About this Event
June is Black Music Month, and The Holdout II by Derrick Adams welcomes French hornist, educator and longtime Newark resident Marshall Sealy to explore the overlooked history, persisting obstacles and the growing attention on Blacks in classical music. Along with his presentation, Marshall has invited fellow French hornist Deryck Clarke and master drummer Baba Don Eaton Babatunde to join the conversation and for a special live performance.
Doors Open at 5:30PM
Program begins at 6:30PM
This event is free and open to the public.
More Information:
"Contributions from Black composers, conductors, and musicians are not given much attention in classical music, past or present. Black accomplishments are downplayed or erased, and African Americans are underrepresented in scholarship, orchestras, executive roles, and in audiences. Historically, classical music performances focused on a small circle of white, male celebrities, ignoring female and non-white composers who had fewer opportunities to establish professional careers...Black talent was funneled into jazz and other popular music genres instead of finding a home in classical music. James P. Johnson and Duke Ellington, who wrote symphonic works while playing piano and leading big bands, are usually included in the jazz canon exclusively. Many jazz musicians like Will Marion Cook, Billy Strayhorn, and Nina Simone, among others, began their training with classical music studies. Jazz is considered “America’s classical music” adding to the erasure of Black composers and musicians in academic curricula.” (Jennifer Hasso, Education Coordinator, www.JimCrowMuseum.ferris.edu 2021)
About Marshall Sealy
Marshall Sealy has performed extensively in a broad range of genres, styles and venues. These include working with artists in Classical, Broadway and Jazz orchestras such as Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr, Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Opera Company of Boston, Les Miserables Brass Band, Count Basie Big Band, and on Broadway in Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Evita (national tour). He has been a soloist with the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, Plovdiv Symphony (Bulgaria) and United States Air Force Band and has performed with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops, Philadelphia Orchestra and Orchestra Filarmonica de Jalisco (Mexico), Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Paquito D’Rivera. He has appeared with live television orchestras of the Essence Awards, Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, and Whitney Houston HBO Special. He has recorded with Les Miserables Brass Band, Anthony Braxton, J.J. Johnson, Max Roach, Taj Mahal, Michael Jackson, and Jay-Z. Marshall recently recorded the soundtrack for the motion picture Dear Evan Hansen (Universal Studios). As a Conn-Selmer Artist/Clinician Marshall has facilitated Masterclass’s in United States, Mexico, South Africa, Bulgaria, Serbia, Dominican Republic, China, and Saint Lucia W.I.
Marshalls Horn quartet “Horn Song” will debut a new CD in 2022.
About Deryck Clarke
Deryck Clarke was born in Brooklyn NY, in a family of immigrants from Guyana, South America. Encouraged by his mother, herself a concert pianist who saw his musical interest at an early age, Deryck took up the French horn and later attended the Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. He received a Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, a BM from the UNC School of the Arts and a MM from Rutgers University.
While enjoying a freelance career in various opera and ballet and symphony orchestras, early music ensembles, chamber music groups, and Broadway productions, Deryck developed his passion for teaching during summers at NY State Music Camp at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. Deryck was a faculty member and served as Interim Music Director of the Harlem School of the Arts until he received his teaching certification in New Jersey. He became the instrumental and general music teacher at the Mount Vernon Elementary School in Newark, NJ in 2006. Deryck served on the Leadership Council of the Arts Ed Newark and on the Education Committee of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
Deryck now makes his home in Augusta, GA. where he performs with the Augusta Symphony Orchestra, Aiken Civic Orchestra, SC Philharmonic, Augusta Chorale, and the Heritage Brass. Deryck continues to perform with the Harlem Chamber Players and the American Composers Orchestra in New York. He is on the faculty of Augusta University, the Jesse Norman School of the Arts, the Carolina Academy of Music in Aiken, SC and substitute teaches for the John Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School. Deryck is the founder of The Harmony Effect, a new organization supporting after-school music learning and professional development.
About Baba Don Eaton Babatunde
For almost a quarter century, Baba Don Eaton Babatunde, a percussionist very much in demand, has performed with many Major American Dance Companies in the world’s greatest performing-arts venues. His recording career is as equally varied as it vast; the jazz idiom, rhythm and blues, and most African derived percussion styles are represented in his discography. He is a featured member of the esteemed last poets. He has long been acknowledged as one of New York City’s master teachers of African Drumming and the rhythms of the Diaspora in the Americas. Baba Don Eaton Babatunde is presently on faculty at the Harlem school Of the Arts for over 25 years, teaching all ages from 4 years of age to adults.
He has performed and recorded with The Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, Maurice Hines, Gregory Hines, Andy Williams, and Chuck Davis Dance theatre, Pattie Labelle, Philycia Rashad, Choreographers Frank Hatchet, Geoffrey Holder, Louis Johnson and many more. Baba Don Eaton Babatunde has recorded with many Jazz artist Donald Brown, Joe Henderson, Jason Linder, Tyrone Jefferson, Tevin Thomas, James Spaulding, Ron Carter, Gorge Clinton, Pharaoh Sanders, and The Last Poets
Baba Don Eaton Babatunde has theatrical credits with The Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Macbeth, Caligula, and Dream on Monkey Mountain as percussionist for each Production and with HBO’s Hoop Life sound track. Baba Don Babatunde has performed with Maurice Hines’s "UPTown It’s Hot," as a Featured Percussionist. Baba Don Eaton Babatunde has performed with the Metropolitan Orchestra at the Opera House, Carnegie Hall, The State Theater , Avery Fisher’s Hall , City Center, The Apollo Theatre and The House Of Blues and is also features on Sesame Street segment called Drumming School and with Julie Andrew’s Green Room on HBO to name a a few .
Baba Don Babatunde has received proclamations from the City of New Orleans, The City of New York Public Advocate’s Office as well a plaque of recognition from the Mid Manhattan branch of the NAACP for his contribution to the Arts.
Baba Don Babatunde Has also Conducted Workshops through out the Metropolitan, Tri State Area, with many institutions such as The Harlem School of The Arts, John Jay College, Arts Connections, Harlem Late Night Jazz, African Horizon, Pyramid Dance Company, Arts Horizon, Yaffa Productions, North Hampden High School and Jack and Jill Arts Center to name a few.
About the Holdout II
With “The Holdout II,” Adams revisits a social sculpture by Derrick Adams that he initially debuted at Alijira: A Center for Contemporary Art in Newark in 2015. Now, using a house-like structure and the format of a pirate radio station, “The Holdout II” is hosted by Sister From Another Planet (Andrea Rose Clarke, SFAP) and welcomes creatives and cultural practitioners to engage in conversation about gentrification, economic development, and land ownership, set to the curated sounds of SFAP.
About Blues People
“Blues People has always meant a great deal to me. It was a dramatic self-confirmation, as a personal intellectual and artistic ‘presence,’ but also as the expression of a set of ideas and measures that I have carried with me for many years. Most, even until today.” —Amiri Baraka
Inspired by the 60th anniversary of “Blues People: Negro Music in White America”,—the acclaimed book by writer, poet, political activist and Newark native LeRoi Jones, who later renamed himself Amiri Baraka—visual artists Derrick Adams, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Cesar Melgar, and Accra Shepp have reimagined pivotal works of theirs to create five newly commissioned art installations at Express Newark that explore what it means to be a “Blues People” in the twenty-first century.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Express Newark, 54 Halsey Street, Newark, United States
USD 0.00
