ATLANTA – A range of stars from the stage, screen and sport paid tribute Tuesday to former President Jimmy Carter ahead of his 100th birthday, the eclectic lineup meant to highlight the 39th president’s emphasis on human rights and his love of music as a universal language.

The benefit concert, with ticket sales funding international programs of The Carter Center that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded in 1982 after leaving the White House, brought together artists that crossed generations and genres that traced back to his 1976 campaign. The concert will be aired in full on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 1, Carter’s birthday. Carter remains in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia.

“Everyone here is making history,” Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, told more than 4,000 people who filled Atlanta’s Fox Theatre to toast the longest-lived U.S. executive in history. “This is the first time people have come together to celebrate the 100th birthday of an American president.”

The evening involved recounting Carter’s legacy as president and with The Carter Center, which advocates democracy, resolves conflict and fights disease across the world.

Hannah Hooper, a lead singer of the alternative rock band Grouplove, praised Carter for dramatically expanding nationally protected park lands, most of it in Alaska. Actress Renee Zellweger narrated the lifelong relationship between the former president and his wife, whom he first met when she was just days old and who died last November after 77 years of marriage.

Two former Atlanta Braves baseball stars, Terry Pendleton and Dale Murphy, celebrated Carter as the team’s No. 1 fan. They recalled what it was like to play with the Carters sitting in a field-level box, and they presented the former president’s great-grandsons with a Braves jersey to give their great-grandfather. The jersey number: 100.

Of course, Obama noted, “Jimmy never passes up the opportunity to send a message,” and several artists referenced one of Carter’s widely circulated quotes about music: “One of the things that has held America together has been the music that we share and love.”