Billie Holiday’s 100th Birthday

This year marks the 100th birth anniversary of American jazz and blues vocalist Billie Holiday. Harlem’s Apollo Theater, a venue where Holiday played around 30 concerts, has announced a series of events to honor the artist born on 07 April 1915.

The program Apollo is going to present throughout this year starts on 06 April with Billie Holiday’s induction into the Apollo Walk of Fame where she will will be joining greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, Gladys Knight and the Pips, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle… “The Walk of Fame is our way of paying tribute to Apollo Theater’s legends who formed the landscape of American entertainment industry and Billie Holiday is a true personification of that”, said Apollo’s official statement.

The program continues on 10 April with a concert by two time Grammy award winner Cassandra Wilson who is going to present her special program Coming Forth by Day by interpreting iconic songs associated with this incomparable, charismatic and revolutionary vocalist.

Jazz Times’ Bret Primack described the tragic fate and unique talent of one of most influential jazz singers of the 20th century and a social phenomenon of her time with following words: “Billie Holiday had the kind of voice you never forget. No singer has ever distilled despair into such tones. She was a great natural born actress who drew on her own feelings and conveyed them with an honesty that cuts right to the quick.”

Billie Holliday died at the age of 44 in New York on 18 July 1959.

Listen to the composition All or Nothing at All from her 1958 album of the same name.

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