The Soraya Celebrates Black History Month

The Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya) celebrates Black History Month this February with a 2018 Winter/Spring season of African American performers from dance to opera to jazz including the debut of The Soraya's new jazz club format.

"The Soraya celebrates Black History month with a host of performances including Step Afrika! whose work Migration portrays the vibrant African American culture that moved north in the early 20th century to escape oppression and unimaginable poverty," said Thor Steingraber, Executive Director of The Soraya. "Those same themes of human migration will be further expanded on when the great American soprano Kathleen Battle brings her Underground Railroad: A Spiritual Journey here in March. We welcome her and the many other great African American artists who bring their distinctive artistry to our stage this year."

Step Afrika! performs The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence (February 9) based on painter Jacob Lawrence's "Migration Series," that document the Great Migration - the movement of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North following the outbreak of World War I. It had its premiere at the New Victory Theater in New York in November of 2017.

Kathleen Battle, whose voice has been called, "one of the very few most beautiful in the world" by The Washington Post will make her Soraya debut with Underground Railroad - A Spiritual Journey (March 29) which also addresses the migration of African Americans in our country's history. Kathleen Battle: Underground Railroad-A Spiritual Journey is a program of music inspired by the journey to freedom along the Underground Railroad, the 19th-century network of safe houses that allowed African-Americans to escape from slavery. Ms. Battle said. "Spirituals have the power to uplift and to heal, and we certainly need that in today's world. This is a program, which brings together my musical background and my cultural heritage."

The Soraya will debut Jazz Club, an intimate format featuring the genre's most prominent artists. Cecile McLorin Salvant's (April 18 & 19) last three albums were nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album - her 2016 album won the Grammy. Ben Ratliff writes in The New York Times about McLorin Salvant, "She sings clearly, with her full pitch range, from a pronounced low end to full and distinct high notes, used sparingly [...] Her voice clamps into each song, performing careful variations on pitch, stretching words but generally not scatting; her face conveys meaning, representing sorrow or serenity like a silent-movie actor." Terence Blanchard (May 1 & 2) is a five-time Grammy Award winning jazz trumpeter. His latest album, Breathless, is a thematic album, inspired by tragedy. The title harkens to the last words spoken by black New Yorker Eric Garner ("I can't breathe") before he was killed, while in a chokehold, by an NYPD officer. Jazz Times said of Breathless, "Blanchard's trumpet provides scorching firepower atop the band's assortment of infectious grooves. It may not be jazz as we know it, but it's soulful, sophisticated and worth meeting on its own terms."

The Soraya will feature an exciting large jazz ensemble specialized in innovating the art form and honoring one of jazz's greatest musicians. Miles Electric Band (March 1) was formed by Vince Wilburn, Jr, drum master and nephew of jazz icon Miles Davis. The band is an 11-member ensemble of Grammy-winning world-class talent and Miles Davis alums.

The 2018 season will conclude with a rare performance from Tony Award winner Billy Porter (June 2). Billy Porter's Broadway credits include Kinky Boots, for which he won a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, Shuffle Along, and Smokey Joe's Café. Later this year he'll be appearing in Ryan Murphy's LGBTQ musical series, Pose. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said of a recent Porter concert, "His show was a master class on being true to oneself as a performer while earning the respect and affection of his those who came to listen."

Tickets are now available at ValleyPerformingArtsCenter.org or by calling (818) 677-3000. The Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya) is located on the campus of California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 18111 Nordhoff Street Northridge, CA 91330-8448, at the corner of Nordhoff and Lindley.

ABOUT THE EVENTS

Step Afrika! Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence
February 9, 2018 | 8PM
Step Afrika! is rooted in Zulu and South African gumboot dance and the African tradition of stepping, which blend percussive dance to create earth-shaking movement and electrifying rhythms. Step Afrika! performers employ precise timing, complex compositions, call-and-response chants and impressive feats of athleticism. Their theatrical piece, Migration incorporates costumes and music to tell the moving story of black families migrating to the North to escape sharecropping, poverty and discrimination in the American South in the early 1900s. As backdrop to the performance, legendary artist Jacob Lawrence's 60 painted panels, "The Migration Series," capture the hope and movement of the Great Migration. Step Afrika! makes Lawrence's images come to life as performers recreate the images on stage, depicting a pivotal chapter in American history, a story told with breathtaking emotion and artistry.

