Category Archives: Music

Black History Month Spotlight: Lenny Williams

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Lenny Williams possesses one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music. 

Leonard Charles “Lenny” Williams was born February 16, 1945 in Little Rock, Arkansas. At a young age he moved to Oakland, California.

His interest in music was initially fueled when he learned to play the trumpet in elementary school, and his skills as a vocalist were nurtured by singing in gospel choirs and groups around the Bay Area. Lenny participated in numerous talent contests and after winning several, he signed his first recording contract with Fantasy Records. He cut two singles for the label including “Lisa’s Gone” and “Feelin’ Blue.”

In 1972, Lenny joined the emerging funk band Tower of Power. A string of hits followed. During his time with Tower of Power the group also recorded three albums: Back To Oakland, Urban Renewal and the gold LP Tower Of Power. Lenny and Tower of Power toured throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

At the end of 1975, Lenny returned to his solo projects. Initially signing with Motown Records, he later moved to ABC Records in 1977 (later purchased by MCA Records). Over the next four years he scored ten chart hits, including “Shoo Doo FuFu Ooh,” “Choosing You,” “You Got Me Running,” “Love Hurt Me Love Healed Me,” and “Midnight Girl”. Lenny recorded four more albums from 1977 to 1980: Choosing You, his first gold LP; Spark Of Love; Love Current; and Let’s Do It Today.

Over the past few years, Lenny has continued his solo career, touring the US, Europe and South Africa. Lenny Williams’ style has transcended into the new millennium, influencing many of today’s newest R & B and Pop vocalists. He has recently shared stages with such notables as Aretha Franklin, The Whispers, Rick James, Boney James, Bobby Womack, Ohio Players, Al Green, Usher, K-Ci & JoJo, Alicia Keys, Anthony Hamilton and Frankie Beverly and Maze. Lenny has also expanded his multidimensional career to include acting, starring in several stages plays including “Love On Lay Away,” “What Men Don’t Tell” and “When A Woman’s Fed Up.”

He continues making music today. In 2012 he was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.  To learn more about Lenny Willams and other inductees, visit the exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. That museum is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.  

Brahms, Wagner and Schubert highlight the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend

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The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (ASO), Philip Mann, Music Director and Conductor, presents the fifth concert in the 2014 -2015 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks Series: Schubert’s Unfinished.

Renowned violinist Vadim Gluzman joins the ASO to perform Brahms’ Violin Concerto. The program opens with the Prelude to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger and reaches a finale with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. The Masterworks Series is sponsored by the Stella Boyle Smith Trust.

The concert takes place Saturday, February 28, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 3:00 p.m. at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, 100 Victory Lane, Maumelle AR.

American Airlines Concert Conversations: All concert ticket holders are invited to a pre-concert lecture an hour before each Masterworks concert. These talks feature insights from the Maestro and guest artists, and feature musical examples to enrich the concert experience.
Tickets are $19, $35, $49, and $58; active duty military and student tickets are $10 are can be purchased online at www.ArkansasSymphony.org; at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center box office beginning 90 minutes prior to a concert; or by phone at 501-666-1761, ext. 100.

All Arkansas students grades K-12 are admitted to Sunday’s matinee free of charge with the purchase of an adult ticket using the Entergy Kids’ Ticket, downloadable at the ASO website.

ARTISTS

Vadim Gluzman, violin – Richard Sheppard Arnold Artist of Distinction

Philip Mann, conductor

PROGRAM

WAGNER: Prelude to Die Meistersinger
BRAHMS: Concerto for Violin in D Major, Op. 77
SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, “Unfinished”

PROGRAM NOTES

Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger introduces the themes of the hero, von Stolzing, and the comic villain, Beckmesser, with a display of contrapuntal ingenuity worthy of Bach.

For Brahms, as it had been for Beethoven, a concerto was no less weighty and important than a symphony. Brahms and soloist Joseph Joachim had been friends for 25 years when Brahms began work on the Violin Concerto in D Major. While ignoring most of Joachim’s suggestions, Brahms crafted a powerful, warm, and dramatic concerto that nonetheless met his requirements of musical substance over pyrotechnic flash.

