2022 Gateways Music Festival, which connects and supports professional classical musicians of African descent and enlightens and inspires communities through the power of performance, presents an evening of chamber music featuring multiple ensembles. 

General Admission. Adults: $15 | Seniors and Students: $10 | Children/Youth (Under 18): Free. Purchase tickets here.

Attendees are required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination and booster and must wear a CDC-recommended mask (disposable surgical, KN95, KF94, or N95) while indoors. Cloth masks alone are not permitted but may be worn as a second layer over a disposable surgical mask.

About the performers:

Marian Anderson String Quartet 
Founded in 1989 and named after the legendary contralto, the Marian Anderson String Quartet won the prestigious Cleveland Quartet  Competition in 1991, becoming the first African-American ensemble in history to win a classical music competition.  The Quartet’s artistic endeavors have taken them to Alice Tully Hall, the Corcoran Gallery, the Library of Congress, the Cleveland Institute of Music, Kilbourn Hall, the University of Southern California and the Chateau Cantanac-Brown in Bordeaux, France. The Quartet’s distinguished history includes performances presented by the Da Camera Society, the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.  The Quartet’s members comprise Marianne Henry, violin; Nicole Cherry, violin; Diedra Lawrence, viola; and Prudence McDaniel, cello.

Marianne Henry | First violinist, Marianne Henry, has toured extensively as a founding member of the Marian Anderson String Quartet. A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, she holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in violin performance, from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. She received a second Master’s degree in String Quartet Performance at The Shepherd School of Music in Houston, Texas. Henry is a devoted teacher of violin and chamber music as well as a performer. She has served on the faculties of the Harlem School of the Arts in New York City, New York City College and California State University, Los Angeles. Henry has been a soloist on KUSC Radio’s Sundays at Four, a featured soloist with the List-Glenn Festival Chamber Orchestra, the South-Central Chamber Orchestra and the Afro American Symphony. She has been involved in a myriad of other orchestra work, which includes The Phantom of the Opera, the Academy Award Orchestra, and The American Music Awards.

Nichole Cherry | Second Violinist Nichole Cherry is a native of the Washington DC area discovered her dream job in music after hearing the Marian Anderson String Quartet perform nearly 20 years ago at the world-renowned Lincoln Performing Arts Center in New York City. A graduate of the Juilliard School with a master of music degree in violin performance, Cherry performs concerts and educational seminars playing and exploring the essence of European classical music and collaborating with some of the world’s most established artists. Noted for her ability to play in many styles, Cherry has shared the stage with a diverse list of esteemed artists, such as members of the Audubon String Quartet, Cleveland String Quartet, Colorado String Quartet and famed pop diva Whitney Houston. Cherry has also toured internationally, performing and giving presentations throughout the world. In the United Sates, she has performed in such venues as the Library of Congress, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. Her past performances in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia include a tour as a featured soloist in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and South Africa.

Diedra Lawrence | A founding member of the Marian Anderson String Quartet, dedicated teacher, and eloquent public speaker, violist Diedra Lawrence, has shared her passion for chamber music through both her instrument and the spoken word. A native of New York City, Lawrence received her Bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and a Master’s degree from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. She has held teaching positions at the City College of New York, the Bowdoin Music Festival and California State University, Los Angeles. Lawrence has been a guest artist with the Southwest Chamber Ensemble, performed as a concerto soloist for both the List-Glenn Chamber Music festival and the Symphony Camerata and has performed live on KUSC Radio’s Sundays at Four. She has also served as a grant panelist for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Prudence McDaniel | Prudence McDaniel, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Drake University, Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music, and an Artist Diploma from Duquesne University. McDaniel has performed as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout the United States and in Portugal. Through participation in the Minority Orchestral Fellowship Program, McDaniel was a section cellist with both the Houston and New York Philharmonic Orchestras. She has also been principal cellist with River Cities Symphony Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and an Associate member of the Columbus Symphony.

