TRIBUTE TO LENA HORNE

Mon 14 Jun 2010 @ 8:00pm

Admission Members $12, Student members $10, Non-members $18

When Lena Horne died on 10th May this year at the age of ninety-two it was only appropriate to feel a sense of loss for an old friend. A beautiful and refined black woman who not only broke the barriers of racism in her country but re-generated her musical career at the age of 65 when she returned to Broadway with her show – The Lady and Her Music it had a 333 performance Broadway run and won her a special Tony Award and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show.

From her early days in the chorus line of the Cotton Club she managed to get a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade and a few years later joined the Noble Sissle’s Orchestra and later as resident band singer with bandleader Charlie Barnet's group touring throughout the country.

However, she disliked touring and was fortunate in replacing the singer Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC’s popular jazz radio series: The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. She also featured in various films of the time, but never in a leading role - only in a stand alone sequence i.e. singing in a club that had no real bearing on the storyline so that it could be edited out when showing in racist states where theatres were not permitted to show ‘Negros’ in a societal setting.

Horne had long been involved with the Civil Rights Movement and in 1941 sang at the Café Society with Paul Robeson and refused to perform for segregated audiences or for groups of German POWs who were seated in front of African American soldiers. She was a long standing member of the (NAACP) National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People - a civil rights organization for ethnic minorities in the United States and worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws.

By the late fifties, Horne was disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused on her nightclub career i.e. Cocoanut Grove in LA, Waldorf- Astoria in New York and in Europe. She became the premiere performer with her amazing voice and her elegant and entrancing southern accent, tantalizing both audience and those musicians who worked with her.

Lena Horne retired in 1998 after releasing another studio album entitled, Being Myself but did return to the recording studio in 2000 when asked by the great conductor, Simon Rattle, to contribute some vocal tracks on his Classic Ellington Album.

The evening will feature: Ali Bodycoat, Bronwynn Sprogowski, Helen Matthews, Libby Hammer, Shameem Taheri Lee – Russell Holmes (piano), Pax Andrews (reeds), Karl Florrison (bass) and Ben Vanderwal (drums).