Two time Grammy and Emmy Award winning actress Rema Webb stars as Billie Holiday in “Crawford Grill Presents Billie Holiday”

PITTSBURGH, PA, November 15, 2023 (PittsburghNewsWire.com) — The Afro American Music Institute in partnership with the 2023 Bayard Rustin Festival presents Lady Day: the Music of Billie Holiday, Saturday November 18 at 2:00pm and 7:30pm and Sunday November 19 at 5:00pm November at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Homewood auditorium, located at 7101 Hamilton avenue in Homewood, pa 15208.

This production of Lady Day will star Broadway veteran Rema Webb. Rema is originally from Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley. She will be  accompanied by an all star band led by Gary Mitchell Jr of NYC at the piano. Dr. Ken Foley on drums, and new to Pittsburgh Benjamin May on bass.

Rema, who has performed Billie Holiday numerous times for both Dr. Vernell Lillie’s “Crawford Grill presents Billie Holiday”, and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill”, at Cape Theater  will perform an evening of Billie Holiday classics as part of the Afro American Music Institute’s ongoing forty plus years celebration. It is also a capital campaign fundraiser towards the planned building expansion of the AAMI’s new Ahmad Jamal Multipurpose and Performance Hall.

Rema Webb, who was influenced by amazing women such as Emelda Webb, the legendary Dr. Vernell Audrey Watson Lillie, and the esteemed Claudia Pinza, her opera teacher, to name a few, is an award winning, thirty plus years singer, performer, actress, and mother of two, residing in New York City.

She is the founder and CEO of the On Broadway Performing Arts Academy. The On Broadway PATP trains, prepares, and disciplines our nation’s youth for performing in films, broadway stages, and everything in between through their summer camps and public performances. They also offer master classes for personal instruction and tutoring with leading Broadway stars.

As a two-time Grammy award winner and Emmy Award winner, Rema brings a wealth of talent, experience, and spirit to any performance she’s starred in. From the Morning Star Baptist Church Choir in Clairton and Pittsburgh’s CLO mini stars, to broadway stages. Her Broadway credits include: Fat Ham, Ragtime, The Lion King, Book of Mormon, Violet, The Color Purple with Oprah Winfrey, Escape to Margaritaville, Music Man with Hugh Jackman. Her one-women show,  “Children Will Listen” garnered rave reviews. This performance of Lady Day will deliver a delightfully unforgettable experience of the musical journey that  Billie Holiday’s popular songs and unique renditions offer.

Gary Mitchell Jr, accompanist, is a multi-hyphenate artist, who regularly collaborates with renowned singers, instrumentalists, artists, and ensembles throughout the world. Mitchell has been featured as Jimmy Powers in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, at Portland Stage Theatre (Portland, ME), The Cape Playhouse (Dennis, MA), New London Barn Playhouse (New London, NH), Syracuse Stage (Syracuse, NY), and he frequents Barrington Stage Theatre (Pittsfield, MA).

Previously, Gary was a bass vocal artist at Houston Grand Opera and Artist-in-Residence at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church-Houston, and now serves as Director of Music and Arts Administration at First AME Church: Bethel-Harlem. He also conducts the mellifluous group he founded: Harlem Renaissance Chorale. He is Artist-in-Residence at Union Theological Seminary, a member of the professoriate: Tougaloo College, Texas Southern University, and Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University

Billie Holiday was a popular American jazz singer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is known for her vocal stylings, recordings and unforgettable performances with many of jazz and blues top artists of the mid twentieth century. Although her career was cut short, she influenced and impacted culture and those turbulent times with songs such as “Strange Fruit” that addressed racism and public lynchings, “God Bless the Child that Got His Own” and many others.

The Afro American Music Institute, founded by Dr. James and Pamela Johnson of Shreveport Louisiana forty years ago, culturally proliferates all forms of music rooted in the african diaspora through Dr. Johnson’s curriculum and pedagogies, staff and student performances, and partnerships with many of the region’s schools, universities and art and cultural institutions.

The Bayard Rustin Festival, now in its thirteenth year, occurs annually in the Fall and Winter as an advocate and a celebration of same gender loving men of color through the legacies and lenses of Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin and Billy Strayhorn through music, dance, theater and the visual arts.

Tickets are $40, and can be purchased now at Dorsey’s Records Homewood, at the Afro American Music Institute located at 7131 Hamilton avenue, online at Afroamericanmusic.org or by calling (412)241-6775. Group rates are available.

For more information and sponsorships:
(412) 241-6775

For press, interviews and media:
Zach Fisher
(724) 809-5422

 

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