Sissieretta Jones
Call Her By Her Name!
Through an up-close and personal concert experience, the unsung grand dame Sissieretta Jones becomes dimensional right in front of the audience’s eyes. Inspired by a life of great peaks and valleys featuring musical, dance and poetic elements masterfully interpreted by some of the world’s most electrifying performers hailing from the concert, theatrical and popular culture stages, all present are drawn in closer to Sissieretta Jones’s life narrative. We discover a heightened sense of the stakes she confronted and conquered.
Although no known recordings of “The Black Patti” have been unearthed (yet the rumor that they do indeed exist persists), it is said that Madame Jones had a voice with such power and beauty that its holder sang in front of dignitaries around the world and at the pleasure of four U.S. presidents, all during one of the darkest periods in our history.
A voice that shattered barriers has the platform to be heard.
Sissieretta Jones can finally speak her truth.
A National Sawdust Project in development. For more information, please contact:
Holly Hunter, Director of NS Projects & Community Engagement
holly@nationalsawdust.org
Statement from Adina Williams — Executive Producer, National Sawdust Curator, and Founder of AdinaWorks Productions:
My mother was the first to tell me of the great Sissieretta Jones. The next reference to her name came to me during my early professional years at Carnegie Hall. Then, about ten years ago, the stars aligned and I met the iconic Jessye Norman by way of our mutual friend Wynton Marsalis. Jessye and I have been dreaming up together Sissieretta Jones ever since.
As this year marks dear Sissi’s 150th anniversary, I am especially honored to collaborate on such a significant and timely project with creative and courageous arts incubator National Sawdust.
With the brilliance of all the artists attached to the project, including Harolyn Blackwell and David Gonzalez, I feel that collectively we are developing an important new cultural work so that a voice that shattered barriers has the platform to be heard and Sissieretta Jones can finally speak her truth.
Jessye Norman, Curator-in-Charge and Co-Artistic Director
Jessye Norman, one of the world’s most celebrated performing artists, is acclaimed for her performances in a wide range of leading roles with the world’s premier opera companies, in solo recitals and in concerts of her cherished classical repertoire with preeminent orchestras all over the globe, as well as her latest artistic expansion with her jazz ensemble.
Her collaborations with artists of other disciplines is a hallmark and include: Bill T. Jones, Steve McQueen, Garth Fagan, Laura Karpman, and Robert Wilson among many others.
She is the recipient of a number of awards and accolades including more than forty honorary doctorate degrees from colleges, universities and conservatories around the world, five Grammy awards including the ‘lifetime achievement award’, the National Medal of the Arts and is a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. Miss Norman has also been awarded the highest honor of the NAACP, The Spingarn Medal.
Her community service includes trustee board memberships at Carnegie Hall, The New York Public Library, The New York Botanical Gardens and The Dance Theatre of Harlem.
The Jessye Norman School of the Arts in her hometown of Augusta, Georgia is now in its fourteenth academic year.
Photo credit: Carol Friedman
Harolyn Blackwell, Co-Artistic Director
Grammy–nominated soprano Harolyn Blackwell is recognized for her expressive and exuberant performances, with a career that has spanned opera, concert, and recital stages around the world. Following college, the Washington, DC native began her career on Broadway in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Shortly thereafter, she was selected as a finalist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and her career path changed from musical theatre to opera. Since then, she has performed with many of the major national and international opera companies and at festivals around the world, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), the Seattle Opera, Opéra de Nice, Florida Grand Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, the Aix-en-Provence festival, the Opera Orchestra of New York, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.
She has appeared in several productions at the Metropolitan Opera, including Un Ballo in Maschera, Le Nozze di Figaro, Manon, Die Fledermaus, Werther, and La Fille du Régiment. Ms Blackwell starred as Cunegonde in the Broadway revival of Candide. An accomplished recitalist, she has performed in several acclaimed concert venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the Morgan Library, the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Performances Series at the Herbst Theatre, the Kennedy Center’s Fortas chamber series, the Vocal Arts society of Washington, and the Ambassador Foundation performing arts series in Los Angeles. She has also appeared in a number of nationally televised concerts such as the Grammy Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Memorial Day and Fourth of July concerts on PBS, Christmas in Washington, and PBS’s In Performance at the White House to name a few.
