Voices Rising
APRIL 15, 2011
7 PM Doors 8 PM Show
$10-$25 Sliding Scale
www.brownpapertickets.com
Washington Hall
153 14th Ave., Seattle
Evelyn Harris, former and founding member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, will headline the April 15, 2011, Voices Rising show at Washington Hall.
Additional performances by:
Rosco Kickingstone
Fabiola Romero
Christine Cruz Guiao & April Nishimura
About Evelyn Harris
Evelyn Harris has dedicated her voice to giving depth and meaning to an extensive array of musical styles, creating stirring interpretations of African-American traditional and contemporary material, freedom songs from around the world, jazz, pop, rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and blues. Her 18-year tenure with the internationally acclaimed Black women’s acapella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock guided her studies as an artist, performer, arranger and composer. Her compositions include State Of Emergency (1988 Grammy nomination), and My Lament. With Sweet Honey, she recorded and co-produced ten albums on the Warner Brothers, Redwood, and Flying Fish labels.
Evelyn relocated to the Pioneer Valley in Fall 2002. For over 3 years, she directed the choir at the North Hadley Congregational Church and facilitated writing and singing workshops with teenage mothers through the Springfield, Mass YWCA. With an emphasis on the social, political and economic conditions of Blacks in America, she has taught “Introduction to African-American Music” at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School, MacDuffie School, Stoneleigh-Burnham School, Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College and Westfield State College among many others. Evelyn currently directs “The Ku’umba Women’s Chorus” at the Northampton Community Music Center and uses singing as cognitive therapy with dementia and Alzheimer’s patients in several nursing homes in the area. During the summer, she is a vocal instructor at the Jane Hanson Vocal Music Academy and the Institute for the Musical Arts Rock ‘n’ Roll Girls Camp. She has enthusiastically shared the stage with The Safari East Jazz Trio, Hip-Hop performance poet Lenelle Moise, singer-songwriter Pamela Means, pianists Miro Sprague, Jeff D’Antona, Stephen Page, Joel Martin and Jerry Noble as well as saxophonist Charles Neville. Earlier collaborations with a diverse spectrum of artists include Odetta, Holly Near, Glory Van Scott, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Horace Boyer, Art Steele, Jane Sapp, Zap Mama and Take 6.
Rosco Kickingstone
Rosco Kickingstone, a two-spirit, chican@ mutt, with mixed blood of conquest, has been slinging a six string for the past twelve years, and has been gender f–king since birth. He takes life experiences, ancestral knowledge, pissed at the system, bits of its culture, one good ear, and every song he’s ever heard to strap-you-on a wild ride through melodic, orchestrated chaos,via guitar and oral whoop-lash. This ain’t yo grandpappy’s folk sing-ah!
Fabiola Romero
Fabiola Romero is a passionate Chicana poet and performance artist. She was born in Michoacan and has lived most of her life in white suburbia. Since the age of 7 she has learned to live on the borderlands of amerikan social programming and Mexican Culture. Her cuentos, poems, and and performance share vivid glimpses into the mind of a norm breaking Chicana writer.
Christine Cruz Guiao & April Nishimura
Christine Cruz Guiao is a Brooklyn-born, Northwest-raised Pinay mystic healer and has performed in the Queer People of Color Liberation Project, TumbleMe Productions’ “XOXO: Love Notes from the Margins.” April Nishimura has played cello for over half her life, and has studied the Mongolian horsehead fiddle. They form the band Dreamcake and believe that music and art, like clean water, nutritious food, and justice, belongs to all people.
