Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy Festival – 2009

With a diverse array of more than 20 events—including concerts, panel
discussions, and educational events at venues throughout New York City,
such as Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater, The Cathedral of St. John
the Divine, Harlem Stage, the Langston Hughes Community Library &
Cultural Center, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
and the Schomburg Center—Honor!
celebrates African American music and its influence worldwide, with
programs paying tribute to pioneering artists. The festival will
provide a citywide showcase for African American music in its many
genres: classical, gospel, the Spiritual, contemporary popular music,
blues, and jazz.

The
festival is bookended by two special programs at Carnegie Hall’s Stern
Auditorium/Perelman Stage featuring contemporary musicians honoring the
great African American artists of the past. Honor! launches on Wednesday, March 4 with Honor: Blues, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Soul and Beyond,
an event at which some of today’s musical innovators will gather in
tribute to the great African American popular music artists of the
past. Under the musical direction of Ray Chew, featured artists for this program include: pianist Geri Allen, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, bassist Ron Carter, and saxophonist James Carter from the world of jazz; blues vocalists/guitarists James “Blood” Ulmer and Toshi Reagon; R&B and soul vocalists Freddie Jackson, Leela James, Kem, and Ryan Shaw; with other artists to be announced. The festival concludes with Honor: The Voice on Monday, March 23,
a program that brings together acclaimed African American classical
singers to pay tribute to icons who paved the way for succeeding
generations. Featured singers include sopranos Harolyn Blackwell, Angela M. Brown, and Nicole Cabell; baritone Gregg Baker; bass-baritone Eric Owens; and bass Kevin Maynor.

As part of Honor!, festival curator Jessye Norman will perform Sacred Ellington at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Saturday, March 7—a program that features excerpts from Duke Ellington’s magnificent Three Sacred Concerts. Miss Norman will also perform the world premiere of composer Laura Karpman’s Ask Your Mama! on Monday, March 16 at Carnegie Hall along with jazz vocalist Lizz Wright, hip-hop group The Roots and conductor George Manahan leading the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in a multimedia concert presentation based on the epic poem cycle by Langston Hughes.

Festival partner the Apollo Theater hosts a weekend devoted to the
Spiritual and gospel music beginning on Saturday, March 21
with a panel discussion exploring the historical, political, and
musical issues associated with these musical genres. Participants
include Derrick Bell, Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, Portia Maultsby, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Chapman Roberts, and Olly Wilson. On Sunday, March 22,
a concert at the Apollo Theater traces the development of the Spiritual
from its African roots in a joyous program that brings together
vocalists Shirley Caesar and Richard Smallwood, the Abyssinian Baptist Church Cathedral Choir, Hezekiah Walker and the Love Fellowship Choir, and Vy Higginsen’s Gospel for Teens
with other artists to be announced. Celebrating its 75th Anniversary
season in 2009, the iconic Apollo Theater has been a driving force
shaping America’s cultural and musical landscape, launching the careers
of gospel greats like Clara Ward, the Staple Sisters, and Sam Cooke’s
Soul Stirrers. As legends like these graced its stage, the Harlem
theater became a catalyst for broadening the audience of Spiritual
music, and sparked the development of the many genres that grew out of
the gospel tradition.

A trio of panel discussions on Sunday, March 8at
Zankel Hall—all featuring performances—focus on various aspects of the
African American cultural experience, including insights from such
luminaries as Michael Eric Dyson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Gwen Ifill, Judith Jamison, Arthur Mitchell, Toni Morrison, George Shirley, Anna Deavere Smith, Shirley Verrett, and Cornel West; performances at these panels will be given by baritone Robert Sims, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Imani Winds performing a new work from African American composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, Five Chairs and One Table,
commissioned by Carnegie Hall and featuring brief musical portraits of
Jessye Norman, Odetta, Miriam Makeba, and the daughters of President
Obama and Michelle Obama, Malia and Sasha.

Other festival highlights include an interview with Arthur Mitchell, founding Artistic Director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, as well as a panel discussion on this iconic institution (Thursday, March 12) and a concert of Spirituals (Saturday, March 21), all at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; a Carnegie Hall concert by The Philadelphia Orchestra and Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit featuring bass-baritone Eric Owens performing Mahler in tribute to the great soprano Marian Anderson as well as a performance of African American composer George Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work Lilacs with tenor Russell Thomas (Tuesday, March 17); and an evening with jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater in Zankel Hall (Wednesday, March 18).

Education and community programs presented by The Weill Music Institute
at Carnegie Hall are an integral part of Honor!. A series of free Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts
will bring exciting music to venues throughout the city with
performances offered at CUNY Graduate Center, the Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture, Harlem Stage, and Apollo Theater’s
Soundstage, all in Manhattan; Brooklyn’s Kingsborough Community
College; and the Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural
Center of the Queens Library. A free interactive Carnegie Hall Community Sing at the Apollo Theater Soundstage on Friday, March 13 invites vocalists of all ages and levels to make music together with host Vy Higginsen and the Gospel for Teens Choir.

Carnegie Hall’s National High School Choral Festival is presented this season as part of Honor! with four select high school choirs from around the country performing Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time on Friday, March 20. Soloists at this concert include soprano Angela M. Brown, contralto Meredith Arwady, tenor Russell Thomas, and bass Morris Robinson.
Tippett’s thought-provoking oratorio, written during World War II, uses
the Spiritual in much the same way that Bach employed the chorale in
his choral masterworks. Also in support of Honor!, The Weill Music Institute’s Perelman American Roots
program for middle school students offers a specially created
curriculum drawing connections between African American music and US
history.

Throughout the month of March, Carnegie Hall’s Rose Museum will participate in the Honor! festival with a special exhibit entitled The African American Experience at Carnegie Hall.
Through items on display from the Carnegie Hall Archives, the New York
Library for the Performing Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, Columbia University, and Howard University, visitors
will have the chance to explore the fascinating history of African
American artists and political and social figures who have appeared at
Carnegie Hall throughout its 118-year history.

Also in conjunction with Honor!, on January 16, Carnegie Hall launches a revised website, carnegiehall.org/honor, to serve as the online companion to the festival. The site will offer the most up-to-date information about Honor!
events, pay tribute to the hundreds of legendary African American
performers who have appeared on Carnegie Hall’s stages throughout its
history, and provide historical context to the festival’s programming
via an interactive timeline (launching later in the month) curated by
Professor Portia Maultsby of Indiana University.

Released in conjunction with the festival is LIFT EVERY VOICE!,
a two-CD, 21-track musical retrospective, part of the Carnegie
Hall/Sony Masterworks series of recordings. The set features historic
live performance and studio recordings from an array of great African
American artists, all of whom have performed at Carnegie Hall and
contributed to the rich cultural legacy in the history of music,
including Marian Anderson, Kathleen Battle, Harry Belafonte, Miles
Davis, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy
Gillespie, Mahalia Jackson, Wynton Marsalis, Jessye Norman, Bill
Withers, Luther Vandross, and more. The audio project, which will be
available on February 17, offers a diverse cross-section of musical
genres, spanning gospel to swing, classical to contemporary, Spiritual
to jazz—complementing the Honor! festival’s programming.