About this Artist

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Editorial Reviews

The Honor! festival at New York's Carnegie Hall was a three-week series of concerts and readings, "celebrating," in the words of curator Jessye Norman, the contribution of African Americans to the legacy of that great and grand institution and to the cultural mosaic of the world." This "companion CD," Norman explains, "serves as a memento of this big idea and the realization of a big dream." The compilers of the CD apparently did not think in similarly big terms, for its contents relate only tangentially to the theme of the festival. The two discs here, one containing classical music and the other jazz, do offer a collection of music by African Americans, but beyond that they have little apparent connection to the festival performers. The first disc is exclusively devoted to performances by Norman herself, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s, of spirituals and operatic and Broadway selections. This was the prime of Norman's career, and for many listeners this collection will be reason enough to purchase the set. Not the most powerful of the African American sopranos who became famous in the last quarter of the twentieth century, she has been perhaps the most versatile, with a distinctively exuberant personality that shines through even spirituals with dark themes and connects the listener with the life-sustaining powers they would have had at their points of origin. The festival, however, featured a variety of singers, paying tribute to artists such as Sissieretta Jones, "the Black Patti," who predated even Marian Anderson and paved the way for subsequent artists. Likewise, on the second disc, there is a good selection of jazz classics, dating back as far as the 1940s in the case of Duke Ellington's Second Sacred Concert (which occurred at Grace Cathedral, not Carnegie Hall) and extending forward to the magnificent Dee Dee Bridgewater. The selections are all well-known classics by Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and the like. But the artists involved are not those who appeared at the festival. The bottom line is that attendees of the Honor! festival may find that this release lacks the specific flavor of the live concerts, but listeners in search of a basic two-disc anthology of serious African American music could do much worse than this. James Manheim, All Music Guide

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