CJI Official Launch Return to the Source

Robert Mills Manor and Avery Research Center, College of Charleston

A Jazz Tribute to William Blake (June 2) at Robert Mills Manor, 20 Franklin St. (home of the former Jenkins Orphanage) honoring former Jenkins Orphanage band director, William Blake with Quentin Baxter and the Franklin Street Five; commissioned work (“Brother Blake”) by Baxter; and the jazz debut of LaToya Smith
CJI Jazz Symposium and Exhibition Opening including “Charleston Cradle of Jazz” (June 3) with Carolyn Jabulile White, viewing of Jenkins Orphanage Band outtakes by University of South Carolina (USC) Newsfilm prepared by Julie Hubbert of USC Music Department; unveiling of “Baby James,” an original painting inspired by artist, John Carroll Doyle; live jazz by the Quentin Baxter Jazz Ensemble Conversations in Jazz with Jenkins Family and Friends; scholarly presentations; Photojazz, an exhibition by documentary photographer, Jim Alexander featuring 33 photographs of celebrated jazz musicians and Charleston sidemen; and the inaugural gathering of the CJI Circle with a presentation by Kathleen Wyer Lane, collector of family source material on the Avery Normal Institute, Jenkins Orphanage, and several Charleston jazz musicians.

Presentations and oral history accounts by:

Keynote Speaker, A.B. Spellman (Washington, DC) (pictured below), Poet, former Deputy Director, National Endowment for the Arts; author of Art Tatum: A Critical Biography and Four Lives in the Bebop Business
Dan Morgenstern (Jersey City, NJ) (pictured left), Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; former editor of Downbeat; six-time Grammy-award winner for his liner notes; author of Jazz People and Living With Jazz
Jeffrey Green (West Sussex, UK) (pictured below), Historian and Author; biographer of Edmund Thornton Jenkins: The Life and Times of An American Black Composer, 1894-1926
Larry Ridley (New York, NY) (pictured below), Bassist, Executive Director, African American Jazz Caucus,Inc., an affiliate of the International Association for Jazz Education, and Jazz Artist-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City
Wolfram Knauer (Darmstadt, Germany) (pictured below), Director, Jazz-Institut Darmstadt, Germany; author of several books including Jazz in Europe and essays for the International Dictionary of Black Composers
Alvin Batiste (Baton Rouge and New Orleans, LA) (pictured below right), Clarinetist; Educator at New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts; author of several scholarly articles including “Charleston: Another Cradle of Jazz?”
Rachel Dowling (North Charleston), organist and daughter of former Jenkins administrators, John and Sarah Dowling
Barbara Braithwaite (Charleston), granddaughter of Reverend Daniel Jenkins
Stanley White (Charleston), grandson of Reverend Daniel Jenkins
Jomo Zimbabwe (Boston), grandson of Reverend Daniel Jenkins and nephew of Edmund Thornton Jenkins
Elizabeth Carter Prioleau (Charleston), 1920s resident of Jenkins Orphanage; played piano at the orphanage and her brother, Wilbur, played trumpet
Rollins Edwards (Summerville, SC), Jenkins era musician; drummer; alumnus of the Count Basie, Buddy Johnson and Willie Jackson bands
Kathleen Wyer Lane (New York, NY), Marketing Consultant; collector of family source material on the Avery Normal Institute, Jenkins Orphanage, Arthur Briggs and Tommy Benford
Jim Alexander (Atlanta, GA), Documentary photographer; photographs include those of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Eartha Kitt and sidemen from the Jenkins Orphanage Bands including Cat Anderson, Freddie Green and Speedy Jones.