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The Roberta Flack Foundation (RFF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by the late, great Roberta Flack with a mission to provide music education opportunities to young people regardless of their ability to pay, presented its inaugural scholarships to two gifted students in a ceremony held last week at Oakland, CA’s City Hall. The RFF – in partnership with Harmony Project Oakland and Oakland Music Matters – bestowed grants to Josiah Scott and Reginae Washington, both of whom were selected by their school teachers for the opportunity to take piano lessons with music teacher, Deanne Brewer, a veteran Oakland, CA-based piano and vocal coach who in her youth, through a remarkable coincidence, studied with Flack’s own beloved piano teacher, Dr. Alma Montgomery Blackmon. Held May 20, the ceremony was attended by representatives of the Roberta Flack Foundation and Oakland Music Matters, alongside Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and other community leaders, local officials and dignitaries.
“Joan Martin and I ran into Mayor Lee at Reverend Jesse Jackson’s memorial earlier this year in Chicago,” says Suzanne Koga, Executor of the Estate of Roberta Flack and Artistic Co-Trustee of the Roberta Flack Trust. “She expressed support and interest in lifting up Oakland youth’s music education opportunities, and as the Roberta Flack Foundation headquarters is located in Oakland, we thought that would be the perfect place to officially launch the RFF musical gifts. These inaugural scholarships will be the first of many music education initiatives to come from the Roberta Flack Foundation. We have another young scholarship recipient forthcoming in Greenville, North Carolina, Roberta’s hometown. We envision scholarships like this to be first presented in cities throughout the United States, and one day, internationally. We hope to collaborate with organizations, schools and companies to give young people opportunities to learn, perform, and record music.”
“It was beautiful to see the bright smile and glee on Josiah Scott’s face as he experienced the support of Oakland’s Mayor Barbara Lee and the Roberta Flack Foundation,” says Joan Martin, co-director of the Roberta Flack Foundation. “His young spirit and love of the piano fuel and inspire our future endeavors.”
A dedicated humanitarian and committed advocate of music education, Roberta Flack founded the Roberta Flack Foundation in 2012 with a mission to nurture young creatives through music, empowering them to develop the talent and skills to cultivate a language of expression that could touch hearts and inspire change. Flack herself experienced the support her foundation now aims to foster. As a young girl growing up in rural Black Mountain, NC, she received invaluable assistance from her family and her community – teachers, church members, choir directors, community sponsors and many others – to pay for piano lessons that ultimately helped her actualize her dreams and create an enduring, multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning body of work which continues to resonate across generations. Flack chronicled her journey in the acclaimed autobiographical children’s book, The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music. In addition to the Roberta Flack Foundation, Flack also founded the Roberta Flack School of Music at the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, NY, that provided an innovative and inspiring music education program to underprivileged students free of charge. To learn more about the Roberta Flack Foundation or to make a donation, please visit robertaflackfoundation.org.
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