Gateways Brass Collective 
The Gateways Brass Collective is a group of extraordinary musicians who play a wide range of works from the traditional brass quintet repertoire through jazz and beyond. They are the only all-Black professional brass quintet in the United States and tour regularly giving performances and clinics under the sponsorship of premier instrument manufacturer Conn-Selmer. Members of the quartet include Courtney Jones, trumpet; Herb Smith, trumpet; Eric Davis, French horn; Isrea Butler, trombone; and Richard White, tuba. Referred to as “a brass quintet for the 21st century,” the Gateways Brass Collective embraces the mission and ideals of the Gateways Music Festival, including professional artistry, joyful determination, productive collaboration and community ownership.

Isrea Butler, DMA, Trombone| Butler has obtained multiple degrees in trombone performance from the Eastman School of Music (BM and MM) and Rutgers University (DMA). His teachers include John Marcellus, Ralph Sauer, George Roberts, Tom Ervin, Michael Powell, and Weston Sprott.

As well as being a founding member of the Gateways Brass Collective, he has played all four chairs in the world-famous Count Basie Orchestra and with many of New York City’s top jazz ensembles. In addition, he has played trombone and tuba for eight Broadway productions. Currently, he is the Music Department Head at Valdosta State University. He was the Music Department Chair at North Carolina Central University and Professor of Trombone from 2017-2021. He served as the Director of Bands and music program coordinator at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Director of Jazz Studies and Low Brass at the University of Mary. Butler was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Trombone at Jackson State University where he taught trombone, conducted the University Brass Ensemble, Jazz Combo, and taught Graduate Music History. He has also taught at the Eastman School of Music, Juilliard School of Music’s Music Advancement Program (MAP), and Rutgers University. His students have gone on to perform, teach and study at graduate schools such as Indiana University, Berklee College of Music, University of Northern Iowa, Rutgers University, Eastman School of Music, University of Memphis, Towson University, and Montclair State University.

Butler has been the conductor of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Wind Ensemble, HBCU Trombone Choir, Associate Conductor of the Brighton Symphony, and Eastman Trombone Choir and Brass Guild. He studied conducting with Brad Lubman, William Weinert, Mark Scatterday, and Kynan Johns. While in New York, he was a frequent performer in numerous Broadway shows and many other prestigious musical performances. He has toured, recorded, and performed with many of the country’s leading jazz orchestras including the legacy orchestras of Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Mingus Big Band, Glenn Miller, Birdland Big Band, Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, and the Jimmy Heath Orchestra. Also at home playing classical music he has performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Rochester Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, and the Colour of Music Festival Orchestra. Butler is a Conn-Selmer clinician and performing artist.

Eric Davis, DMA, Horn | Eric Davis leads a diverse musical life. He is in demand as a soloist, chamber, orchestral, Broadway, and commercial recording musician.

Davis is the former Principal Horn of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Queretaro, Mexico, and La Kamerata, Chamber Orchestra in Greece, and currently performs with the New Jersey Symphony, the Princeton Symphony, and the Vermont Symphony.

A 2018 Grammy nominee for Doug Beavers’ album “The Art of Arrangement,” Davis has performed with The Roots, Bernadette Peters, Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra Jr., and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

Davis is the horn professor at Hofstra University. His teachers have included David Jolley, Douglas Lundeen, and William Brown.

Courtney Jones, DMA, Trumpet | The newest directions in 21st-century trumpet performance are being explored and defined by Jones, an award-winning Bach solo performing and recording artist who has also emerged as a leading figure in contemporary performance, chamber conducting, pedagogy, and service to inner-city youth through music outreach programs and mentorship.

Jones is in high demand as a clinician and adjudicator and transcends stylistic boundaries when performing throughout North America and internationally. In addition to his solo career, he has performed with the Golden State Pop Orchestra, the Southeast Symphony, the Macao Orchestra, the Pasadena Orchestra, the Debut Orchestra, the Inspiravi Chamber Orchestra, the Orchid City Brass Band, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Long Beach Opera, the Chamber Singers of Iowa City, and the Salt-River Brass Band. His feature film and television credits include music performed for “Glee,” “Notes from Dad,” “Cougar Town,” and “Criminal Minds.”

Jones completed his Doctor of Musical Arts and taught at University of California at Los Angeles, served as Visiting Professor of Trumpet at the University of Iowa and Lecturer of Music at Columbus State University. He is currently the Assistant Professor of Trumpet and Artistic Director of Jazz and Chamber Ensembles at Florida Atlantic University.

