Women in Jazz Month is celebrated annually in March. It is a time to recognize and honor the contributions of female vocalists, composers, bandleaders, and instrumentalists. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are jazz icons who are ensconced in the GRAMMY Hall of Fame.
With a voice that evokes Ella and Sarah, 24-year-old Samara Joy McLendon has already achieved GRAMMY recognition.
Samara Joy won the 2023 GRAMMY awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best New Artist for her second album, “Linger Awhile.”
Samara Joy won the 2024 GRAMMY for Best Jazz Performance for “Tight.”
Samara Joy co-wrote the soulful and defiant “Why I’m Here” featured in the Netflix film “Shirley.”
With a voice that belies her age, listening to Samara Joy is, well, a joy.
Brother Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.
The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center is hosting an evening of prayers, performances and reflections to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the assassination of “our own black shining prince,” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
February is the shortest month but it packs a cultural wallop. I cannot think of a better way to kick off Black History Month than with “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” Composed by Anthony Davis (music), Thulani Davis (libretto) and Christopher Davis (story), the groundbreaking opera was workshopped at the Trocadero Theater in 1984 and premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in 1985 (the official premiere was at the New York City Opera in 1986).
The Metropolitan Opera’s staging reimagines Malcolm “as an Everyman whose story transcends time and space.” From the New York Times’ review:
The epigraph of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is a quote from an interview in which, asked about the cost of freedom, Malcolm responds, “The cost of freedom is death.”
That tension — between hope and reality, between liberation and limitation — courses through a new production of “X” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, in the work’s company premiere. This staging dreams of a better future, with a towering Afrofuturist spaceship that, at the beginning, appears to be calling Malcolm X home. But the beam-me-up rays of light are pulled away to reveal a floating proscenium, gilded at the edges and decorated with a landscape mural. It is a replica of the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.
Presented by Great Performances at the Met, “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” premieres beginning February 4, 2024 (check local listings) on PBS and PBS App.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Apollo Theater is hosting its 18th annual celebration of Dr. King’s heavenly birthday, “Uptown Hall: The Inconvenient King,” in partnership with WNYC and March on Washington Film Festival. A panel discussion focusing on Dr. King’s enduring legacy on the culture, and the context and complexity of racial discrimination, will be followed by music, spoken word and other forms of creative expression.
The celebration will be presented live at the Apollo and available via livestream on Sunday, January 14, 2024 at 2:00 pm ET.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. While this is my least favorite time of the year, I love Christmas blues.
I recently learned that long before the film “Ray.” Ray Charles made his film debut in 1966. Brother Ray starred as himself in the movie “Blues for Lovers” (later retitled “Ballad in Blue”).
Ray Charles and his Orchestra lit up the big screen with 13 numbers, including “I Got a Woman,” “Unchain My Heart” and “What’d I Say.”
If anyone can chase my Christmas blues away, it’s Ray Charles.
Black sacred places matter. From Bishop Richard Allen preaching at Mother Bethel, Denmark Vesey planning a slave rebellion at Mother Emanuel, and Minister Malcolm X teaching at Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 12, Black sacred places have been the heart and soul of the African American community.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., an advisor to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, observed: “No pillar of the African American community has been more central to its history, identity, and social justice vision than the ‘Black Church.’”
Preserving Black Churches is a project of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund which is led by National Trust for Historic Preservation Senior Vice President Brent Leggs. In an interview with Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, Leggs said:
It’s critically important that we preserve the physical evidence of our past, that we preserve the historic buildings that are imbued with legacy and memory, that we preserve the profound stories that are embodied in the walls, landscapes, and cemeteries stewarded by African American churches.
Rooted in the Black experience, jazz both has been a sanctuary and found sanctuary in the church. Now a jazz standard, Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” is a celebration of the African American religious tradition.
The Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church which killed four Black children moved John Coltrane, the grandson of a prominent African Methodist Episcopal minister, to compose “Alabama.”
Partners for Sacred Places and the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia recently launched the Philadelphia Fund for Black Sacred Places (PFBSP). The three-year project will expand public access to purpose-built religious properties of architectural, historical or cultural significance, regardless of denomination, that are operated and owned by an active community of faith. PFBSP will provide planning and programming grants, as well as capital grants to support Black congregations’ efforts to maintain their properties.
The public’s response to the murder of George Floyd in June 2020 gave focus to the unanswered needs of our city’s Black communities. Religious properties have space that can be developed to respond to these needs in creative and innovative ways after worship. The houses of worship that are selected to participate in this grant program will provide welcoming and affirming space to the public that will benefit all of our communities.
PFBSP will provide up to $10,000 in planning grants and up to $250,000 in 1:2 matching grants ($2 granted for each $1 raised) for the planning and execution of projects that expand equitable access to Black-led historic sacred places. Eligibility guidelines are available here. The application deadline is January 31, 2024.
Register here for the November 17 info session on completing the application. If you have any questions, contact PFBSP Director Betsy Ivey by email or by phone at (215) 567-3234 x29.
A child prodigy, Roberta Flack began studying classical piano at age nine. Flack got her big break while performing at Mr. Henry’s Upstairs, a jazz club on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
American Masters: Roberta Flack tells Flack’s story in her own words. The documentary features interviews with, among others, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Angela Davis, Valerie Simpson, Les McCann and Peabo Bryson.
American Masters: Roberta Flack premieres on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 9pm ET. The documentary will be available on PBS, PBS.org and PBS Video App. Check your local listing here.
All That Philly Jazz 