Ms Blackwell is the recipient of numerous awards, including two career grants from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation; Artist of the Year from the Seattle Opera; the Alumna of the Year Award from her alma mater, Catholic University; an honorary doctorate in music from George Washington University; an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Siena College; and the Norman Vincent Peale Arts Award. An advocate of arts education, Ms Blackwell is a board member of the George London Foundation and The Voice Foundation. Presently, she is serving on the artist board for The Metropolitan Opera Guild, the Morgan Library, and the Martina Arroyo Foundation. Since 2005, she has served on the artists committee for the Kennedy Center Honors as well as the artist selection committee for the Marian Anderson Competition and the NEA Awards.
Grammy–nominated soprano Harolyn Blackwell is recognized for her expressive and exuberant performances, with a career that has spanned opera, concert, and recital stages around the world. Following college, the Washington, DC native began her career on Broadway in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Shortly thereafter, she was selected as a finalist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and her career path changed from musical theatre to opera. Since then, she has performed with many of the major national and international opera companies and at festivals around the world, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), the Seattle Opera, Opéra de Nice, Florida Grand Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, the Aix-en-Provence festival, the Opera Orchestra of New York, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.
She has appeared in several productions at the Metropolitan Opera, including Un Ballo in Maschera, Le Nozze di Figaro, Manon, Die Fledermaus, Werther, and La Fille du Régiment. Ms Blackwell starred as Cunegonde in the Broadway revival of Candide. An accomplished recitalist, she has performed in several acclaimed concert venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the Morgan Library, the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Performances Series at the Herbst Theatre, the Kennedy Center’s Fortas chamber series, the Vocal Arts society of Washington, and the Ambassador Foundation performing arts series in Los Angeles. She has also appeared in a number of nationally televised concerts such as the Grammy Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Memorial Day and Fourth of July concerts on PBS, Christmas in Washington, and PBS’s In Performance at the White House to name a few.
Ms Blackwell is the recipient of numerous awards, including two career grants from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation; Artist of the Year from the Seattle Opera; the Alumna of the Year Award from her alma mater, Catholic University; an honorary doctorate in music from George Washington University; an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Siena College; and the Norman Vincent Peale Arts Award. An advocate of arts education, Ms Blackwell is a board member of the George London Foundation and The Voice Foundation. Presently, she is serving on the artist board for The Metropolitan Opera Guild, the Morgan Library, and the Martina Arroyo Foundation. Since 2005, she has served on the artists committee for the Kennedy Center Honors as well as the artist selection committee for the Marian Anderson Competition and the NEA Awards.
Photo credit: Luc Papa
Adina Williams, Executive Producer, National Sawdust Curator, and Founder of AdinaWorks Productions
Founder and President of AdinaWorks Productions, Adina Williams provides strategic management and advisory services to corporations and individual artists such as Brooklyn arts incubator National Sawdust, opera legend Jessye Norman, and global jazz radio station, WBGO-Newark Public Radio. Williams, at the request of New York State Senator Jesse Hamilton, proudly serves as a lead member and panelist for the Senator’s “Roundtable on Diversity and Inclusion in Cultural Institutions.” Williams’s recent posts include Assistant Director of Programs at International House, a residential community for emerging global leaders, founded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr . From 2011-2017, Williams served as Senior Manager of Public Programs at the American Museum of Natural History, where she was responsible for the direction and management of major arts festivals and selected science programs and designing an overarching strategic vision for a diverse and interconnected series of programs which encompassed various mediums of expression. As Director of Jazz and Standards at Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., she was part of the international management team that led the company’s first foray into America’s art form. Williams was in charge of developing and executing a global strategy for promoting the works of award-winning composers. She personally signed Blue Note Records, Paquito D’Rivera, Andrew Hill and Wynton Marsalis to its renowned family of composers and catalogues and re-signed icon Chick Corea. As Community Engagement Manager at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, Williams created new artist residency models with Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons, Sweet Honey in the Rock, led by Drs. Bernice Johnson Reagon and Ysaye Barnwell, and the Ying Quartet, as well as produced the annual University President-initiated open house festival, “Maryland Day.” A former New York City public school teacher, Williams has also developed educational programming at Carnegie Hall and Washington National Opera. She served as the Project Coordinator for the NEA survey, “Changing the Beat: A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians” and most recently presented, “Renewing the Currency of Cultural Halls: Reframing the Past to Save the Future,” at the Association of Science-Technology Center’s annual conference with colleagues from the curatorial, exhibition, public programs, and education departments of three leading cultural institutions (American Museum of Natural History, Field Museum of Natural History and the Haida Gwaii Museum). She holds Master’s degrees in Arts Administration and Elementary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, in Music (violin) from Baldwin-Wallace University.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Herman
