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MUSIC OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
THE EBONY ECUMENICAL ENSEMBLE
34th Annual Concert
Joseph Joubert
son of a Baptist minister, was born in New York, New York, where at the age of eight he began playing the piano. More serious study with Dora Zaslavsky commenced at age fifteen and, within one year, Mr. Joubert made his Town Hall debut with full orchestra. After advanced study and raduation from the Manhattan School of Music, with the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees, Mr. Joubert began to enjoy wider recognition as a solo pianist. He won the nation-wide piano competition of the National Association of Negro Musicians and success in other competitions resulted in not only performances of concerti with full orchestra, but also participation in master classes offered by such virtuosos as Andre Watts, John Browning, and Eugene Istomin.
Mr. Joubert's accomplishments are wide ranging and his talent has taken him not only across the continent, but also throughout the world. As his reputation for solo and ensemble work grew, Mr. Joubert performed with the Manhattan Symphony, the Bronx Arts Ensemble, the New Philharmonia, the West Palm Beach Symphony, the Mobile Symphony, the Marin Symphony, the Lancaster Symphony and the Colonial Symphony. As both a solo performer and ensemble player, Mr. Joubert has appeared in New York City's major concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and Alice Tully Hall. For two seasons, Mr. Joubert served as staff pianist for the Metropolitan Opera Company's revival of Porgy and Bess. In that production, the Company opened featuring Mr. Joubert as pianist "Jasbo Brown." Abroad, he has performed in the International Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy and in Nice, France. Mr. Joubert has performed at the Pushkin Museum Of Arts in Moscow, Russia. As an accompanist, critics have hailed Mr. Joubert's "sensitive and supportive" performances as well as the "uncommon tonal beauty" of his playing. He has collaborated with Kathleen Battle, Angela Brown, Florence Quivar, Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Harolyn Blackwell, Marvis Martin, Simon Estes, Hilda Harris, William Brown, Morris Robinson and Esther Hinds to name a few. He has performed at the White House with Kathleen Battle for President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin. At that performance Mr. Joubert did his arrangement of "Amazing Grace". Afterwards President Yeltsin requested the sheet music to take back with him. Mr. Joubert has since transcribed this performance and is published with Hinshaw Music.
Mr. Joubert has enjoyed success in musical direction. For five years Mr. Joubert was Musical Director for Judy Collins in connection with which he performed with the London Symphony and many of this nation's symphony orchestras, among them, the orchestra's of Atlanta, Charleston, Chicago, Dallas, Dayton, Houston, Kansas City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Portland, Oregon. He served as Assistant Musical Director of the Broadway show "Five Guys Named Moe" and was assistant conductor/pianist for the award-winning "Big River". In Kobe, Japan, he was Musical Director for "Harlem Kid Symphony". Mr. Joubert served as Musical Director for the Gala of New York's Shakespeare Festival, in which he worked with Kathleen Battle, Kevin Kline, Wynton Marsalis, Melba Moore, Mandy Patinkin, Ben Vereen, and Christopher Walken.
Mr. Joubert is also a record producer and arranger/orchestrator. He has successfully produced and arranged for Sony Records Tramaine Hawkins CD "To A Higher Place" and"The Promised Land". His other recording collaborations include Ashford and Simpson, Diana Ross, George Benson, Patti Labelle, Whitney Houston, Cissy Houston, Jennifer Holiday, Dione Warwick, Luther Vandross, Patti Austin, Diane Reeves, Wintley Phipps, Florence Quivar, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and The Boy's Choir of Harlem. Mr. Joubert, also, has provided specialized arrangements and orchestrations for "The Music Connection" released by Silver Burdett Ginn.
Mr. Joubert received a Drama Desk Award nomination for his work as orchestrator for the Off- Broadway show "Violet" produced by Playrights Horizons and a Grammy Award nomination along with Buryl Red and the Centurymen as Best Classical Cross-Over Album. Mr. Joubert along with Buryl Red and Michael McElroy have a Grammy Award nomination for Best Instrumental Accompanying Vocalists for “Joy To The World” from the CD “Great Joy – A Gospel Christmas”. Mr. Joubert was one of the orchestrators for Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Musical “Caroline or Change” and was orchestrator, musical director and pianist for the premiere of “Three Mo’ Divas” at the San Diego Repetory Theatre. Mr. Joubert has recorded Coleridge Taylor- Perkinson’s “Grass” for Piano, Strings and Percussion with Paul Freeman and the Chicago Sinfonietta released on Cedille Records.
Mr. Joubert was featured as conductor/arranger/pianist for the PBS special "Three Mo' Tenors" along with the CD on BMG records. His spiritual arrangements are published by GIA Publications, Mar-Vel Music, Hinshaw Music, Hal Leonard and Silver Burdett Ginn. Best known for his amazing versatility, Mr. Joubert is very comfortable arranging and performing in any style of music from classical to pop, from broadway to gospel, from spiritual to R&B and many of these elements can be found in his arrangements.
