Giving Back to Roberta Flack, Stories of Art and Music Returning from Those She’s Inspired
Published
Giving Back to Roberta Flack
Stories of Art and Music
Returning From Those She’s Inspired
Kuma Hula, Patrick Makuakane, Honors Flack
Choreographs Hula
To Flack’s “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”
NEW YORK — We can probably count on two hands the number of artists who can inspire a minutes-long standing ovation by simply being present in a venue. Musical icon Roberta Flack, the chart-topping, GRAMMY-winning singer of such iconic hits as “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” is one of those legendary artists.
Case in point: One night while attending a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City, the entire venue stood up and cheered for the vocal superstar’s mere presence for more than two minutes. Her friend recalls, “I heard Roberta say quietly to the crowd, ‘THERE you are!’ You could see how important it was to her to see ‘the audience’ that loved her and that she loved for so many decades. Her audience has been a constant source of love, communication, and validation for more than 50 years of performing.”
Flack has been unable to perform due to a stroke in 2016 and later became restricted from even going out to see performances (and be amongst her beloved fans) due to her ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) diagnosis in 2022. Her only musical outlet was watching performances on television, which lacked the connectivity to music, art, and the spirit of the audience and fans that she embraced wholeheartedly.
Out of this was born the idea to have an “Audience of One” wherein fellow musicians, singers, and dancers, who not only adore her but have been deeply inspired by her, can give back to the icon during this special time in her life. A talented array of artists have come to play, sing, and/or dance for Flack in the privacy of her New York home.
A recent public performance by Makuakane’s company in San Francisco included a 15-minute segment from that private performance of some of the pieces they performed for Flack. Makuakane first met Flack when her manager, Suzanne Koga (born and raised in Hawaii), invited his company to perform onstage with Flack in 2012 at the San Francisco Opera House. That first collaboration was with Flack singing “First Time Ever..,” live; and when she sang the first few lines of the song and saw the dancers, she had to stop and start again as she was brought to tears by the beauty of the hula. The dance is now the most popular and most requested in the entire repertoire of Makuakane’s company.
Other famous artists giving the legendary singer an “Audience of One” include GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriters Alicia Keys and Lisa Fischer, as well as Valerie Simpson of Ashford & Simpson fame, Davell Crawford (Flack’s godson), Reverend Jesse Jackson with his daughter, musician Santita, Vivian and Ray Chew with a small orchestra and gospel choir, along with some personal friends, including a former janitor from her prior residence (the famed Dakota apartment building) now turned popular musician. Even a piano-playing attorney has filled her home with musical love.
About Roberta Flack:
GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Roberta Flack is the first solo artist to win the GRAMMY Award for Record of the Year for two consecutive years for her #1 single “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973, which also won her the Song of the Year GRAMMY, and “Killing Me Softly with His Song” in 1974 which topped the charts for five weeks. Flack is also known worldwide for songs “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” her hit duets with Donny Hathaway “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You,” “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” (Peabo Bryson), and “Set the Night to Music” (Maxi Priest). In 2018, Flack was given the prestigious Clark and Gwen Terry Courage Award from the Jazz Foundation of America, and in 2017 was presented with the Town Hall Friend of the Arts Award and the Black Girls Rock Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, she received the Berklee College Honorary Doctorate and released the children’s book, “The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music” via Random House. Additionally, her Roberta Flack Foundation gives grants to inspiring creatives. She is considered one of the greatest songstresses of our time, effortlessly traversing a broad musical landscape over the years from pop to soul to folk to jazz with a voice the BBC describes as “a molten murmur [that] flexes into a cry as pure as a prayer, heartfelt as a confessional. It is elegantly tender, almost unbearably intimate.”
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