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sl ’ p Aiwwta Nma-ißrutw a THE PEOPLE S PAPER NATIONAL BLACK NEWS SERVICE V 7 MEMBER Vol. 2 Augusta Girl Becomes International Singing Star By Donal Henahan N.Y. Times, Jan. 24,1973 Up to a point, the scenario is pure Paramount Pictures. The young American singer wins a couple of contests, receives help from several foundations, then goes to Europe for one of the big international competitions. She wins first prize, is snatched up by one of Germany’s leading opra houses, makes a sensational debut, is summoned as a guest artist to La Scala, Covent Garden, Florence. One of her recordings is nominated for a worldwide prize. She returns in triumph to her native land, sings at the Hollywood Bowl, knocks the Eastern critics dead with Wagner’s “Wesendonck” Lieder at Tanglewood. Lincoln Center acts fast and engages her for a special recital. Welcome home, Jessye Norman. * But Miss Norman, a 27-year-old black soprano who will make her New York debut this afternoon at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center’s Great Performer series, doesn’t quite fit into the scenario outlined above. For one thing, she’s not planning to return to this country to live, certainly not just yet. She seemed firm on that point when one met her recently in Washington, where she was giving a series of recitals prior to her New York debut. “Germany has been very good to me,” she says with a smile. It’s a smile that hits the eyes like the sudden opening of Venetian blinds on a sunny day. She is a big woman - really big, somewhat on the order of Maria Callas in her pre-American, pasta -advertisement days before she lost a couple of hundred pounds and became the world’s most glamorous former great singer. But the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin not only signed the inexperienced, black and bulky Miss Norman to a three-year contract in 1969, but put her immediately in major parts. Her debut was as Elisabeth in“Tannhauser,” and not long afterward she sang the Countess Almaviva opposite Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in “The Marriage of Figaro.” Her new Berlin contract, recently negotiated, keeps her there for two and a half months a year and lets her go roaming, a rare arrangement in repertory opera houses unless you are a star. “I’m down to 10 performances in Berlin, but I have, all in all, about 40 recitals next season in Europe.” For a girl who grew up in Augusta, Ga., Berlin plainly offers satisfactions. “It’s so funny there,” Miss Norman says. “I have to call up for groceries because it’s so painful to go shopping. Everything in the store just stops when you come in. An opera singer is really somebody there, you know. The woman at the cash register says, ‘O., Frau Opemsanger Norman, how are you? Can we help you? “I like Europe very much. I really don’t know if I could come back here to live. When I moved to Berlin in 1969 (she had won first prize in the Bavarian radio network music competition in Munich the year before), the German people were perfectly willing to come to hear me in opera as well as recitals. They didn’t know me but they were interested in hearing the music, and it didn’t matter that my name wasn’t Tebaldi. It’s a different thing over there and you can’t help but be appreciative. If I hadn’t gone to Europe, I’d be beating my brains out right now in New York, working as a waitress and running around to the foundations trying to get ahead.” Before Munich, Ms. Norman had taken part in nine competitions in this country and had auditioned for most of the foundations that do in for assisting young musicians (in her case, the Rockefeller, the Walter Mathaus Sullivan and Corbett Foundations helped). “But I’d hate to do it all again. I take singing too seriously now. Then I never worried about winning or anything else. In that one school year of 1967-68, it was a very natural thing for me to get up in the morning, sort of clear the throat and go sing for somebody. Now I’ve learned to worry. And I have to vocalize a lot now before singing -1 have this nasal drip. When I call room service for breakfast, the man always say, ‘Yes, sir.’ ” She remembers her first competition clearly. “I was 7, and the contest was at the Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga. 1 sang ‘God Will Take Care Os You,’ and I only won third prize because I forgot the second stanza. In fact, I guess He has taken care of me. That was my last memory slip in public.” In spite of that early start, Miss Norman began singing for a living only three years ago, after moving to Berlin. She had sung in the Howard University chorus and given a few small recitals around Washington before that, but contests and auditions were her way of life. While she was in high school in Augusta in 1961, Miss Norman was taken to Philadelphia by one of her teachers to audition for a Marian Anderson award (“We went on a train, and the school took up a collection to raise the money”). Since the Marian Anderson contest was pretty much the big time, with an age limit of 32, the 16-year-old student from Augusta made no great impression. But on the way home, her teacher decided to drop in at Howard University in Washington to have her sing for the voice teacher there. Miss Norman came away with a full scholarship to Howard, leaving there in 1967 with a music degree. “And do you know, the woman 1 sang for that day is the same woman with whom I had a lesson today, just before I came to talk to you. She’s Carolyn Grant, who’s been a professor at Howard for 51 years. She’s 74 now, and looks 50. An incredible woman. She knows how to communicate with me. She knows my voice, my temperament. She knows when I’m not really singing but just making pretty sounds. If I could do everything she tells me to do - gosh - it would really be something. That’s why I keep coming back here. Berlin is rather far from Washington, but I’m here fairly P.O. Box 953 ® J- 1 B JESSYE NORMAN often.” After Howard came an unhappy summer at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, but the “rat race, the terrible competitiveness there was just not my scene at all,” so she went to the University of Michigan to study with one of the world’s leading teachers in art song, Pierre Bernac. Although scholarships and foundation grants helped in all this, Miss Norman did not come struggling up out of the ghetto. She from that currently neglected minority group, the educated, genteel, black bourgeoisie. Father, an insurance broker. Mother, an amateur pianist. “I’m one of five children and we’re all musical, though I’m the only professional musician. We all studied piano because our parents insisted on it. No, actually we all liked it.” She seems to wear her blackness with more ease than many of her contemporaries. “I don’t feel guilty about making it in a largely white or European world - not at all. Though I suppose if I stayed in the United States long, I might come to feel that way. As it is, black people come backstage after I sing here and say to me, “You make us feel so proud.’ I think you have to do what you do best. Some people ask me why I don’t sing jazz or spirituals. I can’t sing them, that’s why. Like most people of talent who change their lives drastically, Miss Norman finds it hard to go home again, in the Thomas Wolfe sense. Her speech has become extremely cultivated, with touches of a German accent, or sometimes an Oxford accent, “When I go back to Georgia they say to me, ‘Oh you sound so funny.’ I tell them, ‘You should hear yourself, darling, it’s you who sound funny.’ ” Even within her family circle, she finds some lack of comprehension. “I have this godmother, for instance. I’ve just come home after having sung Aida at La Scala, you know, so proud I can hardly stand it. And she says, ‘Jessye, when are you going to go back to Michigan and get your master’s degree?’ For what? 1 have friends with Ph. D’s who work here in Washington in the Post Office. Because her talent has to a great extent set her free of that America, Miss Norman can laugh a bit at what problems still linger. “When I get into a taxi, the driver sometimes will say, ‘Are you from the West Indies, or Barbados or some place? And I say, ‘No, I’m from Geawgah, honey.’ The trouble is, I speak to someone for two minutes and unconsciously I start mimicking the accent or even i speech defect. It’s terribly embarrasing sometimes.” For a singer, however, that kind of keenness of ear makes life easier. For her New York recital, Miss Norman plans a program to include Schubert, Wolf, many be some Mahler, and Ravel’s “Two Hebriac Songs.” “When I sing Hebrew in New York, I’d better be able to pronounce it right,” she says. “I sing a lot of French songs, actually, but I’ll be touring in France this season and I still don’t speak French very well. You know I could make love to a French taxi driver, but 1 would have trouble telling him how to get me to the rehearsal hall.” Since her move to Berlin, things have opened up fast for Miss Norman. Aida at La Scala and the Hollywood Bowl, the leading role in “L’Africana” at the opening of the 1971 Florence Festival, Cassandra in “Les Troyens” at Covent Garden, Wolf Trap and Tanghwood last summer, Edinburgh, Spoleto. Perhaps the biggest breakthrough so far came when her recording company, Phillips, picked her to record the Countess in “The Marriage of Figaro” with Colin Davis conducting. Not long ago that See Miss