Join us for Imprint: Jazz’s Timeless Legacy for a talk with music, jazz-themed drinks, visual art and material donated from Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center and the JHU Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts. We’ll be exploring Billie Holiday’s music and life as well as jazz’s imprint on the arts. Longtime educator and musician Mr. Charles Funn, Founding Director of JHU Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts and Professor Dr. Lawrence Jackson, Professor and Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz at Peabody Conservatory Sean Jones and Interdisciplinary Artist, Lecturer at Peabody Conservatory and member of the Baltimore Jazz Collective Brinae Ali will bring their artistic experiences and knowledge to enrich this conversation with Baltimore at the center.
Alexandria “Brinae Ali” Bradley
Alexandria “Brinae Ali” Bradley is an interdisciplinary artist who believes in using the power of the arts to transform the conditions of the human spirit. Ali has received awards for Best Short Play at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival for her one woman show “Steps” and the Vox Populi Independence Music Award for “Destination Forever: Vol.1 EP.” Her broadway and off-broadway experience include Shuffle Along and STOMP. Currently she is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory, co-creator with trumpeter Sean Jones called “Dizzy Spellz”, band member of the Baltimore Jazz Collective, and cultural ambassador for diplomacy with Next Level-USA in partnership with the U.S. Department of State Education and Cultural Affairs, the Univerisity of North Carolina, and the Meridian International Center. Ali is also a National Dance Projects Grant recipient for a new work in progress archival performative process called the “Baby Laurence Legacy Project.”
Charles Funn
Charles Funn is a Morgan State College graduate, a retired band instructor, after 44 years, with Baltimore City Public Schools. Charles is a professional musician, having performed with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, The Temptations, The Dells, Four Tops, Dizzy Gillespie to name a few. Charles also performed in two off Broadway productions: “Satchmo, America’s Musical Legend” & “Harlem Suite” as an actor, dancer, vocalist, and musician in both. Charles’ awards include: numerous Mayoral citations, Jazz Journalist Award and Benny Golson Jazz Masters Award. Funn started, trained and developed countless future musicians, nurturing and guiding the musical development of Maryland’s youth.
Dr. Lawrence Jackson
Lawrence Jackson is the author of the award-winning books Chester B. Himes: A Biography (W.W. Norton 2017), The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics (Princeton 2010), My Father’s Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War (Chicago 2012) and Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, 1913-1952 (Wiley 2002). Harper’s Magazine, Paris Review and Best American Essays have published his criticism and non-fiction. Professor Jackson earned a PhD in English and American literature at Stanford University, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the William J. Fulbright program. He began his teaching career at Howard University in 1997 and he is now Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University. His latest books are Hold It Real Still: Clint Eastwood, Race, and the Cinema of the American West (Johns Hopkins University Press 2022) and Shelter: A Black Tale from Homeland, Baltimore (Graywolf 2022).
In addition to his writing and research, Professor Jackson launched and now serves as director of the Billie Holiday Center for the Liberation Arts, an initiative that showcases the unique arts, history, and culture of Baltimore. Founded in 2017, the project fosters organic links between the intellectual life of Johns Hopkins University and the city’s historic African-American communities, celebrating the strengths and potential of both. The BHCLA serves a cultural purpose, hosting regular events to nurture such connections, as well as an archival one, protecting artifacts of African-American culture and politics.
Jackson is currently working on an early twentieth century history of jazz music in Baltimore City.
Sean Jones
Music and spirituality have always been fully intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and activist Sean Jones. Singing and performing as a child with the church choir in his hometown of Warren, Ohio, Jones switched from the drums to the trumpet at the age of 10.
Jones is a musical chameleon and is comfortable in any musical setting no matter what the role or the genre. He is equally adept in being a member of an ensemble as he is at being a bandleader. Jones turned a 6-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra into an offer from Wynton Marsalis for a permanent position as lead trumpeter, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015 Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. During this time, he managed to keep a core group of talented musicians together under his leadership forming the foundation for his groups that have produced and released eight recordings on the Mack Avenue Records, the latest is his 2017 release Sean Jones: Live from the Jazz Bistro.
Sean Jones has been prominently featured with a number of artists, recording and/or performing with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Gerald Wilson and Marcus Miller. Jones was selected by Miller, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter for their Tribute to Miles tour in 2011.
He has also performed with the Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown Symphony Orchestras as well as Soulful Symphony in Baltimore and in a chamber group at the Salt Bay Chamber Festival. Sean is also an internationally recognized educator. He was named the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz at John Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Before coming to Peabody, Jones served as the Chair of the Brass Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Photo Credit: Todd Rosenberg
Angela Rodgers-Koukoui
Angela Rodgers-Koukoui is a dedicated Cultural Curator and serves as the Outreach Engagement Librarian at the University of Baltimore, RLB Library. In addition to her work at the university, Angela plays a vital role as the co-director of the Community Archives Program for Inheritance Baltimore, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University’s Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts. This program focuses on preserving African-American art and culture.
Angela’s educational background includes a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Maryland’s College Park and a bachelor’s in Integrated Arts from the University of Baltimore. She is also an alumna of the renowned Baltimore School for the Arts.
Passionate about giving back to her community, Angela founded a community arts program that teaches dance to young individuals in Baltimore. Her choreography has been showcased at notable events such as AFRAM, ArtScape, and Baltimore Light City. Angela’s passion for preserving and highlighting the rich history of the arts in Baltimore led her to curate The Baltimore Cultural Arts Program, 1964-1993 photography exhibit at the University of Baltimore in 2016. The exhibit showcased the remarkable contributions and impact of the program during that period. In 2020, a revised exhibit was featured as a digital exhibition, making the program’s history accessible to a broader audience. By collaborating with various local art organizations, museums, and institutions, Angela continues to make a significant impact through her dedication to preserving and promoting the arts and culture of Baltimore.
Dr. David Olaquyi Fakunle
David Olawuyi Fakunle, Ph.D. is a “mercenary for change,” employing the necessary skills and occupying the necessary spaces to help strengthen everyone divested from their truest self, particularly those who identify as Black, Indigenous and/or a Person of Color. David serves as Assistant Professor in Public Health at the Morgan State University School of Community Health & Policy, Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and Associate Faculty in Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. David’s interests include stressors within the built environment, manifestations of systemic oppression, and the utilization of arts and culture to cultivate holistic health through humanity, justice, equity and ultimately, liberation.
Additionally, David has applied artistic and cultural practices such as Black storytelling, African drumming, singing and theater in the proclamation of truth for over 25 years, collaborating primarily with organizations in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. region. Among many affiliations, David is co-founder and CEO of DiscoverME/RecoverME, an organization that utilizes the African oral tradition to empower use of storytelling for healing and growth, serves as Executive Director of WombWork Productions, a Baltimore-based social change performing arts company, and serves as Chair of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first state-level commission in the U.S. dedicated to chronicling and bringing justice to racial terror lynchings.
