Renowned pop and jazz singer Rachelle Ferrell will headline the 19th annual Jazz Under the Stars Benefit concert at Clark Atlanta University Guild’s on May 5, 2012, on the Harknes Hall Quadrangle.
The concert, facilitated by CAU and subsidized through their partnership with UPS, will help to provide scholarships to students in the performing arts. The CAU Jazz Vocal Ensemble and the Jazz Orchestra will also play musical selections.
Ferrell, the former classmate of jazz legends Branford Marsalis, Kevin Eubanks, Donald Harrison and Jeff Watts at the prestigious Boston’s Berklee College of Music, this multitalented singer, composer, arranger, violinist and pianist began toying as a toddler with music and blossomed into dynamic musical connoisseur and professional performer by the time she was in her teens. Her father bought her a piano one day with the explicit expectations that she learn to play professionally. Six months later, Ferrell got her first paying gig and it has been on and popping ever since.
Ferrell talents were such that, when she graduated, she taught music with legend Dizzy Gillespie for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Ferrell worked with the crème de la crème of music, including Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, George Benson and George Duke.
Ferrell recent expansion into the contemporary jazz scene from the pop-urban contemporary genre has only served to enhance her brand, profile and consequently introduced her fan base to one of America’s oldest and original music forms.
“There are common denominators which is the reason why music form was born,” said the Philadelphia-born Ferrell. “Jazz was born out of rebellion and born out of a particular generation who needed to identify self and uniqueness and individuality and carve out their own identity. And that’s the same with any other genre of music. I’m someone who enjoys being able to perform in that space.”
–terry shropshire
