Consuela Lee, pianist, educator, activist, R.I.P.
Consuela Lee, a jazz pianist who fought to establish an arts school for
children in rural Alabama on the grounds of a moribund academy founded
by her grandfather, died Dec. 26 in Atlanta, where she had lived since
2007. She was 83. Ms. Lee was a classically trained pianist who recorded distinctive arrangements of compositions by Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and others, playing in a style influenced by the likes of Mary Lou Williams and Art Tatum. She studied music at Fisk University in Nashville and Northwestern University
in Evanston, Ill., and had a long career teaching theory and
composition at historically black colleges including Alabama State
University, Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), Talladega
College and Norfolk State University. Read complete story from the New York Times.
Ms. Lee's music and information
Ms. Lee's music and information
Lee quote:
"When I got to Fisk, and this was the odd thing about black colleges, they didn't want us to play jazz, which they thought was a cut below Bach, Beethoven and Choplin and the boys," Ms. Lee told The New York Press in 2001. "They wanted us to concentrate on the Europeans. Of course we'd play jazz anyway."
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