There are actually several ‘unfinished’ symphonies left by Schubert, but the haunting Symphony No. 8  is the most famous of the fragments. The work was composed while he was seriously ill, and also undergoing a major shift in creative direction. He completed the first two movements in every detail. After composing and partially orchestrating sketches for a third movement, he set the symphony aside and appears never to have returned to it again.

ABOUT THE ARKANSAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 49th season in 2014-2015, under the leadership of Music Director Philip Mann. ASO is the resident orchestra of Robinson Center Music Hall, and performs more than sixty concerts each year for more than 165,000 people through its Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks Series, ACXIOM Pops LIVE! Series, River Rhapsodies Chamber Music Series, and numerous concerts performed around the state of Arkansas, in addition to serving central Arkansas through numerous community outreach programs and bringing live symphonic music education to over 26,000 school children and over 200 schools.

Black History Month Spotlight: Lencola Sullivan

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Entertainer and journalist Lencola Sullivan broke many barriers. While she gained recognition as a pageant winner, she also made a name for herself on other arenas.

In 1980, she was crowned Miss Arkansas, becoming the first contestant in pageant history to win the talent award and the title.

In the Miss America pageant, she became the first African American to win a preliminary award and to place among the top five finalists.

Around the time she was competing in pageants, she was employed by KARK as a producer and eventually an on-air reporter.

She eventually moved to New York to focus on her career as a singer and public speaker.

Sullivan had studied piano for seven years and voice and organ for one year. As a vocalist, she performed with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, with Stevie Wonder, with Kool and the Gang, and at both of President Bill Clinton’s inaugural balls, in 1993 and 1997.

She has also performed throughout The Netherlands, on Dutch National Television, and at Jazz Club 606 in London. Sullivan has also appeared on several television soap operas, in industrial films, and in many television commercials.

In 2002, Sullivan married Roel P. Verseveldt of The Hague. She and her husband are involved in international business activities. Sullivan is a frequent lecturer at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands.

She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2006. For more information on Lencola Sullivan and the other Arkansas Black Hall of Fame inductees, visit the permanent exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, a division of the Department of Arkansas Heritage

The Sea Nanners headline tonight’s Local Live at South on Main

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sea_nanners_cropped.jpg.190x140_q60_cropThis week’s installment of the free Local Live concert series, featuring the group Sea Nanners! Presented by the Oxford American magazine, Local Live showcases the best of local and regional music talent. Call ahead to South on Main to make your reservations and ensure a table: (501) 244-9660. Local Live is made possible by the generous sponsorship of Cosmic Cowboy Music.

The music starts at 7:30 pm on the stage at South on Main.

Sea Nanners is a Little Rock band named after the handle of an acclaimed Call of Duty player. The group has expanded in the past year, adding four new members into their rotating door of a lineup. Their sound ranges from stadium rock to beach pop, with a focus on jaunty melodies and hip swinging rhythms. They are recording their first LP this winter in the hopes of a release in late spring /early summer 2015.  Band Members are Lee Petray, Brooks Tipton, Jonathan Jacobs, Michael Inscoe, Thom Asewicz, Clayton Scott Grubbs, Matthew Steel, and Phillip Rex Huddleston.

 

Black History Month Spotlight: John Stubblefield

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IMG_5435Tenor saxophonist John Stubblefield ranks among the most powerful and innovative soloists of the last decades of the 20th century.

Born February 4, 1945, in Little Rock, Stubblefield first studied the piano, but moved to saxophone as a teen.
At the age of 17, Stubblefield joined local R&B combo York Wilburn & the Thrillers, with whom he made his recording debut. He then spent a year on the road with legendary soul artist, Solomon Burke before studying music at AM&N College (now UAPB) while leading his own modern jazz quintet.

After graduation, Stubblefield settled in Chicago in 1967, soon signing on with the pioneering avant-garde jazz collective the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); he studied under Muhal Richard Abrams and appeared on Joseph Jarmans’s landmark 1968 set As If It Were the Seasons.

Stubblefield remained with the AACM until 1970, when he relocated to New York City and joined its East Coast counterpart, the Collective Black Artists. He played with Mary Lou Williams, Tito Puente, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. Upon joining Mingus in 1972, Stubblefield added alto saxophone, oboe, flute, and bass clarinet to his arsenal.

