Singers Diana Ross and Brian Wilson, actor Steve Martin, pianist Leon Fleisher and film director Martin Scorsese are this year’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts honorees.

The ceremony will take place on Dec. 2 with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush hosting the event. A gala performance and supper dance at the Kennedy Center follow the ceremony.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will present the honors at a State Department dinner the night before.

“With their extraordinary talent, creativity and perseverance, the five 2007 honorees have transformed the way we, as Americans, see, hear and feel the performing arts,” Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman said Tuesday, as he announced the honorees.

“We will forever be thankful for the great gift they have shared with us.”

The five artists sharing the 30th annual honors of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have all been around for quite a while, leaving their unmistakable mark on the world.

Diana Ross began her career as the lead singer of 1960s girl group The Supremes. The 62-year-old singer and actress said she was honored to be part of the Kennedy Center’s artistic legacy.

Speaking of her success, she said there is no secret to it. “My life is not really complicated. I try to keep it as simple as possible,” she said. “My values are in the right place, I think.”

Pianist Leon Fleisher, 79, lost the use of his right hand for much of his career because of a rare neurological disease but his passion for playing the piano helped him regain use of both hands.

Schwarzman called the pianist’s career a “moving testament to the life-affirming power of art.” Fleisher has served on the faculty of Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory of Music since 1959, as well as the Curtis Institute of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, among other schools and symphony orchestras.

Comedian Steve Martin, 62, whom Schwarzman called a “renaissance comic whose talents wipe out the boundaries between artistic disciplines,” gained public attention as a guest stand-up comedian on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” in the mid-1970s.

Upon learning of his award, the actor declared: “I am grateful to the Kennedy Center for finally alleviating in me years of covetousness and trophy envy.”

Director Martin Scorsese, who earlier this year basked in the long-overdue glory of receiving an Academy Award, for directing “The Departed,” was described as a “visionary” and a “fearless artist.”

Brian Wilson, 65, is best known for being a prominent member of the rock and roll band the Beach Boys and for his “era-defining transformation of the sound of music,” the Kennedy Center said.

The Kennedy Center honors will be recorded and broadcast Dec. 26 for the 30th consecutive year on CBS as a two-hour prime-time special.

The honorees are chosen from recommendations by the Kennedy Center's national artists committee (which includes the likes of Anjelica Huston, Francis Ford Coppola and Helen Mirren) and past honorees.

The honors recognize a lifetime of contributions to American culture through the performing arts.

Honorees of the past years include Robert Redford, James Brown, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, Steven Spielberg and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The first five honorees, celebrated in 1978, were dancer and actor Fred Astaire, ballet choreographer George Balanchine, contralto Marian Anderson, Broadway composer Richard Rodgers and pianist Arthur Rubinstein.