Los Angeles -- With Vanity Fair sitting out this year's fetes, the belle of the Oscar parties was a piano-playing Elton John.
The 60-year-old singer's 16th annual viewing dinner and after-party benefiting the Elton John AIDS Foundation topped other bashes late Sunday, with 750 guests and a bevy of A-list stars who feasted on a four-course meal under the Pacific Design Center's red-draped tent.
Vanity Fair's lavish, celebrity-drenched annual affair, typically the top Oscar-night party, was cancelled weeks earlier, before the end of the U.S. writers strike.
After greeting each table, John pounded out the first of 11 songs, the first time in several years that he has played a full set with an entire band at his own party.
John, who wore an ornate Yohji Yamamoto black suit, silver tie and black-framed eyeglasses, pointed at the crowd and banged on his piano. The crowd howled and clapped when he broke out hits such as Rocket Man.
Patricia Clarkson waved her arms in the air. Calista Flockhart swayed next to beau Harrison Ford. Petra Nemcova jumped on a few chairs and shimmied. Faye Dunaway bopped her head.
Mary J. Blige sang a duet with John, as did Scissor Sisters front man Jake Shears.
John and his Canadian partner David Furnish shared Ellen DeGeneres's table during dinner, along with Blige and her husband.