Musicians of the African American Composer Initiative will present their annual concert to benefit Eastside College Preparatory School on Saturday January 27 and Sunday January 28, 2024 at 3 pm in the school’s Performing Arts Center, 1041 Myrtle Street, East Palo Alto, CA 94303. All ticket proceeds benefit this outstanding all-scholarship school.
A musical response to our times, the program draws from music that inspires, uplifts, and energizes – spirituals, jazz, and classical music, vocal and instrumental. Bay Area musicians will be joined by jazz greats pianist Valerie Capers and bassist John H. Robinson.
Composers include Margaret Bonds, John Wesley Work III, Jacqueline Hairston, Thomas A. Dorsey, Valerie Capers, John H. Robinson, Jeremiah Evans, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Valerie Coleman, Shawn Okpebholo, John Worley, Horace Silver, Billy Strayhorn, and Marvin Gaye.
Performers are outstanding musicians of the Greater Bay Area: soprano Yolanda Rhodes, tenor Othello Jefferson, pianists/vocalists LaDoris Cordell and Deanne Tucker, pianists Valerie Capers, Josephine Gandolfi and Jansen Verplank, violinist Susan C. Brown, cellist Victoria Ehrlich; clarinetist Carol Somersille and her woodwind quintet, trumpeter John Worley, saxophonists Oscar Pangilinan and Tod Dickow, bassist John Robinson III, percussionist Jim Kassis, and dancer Johnny Clark.