KU presents jazz concert, lecture on Louis Armstrong

LAWRENCE -- Robert O'Meally, director of the Center for Jazz Studies and the Zora Neale Hurston professor of literature at Columbia University in New York City, will speak on "Louis Armstrong's Comic Masks" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, in Alderson Auditorium of the Kansas Union at the University of Kansas.

KU's Interdisciplinary Jazz Studies Group is sponsoring O'Meally's talk and a pre-lecture jazz concert as a special evening for jazz lovers. KU's Jazz Combo I will perform at 6:30 p.m. in Alderson Auditorium. Both the concert and lecture are free and open to the public.

O'Meally wrote "The Craft of Ralph Ellison" and "Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday." He is editor of "The Jazz Cadence of American Culture" and of "Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Essays on Jazz."

He is the principal writer of "Seeing Jazz," the catalog for the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit on jazz painting and literature. He co-edited two volumes, "History and Memory in African American Culture" and "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature." He wrote the script for the documentary film "Lady Day" and for the documentary accompanying the Smithsonian exhibit, "Duke Ellington: Beyond Category."

O'Meally also was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1998 for his work as co-producer of the five-CD box-set called "The Jazz Singers." His other music projects include writing liner notes for a Sony/Columbia recent re-release of Louis Armstrong's "Hot Fives and Sevens," for a Duke Ellington box-set called "The Duke" and for a Branford Marsalis recording, "Romare Bearden Revealed."

"Generous support for this event has been provided by the KU Center for Research, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the chancellor's office," said William J. Harris, KU associate professor of English and a member of KU's Interdisciplinary Jazz Studies Group.

More information is available online at www.ku.edu/~kuijsg/ and at www.columbia.edu/cu/cjs/bio/omeally_r.html.