INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

  After a five-year pause due to the COVID pandemic, Nina Kennedy will be presenting concerts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and in Mexico City at the National Arts Center next month. In Mexico City she will be appearing as part of the  27th Festival Internacional de Piano En Blanco y Negro  on Saturday, September 14th at 7:00 pm., presenting a recital of works by Ravel, Chopin, Schumann, de Falla, Lecuona, and African-American composers John W. Work III and R. Nathaniel Dett. At Vanderbilt she will present the same program at the Blair School of Music  in Turner Recital Hall on Thursday September 5th. She will also appear Sunday, September 8th at the First Baptist Church Capitol Hill as part of the Grandparents' Day celebration. She will also conduct a master class at Fisk University. Praised by the New York Times as one of the great pianists of her generation, Nina   Kennedy is a world-renowned concert pianist, orchestral conductor, award- winning fil...

  As we celebrate one hundred years of the Rhapsody in Blue , I am inspired to reflect on the impact of George Gershwin's composition on my life. I first discovered the Rhapsody in Blue when my father had assigned the piece to one of his graduate students at Fisk University. Carol Elligan was a former Fisk Jubilee Singer and Piano Pedagogy major. I already considered her to be my best friend (even though I was eleven years old at the time, and Carol was in her early twenties). Before she started working on the Rhapsody in Blue , I was struggling with my piano studies, and had even reached the point where I was ready to quit piano. My parents went on about how expensive my piano lessons were, so I figured they'd be pleased with saving that little bit of money. But my quitting was not an option. They insisted that I continue with the lessons, whether I liked it or not. Enid Katahn, my piano teacher at the Blair School of Music in Nashville was struggling to assign repertoire tha...

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...