Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer and pianist. Nicknamed "Sassy" and "The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine Grammy Awards. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century".
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, was an American singer and songwriter of blues and R&B.
Doris Troy was an American R&B singer and songwriter, known to her fans as "Mama Soul". Her biggest hit was "Just One Look", a top 10 hit in 1963.
Barbara Cook was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings.
Mary Beth Peil is an American actress and soprano. She began her career as an opera singer in 1962 with the Goldovsky Opera Theater. In 1964 she won two major singing competitions, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions; the latter of which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera National Company with whom she performed in two seasons of national tours as a leading soprano from 1965 to 1967. She continued to perform in operas through the 1970s, notably creating the role of Alma in the world premiere of Lee Hoiby's Summer and Smoke at the Minnesota Opera in 1971. She later recorded that role for American television in 1982. With that same opera company she transitioned into musical theatre, performing the title role of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate in 1983. Later that year she joined the national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I as Anna Leonowens opposite Yul Brynner, and continued with that production when it opened on Broadway on January 7, 1985. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal.
George Hearn is an American actor and bass-baritone singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.
Helen Dorothy Martin was an American actress of stage and television. Martin's career spanned over 60 years, appearing first on stage and later in film and television. Martin is best known for her roles as Wanda Williams on the CBS sitcom Good Times (1974–1979) and as Pearl Shay on the NBC sitcom 227 (1985–1990).
Leslie Marian Uggams is an American actress and singer. After beginning her career as a child in the early 1950s, she garnered acclaim for her role in the Broadway musical Hallelujah, Baby!, winning a Theatre World Award in 1967 and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1968. Uggams gained wider recognition for portraying Kizzy Reynolds in the television miniseries Roots (1977), earning Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for her performance.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a musical written by Rupert Holmes based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. The show was the first Broadway musical with multiple endings. The musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical; from among eleven nominations. Holmes received Tony awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.
The Gospel at Colonus is an African-American musical version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in 1983 by the experimental-theatre director Lee Breuer, one of the founders of the seminal American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, and composer Bob Telson. The musical was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show had a brief run on Broadway in 1988.
Die Tödliche Doris(Deadly Doris; a pun on tödliche Dosis, meaning lethal dose) was a performance art and music group based in West Berlin from 1980 to 1987. It was founded by band members Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen and later joined by Käthe Kruse, Chris Dreier, Dagmar Dimitroff and Tabea Blumenschein.
Mama, I Want to Sing! is a 2012 musical drama film starring Ciara, written and directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, an adaptation of the 1983 off-Broadway gospel stage musical of the same name written and produced by Vy Higginsen and Ken Wydro. It was the final film produced by Fox Faith prior to its dissolving.
Josina van de Wijdeven, known as José Hoebee, is a Dutch pop singer. She was a member of Luv' in the late 1970s and early 1980s that scored hits in more than 15 countries. In late 1981, she went solo and was successful in her homeland and in the Flanders region of Belgium between 1982 and 1985. She formed a duo known as Bonnie & José with Bonnie St. Claire to record Dutch cover versions of ABBA's songs.
Stacy Francis is an American singer and actress. She is best known for being a part of the girl group Ex Girlfriend and as a contestant in the first season of The X Factor USA. Francis has also made several television appearances on various shows. She also performed for Tom Cruise at his 40th birthday. Stacy participated in the nineteenth series of the UK television show Celebrity Big Brother as a "new star" housemate.
Doris Troy is an album released in 1970 on the Beatles' Apple Records label by American soul singer Doris Troy. It features songs written by Troy and a number of the participants on the sessions, including George Harrison, Stephen Stills, Klaus Voormann and Ringo Starr. Through the extended period of recording, the album became an all-star collaborative effort, typical of many Apple projects during 1968–70, although it was Troy's only album on the Beatles' label. Other guest musicians included Billy Preston, Peter Frampton, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton and members of the Delaney & Bonnie Friends band. Like the Harrison-produced single "Ain't That Cute", Doris Troy failed to chart in Britain or America on release.
D'Atra Hicks is an American actress and singer. Hicks is best known for her role as Jackie Simmons in Tyler Perry's 2002 stage play Madea's Family Reunion. Hicks has also performed as Nurse Trudy in the 2006 stage play What's Done in the Dark and as Niecy in the 2009 play Laugh to Keep from Crying.
Sheila Dabney is an American actress, best known for her co-starring role in the 1987 lesbian feminist film She Must Be Seeing Things alongside Lois Weaver and directed by Sheila McLaughlin.
Robin Saex Garbose is an American filmmaker and theatre director. Following an early career directing several off-Broadway plays and episodes of the shows Head of the Class and America's Most Wanted, Garbose embraced Orthodox Judaism and founded the Kol Neshama Performing Arts Conservatory, a summer camp and arts conservatory providing an artistic outlet for teenage Orthodox girls. With Kol Neshama, she has produced several projects, including the films A Light at Greytowers (2007), The Heart That Sings (2011), and Operation: Candlelight (2014). Her projects have been screened at the Museum of Tolerance, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Cinematheques, and the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
Vy Higginsen is an American theater producer, playwright, former disc jockey, and radio and television personality. She is the founder and executive director of the Mama Foundation for the Arts, and the co-writer of the 1983 musical Mama, I Want to Sing!, the longest running black off-Broadway musical in American history.
John Frank Oddo was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He is most notably associated as pianist and musical director for Woody Herman, Rosemary Clooney and Michael Feinstein.
