Harlem Bespoke: The largest black-owned jazz club in Harlem was probably Small’s Paradise at the corner of West 135th Street at 7th Avenue and we recently found a 1940 government photo of the legendary address.  Most of the speakeasies nearby were in modest brownstone storefronts a couple of blocks south or big white-owned establishments like the Cotton Club on West 142nd Street and Lenox.  Out of all the large club buildings of the Harlem Renaissance years, only the Small’s now stand and has pretty much been restored after much community activism a few decades ago.  There is school on the added upper levels now and and IHOP now resides as the anchor commercial tenant.  More on Small’s Paradise can be found in our past post: LINK

* This article was originally published here

Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick has confirmed that President Joe Biden will deliver the commencement address at the historically Black university’s 155th ceremony.

Officials have scheduled commencement activities for 10 a.m. on May 13 on the Upper Quadrangle of the main campus.

Erica Loewe, the White House’s Director of African American Media, stated that in addition to Biden’s address at Howard University, administration officials plan to attend commencements at HBCUs nationwide.

According to the White House, President Biden’s impending visit to Howard, the alma mater of Vice President Kamala Harris, follows the administration’s record-breaking investment of nearly $6 billion through the U.S. Department of Education to support HBCUs since 2021.

“Securing funding for the more than 100 HBCUs in the United States has been a prominent feature of Biden’s domestic agenda,” Loewe wrote on Twitter.
In addition, the visit coincides with the publication of new data showing the lowest Black unemployment rate in U.S. history.

“It is an honor and privilege to welcome President Biden to deliver the 2023 commencement address and celebrate the 2023 graduating class,” Dr. Frederick said.

Biden will also receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree during the commencement.

“This honorary Doctor of Letters is much deserved for his years of transformational service as U.S. Senator, Vice President, and now as President of the United States,” Dr. Frederick stated.

“We are excited to receive the president as this year’s distinguished guest and recognize him for his relentless work uplifting our communities that have been historically left behind.

“I look forward to honoring President Biden, our honorary degree recipients, and graduating seniors at the Commencement Convocation.”

Biden was the first of four children born to Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Biden family relocated to Claymont, Delaware, in 1953.

Biden attended the University of Delaware and Syracuse University School of Law and served on the New Castle County Council.

The Wilmington, Delaware, Amtrak station bears Biden’s name.

The president was among the youngest individuals ever elected to the United States Senate at age 29.

At 80, Biden has confirmed his candidacy for re-election, and a victory would make him the oldest elected president in American history.

Harris became the first African American and female vice president.

Biden would be the seventh incumbent U.S. president to deliver Howard’s commencement speech.

The post President Biden to deliver Howard University’s commencement address appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

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We all have a secret, but are you ready to spill yours? Well, now you can at contemporary painter Sonya Sklaroff’s new exhibition Secrets of New York, which portrays the little-known treasures of NYC.

The exhibition invites New Yorkers to turn away from the city’s iconic landmarks and instead take a look at some of the city’s lesser known gems.

A series of oil-on-canvas paintings depict locations around the city that aren’t immediately recognizable, giving an almost behind-the-scenes look at NYC’s many clandestine happenings.

Think: a small garden oasis tucked away in the heart of SoHo, a tennis court on a garage rooftop on the East Side, and a dead-end street overlooking the East River 4th of July fireworks.

And, if you’re willing to spill a secret of your own, Sklaroff may just bring it to life!

A box at the exhibition allows guests to drop their own secrets in to then be pulled out and painted by Sklaroff. The painting will be on display for the second half of the exhibition.

“Through my Secrets of New York series, I wanted to show the unfamiliar spots in New York that people tend to overlook. There are not only places that are hidden in plain sight, but also at every moment secrets are happening around us” said Sklaroff.

Through the exhibition, Sklaroff takes viewers on a tour through the city’s ephemeral scenes, presenting a vibrant yet esoteric look at New York–a look that many of us miss out on as we go about our hectic lives.