Herbert Smith, Trumpet | Smith’s varied teaching experience has included teaching musicians and non-musicians of all ages. He began his Artist in Residence work with the now disbanded Rochester Chapter of the Aesthetic Education Institute, and he is frequently involved in residencies with the Rochester City School District and many school districts in the surrounding area. Herb also conducts masterclasses and lectures on trumpet technique, endurance and sound production; works with high school bands and orchestras as teacher and soloist; and gives individual lessons in his private studio.

As a composer Smith has been commissioned to write pieces for brass ensembles, high school choirs, jazz ensembles and trumpet ensembles, all the while composing for his own jazz trio. Herb’s composition “The Twelve Tones of Christmas” for trumpet, piano and voice, was premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2008. Recently, Smith was commissioned to write a ballet for the Garth Fagen Children’s Ensemble. The six-part work of more than 40 minutes spanned many styles including Reggae, classical, Jazz and Funk. A four-voice piece for high school choir was premiered in 2014 at the Finney School in New York. Smith composed a fanfare for the dedication of the new auditorium at Our Lady of Mercy School for Young Women in Rochester.

Smith’s orchestral conducting debut took place with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in January 2019, where he leads a program aimed at dismantling the musical hierarchy of classical music and making it accessible to youth. He is a faculty member at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he directs two jazz bands and is frequently requested to conduct all-county big bands in upstate New York.

RIichard White, DMA, Tuba | White began his tuba studies at age twelve at the Baltimore School for the Arts. He then attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he received his Bachelor’s degree. He received both his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the University of Indiana, and became the first African American in the world to receive a doctorate of music in tuba.

White is currently in his ninth season as Principal Tubist of the New Mexico Philharmonic. He enjoys teaching at the University of New Mexico, where he is Associate Professor of tuba/euphonium and Associate Director of the Spirit Marching Band. Visit www.rawtubafilm.com to learn more about the award-winning that narrates White’s inspirational life journey.

Gateways Piano Quartet
As Gateways Music Festival’s newest touring ensemble, the Gateways Piano Quartet celebrates the mission of the Gateways Music Festival to “connect and support professional classical musicians of African descent and enlighten and inspire audiences through the power of performance.”  Members of the Quartet are esteemed soloists in their own right and include Terrence Wilson, piano; Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin; Amadi Azikiwe, viola; and Troy Stuart, cello. The program includes Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, a work by Florence Price, and others to be announced.

Terrence Wilson | Acclaimed by the Baltimore Sun as “one of the biggest pianistic talents to have emerged in this country in the last 25 years,”  pianist Terrence Wilson has appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Washington, DC (National Symphony), San Francisco, St. Louis, and with the orchestras of Cleveland, Minnesota, and Philadelphia and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

In the 2019-2020 season, Wilson made his Boston (MA) recital debut at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to critical acclaim. In March, 2020, Wilson substituted for Andre Watts on short notice, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Detroit Symphony.

The 2021-2022 season will bring Wilson back as soloist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. He will also make his debuts with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Boulder Philharmonic, and the Roanoke Symphony. In the fall, the Chamber Music Society of Detroit will present Wilson with the Escher Quartet performing Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor.

In 2011, Wilson was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Instrumental Soloist With an Orchestra” for his world-premiere recording with the Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero of Michael Daugherty’s Deus ex Machina for piano and orchestra - written for Wilson in 2007.

Terrence Wilson is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky. He has also enjoyed the invaluable mentorship of the Romanian pianist and teacher Zitta Zohar. A native of the Bronx, he resides in Montclair, New Jersey.

In the spring of 2021, he was appointed to the piano faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

Kelly Hall-Tompkins | Winner of a Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize and featured in the Smithsonian Museum for  African-American History and Culture, Hall-Tompkins is a violin soloist entrepreneur who has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive,” for her “tonal mastery” (BBC Music Magazine) and as a New York Times “New Yorker of the Year.”

She has appeared as co-soloist in Carnegie Hall with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin, in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall, at Lincoln Center and with the Symphonies of Baltimore, Dallas, Jacksonville, Oakland, recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, and festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, and in France, Germany and Italy.

