Born 78 years ago, today, January 4, 1937, in St. Louis, Missouri, singer GRACE MELZIA ANN BUMBRY, is one of the leading opera voices of her generation. When Bumbry attended Sumner High School in St. Louis, she was mentored by Kenneth Brown Billups, a well-known African-American choir director and musician. In 1954, at the age of 17, she won a teenage talent contest on a St. Louis radio station. Her prize included a scholarship to a local conservatory; however, the school was unwilling to admit a black student. Bumbry enrolled at Boston University, where she studied for two years before transferring to Northwestern University in Chicago. At Northwestern she met the opera star and concert soloist Lotte Lehmann, who would teach her there and at the Music Academy of the West. She also studied under the famous tenor Armand Tokatyan. Bumbry made her concert debut in London in 1959 and her opera debut at the Paris Opéra in 1960, at the age of 23. She performed around the world and mastered the great mezzo-soprano and soprano roles in the classical opera repertoire in a career that spanned nearly 40 years. In 1962 Bumbry was invited to sing at a state dinner at the White House, where she met President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. She returned to the White House in 2009 to receive the Kennedy Center Honors for achievement in the performing arts, Miss Bumbry has received a Grammy Award (in 1972), among many other honors. Grace Bumbry Vissi darte https://youtube/watch?v=hpnq-LY6KNM a Jan Holmes Boyd joint
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 13:47:10 +0000
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