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Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina. Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz." Biography Early life and career Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, Unite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenville, North Carolina
Greenville ( ; ) is the county seat of and the most populous city in Pitt County, North Carolina, United States. It is the principal city of the Greenville, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area, and the List of municipalities in North Carolina, 12th-most populous city in North Carolina. Greenville is the health, entertainment, and educational hub of North Carolina's Tidewater (geographic term), Tidewater and Atlantic coastal plain, Coastal Plain. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, there were 87,521 people in the city. The city has a high population density at 2,337.63 per square mile. Greenville has been experiencing a population and economic boom since the late 1990’s. In 2020 Greenville was the most moved to city in the United States. Many major companies have moved their regional, national, and international headquarters to Greenville. Companies include Grady-White Boats, Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Catalent, and Avient Corporation, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a powerful, devastating and historic tropical cyclone that caused 1,392 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. It is tied with Hurricane Harvey as being the List of the costliest tropical cyclones, costliest tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin. Katrina was the twelfth tropical cyclone, the fifth hurricane, and the third major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous United States, gauged by barometric pressure. Katrina formed on August 23, 2005, with the merger of a tropical wave and the remnants of a tropical depression. After briefly weakening to a Tropical cyclone, tropical storm over south Florida, Katrina entered the Gulf of Mexico on August 26 and Rapid intensification, rapidly intensified to a Saffir–Simpson scale, Category 5 hurricane befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art Tatum
Arthur Tatum Jr. (, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever. From early in his career, fellow musicians acclaimed Tatum's technical ability as extraordinary. Tatum also extended jazz piano's vocabulary and boundaries far beyond his initial stride influences, and established new ground through innovative use of reharmonization, voicing, and bitonality. Tatum grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where he began playing piano professionally and had his own radio program, rebroadcast nationwide, while still in his teens. He left Toledo in 1932 and had residencies as a solo pianist at clubs in major urban centers including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In that decade, he settled into a pattern he followed for most of his career – paid performances followed by long after-hours playing, all accompanied by prodigious alcohol consumption. He was said to be more spontaneous and creative in such venues, and altho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
52nd Street (Manhattan)
52nd Street is a One-way traffic, one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. A short section of it was known as the city's center of jazz performance from the 1930s to the 1950s. Jazz center Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, 52nd Street replaced 133rd Street (Manhattan), 133rd Street as "Swing Street" of the city. The blocks of 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenues became renowned for the abundance of jazz clubs and lively street life. The street was convenient to musicians playing on Broadway and the 'legitimate' nightclubs and was also the site of a CBS studio. Musicians who played for others in the early evening played for themselves on 52nd Street. In the period from 1930 through the early 1950s, 52nd Street clubs hosted such jazz musicians as Louis Prima, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Trummy Young, Harry Gibson, Nat Jaffe, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Webster
Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973) was an American jazz tenor Saxophone, saxophonist. He performed in the United States and Europe and made many recordings with Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Johnny Hodges, and others. Career Early life and career A native of Kansas City, Missouri, he studied violin, learned how to play blues on the piano from Pete Johnson (musician), Pete Johnson, and received saxophone lessons from Budd Johnson. He played with Lester Young in the Young Family Band. He recorded with Blanche Calloway and became a member of the Bennie Moten Orchestra with Count Basie, Hot Lips Page, and Walter Page. During the 1930s, he played in bands led by Willie Bryant, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Andy Kirk (musician), Andy Kirk, and Teddy Wilson. With Ellington Webster was a soloist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra starting in 1940, appearing on "Cotton Tail". He considered Johnny Hodges, an alto saxophonist in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Undine Smith Moore
Undine Eliza Anna Smith Moore (25 August 1904 – 6 February 1989), the "Dean of Black Women Composers", was an American composer and professor of music in the twentieth century. Moore was originally trained as a classical pianist, but developed a compositional output of mostly vocal music—her preferred genre. Much of her work was inspired by black spirituals and folk music. Undine Smith Moore was a renowned teacher, and once stated that she experienced "teaching itself as an art". Towards the end of her life, she received many awards for her accomplishments as a music educator.Walker-Hill, Helen. ''From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and their Music''. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 60. Biography Early life Undine Eliza Anna Smith was born the youngest of three children to James William Smith and Hardie Turnbull Smith. She was the granddaughter of slaves. In 1908, her family moved to Petersburg, Virginia. Her hometown of Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kappa Alpha Psi
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. () is a List of African-American fraternities, historically African American Fraternities and sororities, fraternity. Since the fraternity's founding on January 5, 1911, at Indiana University Bloomington, it has never restricted membership based on color, creed, or national origin though membership traditionally is dominated by black men. The fraternity has over 260,000 members with 721 undergraduate and alumni chapters in every state of the United States, and international chapters in ten countries. Kappa Alpha Psi sponsors programs providing community service, social welfare, and academic scholarship through the ''Kappa Alpha Psi Foundation''. It is a supporter of the United Negro College Fund and Habitat for Humanity. Kappa Alpha Psi is a member of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) and the North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC). The fraternity is the oldest predominantly African American Greek-letter organization founded west of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia State College
Virginia State University (VSU or Virginia State) is a Public university, public Historically black colleges and universities, historically Black land-grant university, land-grant university in Ettrick, Virginia, United States. Founded on , Virginia State developed as the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for Black Americans. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. History Virginia State University was founded on March 6, 1882, when the legislature passed a bill to charter the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The bill was sponsored by Delegate Alfred W. Harris, a Black attorney whose offices were in Petersburg, but who lived in and represented Dinwiddie County in the General Assembly. A hostile lawsuit delayed opening day for nineteen months, until October 1, 1883. In 1902, the legislature revised the charter act to curtail the collegiate program and to change the name to Virginia Nor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dunbar High School (Washington, D
Dunbar High School can refer to: * Former Dunbar High School (Bessemer, Alabama) in Bessemer, Alabama * Dunbar High School (Little Rock, Arkansas) in Little Rock, Arkansas * Dunbar Vocational High School in Chicago, Illinois * Dunbar High School (Dayton, Ohio) in Dayton, Ohio * Dunbar High School (Fort Myers, Florida) in Fort Myers, Florida * Dunbar High School (Livingston, Texas) in Livingston, Texas * Dunbar High School in Quincy, Florida Quincy is a city in and the county seat of Gadsden County, Florida, United States. Quincy is part of the Tallahassee metropolitan area, Tallahassee, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,970 as of the 2020 census, almost eve ... * Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.) in Washington, D.C. * Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Baltimore, Maryland) in Baltimore, Maryland See also * Dunbar School (other) * Paul Lawrence Dunbar School (other) {{schooldis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become Standard (music), standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan (1937 song), Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty five-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guinness Publishing
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Hugh Beaver, Sir Hugh Beaver created the concept, and twin brothers Norris McWhirter, Norris and Ross McWhirter co-founded the book in London in August 1955. The first edition topped the bestseller list in the United Kingdom by Christmas 1955. The following year the book was launched internationally, and as of the 2025 edition, it is now in its 70th year of publication, published in 100 countries and 40 languages, and maintains over 53,000 records in its database. The international Franchising, franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in ''Guinness World Records'' becoming the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
