Portland observer., April 15, 2015, Image 4

Page 4
April 15, 2015
2015
In memory
of Joyce Washington
and Charles Washington
for their tireless work
in the Portland Community.
Come join us on
May 16, 2015
at
SEI, 3920 N. Kerby, Portland, OR 97217
Featuring many top athletic talents from
Portland high schools, in match-up
basketball games girls.
Excellent ad rates are available
for our ad sponsors.
Ad deadline is May 5th, 2015.
Contact us TODAY for the best ad rates and placement.
Joyce Washington Classic
For more info:
Mark Washington -- email: markw@portlandobserver.com
or Phone: (503) 288-9443
Talunaka Washington -- email: talunaka@yahoo.com
SPONSORS:
photo by O livia O livia /T he P ortland O bserver
Shanelle Leonard and De’Sean Dooley singing together at a rehearsal for ‘Soul Harmony,’ an original
musical produced by Portland’s Stumptown Stages.
Soul Harmony
C ontinued from F ront
and a member of Portland’s
African American community.
The effort dates back to 2011
when Greil Marcus and Alan
Berg, a Portland writer, began
a series of weekly interviews
with Chessler a year before her
death. Interviews continued
with her surviving husband and
daughter.
In 2013, Soul Harmony’s
artistic team was formed with
Alan Berg, Kirk Mouser, Ju-
lianne R. Johnson-Weiss and
Michael Alan Harrison, a pop-
ular songwriter and pianist with
roots from northeast Portland.
The five had worked to-
gether on Stumptown Stages’
award-winning It’s A Wonder-
ful Life. “Together the group
had a breadth of experience
in music, composing, theatre,
writing and education; plus a
shared affinity for the histo-
ry of American music,” said
Mouser.
Stumptown Stages is known
as a nurturer of new works and
Mouser said Soul Harmony
is not just another “jukebox
musical.” The concept was to
create a seamless score with
Chessler and the Orioles’ clas-
sic R&B songs, pivotal period
music, and their own original
songs to enhance the drama of
the characters and reveal their
inner stories.
“As our work progressed
we realized we were lacking
the kind of in-depth informa-
tion and the ‘connection’ with
Sonny Til we felt we had with
Deborah,” says Berg.
“Then one night in the
spring of 2013 Janet discov-
ered a video of Sonny perform-
ing in his last year. Beneath the
video a young man by the name
of De’Sean Dooley, a graduate
of The Duke Ellington School
of the Arts and the American
Musical Drama Academy had
written, “It feels so wonderful
to know that people really love
and respect my granddad’s mu-
sic.”
The next day Dooley was
called.
“Guess what? We’re cre-
ating a musical that tells your
grandfather’s story,” Berg
recalled from that conversa-
tion.
From that day forward,
Dooley and his father Ricky,
and grandmother, Wanita have
all helped enriched the many
voices of Soul Harmony. Dool-
ey traveled to Oregon twice
from New York to participate
for 10 weeks in Stumptown
productions.
The script eventually did
come together and so did the
original music, and Stumptown
Stages eventually had the full
performance on their hands,
which is now set to open here
in Portland.
Soul Harmony premieres
Thursday, April 16th and runs
through May 3rd at the Brunish
Theatre, part of Antoinette Hat-
field Hall and Portland’5 Cen-
ters for the Arts. Tickets and
more information are available
at stumptownstages.org.