Vocalist to kick off series at YSU

By Denise Dick

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Sophia Brooks, an internationally known vocalist who studied at Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music in the 1950s, will be performing on campus Thursday to kick off the YSU Diversity Council’s 2010-11 Community Diversity Program Series.

“An Evening of 19th Century Negro Spirituals,” the first in the series, is set for 7 p.m. in the Ford Theater at YSU’s Bliss Hall. Event co-sponsors are YSU’s Department of Theater and Dance, the Dana School of Music and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Planning Committee.

Brooks, a city native who was educated in the city schools, the Dana School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music, said she created the musical program to showcase the rich heritage of “Negro Spirituals.”

“I will never forget this moment,” Brooks said of the opportunity to sing for the first time in YSU’s Ford Theater. “This is a dream come true for me.”

A soprano classical musician, Brooks has traveled throughout the United States and Europe and was a soloist with Youngstown Symphony Choir. She also served for 14 years as community-affairs director for WKBN TV-27 in Youngstown, where she hosted a regular program called “Expressions.”

She has performed as a soloist at several area churches and is a voice instructor.

The concert also will include a historical narrative by the Rev. Dr. Lewis W. Macklin II and performances by For Grace, a Warren-based men’s quartet, and by musician Wilbert Ervin.

Ervin has played at the famous Apollo Theater and performed with such musical greats as the late Mahalia Jackson, the Mississippi Mass Choir, Mary Wells and Dorothy Norwood. He now plays for Great Liberty Baptist Church in Campbell.

Admission is free, but tickets are required and are available on a first-come basis, no more than four per person, beginning at 9 a.m. Monday at the information desk in YSU’s Kilcawley Center. Parking will be available in the Wick Avenue Parking Deck, located across the street from the Butler Institute of American Art and Maag Library. Guests are encouraged to park on the third level. A fee will be charged.

Other programs planned in September as part of the Diversity Program Series:

10 a.m. Sept. 15: health-care worker Carol Vitelli discusses “Health at Home,” OCCHA, 3600 Shirley Road.

6 p.m. Sept. 16: second annual Student Art Celebration, Newport Branch Library, 3730 Market St. Exhibit continues through Sept. 21.

6 p.m. Sept. 28: Atty. Margaret W. Wong discusses her book, “The Immigrant’s Way — For All Immigrants, By an Immigrant,” at Newport Library.

6 p.m. Sept. 30: dialogue with Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the nine African-American students, known as the Little Rock Nine, who integrated an Arkansas public high school in 1957. Set for St. Columba Cathedral, Wood & Elm.

For more information, contact the YSU Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, (330) 941-3370, or visit www.ysu.edu/div_ysu for the entire program series schedule.