Musician and composer
Damien Sneed pays homage to his mentor Aretha Franklin tonight, Monday Nights
with WBGO: “Damien Sneed Presents A Tribute to Aretha Franklin: The Queen of
Soul” Monday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola,
located in Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, on Broadway
at 60th Street, New York City.
The multiple genre recording artist and instrumentalist is
part of Dizzy’s Club October lineup of tributes to jazz icons and music legends
and WBGO Monday Nights series, which features talented new artists, hosted by
WBGO announcer Nicole Sweeney.
“During the last four years of Ms. Franklin’s life, I shared
a special relationship with her as a band member,” says Sneed. “She originally
reached out to me to teach her private lessons in classical piano, but a few
months later she asked me to start traveling with her band doing background
vocals, organ and piano after she requested that I send an audition recording
of me playing and singing ‘I Say A Little Prayer For You’ and ‘Amazing Grace.’”
“I never had the opportunity to sing background,” Sneed
continues. “But little did I know that I would learn so much from her and
receive such a large amount of impartation about life, her experiences working
with the Jazz legends of her youth and my responsibility to carry the baton for
my generation and those coming after me. I miss Ms. Franklin more and more with
each day. When the world lost her, we lost a giant, a monogenēs that God only
blesses the Earth with every few hundred years.”
Joining Sneed on stage for tonight’s tribute are Chenee
Campbell (vocalist), Matia Celeste Washington (vocalist), Markita Knight
(vocalist), Alicia Peters-Jordan (vocalist), Joel Tate (drums), John Matthew
Clark (bass), David Daniels (lead guitar), Marquéz Cassidy (organ), Jonathan
Shillingford (trumpet), Markus Howell (alto saxophone and flute) and Jack Kotze
(trombone and horn arrangements). As music director Sneed will bring the
audience fresh renditions of some of Franklin’s classic tunes including
“Respect,” “Knew You Were Waiting,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Precious
Memories,” “Think,” “Until You Come Back To Me,” “Daydreaming,” “Freeway,”
“Natural Woman,” and others. Both sets of “Damien Sneed Presents A Tribute to
Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul” will be available via Livestream at
jazz.org/live.
In January 2020, Sneed will kick off his 40+-City North
American tour, “We Shall Overcome: A Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.” on Tuesday, January 14, 2020, at Joe’s Pub in New York, NY, and will make
stops at concert halls and universities in the U.S. and Canada. The two-month
tour will conclude on Friday, March 13, 2020, at Kent-Meridian Performing Arts
Center in Kent, WA.
Sneed has worked with jazz, classical, pop, and R&B with
legends including the late Jessye Norman, which he recently was the musical
director for her funeral service, and will be featured on Norman’s forthcoming
and final recording, Bound For The Promised Land on Albany Records on November
2, 2019. He also worked with Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross,
Ashford & Simpson, Lawrence Brownlee, and many others.
Sneed recently joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of
Music, where he teaches graduate-level courses in conducting, African American
Music History, a singer/songwriter ensemble, a gospel music ensemble, and
private lessons in piano, voice, and composition.
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