As founder of Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul, Kelly Hall-Tompkins is a pioneer of social justice in classical music, bringing top artists to over 100 concerts in homeless shelters coast to coast from New York to Los Angeles, and internationally in Paris, France. Music Kitchen commissioned and will present the world premiere of Hall-Tomkins’ Forgotten Voices Song Cycle in Association with Carnegie Hall.

Hall-Tomkins earned a Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music under the mentorship of Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. While there, she was concertmaster of both of the school’s orchestras. Prior to that, she earned a Bachelor of Music degree with honors in violin performance with a minor in French from the Eastman School of Music studying with Charles Castleman. While at Eastman, she won the school’s prestigious Performer’s Certificate Competition.

Amadi Azikiwe | Amadi Azikiwe, violist, violinist, and conductor, has been heard in recital in major cities throughout the United States, such as  New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Houston, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, including an appearance at the US Supreme Court. Azikiwe has also been a guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall and The Kennedy Center. Abroad, he has performed throughout Israel, Canada, South America, Central America, Nigeria, India, Japan, and Hong Kong.

As a soloist, Mr. Azikiwe has appeared with the Prince George’s Philharmonic, Delaware Symphony, Virginia Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Fort Collins Symphony, Virginia Beach Symphony, Roanoke Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, Western Piedmont Symphony, Salisbury Symphony, the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, the City Island Baroque Ensemble of New York, the National Symphony of Ecuador, and at the Costa Rica International Music Festival.

Currently, Azikiwe is Music Director of the Harlem Symphony Orchestra. He is also Community Engagement Director of the Harlem Chamber Players and a member of the Pressenda Chamber Players.

As an orchestral musician, he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and as guest principal violist of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.

A native of New York City, Azikiwe first studied music with his mother, after which he began training at the North Carolina School of the Arts as a student of Sally Peck. His studies continued at the New England Conservatory with Marcus Thompson and at Indiana University as a student of Atar Arad.

Troy Stuart | Troy Kenneth Stuart, gifted American cellist and highly respected pedagogue, has shared his passion for the cello and chamber  music through his teaching at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (Preparatory and Conservatory), Baltimore School for the Arts, Third Street Music Settlement (NYC), and the Maryland Talent Education Center. He has also served on the faculties of Opus 118 (NYC), Schwob School of Music (GA - Visiting Professor), and Morgan State University. In recent summers, Stuart has taught at Apple Hill Chamber Music Center, Reveille Music Camp, Kinhaven, and Musicordia.

Highlights from recent seasons, as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician: performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto at Eastman School of Music with the Gateways Chamber Orchestra, presenting a duo recital with violin virtuoso Tai Murray at the Harvard Club in NYC, appearing in the Dorot Series in NYC―a concert of viola quintets (with Todd Phillips, Katherine Cho, Cynthia Phelps, and Maureen Gallagher), and a recital on the Four Seasons Series in San Francisco. For ten years, Stuart was a founding member of the Ritz Chamber Players. He has toured nationally, recorded, held residencies in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Florida, and was featured on the international FOX-TV broadcast of the NAACP Image Awards.

In 1988 Stuart was invited to participate in the internationally televised (CBS) Kennedy Center Honors in honor of violinist/conductor Alexander Schneider, where he performed alongside Isaac Stern, Jamie Laredo, Michael Tree, Sharon Robinson, and Pamela Frank. In 1993, concert pianist and Gateways Music Festival founder Armenta Hummings Dumisani invited Stuart to participate in the then newly formed Gateways Music Festival where he continues to serve as principal cellist.

Stuart is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore School for the Arts, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Major teachers included Richard Kapuchinski, Steve Doane, Norman Fischer, and Ronald Thomas. He has coached chamber music with Apple Hill Chamber Players, Isidore Cohen, Abraham Skernick, Timothy Eddy, Isaac Stern and members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Vermeer, Lydian, Audubon and Smithson Quartets.

Stuart is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Freidberg Lecture/Artist Award, and the Martell Cordon Bleu Award, presented by actor/musician Dudley Moore and the Seagram Company Ltd.