Date: March 18, 2017
Contact: Todd Bolton, 304-535-6026
On Saturday, April 1, 2017, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park will host a Jazz Appreciation Month program in conjunction with the Sesquicentennial of the founding of Storer College. The event features legendary jazz pianist and educator, Bertha Hope and Washington, D. C. area educator and musician, Howard Burns.
Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM) was established in 2001 by John Edward Hasse, PhD, curator of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History to honor jazz as a great American art form. Harpers Ferry National Historical Park has a rich association to jazz because of its connection to Don Redman, known as “the Little Giant of Jazz,” a 1920 graduate of Storer College. The park commemorated the centennial of his birth in 2000 and since 2002 has hosted the Don Redman Jazz Heritage Awards and Concert. The Don Redman Next Generation Jazz Academy was inaugurated last summer in conjunction with the Centennial of the National Park Service and is continuing this summer.
The JAM program is part of an ongoing series of events being presented this year commemorating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Storer College. Storer was one of the first schools established after the American Civil War to educate newly freed slaves. The college operated for 88 years before closing its doors in 1955.
This free program will begin at 10:30 am in the Mather Training Center on Fillmore Street on the former campus of Storer College in Harpers Ferry. For additional information call the park at 304-535-6298. To see the full schedule of events for the 150th Anniversary of Storer College, please visit go.nps.gov/StorerCollege
