Jessye Exhibit Sunday

Jessye Exhibit Sunday

The first public exhibition of the Eva Jessye Afro-American Music Collection of the U-M will be held 3-5 p.m. Sunday in the Stearns Building at the corner of Broadway and Baits.

The theme for the exhibition will center on Dr. Eva Jessye, choral conductor of Gershwin's 1935 premier production of “Porgy and Bess",  who recently donated her collection of Afro-American music to the U-M School of Music.

The collection is intended to serve as a nucleus for further acquisitions of black music and related memorabilia. It now contains original scores, manuscripts, plays, operas, Hirschfield caricatures of black artists, recordings, books, photos and various objects of art.

Prof. James A. Standifer of the School of Music is director of the new archive and Mary Blanding, graduate student in music history and musicology, is supervisor.

Dr. Jessye, a composer in her own right, has many friends who are well known musicians. She knew Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Eugene Ormandy when he conducted the Capitol Theatre Orchestra in New York. Virgil Thomson placed her in charge of the chorus for his opera "Four Saints in Three Acts" for its premiere in 1934. She worked with both George and Ira Gershwin and was a familiar face in the musical theatre world. She organized the Eva Jessye Chorale which toured extensively.

Last year, Dr. Jessye conducted her own folk-oratorio. "Paradise Lost and Regained" (based on Milton's poetry), in the Washington Cathedral. The cast included U-M music students Z. Edmund Toliver and Wayne Brown.