Tevin Thomas is a U.S. musician, composer, keyboard artist, producer and educator.
He graduated with an Educational Technology Masters Degree from the New York Institute of Technology, he has been teaching music at PS.811x Bronx, New York, where he performs with autistic students. [1]
Tevin was born in Kansas City, Missouri and also grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Thanks to his music teacher Richard Wilson, he had his first gig at the age 14, playing sax and keyboards in a jazz band at the Tulsa YMCA with Robert and Charlie Wilson, Ken Collier and Troy Hanson. Since then, he has performed all over US and abroad working with 802, Aisha Wonder, Ashford & Simpson, Babyface, Bloodstone, Bobbi Humphrey, Craig Harris, Dionne Warwick, Gary Bartz, Gary Byrd, Impact Repertory Theatre, Jay-Z, Jeff Redd, Mary J. Blige, Nile Rodgers, Reverend Run and Roberta Flack. He is one of the very few pianists having performed with the godfather of avant-garde jazz Ornette Coleman.
Thomas co-wrote the song "Raise It Up" with Jamal Joseph, Charles Mack and IMPACT Repertory Theatre, who performed in the 2007 film August Rush . "Raise It Up" was nominated in 2008 Oscars in the Best Original Song category. [2] Tevin performed with Impact and Jamia Simone Nash at the 80th Academy Awards. In 2009 the August Rush soundtrack was nominated for Grammy Award.
Tevin moved to Strasbourg, France in 2014. Tevin toured with The Sun Ra Arkestra from 2018 to 2022.
Geddy Lee Weinrib is a Canadian musician, best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the rock group Rush. Lee joined the band in September 1968 at the request of his childhood friend Alex Lifeson, replacing original bassist and frontman Jeff Jones. Lee's solo effort, My Favourite Headache, was released in 2000.
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago ". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
Michel Jean Legrand was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, jazz pianist, and singer. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and additional Oscars for Summer of '42 (1971) and Barbra Streisand's Yentl (1983).
August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once on This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for the Grammy Award. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
While the music of Oklahoma is relatively young, Oklahoma has been a state for just over 100 years, and it has a rich history and many fine and influential musicians.
Christian Jacob is a French jazz pianist. He has gained widespread exposure as co-leader, arranger and pianist with vocalist Tierney Sutton, although he has also maintained a substantial career as a solo artist and leader.
Tevin Jermod Campbell is an American singer and songwriter. He performed gospel in his local church from an early age. Following an audition for jazz musician Bobbi Humphrey in 1988, Campbell was signed to Warner Bros. Records. In 1989, Campbell collaborated with Quincy Jones performing lead vocals for "Tomorrow" on Jones' album Back on the Block and released his Platinum-selling debut album, T.E.V.I.N. The album included his highest-charting single to date, "Tell Me What You Want Me to Do", peaking at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. The debut album also included the singles "Alone With You", and "Goodbye".
August Rush is a 2007 musical drama film directed by Kirsten Sheridan and produced by Richard Barton Lewis. The screenplay is by Nick Castle and James V. Hart, with a story by Paul Castro and Castle. It involves an 11-year-old musical prodigy living in an orphanage who runs away to New York City. He begins to unravel the mystery of who he is, while his mother is searching for him and his father is searching for her. The many sounds and rhythms he hears throughout his journey culminate in a major instrumental composition that concludes with his score, "August's Rhapsody".
Barry Doyle Harris was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. He was an exponent of the bebop style. Influenced by Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, Harris in turn influenced and mentored bebop musicians including Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Curtis Fuller, Joe Henderson, Charles McPherson, and Michael Weiss.
"Wild Is the Wind" is a song written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington for the 1957 film Wild Is the Wind. Johnny Mathis recorded the song for the film and released it as a single in November 1957. Mathis' version reached No. 22 on the Billboard chart. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song in 1958, but lost to "All the Way" by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn from The Joker is Wild.
Terence Oliver Blanchard is an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He has also written two operas and more than 80 film and television scores. Blanchard has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Original Score for BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods, both directed by Spike Lee, a frequent collaborator.
Jamal Joseph is an American writer, director, producer, poet, activist, and educator. Joseph was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was prosecuted as one of the Panther 21. He spent six years incarcerated at Leavenworth Penitentiary.
Bruce Martin Woolley is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He wrote songs with artists such as the Buggles and Grace Jones, including "Video Killed the Radio Star" and "Slave to the Rhythm", and co-founded the Radio Science Orchestra.
Dean Pitchford is an American songwriter, screenwriter, director, actor, and novelist. His work has earned him an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three additional Oscars, two more Golden Globes, eight Grammy Awards, and two Tony Awards.
"Raise It Up" is a 2007 song written by Jamal Joseph, Charles Mack and Tevin Thomas for the motion picture August Rush. "Raise It Up" is performed in the film by Jamia Simone Nash and Impact Repertory Theatre, an African-American youth theatre group based in Harlem. The song was produced by Joseph and Mack.
Jonathan Michael Batiste is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, and television personality. He has recorded and performed with artists including Stevie Wonder, Prince, Willie Nelson, Lenny Kravitz, ASAP Rocky, Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Rey, Roy Hargrove, Juvenile, and Mavis Staples. Batiste appeared nightly with his band, Stay Human, as bandleader and musical director on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022.
Paul Englishby is a film and theatre composer, orchestrator, conductor and pianist. He is best known for his Emmy Award-winning jazz score for David Hare's Page Eight, his orchestral score for the Oscar nominated An Education, his BAFTA nominated score for the BBC's Luther and his many theatre scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company, with whom Paul is an associated artist.
New Heritage Theatre Group (NHTG) is the oldest Black nonprofit theater company in New York City, established in 1964. Through its multiple divisions: IMPACT Repertory Theatre, The Roger Furman Reading Series, and New Heritage Films, New Heritage gives training, exposure, and experience to new and emerging artists, playwrights, directors and technicians of color. New Heritage was founded by the late Roger Furman and is currently headed by Executive Producer Voza Rivers and Executive Artistic Director Jamal Joseph. NHTG presentations capture the historical, social, and political experiences of Black and Latino descendants in America and abroad.