Norman - P. 2 EDITORIAL NIXON CUTBACKS Guest Editorial By Charles F. Smith, Board Chairman C.S.R.A. Economic Opportunity Authority It is totally obvious at this point that President Nixon intends to impose stern measures on the nation’s economy, especially at the Federal level. No thoughtful person can object to attempts to put a check on deficit spending. The priorities of the President are seriously questionable, however. The unyielding austerity measures employed by him strike first at the ones who can afford it least; the poor and education (especially Black Colleges). The dismantling of the Office of Economic Opportunity and the cutting of Federal aid to Education are examples. Granted that Congress has allowed the Executive Branch to assume power that is constitutionally questionable, the wise President would use this power in the best interest of all as oppose to the wealthy few. The open attacks on the programs needed so badly by the poor, the impoundment of funds, the open attacks on the news media, the string of broken promises of this administration to the people of this country all mean that we are closer to absolute rule than ever before. Benign neglect can’t even describe the attitude that promotes these austerity measures. Those who argued that the money we were spending in Viet Nam should be spent to solve domestic problems exhibit great insight, it is perfectly clear that the priorities of the Nixon administration are not in this direction, however. The local governments must act to compensate for the warped priorities of the President. Revenue-sharing provides a means to continue the help to the poor and aged. The needs must be made known now as never before and the local governments must assume greater responsibility for health, housing, and welfare of the citizens. On a national scale, Congress is a hope for us. But the poor must act so that our displeasure with the present priorities of the President can be made crystal clear to Congress and the President. The time WAS November 7, 1972. But it IS now. Augusta, Georgia Pilgrim Gives Its Second Thousand To "Build It Back” W.S. Hornsby, Jr., President of The Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company, Man Shoots Wife Burglaries Continue To Plague Community announced yesterday another contribution of SI,OOO to Paine College for the purpose of re-building Haygood Hall. “The Company will support Paine College on an annual bases for some time to come. We have a sincere desire to see that the “Build It Back” Campaign culminate in the building of Haygood Hall. “Last year Pilgrim gave several thousant dollars to young people throughout the Southeast who were entering college for the first time. “Our College Educational program started five years ago MALLORY K. MILLENDER NEWS-REVIEW JOINS BLACK NEWS SERVICE News-Review Editor-Publisher Mallory K. Millender attended the mid-Winter Workshop of the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Washington, D.C., January 24-27. The theme of the workshop was “Extending the Reach of Black Publishers.” Millender said the workshop was designed to find ways of increasing circulation and ways publishers may benefit from government programs. February 1, 1973 No. 46 •< I I • ir-', ' • ,-’’--‘J-* £ IB .&•*<«»* jjj&*g||ra e * W ' V r ' , * ,< -• '-' f " Millender Attends NNPA Workshop See Police Report - P. 4 and during that time we have given enormous amounts of scholarships. So this thousand today is just another way of supporting higher education in an effort to raise economic base of the “Have Nots!” Shown presenting the check is C.O. Hollis, First Vice President of the Pilgrim Health & Life Insurance Co., to David Duncan, Assistant to the President of Paine College. Looking on is Ed Mclntyre of Pilgrim and also campaign chairman of the Paine College “Build It Back” Campaign Fund. Among the speakers addressing the publishers were Rep. Louis Stokes (Dem.-Ohio) Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP, Robert Brown, former special assistant to President Nixon and his successor Stan Scott. The publishers were entertained at the Capitol where they were hosted by Congressman Andrew Young and Congresswomen, Yvonne Braithwaite Burke and Barbara Jordan, three new Black members of Congress. There was a briefing at the White House and a reception at the State department including Herbert Klien and HEW head Weinburger, and attorney General Richard Kleindienst. The workshop was attended by over 200 publishers. JOINS NBNS Millender also announced upon his return that the News-Review has joined the National Black News Service. The NBNS provides national and international news of special interest to Blacks, usually not covered by other news media.