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Sister Lena Mae Perry says music is like medicine. She would know. At 80-years-old, Sister Perry has helmed the Branchettes, a celebrated gospel group from Johnston County, North Carolina, for decades. To see her perform is to witness the healing powers of music, and, at risk of cliché, to be taken to church. Born in Johnston County in 1940, she grew up in a farming family that deeply valued education, faith, and music.
Nina Simone’s first musical love was Johann Sebastian Bach.In her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You she noted that Bach “is technically perfect… Each note you play is connected to the next note, and every note has to be executed perfectly or the whole effect is lost. Once I understood Bach’s music I never wanted to be anything other than a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music.”
On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 singer-songwriter Charly Lowry played a set at the North Carolina Executive Mansion in Raleigh for the Music at the Mansion series, an ongoing program of Come Hear North Carolina hosted by Governor Roy Cooper and First Lady Kristin Cooper.Charly Lowry was born and raised in Robeson County, North Carolina, the geographic and spiritual epicenter of the Lumbee Native American Tribe of which she is a member. She is known for using her music to shine a light on the culture and traditions of the Lumbee people.
Brooke Simpson, a Haliwa-Saponi vocalist, songwriter, and finalist on NBC’s hit talent-competition show “The Voice,” is the latest North Carolina musician to take part in Come Hear North Carolina’s series “In the Water.”
Rhiannon Giddens, the Macarthur Genius Award recipient and Grammy Award-winning co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is the latest North Carolina musician to take part in Come Hear NC's live session series In The Water.
Today we are thrilled to share the second installment of In The Water, our live session series that sheds light on the spaces and places that inspire some of North Carolina's most renowned musicians. In this episode, Vanessa Ferguson, a Greensboro artist who gained national fame and fans as a finalist on NBC's "The Voice," performs Nina Simone's classics in the home where Simone developed her love for the piano and which is now the subject of a major rehabilitation effort led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Come Hear North Carolina premiered In The Water, a live session series featuring North Carolina musicians performing in unique, meaningful locations in the state, today as part of the Year of Music celebration.
It was big news when Tift Merritt returned to Raleigh, North Carolina last year. Born in Houston, T.X. but planted in the City of Oaks by the age of two, the Grammy-nominated songstress began making waves in the early 2000s with her dynamic voice and evocative song writing. Last year she and her daughter Jean moved back to her hometown after a nine-year stint in New York City, marking a new chapter of Tift’s career anchored in family, writing, and roots.