saw Bennett still making hits, including his signature “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

Even as the chart-toppers slowed, Bennett proved a survivor, muddling through a stalled career in the rock era. He decamped to Vegas where he did what he always did: sing the songs he liked best.

He couldn’t stay in Vegas forever, however, and after a decade and a half in exile, the world beckoned Bennett. His wildly successful resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s found him playing to new generations and proved him to be a cultural treasure.

It’s been morew than 50 years and he’s still at it.

On the heels of the release of his recent collection of Christmas songs, Bennett—who is usually booked in grandiose theaters and larger venues—will treat Western New York fans to a particularly intimate, sold-out show this Sunday, December 14, at the University ar Buffalo’s Center for the Arts, with part of the proceeds benefiting the Ronald McDonald House of Buffalo.

Tony Bennett is still making great albums, still remains a showstopper and there’s every reason to believe—as the man has often sung—thatthe best is yet to come.