During the mid-1970s, Stubblefield also served as an instructor with the famed Jazzmobile program. He cut his first disc as a leader, Midnight Sun, in 1976. Subsequent efforts for the Enja and Soul Note labels include 1984’s Confessin’, 1987’s Countin’ on the Blues, and 1990’s Sophisticatedfunk.

In the 1990s Stubblefield served as the Mingus Big Band’s lead tenor and occasional conductor. Diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 2004, Stubblefield remained the Mingus Big Band’s guiding force, conducting much of its I Am Three album from his wheelchair. He died July 4, 2005.

In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. To learn more about John Stubblefield and other inductees, visit the permanent exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. That museum is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

Black History Month Spotlight: William Grant Still

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bhm StillLong known as the Dean of African American composers, Dr. William Grant Still was a legend in his own lifetime.

Dr. Still, who wrote more than 150 compositions ranging from operas to arrangements of folk themes, is best known as a pioneer. He was the first African-American in the United States to have a symphonic composition performed by a major orchestra. He was the first to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the US; the first to conduct a major symphony in the south; first to conduct a white radio orchestra in New York City; first to have an opera produced by a major company. Dr. Still was also the first African-American to have an opera televised over a national network

Dr. Still was born May 11, 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi to parents who were teachers and musicians. When Dr. Still was only a few months old, his father died and his mother took him to Little Rock. Inspired by RCA Red Seal operatic recordings, his musical education began with violin lessons.

After his studies at Wilberforce University and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he played in orchestras and orchestrated for various employers including the great W. C. Handy. For several years he arranged and conducted the “Deep River Hour” over CBS and WOR.

In the 1920’s, Still made his first appearances as a serious composer in New York. Several fellowships and commissions followed. In 1994, his “Festive Overture” captured the Jubilee prize of the Cincinnati Symphony orchestra. In 1953, he won a Freedoms Foundation Award for “To You, America!” which honored West Point’s Sesquicentennial Celebration. In 1961, he received honors for this orchestral work, “The Peaceful Land”. Dr. Still also received numerous honorary degrees from various colleges and universities, as well as various awards and a citation from Arkansas Governor Dale Bumpers in 1972.

In 1939, Dr. Still married journalist and concert pianist Verna Avery, who became his principal collaborator. They remained together until Dr. Still’s death in 1978.  In a proclamation marking the centennial of Dr. Still’s birth, President Bill Clinton praised the composer for creating “works of such beauty and passion that they pierced the artificial barriers of race, nationality and time.”

In 1995, Dr. Still was posthumously inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.  For more on William Grant Still and other inductees into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, visit the permanent exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. That museum is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

 

Piano recital this afternoon by UALR Music Professor Dr. Linda Holzer

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Piano recitalDr. Linda Holzer, professor of music at UALR, will hold​ a piano recital at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22, in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in UALR’s Fine Arts Building.

Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the UALR Department of Music at 501.569.3264​

The music will present something for everyone, from the jazz stylings of Bill Evans piano solo “Peace Piece” to a poetic masterpiece, “Sonata Op. 109,” by Beethoven​,​ to three selections by award-winning U.S. composers.

For one the three selections, Dr. Holzer will perform “Love Twitters” by Augusta Read Thomas.

She will be joined by Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s English horn player, Beth Wheeler, for John Steinmetz’s Suite from an “Imaginary Opera.” The program will conclude with Lowell Liebermann’s “Sonata for Flute and Piano,” featuring guest artist Diane McVinney of the ASO.

An active soloist and chamber musician, Holzer has delivered performances in 29 states, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and New York Public Radio Station WNYC-FM.

She has performed at Qingdao University in mainland China, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Palffy Palace in Bratislava, Slovakia. An advocate for contemporary music, Holzer has participated in numerous premieres, and her concert recordings have been broadcast internationally.

She has served as chair of the Committee on the Pedagogy Student for the 2007 and 2009 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy in Chicago and is an active member of the Network of Music Career Development Officers.

She is a founding member of the duo Mariposa with violinist Sandra McDonald, assistant concertmaster of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. Holzer was also named College Teacher of the Year by the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association in 2001.

Holzer is a native of Chicago and holds degrees in piano performance from Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Florida State University.