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...

In 1871, Verdi’s groundbreaking opera Aida had its world premiere in Cairo. October 6th of that same year, a group of formerly enslaved African Americans set out on their first fundraising tour to save the Free Fisk Colored School in Nashville, which had been established by the American Missionary Association in the aftermath of the Civil War. Within three years, this group primarily made up of teenagers would find themselves singing in the royal courts of Europe, eventually singing before Queen Victoria who reportedly stated, “These young people sing so beautifully they must be from the Music City of the United States.” This group of singers became internationally known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The Fisk Jubilee Singers Queen Victoria commissioned a larger-than-life-sized painting of the group that hangs in Jubilee Hall today. Built from the proceeds from those first concert tours, Jubilee Hall was the first permanent structure built in the United States specifically for the purpo...

Join us as we pay homage to  American classical pianist, professor, choral director, composer, and arranger of Negro Spirituals Matthew Kennedy , who was born March 10, 1921 in Americus, Georgia. We will be posting links to his recordings, articles, and film clips as part of his 100th birthday celebration. As a young boy, Matthew Kennedy sat in the segregated audience for a live concert given by famed Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. He decided to become a pianist himself after that concert. Soon afterwards, he and his mother traveled to New York City at apply for study at the Juilliard School, for which he won a scholarship as a result of imitating Rachmaninoff's playing style. After graduating from the Juilliard Preparatory Division, he entered Fisk University as a freshman and served as piano accompanist for the Fisk Jubilee Singers under then-director Mrs. James A. Myers. He traveled the world with the group performing several solo pieces on their programs, thu...

Harriette Cole and Judith Jamison Dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director Emerita of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater   Judith Jamison  was the special guest on this week's "Real Conversations With..." series presented by AARP Black Community  on Facebook Live. She was interviewed by Harriette Cole , who describes herself as "a life stylist, author, nationally syndicated advice columnist, motivational speaker, media trainer, magazine editor, lifestyle writer, wife and mother." Judith Jamison I have watched Judith Jamison's career through the years since my days as an undergraduate in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music, when Sophisticated Ladies  came to town for its pre-Broadway run. During yesterday's conversation, Jamison praised the cast and music of the production, Duke Ellington 's band and Gregory Hines , with whom she starred and choreographed the show. This production happened many years after her groundbreaking internat...

Anne Gamble Kennedy: 1920-2001   In Anticipation of Anne Gamble Kennedy's 100th Birthday Celebration/Virtual Exhibit Anne Gamble Kennedy began her career with faith, hope, and optimism. She was a black woman (albeit light-skinned), and endured the racism that was rampant in the American South during the first half of the twentieth century. Growing up in Charleston, West Virginia, she endured the humiliation of segregated schools, public accommodations and toilets. She eventually moved further south to study a Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1941, she enrolled in the Conservatory at Oberlin College in Ohio where she earned a Bachelor of Music degree. Soon afterwards, she moved to New York City to study privately with famed pianist Ray Lev. Then she accepted teaching positions at Tuskegee Institute and Talladega College in Alabama, and began a successful concert career. She was invited to perform at several HBCUs throughout the sout...

Anne Gamble Kennedy Anne Gamble Kennedy's 100th birthday will be celebrated on September 25th, 2020 with the launch of a virtual online exhibit curated by INFEMNITY Productions  on  celebratelifesmoments.online , in conjunction with Fisk University. Co-sponsors include the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the Nashville Chapter of Links, Oberlin Conservatory Alumni Association, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), First Baptist Church Capitol Hill in Nashville, and media sponsor The Tennessee Tribune . Anne Gamble Kennedy was born in Charleston, West Virginia on September 25th, 1920. Her parents were Dr. Henry Floyd Gamble of North Garden, Virginia, and the former Nina Hortense Clinton of Zanesville, Ohio. Her mother sang and toured the United Kingdom with Frederick Loudin's Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1900 to 1903, and played the piano. Anne received her first piano lessons from her mother, and gave her first complete piano recital in Charleston at age twelve. ...

While watching the home-going service for John Lewis, I heard Civil Rights activist James Lawson speak of the efforts to desegregate downtown Nashville via non-violent protest. He mentioned the James Lawson and Martin Luther King names of Diane Nash, Kelly Miller Smith, et al. Lewis and Nash were Fisk students who were attempting to desegregate the stores and establishments in downtown Nashville. My parents were on the faculty at Fisk University, and this was  the environment into which I was born in 1960. Diane Nash and Kelly Miller Smith The students were non-violent, but the white mobs that gathered around them were not. It still boggles the mind when I try to understand exactly what motivated these mobs to inflict such violence. In fact, I have already blogged on that subject:  "What Nazis Can Teach Us About American Police." Of course, I had no idea that all of this energy was swirling around me. I was just a baby, after all, and my parents did not discu...

Matthew Kennedy: One Man's Journey From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Matthew Kennedy: One Man's Journey  is an American  documentary film  directed and written by  Nina Kennedy . The film chronicles the life of concert pianist, professor, and choral director  Matthew Kennedy . [1] [2] [3] [4] Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Production 3 Awards 4 Critical reception 5 Soundtrack 6 References 7 External links Synopsis                                                  Born in the segregated South in 1921, Matthew Kennedy was known throughout his home state of Georgia as a child-prodigy. At age 12, he attended a concert given by the famous Russian pianist  Sergei Rachmaninoff  in Macon, Georgia in 1932. When this film was produced, he was one of few surviving witnesses of Rachmaninoff's live performance. In his f...