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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (April 15, 2015)
Forging Trade with China Historic Church to be Demolished Business leader embarks on strategic initiative Residents say goodbye to local part of history QR code for Portland Observer Online See inside, page 4 See inside, page 3 ‘City of Roses’ Volume XLIV Number 17 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • April 15, 2015 Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity P AUL F ARDIG /C OURTESY S TUMPTOWN S TAGES Pianist and composer Michael Allen Harrison sits at the piano surrounded by the cast of ‘Soul Harmony,’ an original musical produced by Portland’s Stump- town Stages and based on the birth of R&B with the unlikely partnership between Deborah Chessler, a young Jewish woman, and Sonny Til and the Orioles, a dynamic black male vocal group. PHOTO BY O LIVIA O LIVIA T HE P ORTLAND O BSERVER Stumptown Stages, a Portland theater production company with an acumen for embracing diversi- ty, gears up this week for the world premiere of its all-original musical, Soul Harmony, based on the real life history of the birth of R&B, American soul music, DQG VSHFL¿FDOO\ WKH XQOLNHO\ SDUWQHUVKLS EHWZHHQ D young Jewish woman, Deborah Chessler, and the dy- namic black male vocal group, Sonny Til and the Ori- oles. In fact, the main character, Sonny Til, is played by his own grandson, De’Sean Dooley. Til was known for putting heroic anguish in de- BY Soul Harmony Portland theater group tackles birth of R&B mure ballads about loneliness, pushing his sleepy, ZRXQGHG YRLFH DQG LQÀDWLQJ D VLQJOH ZRUG LQWR D sunrise. Sonny Til and the Orioles did serious busi- ness in the late 1940s in Harlem, essentially replac- ing jazz as youth music, and creating fan hysteria at the famous Apollo Theater. Soul Harmony reveals their rise to music nobility and the role they played in challenging segregation in the south. The production is co-directed by Stump- town Stages founder Kirk Mouser and Julianne R. Johnson-Weiss, one of Portland’s premier vocalists C ONTINUED ON P AGE 4