January 15, 1999
Jazz and blues singer Barbara Morrison will be featured in performances of 100 years of Ellington Jan 17 in the Ida and Cecil Green Faculty Club at the University of California, San Diego. UCSD musician Cecil Lytle and guests will round out the musical survey of Duke Ellington's unique style.
Proceeds from a 2 p.m. matinee performance and a 7 p.m. Supper Club will go to the Rebecca E. Lytle Memorial Scholarship Fund at UCSD. Matinee tickets are $25. Tickets for the Supper Club benefit are $250.
"Whether she's offering rambunctious blues or skirting the edges of urban funk, Morrison's work breathes the spirit of jazz improvisation," the Chicago Tribune writes. "To hear her ride the great, roaring orchestral sound is to behold one of the more accomplished jazz-blues singers in the business."
Morrison has performed in concert with many of the giants in jazz and blues, including Ray Charles, Doc Severinsen, Dizzy Gillespie, Dionne Warwick, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson and Carmen McRae, to name a few.
"I consider myself the luckiest singer alive in that I have been influenced by everyone from Dinah to Ella, Sarah and Billie," Morrison says. "Jazz and the blues are timeless because they are the beginning of music in this country, from the slave chants in the fields to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington."
Of a performance in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: "Her real quality as a singer came into sharpest focus in Ellington's I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good). The phrasing and harmonic sense were masterful... Morrison is blessed with that infectious on-stage charisma that is part genes, part years of doing it."
Morrison began performing at age 10 on radio in Detroit. Performing with her was a nine-year-old Stevie Wonder. She has performed on stages throughout the world, made guest appearances on television shows, sound tracks for movies and television's The Naked Truth and recorded albums and CDs. Her most recent album is I'm Getting' `Long All Right for Chartermaker Records.
"Most of the albums I have appeared on have me yelling and screaming a deeply emotional very raw blues," says Morrison. "This time I made it a point to do it all: from fast and screaming, to soft and flowing, to slow and cool, to emotional and funky."
Award-winning artist and music professor Lytle headlined last year's all-Chopin piano recital to benefit the Rebecca E. Lytle Memorial Scholarship Fund. Lytle is also provost of UCSD'S Thurgood Marshall College, which is presenting the benefit performances in conjunction with the UCSD Faculty Club.
In addition to his teaching courses in classical music and black music history at UCSD, Lytle has performed in concert in the United States, Europe and Asia since 1968. He is deftly comfortable with live jazz, is a recording artist on several labels and was nominated for an Emmy Award for a performance/lecture series on public television.
The Rebecca E. Lytle Memorial Scholarship Fund was established in 1995 with an initial contribution of $50,000 from her family and friends. Rebecca Lytle, who was married to Cecil Lytle and had led a life dedicated to public service, died from cancer in the spring of 1995.
The interest from the memorial scholarship endowment fund goes to support and encourage a select group of first-year students enrolled in Thurgood Marshall College at UCSD who are the first in their family to attend college.
This is the fourth annual Rebecca E. Lytle Memorial Scholarship Concert. This year's 2 to 4 p.m. $25 matinee will include hors d'oeuvres, while the 7 to 10 p.m. $250 per person Supper Club features a four-course dinner. For tickets and further information call the UCSD Faculty Club at 534-0876.
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