There cannot be many performers who merit a standing ovation before they have even started their act.
But such was the warmth felt towards Tony Bennett that the audience rose to its feet as he walked on stage.
His introduction came via an old recording of Frank Sinatra hailing him as "the greatest singer in the world today".
At two years shy of his 90th birthday, Tony may no long be at the peak of his vocal powers but his performance provided more than enough evidence to justify Sinatra's enthusiasm.
It was a pared down show, the Tony Bennett Quartet - including Count Basie's drummer Harold Jones, a comparative youth at 74 - acting as warm up and also setting the intimate jazz club tone with every musician on stage getting a chance to shine.
The show is quite a brisk run through a back catalogue that covers more than six decades, Boulevard of Broken Dreams being one of his earliest hits in 1950.
There were covers of numbers like Maybe This Time from Cabaret, the Gershwins' They All Laughed and the world weary Sinatra classic One More for the Road, Tony's huskier tones imbuing them with his own heartfelt emotion.
The crowd also thrilled to his signature hits like Stranger in Paradise and I Left My Heart in San Francisco, while in Fly Me to The Moon he showed off Symphony Hall's celebrated acoustics by singing it mic free.
It was only towards the second half of the act that Tony started to share a little more than his music with the audience, joking that we should all buy the new album he'd made with Lady Gaga "because she needs the money".
There was also a touching anecdote about how a composer wrote, thanking him for making his music famous all over again before launching into Charlie Chaplin's Smile.
Perhaps his most telling story was, when asked by his record company why he kept singing the old songs, he replied "because I like them better than the new ones".
Judging by the second standing ovation he received at the end and the applause that repeatedly called him back to the stage, his audience liked them too.
