DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC
Join scholars Maurice Jackson and Blair Ruble and artists E. Ethelbert Miller and Davey Yarborough for a discussion of the new book DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC, a collection of original and fascinating stories about the DC jazz scene throughout its history. The discussion will be moderated by Ariel Shelton of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and include a poetry reading by E. Ethelbert Miller.
Following the program, the authors will be available to autograph books.
FREE - Space is limited, please register below.
Maurice Jackson is an Associate Professor at Georgetown University in the History Dept and African American Studies Program and is Affiliated Professor of Music (Jazz). Jackson has won many fellowships and is the author of many articles on the Atlantic world and African American history and culture. Jackson wrote the liner notes to the 2 jazz CDs by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones, Steal Away: Spirituals, Folks Songs and Hymns and Come Sunday. A 2009 inductee into the Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame, he was appointed by the Mayor and the Council of the District of Columbia as the first chair of the DC Commission on African American Affairs (2013-2016) and serves as special advisor on D.C. Affairs to Georgetown University President Jack DeGioia.
Blair A. Ruble is a non-fiction writer and academic administrator whose work has focused on comparative urban studies as well as Russian and Ukrainian affairs. Currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center he previously he served as Vice President for Programs and Director of the Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Program /Urban Sustainability Laboratory. Dr. Ruble's latest work, The Muse of Urban Delirium, examines how new forms of performing arts emerge at moments of uncertain social identity in cities undergoing rapid transformation. His earlier books include Washington’s U Street: A Biography.
E. Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary activist. He is the board chair of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank located in Washington, D.C. For ten years he has bee n the editor of Poet Lore, the oldest poetry magazine published in the United States. In 1996, he delivered the commencement address at Emory and Henry College and was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. Mr. Miller has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow to Israel in 2004 and 2012. In February 2006 he was the keynote speaker at the 50th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Israel, at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. Miller is the founder and former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. He served as a Commissioner for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities from 1997-2008. He is board emeritus for the PEN/ Faulkner Foundation.
Davey Yarborough, performer, bandleader, composer and educator, has worked with Sir Roland Hanna, Keter Betts, Billy Eckstine, Buck Hill, Shirley Horn, Lena Horne, and others. He can be heard on The Lincoln Center Orchestra’s arrangement for the opening theme for NPR’s All Things Considered and collaborated with trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, performing on Marsalis’ Making the Music series on National Public Radio (NPR).As an educator, he created the jazz orchestra at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, advancing it to an internationally recognized Jazz Studies program.