Mr. Joubert was the pianist/ associate conductor for the Broadway Show “The Color Purple” and has credits with additional arrangements. He taught Fantasia her musical role as well as Chaka Khan and Bebe Winans. Mr. Joubert was an orchestrator for the film “Nights In Rodanthe” starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere. Mr. Joubert was keyboardist and assistant conductor of the 2009 Tony Award Show “Billy Elliot”. Mr. Joubert’s first solo piano CD “Total Praise-Classic Hymns For Piano”was released by GIA Music Publishing. This past Broadway season Mr. Joubert orchestrated Alan Menken’s “Leap of Faith” and was Assistant Conductor for ‘Nice Work If You can Get It”. Currently Mr. Joubert is Musical Director and Conductor for Berry Gordy’s “Motown The Musical opening this April 2013.
GUEST ARTIST
In 2008, Kersten celebrated her first holiday album, The Gift, a nu-jazz interpretation of Christian-based Christmas songs, including her original title track, "The Gift". September 2005 celebrated the release of Kersten's highly anticipated sophomore gospel album entitled Walks of Faith. A fusion of contemporary jazz and gospel, the project features such legendary musicians such as bassist Lonnie Plaxico and is complete with gospel standards "The Lord's Prayer," contemporaries like "Shabach" and spirituals like "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child." The Beginning, released in 2002, features jazz classics like Duke Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood" and funk charts like Stevie Wonder's "Master Blaster." The albums are truly electrifying!
Kersten's dynamic improvisational abilities have received a number of awards and recognitions. She was Connecticut's Holla Back Video Awards' 2007 Gospel Instrumentalist of the Year and 2008 Gospel Album of the Year Nominee. She was crowned the Hal Jackson's Talented Teen Miss Connecticut 2000 and International 1st runner up and in 2002 was the Gold Medal winner of the NAACP Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics in the Music/ Instrumental Contemporary category. Also in 2002, she received awards from the Greater Bridgeport Symphony Youth Orchestra for musical excellence and from Vivian Ayers-Allen and Phylicia Rischad for her musical accomplishments. Recently, she was awarded for artistic excellence by the Afro- American Cultural Center at Yale University.
Musically gifted. Talented. Poised. Violinist Kersten Stevens has distinguished herself as an artist who will make a significant impact in the world of music and beyond.
Internationally celebrated as the man who essentially picked up where Chano Pozo left off, Candido Camero was among the most ubiquitous of the Cuban and Caribbean percussionists who enlivened and enriched the musical landscape of North America during the second half of the 20th century. Among the first to popularize the use of multiple conga drums and one of the inadvertent instigators of the bongo craze of the 1950s, he outlived most of his contemporaries and was still performing with extraordinary passion and precision well after attaining the status of an octogenarian.
Candido de Guerra Camero was born in the El Cerro barrio of San Antonio de los Baños in Havana, Cuba, on April 22, 1921. As a young boy he played the string bass. After operating a tres guitar with Conjunto Gloria Habanera at the age of 14, he began to concentrate on the bongos, and had soon graduated to the conga. In addition to the Pan African combination of Yoruba, Portuguese, and Spanish folk influences, Candido named U.S. jazz drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke as primary inspirations. He recorded with various Cuban bandleaders including Machito, worked for six years in the house band at radio station CMQ in Havana, and performed at the Tropicana club there as a member of Armando Romeu's orquesta from 1947 to 1952.
The North American chapter of his career began in October of 1952 and was inaugurated with a six-week engagement at the Clover Club in Miami, followed by a move to New York suggested by his new friend, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who personally took him to the Downbeat Club to sit in with pianist Billy Taylor. During 1953 and 1954 he recorded with Taylor's trio as well as with Erroll Garner, assisted Gillespie in the realization of "Manteca Suite" (the first of many recorded collaborations with Diz), and toured with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. He then formed his own group (including saxophonist Al Cohn); made his first recordings as a leader in 1956; and toured extensively through Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Miami, and New York.
During the late '50s, throughout the '60s, and well into the '70s, Candido became the most active Latin American percussionist in both jazz and pop music, appearing on television to an unusual extent and recording with saxophonists Charlie Parker, Gene Ammons, Stan Getz, Phil Woods, Sonny Rollins, Illinois Jacquet, and Coleman Hawkins; guitarists Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery; pianists George Shearing and Marian McPartland; and vocalists Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, Patti Page, Tony Bennett, Charo, and Antonio Carlos Jobim. He appeared with bandleaders Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Doc Severinsen, Chico O'Farrill, Lalo Schifrin; drummer/bandleaders Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Mongo Santamaria, and Tito Puente; and fellow conga masters Giovanni Hidalgo and Carlos "Patato" Valdes.