“Making art is my purpose.  More than just what I do, art is a big part of who I am.  Painting is how I express my true self, the authentic me,” reads Sklaroff’s website.

Secrets of New York is running now through Tuesday, May 30 at the Algonquin Times Square, Autograph Collection (59 West 44th St.) You can check it out Tuesday through Saturday, 12 p.m. – 6 p.m. or by appointment.

You can learn more about the artist and her work on her website.

The post Spill A Secret At This New Exhibition & It May Be Painted & Displayed appeared first on Secret NYC.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Grace Bumbry, a pioneering mezzo-soprano who became the first Black singer to perform at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival during a career of more than three decades on the world’s top stages, has died. She was 86.

Bumbry died Sunday at Evangelisches Krankenhaus, a hospital in Vienna, according to her publicist, David Lee Brewer.

She had a stroke on Oct. 20 while on a flight from Vienna to New York to attend her induction into Opera America’s Opera Hall of Fame. She was stricken with the plane 15 minutes from landing, was treated at NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens and returned to Vienna on Dec. 8. She had been in and out of facilities since, Brewer said Monday.

Bumbry was born Jan. 4, 1937, in St. Louis. Her father, Benjamin, was a railroad porter and her mother, the former Melzia Walker, a school teacher.

She sang in the choir at Ville’s Sumner High School and won a talent contest sponsored by radio station KMOX that included a scholarship to the St. Louis Institute of Music, but she was denied admission because she was Black. She sang on CBS’s “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” then attended Boston University College of Fine Arts. and Northwestern, where she met soprano Lotte Lehmann, who became her teacher at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and a mentor.

Bumbry, known mostly as a mezzo but who also performed some soprano roles. was inspired when her mother took her to a recital of Marian Anderson, the American contralto who in 1955 became the first Black singer at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Bumbry became part of a generation of acclaimed Black opera singers that included Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, George Shirley, Reri Grist and Martina Arroyo.

Bumbry was among the winners of the 1958 Met National Council Auditions. She had a recital debut in Paris that same year and made her Paris Opéra debut in 1960 as Amneris in “Aida.”

The following year, she was cast by Wieland Wagner, a grandson of the composer, to sing Venus in a new production of “Tannhäuser” at the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Bumbry’s casting in a staging that included stars Wolfang Windgassen, Victoria de los Angeles and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau resulted in 200 protest letters to the festival.

“I remember being discriminated against in the United States, so why should it be any different in Germany?” Bumbry told St. Louis Magazine in 2021. “I knew that I had to get up there and show them what I’m about. When we were in high school, our teachers — and my parents, of course — taught us that you are no different than anybody else. You are not better than anybody, and you are not lesser than anybody. You have to do your best all the time.”

Reviews of her Bayreuth debut on July 23, 1961, were mostly positive.

“A voice of very large size, though a little lacking in color. It is a voice that has not as yet `set,’ as the teachers say,” Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times. “She is obviously a singer with a big career ahead of her.”

As a result of the attention, Bumbry was invited by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to sing at a White House state dinner the following February. Debuts followed at Carnegie Hall in November 1962, London’s Royal Opera in 1963 and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1964.

She appeared at the Met on Oct. 7, 1965, as Princess Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” the first of 216 performances with the company.

“Her assurance, self-possession, and character projection are the kind from which a substantial career can be made,” Irving Kolodin wrote in the Saturday Review.

Bumbry’s final full opera at the Met was at Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida” on Nov. 3, 1986, though she did return a decade later for the James Levine 25th anniversary gala to sing “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix (Softly awakes my heart)” from Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Dalila.”

In 1989, she sang in the first fully staged performance on a work at Paris’ Bastille Opéra in Berlioz’s “Les Troyens (The Trojans).” In 2009, she was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Bumbry’s 1963 marriage to Polish tenor Erwin Jaeckel ended in divorce in 1972. Bumbry was predeceased by brothers Charles and Benjamin.

Brewer said memorials are being planned for Vienna and New York.

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* This article was originally published here