Eva Jessye
Composer
Harlem Renaissance...and Bess, and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts. In both productions the choral conductor Eva Jessye was part of the creative team. Her choir was featured in Four Saints. The music world also found white band... In this article: Harlem, World War I, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, New York City, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson |
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Wikipedia | August 10, 2009
Western University (Kansas)
...Virgil Thomson and writer Gertrude Stein on Four Saints in Three Acts. She was selected by George Gershwin as his choral director for his opera Porgy and Bess. Moten Barnett made "Bess" of Porgy and Bess a signature role after performing...
In this article: Western University, Kansas, Civil War, Virgil Thomson, Nora Douglas Holt, Etta Moten Barnett, and George Gershwin
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Four Saints in Three Acts
...twenty saints, and is in at least four acts. It was ground breaking for form, content, and its all-black cast, with singers directed by black choral director Eva Jessye and supported by her choir. Thomson suggested the topic, and the...
In this article: Four Saints in Three Acts, Virgil Thomson, Gertrude Stein, Ignatius of Loyola, Avila, Cellophane, Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, and Florine Stettheimer
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Eva Jessye
...for the MGM film Hallelujah directed by King Vidor. In New York, she worked with creative multiracial teams in groundbreaking productions that experimented with form, music and stories. In 1933, she directed her choir in Virgil Thomson's...
In this article: Four Saints in Three Acts, University of Michigan, New York, Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin, and Baltimore
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www.answers.com
Four Saints in Three Acts: Definition from Answers.com
Four Saints in Three Acts Opera in four acts by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by ... The black music pioneer Eva Jessye directed the singers and her choir in the ...
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www.absoluteastronomy.com
Eva Jessye: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article
Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera by United States composer Virgil Thomson ... Written in 1927-8, it contains about twenty saints, and is in at least four acts...
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www.ibdb.com
Eva Jessye | IBDB: The official source for Broadway Information
The official source for Broadway information, statistics, dates, cast, crew and creative ... Four Saints in Three Acts [Original, Musical, All Black Cast, ...
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www.umich.edu
African American Music Collection: the holdings
... other choirs, that her choir's name was changed to the Eva Jessye Choir. ... director of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's work "Four Saint in Three Acts. ...
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www.arts.ualberta.ca
ENGL 402 > Projects > Matteotti > Jessye
Forming the Eva Jessye Choir, Jessye was the first black woman in America to ... of Four Saints in Three Acts and its proposed all-black cast, Jessye was ...
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Virgil Thomson: Four Saints In Three Acts: Information from ...
Virgil Thomson: Four Saints In Three Acts Booklet languages: English Libretto languages: English Release ... Eva Jessye. Accordion music genres. 1934 in ...
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Description from Wikipedia:
Eva Jessye (January 20, 1895, Coffeyville, Kansas—February 21, 1992, Ann Arbor, Michigan)—the first black woman to receive international distinction as a professional choral conductor. She is notable as a female choral conductor during the Harlem Renaissance. Her accomplishments in this field were historical for any woman regardless of ethnicity.
Jessye was educated at Western University (formerly Quindaro State) in Kansas and Langston University in Oklahoma. She later studied privately with Will Marion Cook in New York. In 1919 she worked as the choir director at Morgan State College in Baltimore and then returned west to teach at an AME Church school in Oklahoma. She returned to Baltimore in 1926 where she began to perform regularly with her choir, the Eva Jessye Choir, who were originally called the Dixie Jubilee Singers. She and the group moved to New York where they appeared frequently in the stage show at the Capitol Theatre where Eugene Ormandy conducted the orchestra. They were also a frequent presence on NBC and WOR radio in New York in the 1920s and 1930s and recorded on Brunswick, Columbia, and Cameo records in the 1920s. She went to Hollywood in 1929 as the choral director for the MGM film Hallelujah directed by King Vidor. In 1933, she directed her choir in the Broadway production of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's opera, Four Saints in Three Acts and in 1935, she was the choral director chosen by George Gershwin for Porgy and Bess.
An active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Eva Jessye and her choir participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She was active into her 80s and, shortly before her death, established the Eva Jessye African-American Music Collection at the University of Michigan and left most of her personal papers to Pittsburg State University in Kansas.
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