Miles Electric Band
March 1, 2018 | 8PM
Jazz is in the blood. Legendary jazz trumpeter, bandleader and composer Miles Davis spent 50 years on the cutting edge of 20th-century music. His Grammy Award-winning nephew, drummer Vince Wilburn, Jr., proves that jazz runs in his veins with his commanding leadership of the Miles Electric Band. Recreating the repertoire from Davis' electric period, the 11-member ensemble features The Rolling Stones' bassist, Darryl Jones, Grammy-nominated performers John Beasley, Robert Irving III, and Badal Roy, along with a posse of top shelf trumpeters. Miles Electric Band does what no other group can -- owning the rights to Davis' music and having Davis' blood relative at center-stage, it is the quintessential Miles Davis experience.

Kathleen Battle Underground Railroad: A Spiritual Journey
March 29, 2018 | 8PM
Performing five encores to a sold-out house at the Metropolitan Opera, the once reigning prima donna returned last year with her new program "Kathleen Battle: Underground Railroad - a Spiritual Journey." Wrought from her childhood in Ohio in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Battle performs a program of spirituals, dedicated to our nation's early civil rights activists, those who secretly aided in the escape of slaves from the South. VPAC brings this rare program for its only Los Angeles engagement.

Cécile McLorin Salvant / Onstage Sessions
April 18-19, 2018 | 8PM
Cécile McLoren Salvant coos like a dove and bites like a hawk. The Grammy Award-winning vocalist has a range that is unmatched, soaring to the rafters and diving to the earthy depths. In addition to carrying on the legacies of Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday, McLoren Salvant tackles racial stereotypes reaching back more than a century, performing forgotten Vaudeville numbers once performed in black face. Once attracted by the drama and grandness of the opera stage, McLoren is classically trained. But the young 27-year-old artist found a home in the world of jazz, embracing the broad themes and flexibility it offers her.

Terence Blanchard Feat. The E-Collective, Breathless / Onstage Sessions
May 1-2, 2018 | 8PM
Five-time Grammy winner Terence Blanchard has composed scores for dozens of films, including all of those by director Spike Lee since 1991. Blanchard has layered funky grooves and R&B with powerful social and political messages to tremendous effect. The jazz composer-trumpeter created A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) as a meditation on the destruction and suffering left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. With his E-Collective, Blanchard then debuted the album Breathless, tragically inspired by and dedicated to Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who was fatally suffocated in an altercation with police. Although Blanchard does not shy away from difficult topics, he is committed to the healing impact of his music.

Billy Porter
The Soul of Richard Rodgers
June 2, 2018 | 8pm
Billy Porter does not hold back. The powerhouse performer earned a 2013 Tony Award for his performance as the drag queen Lola in Kinky Boots, adding to a Broadway resume that includes Miss Saigon, Five Guys Named Moe, Grease, Smokey Joe's Café, Shuffle Along and the 20th Anniversary Broadway concert of Dreamgirls. The busy actor, composer, and director has also produced four solo albums. The most recent, Billy Porter Presents: The Soul of Richard Rodgers, features Porter's fresh take on the composer's classics, from My Funny Valentine to Edelweiss. Porter brings Rodgers to VPAC, along with his cool style and searing vocals.

About the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya)
The Soraya opened its 2017-2018 season on September 16 with a performance of AMADEUS Live (Milos Foreman's 1984 Academy Award-winning Best Picture with live orchestra) with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and members of the LA Opera Chorus. The evening honored the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Foundation in recognition of the family's recent $17 million gift that will rename VPAC as the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Performing Arts Center, known as The Soraya. The gift is one of the largest in the history of the California State University and the system's largest single gift to support the arts; gift to support the programming and operations of the award-winning Valley Performing Arts Center - which has become one of the cultural jewels of the region in the six years since it opened.

The 2017-18 Soraya season signals a new era for the premier event venue. Under the leadership of Executive Director Thor Steingraber, the renamed Younes and Soraya Nazarian Performing Arts Center expands its programming and outstanding multidisciplinary performances. The mission of The Soraya is to present a wide variety of performances that not only includes new and original work from the Los Angeles region but also work from around the world that appeal to all of LA's rich and diverse communities.

Located on the campus of California State University, Northridge, The Soraya's season offers a vibrant performance program of nearly 50 classical and popular music, dance, theater, family and international events that will serve to establish The Soraya as the intellectual and cultural heart of the San Fernando Valley, and further establish itself as one of the top arts companies in Southern California. The award-winning, 1,700-seat theatre was designed by HGA Architects and Engineers and was recently cited by the Los Angeles Times as "a growing hub for live music, dance, drama and other cultural events."

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