Composer Robert Owens 3 songs, Op 41, Song Cycle for Baritone and Piano – words by Claude McKay – titled THE LYNCHING, IF WE MUST DIE, and TO THE WHITE FRIEND (In memoriam George Jackson) was performed by Baritone Donnie Ray Albert during 150th Anniversary Emancipation Proclamation Concert co-presented by MusicUNTOLD and Classical KUSC…
Maestro Paul Freeman (January 2, 1936 – July 21, 2015) earned his doctorate in music from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and studied for two years at Berlin’s Hochschule fur Musik on a Fulbright Scholarship. He later trained with the eminent French conductor Pierre Monteux. Paul Freeman became one of…
Betye Saar (b. 1926, Los Angeles) is an African decent artist whose work consistently speak to issues of race, gender, and spirituality. Known as an assemblage artist, Saar’s work combines many different symbols along with objects found on her travels across Africa, Mexico, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean and especially in Los Angeles.
Violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama was violinist for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) Ballade for violin and piano in C minor, opus 73 during the 150th Anniversary Emancipation Proclamation Concert co-presented by KUSC Classical Radio & MusicUNTOLD.
Rapper & songwriter SNOOP DOGG (Terence Blanchard – Trumpet) during the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors HERBIE HANCOCK.
Amanda Gorman, the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote a 4th of July poem for CBS.
Baritone MLK Jr The three King children, including Martin Jr. took piano lessons from their mother, Alberta William King * MLK Jr. sang in his Father’s church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie ‘Gone with the Wind’ and in the Glee Club at Morehouse College. MLK Jr. wrote in his biography “On…
Remembering the birthday of Coretta Scott King born April 27, 1927. Coretta Scott graduated valedictorian from Lincoln Normal School in 1945, where she played trumpet and piano, sang in the chorus, and participated in school musicals and enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio during her senior year at Lincoln. She continued her education…
Little Known deceased composer and friend Ed Bland’s wife, Mary Batten-Bland, recently shared the following with me “Cambria Records released a CD of Ed’s piano music, URBAN COUNTERPOINT, performed by Judith Olson, the pianist with whom Ed had been working for several years. He had planned to record it the summer that he passed away…
According to Thomas Jefferson in 1781: “The instrument proper to them (i.e. the slaves) is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa.” The 1984 television film Solomon Northup’s Odyssey and the 2013 feature film 12 Years a Slave are based on the memoir of violinist Solomon Northrup. Living & working violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama…