INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

In the wake of the widely publicized sexual-abuse claims brought by violinist Lara St. John  against the late Jascha Brodsky, her violin teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music (read the article here ), I decided that it was time to share my own story of abuse that took place when I was a student there.  Nina Kennedy at age 9 The kinds of abuse I endured there were verbal and emotional. The perpetrator was clearly a racist, but I did not have the skills at the time to handle such abuse. It was devastating when it became clear to me that my teacher was not going to help me pursue a career, because a concert career was all I had ever imagined for myself. It had been my parents’ dream for me, and their mothers’ dreams of both of them. Little did I know that this one racist, elderly white woman set out to crush their dreams, and to destroy me in the process. The year I auditioned to enter the Curtis Institute of Music there were three openings in the ...

Débora Waldman Orchestral conductor  Débora Waldman  is the special guest on The Noshing with Nina Show this month. You will see clips of an interview that was filmed in her home in Paris, along with clips of some of her performances conducting l'Orchestre National de France and l'Orchestre Idomeneo .  A native of São Paulo, Brazil,  Dé bora Waldman accompanied her family to Israel in a Kibbutz where she lived until the age of fourteen. She then pursued her musical studies in Buenos Aires, in the Universidad Católica de Argentina. She is the only student in the history of this university that has been awarded two golden medals, both in orchestra conducting and composition. In 2002, she perfected her formation in Paris (where she lives) with Janos Fürst, and with F.X. Roth and M. Levinas in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM). Hailed as an energetic and profound young conductor,  Dé bora Waldman was discovered by the Or...

Matthew Kennedy directing the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1971 In the 1960s, Matthew Kennedy arranged the spiritual "Steal Away" for the Fisk Jubilee Singers to perform. He served as director of the group intermittently from 1957 - when he was appointed by then director John W. Work III to succeed him - until his retirement in 1986. His arrangements of "Steal Away" and "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit" were publish by Abingdon Press in 1974. Nina performing in the Jubilee Heritage Awards Concert This month Kennedy's daughter Nina traveled to Fisk University to perform on the 4th annual Jubilee Heritage Awards Concert on October 5th. The concert was scheduled to coincide with Jubilee Day on October 6th, which marks the anniversary of the day when the original Fisk Jubilee Singers set out on their first concert tour to raise money for the school. Every year on that day, current Jubilee Singers, alumni and staff go on a pilgrimage to the graves o...

Daresha Kyi Congratulations to our own Daresha Kyi for winning the 2019 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Documentary Short category for her film  Trans in America: Texas Strong . We're so proud of you, Daresha! Watch the trailer and read the Houston Chronicle article announcing the award  here .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: April Gibson, 646-853-3217 As part of the Jubilee Day celebrations at Fisk University next month, pianist Nina Kennedy will be performing in the Jubilee Heritage Award Concert at Fisk Memorial Chapel on Saturday October 5th at 7:00 pm. Rock and roll icon Little Richard is one of the honorees, as well as gospel personality Dr. Bobby Jones and hit maker Eddie "ET" Thomas. Kennedy's father Matthew Kennedy was on the piano faculty at Fisk, and also served as director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1957 to 1986 (intermittently). Her mother Anne Gamble was also a member of the piano faculty and served as piano accompanist for the group. Nina Kennedy was presented in her first complete solo piano recital in Nashville at age nine. She made her debut as piano soloist with the Nashville Symphony at age thirteen in a performance of Gershwin's  Rhapsody in Blue  before an audience of over 4,000. After graduating fro...

Myra Hess photographed by Carl Van Vechten A continuation of our tales from Vienna...   One of the works performed and recorded by Nina Kennedy at the  Bösendorfer  Salon was the arrangement for solo piano of the Chorale from Cantata number 147 called "Jesu bleibt meine Freude," (loosely translated "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring") by Johann Sebastian Bach. That published arrangement was made by Dame Myra Hess, a world-renowned concert pianist and hero to the people of London because of the free afternoon concerts she organized and in which she performed at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square during the Second World War. Since there was an official black-out declared at the onset of the bombings by the Nazis, this meant that there were no evening concerts or gatherings because no lights could be turned on at night.  Nearly 2,000 of these lunchtime concerts took place during the war, for six-and-a-half years .   For this contribution to maintaining th...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: April Gibson, +1.646.853.3217                info@infemnity.com Nina Kennedy In 1900, Nina Hortense Clinton traveled from Ohio to the U.K. as a nineteen-year-old soprano with a group of "Fisk Jubilee Singers" under director Frederick Loudin. Their travels included tours of Ireland, Scotland, and Great Britain. She and the group were still in London in 1902 where they witnessed the coronation of King Edward VII. Nina Hortense Clinton Clinton's grandfather, James Beverly Lett, was a founder of the Lett Settlement near Zanesville, Ohio. His daughter, Celia Lett married Martin H. Clinton, an ice cream salesman. Nina was their only daughter. After her return from Europe, she eventually married Dr. Henry Floyd Gamble of Charleston, West Virginia. Their daughter, Anne Lucille Gamble, was also a pianist and served on the piano faculty at Fisk University, where she met and married Matthew Washington Kennedy, ...

As you may recall, in our last newsletter we announced that The Noshing with Nina Show would be spending the bulk of the month of August in Austria and Great Britain. Nina Kennedy in her role as concert pianist was invited to film a music video at the  Bösendorfer  Salon, which happens to be inside of the Musikverein building in the heart of Vienna. Vladimir Bulzan and Nina Kennedy Our gracious host, Vladimir Bulzan, was kind enough to sit down with us for a short interview on the history of Bösendorfer in Vienna, and to share some details on the beautiful Imperial Grand piano on which Nina performed. That instrument was the model owned and preferred by jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, and Vladimir discovered later that afternoon that the day we were filming happened to be Oscar Peterson's birthday. Happy belated birthday, Oscar! You are our favorite jazz pianist. Vladimir also pointed out the Bösendorfer model owned by Michael Jackson. Franz Schubert Nina and...