Artist Study: Ms. Sarah Vaughn

Possessor of one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century, Sarah Vaughan ranked with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday in the very top echelon of female jazz singers. She often gave the impression that with her wide range, perfectly controlled vibrato, and wide expressive abilities, she could do anything she wanted with her voice. Although not all of her many recordings are essential (give Vaughan a weak song and she might strangle it to death), Sarah Vaughan's legacy as a performer and a recording artist will be very difficult to match in the future. (Read the rest here)

Artist Study: Mr. Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey, Jr. (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) was an American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on 92nd Street in New York City. He died at the age of 58.
Born in Rogers, Texas on January 5, 1931, Alvin Ailey was introduced to dance by performances of the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. His formal training in dance began with an introduction to Lester Horton's classes by his friend, Carmen de Lavallade.
When Ailey began creating dance, he drew upon his "blood memories" of Texas, the blues, spirituals, and gospel as inspiration, which resulted in the creation of his most popular and critically acclaimed work "Revelations". He concentrated on ballets that used blues, folk songs, and gospel to celebrate the southern Black Experience in America.
Although he created 79 ballets over his lifetime, Alvin Ailey maintained that his company was not exclusively a repository for his own work. Today, the company continues Mr. Ailey's mission by presenting important works of the past and commissioning new ones to add to the repertoire. In all, more than 200 works by over 70 choreographers have been performed by the Company.

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Romare Bearden Inspired Collages

The children reallly enjoyed this project. Probably because it was so messy! We used old magazines, fabric, and paint to channel our artist of the month, Mr. Romare Bearden.

Artist Study: Mr. Louis Armstrong

Pops. Sweet Papa Dip. Satchmo. He had perfect pitch and perfect rhythm. His improvised melodies and singing could be as lofty as a moon flight or as low-down as the blood drops of a street thug dying in the gutter. Like most of the great innovators in jazz, he was a small man. But the extent of his influence across jazz, across American music and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.

That is why Armstrong remains a deep force in our American expression. Not only do we hear him in those trumpet players who represent the present renaissance in jazz — Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Roney, Terence Blanchard, Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton — we can also detect his influence in certain rhythms that sweep from country-and-western music all the way over to the chanted doggerel of rap.

Read the rest here.

Artist Study: Mr. Romare Bearden

Romare Howard Bearden was born on September 2, 1911, to (Richard) Howard and Bessye Bearden in Charlotte, North Carolina, and died in New York City on March 12, 1988, at the age of 76. His life and art are marked by exceptional talent, encompassing a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests, including music, performing arts, history, literature and world art. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists.

Romare Bearden began college at Lincoln University, transferred to Boston University and completed his studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in education. While at NYU, Bearden took extensive courses in art and was a lead cartoonist and then art editor for the monthly journal The Medley. He had also been art director of Beanpot, the student humor magazine of Boston University. Bearden published many journal covers during his university years and the first of numerous texts he would write on social and artistic issues. He also attended the Art Students League in New York and later, the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1935, Bearden became a weekly editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American, which he continued doing until 1937.

After joining the Harlem Artists Guild, Bearden embarked on his lifelong study of art, gathering inspiration from Western masters ranging from Duccio, Giotto and de Hooch to Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse, as well as from African art (particularly sculpture, masks and textiles), Byzantine mosaics, Japanese prints and Chinese landscape paintings.

From the mid-1930s through 1960s, Bearden was a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at night and on weekends. His success as an artist was recognized with his first solo exhibition in Harlem in 1940 and his first solo show in Washington, DC, in 1944. Bearden was a prolific artist whose works were exhibited during his lifetime throughout the United States and Europe. His collages, watercolors, oils, photomontages and prints are imbued with visual metaphors from his past in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Harlem and from a variety of historical, literary and musical sources.
In 1954, Bearden married Nanette Rohan, with whom he spent the rest of his life. In the early 1970s, he and Nanette established a second residence on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, his wife's ancestral home, and some of his later work reflected the island's lush landscapes. Among his many friends, Bearden had close associations with such distinguished artists, intellectuals and musicians as James Baldwin, Stuart Davis, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Joan Miró, George Grosz, Alvin Ailey and Jacob Lawrence.

Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the twentieth century, Romare Bearden had a prolific and distinguished career. He experimented with many different mediums and artistic styles, but is best known for his richly textured collages, two of which appeared on the covers of Fortune and Time magazines, in 1968. An innovative artist with diverse interests, Bearden also designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and programs, sets and designs for Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance Theatre.
(Source)

Artist Study: Ms. Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters was the first black Superstar...an innovator who opened all the theatrical doors hitherto closed to black performers of her day, to attain the towering position she reached as a headliner. She fought hard and long to achieve solo star status in the white world of vaudeville, night clubs, Broadway theater, radio, films and television. More than any other black performer of the century, Ethel Waters was a woman of the theater, and the celebrity she attained in maturity as an actress tended at times to overshadow-at least in memory-the importance of her accomplishments and influence as a singer.
Her talents defied categorical limits. She was the fountainhead of all that is finest and most distinctive in jazz and popular singing. Widely imitated during the 30's and 40's, one still hears echoes of Ethel Waters in many singers who came after her. Joe Turner, Bing Crosby, Ivie Anderson, Lee Wiley, Mildred Bailey, Connie Boswell, and Ella Fitzgerald have acknowledged their debt to her. Her range soared easily from a low, chest tone to a high, clear head voice: on records she sang from a low E to high F, just over two octaves, and on "Memories of You" she hits a spectacular high F sharp. Her diction was clear and impeccable, coloring the lyrics with the proper emotion necessary to express the feelings she wanted to convey.
Born October 31, 1896, in Chester, Pennsylvania, her eighty year life was a turbulent one filled with low valleys and high peaks. In her autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow, she frankly detailed the squalor of her sordid childhood and early struggles. Her singing career began with amateur night performances in Philadelphia, then slowly moved in the black theater circuit, where she was billed as "Sweet Mama Stringbean."
She began recording in 1921 for the Black Swan label, continuing with that company through 1924. When she introduced "Dinah" at the famous Plantation Club (Broadway and 50th Street) in New York City in 1925, she met with such success that she was signed by Columbia Records, for whom she was to make many of her most famous recordings during the next decade. Her career continued to escalate in such black shows as Africana, The Blackbirds of 1928 (and 1930) and Rhapsody in Black. In 1929, she made her film debut in the new talking films, singing "Am I Blue?" and "Birmingham Bertha" in On with the Show, remade a few years later as Forty-Second Street
In 1933, her sensational rendition of "Stormy Weather" at the Cotton Club made her the talk of the town; when Irving Berlin heard her sing it, she was signed for his As Thousands Cheer, a revue starring Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb. She stopped the show with "Heat Wave" and "Suppertime" and was elevated to co-starring status. At the same time, she became the first Negro to star in a sponsored coast-to-coast radio show, accompanied by the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra. Her Broadway career continued its spectacular ascent with the hit shows At Home Abroad, Mamba 's Daughters, Cabin in the Sky, and Member of the Wedding. Later, she filmed the latter two, appearing also in Gift of Gab, Cairo, Tales of Manhattan, Pinky, and The Sound and the Fury. These films and her numerous recordings remain a legacy for audiences too young to have been or heard this legendary performer at her peak.
Her last years were spent touring with the evangelist Billy Graham, still performing occasionally, until her death on September 2, 1977, in Chatsworth, California.
Ethel Waters remains a towering figure in the history of jazz and American music.
Text by Larry Carr.

Source

Library resources below:

A Classic! Must See!

Artist Study: Mr. Gordon Parks

The life of Gordon Parks is a study in self-reliance and determination. Moreover, it has served as a blueprint for many people on how to overcome racial, social, and economic barriers within America. From a childhood characterized by poverty, Parks seemed to be following a typical downhill path by dropping out of high school at age sixteen after the death of his mother. However, Parks would have no part of failure; he fended for himself on the streets until he discovered something that ignited his passion. That something was a camera, and since 1937 Parks's talent as a photographer has allowed him to channel his abundant creative gifts and energy into creating a life that reads like a quintessential American success story. That Parks is also an African American makes his life story particularly inspiring to young men and women of color. In 1988, in recognition of his many achievements, President George Bush awarded the multitalented Parks the National Medal of Arts. (Source)

The children were Gordon Parks for a day and got to use the digital camera. Here's a sample of their pictures: Ms. Won, our community events organizer (Taken by Amir)
Amir killing an ice cream cone (Taken by Yasina)
Jimmy, the Twins' classmate in the preschool class I volunteer co-teach (Taken by Amir)
Dewayne and his BFF (Taken by Yasina)
Babygirl (Taken by Yasina)


And a library resource . . .