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"Lenox School of Jazz" Lecture at Ventfort Hall10:13AM / Friday, June 26, 2009
LENOX, Mass. - Not known to most people, especially to Lenox residents, the town played host to one of the most important venues for the teaching and performance of jazz in the 1950s: The Lenox School of Jazz. Such legendary greats at John Lewis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Gunther Schuller, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Giuffre and Ornette Coleman were there during those heady days of American jazz.
Author and lecturer Jeremy Yudkin will present at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum the full picture of the school and its influence on the world of jazz in his talk titled “The Lenox School of Jazz, a Hidden Secret”. The speaker will appear on Wednesday, July 15 at 4:00pm as part of Ventfort Hall’s 2009 Summer Lecture Series. He will also autograph his book The Lenox School of Jazz: A Vital Chapter in the History of American Music and Race Relations at the Victorian Tea that will follow the lecture.
Yudkin, a Lenox resident, had access to files and memorabilia relating to the school and completed his research in the archives of the Lenox Library. He also interviewed many of the teachers and performers who were at the school. The library selected his book as part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of its founding. The world-renowned pianist Randy Weston comment has been “This book is necessary! It’s way, way overdue”.
Yudkin has been a popular lecturer at the Tanglewood concerts for twenty-five years and at the Lenox Library every weekend. He is also a professor of music at Boston University and Visiting Professor of Music at Oxford University and has also taught at Harvard University and the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris. He is the author of seven other books including Understanding Music and Miles Davis and the Invention of Post-Bop.
Admission for the lecture and tea is $15 per person for nonmembers and $12 per person for members. For reservations call Ventfort Hall at 413-637-3206. The historic mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox.
An Official Project of Save America’s Treasures, Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum offers tours of the historic mansion, as well as lectures, concerts, teas, theater and other programs. This elegant Elizabethan Revival Berkshire “cottage,” listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is open to the public year-around and is available for private rental. Built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan (sister of the financier, J. P. Morgan), Ventfort Hall has undergone substantial restoration, which continues. |
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