A SusanvilleStuff Photofeature
by Jeremy Couso
The Lassen College Foundation’s big concert gala, celebrating Black History Month through poetry and music onstage at the Elks Lodge, was a huge success last week with a packed house and plenty of talent to go around.
Smooth jazz musician Kenney ‘Sax Man’ Polson opened the show, backed by local musicians, playing several numbers including songs from his latest album.
Fay Hauser-Price, a woman with a long list of acting, writing, singing and production credits to her name, led the performers along a timeline of black history using poetry and music to illustrate the lesson. Snippets of classic soul, spiced with gospel, blues, jazz and poetry showed how European melodies were adopted and refined by black artists here in America creating unique and diverse musical forms recognizable to music fans around the world.
Hauser-Price introduced her husband Louis Price, lead singer for two musical legacies, The Temptations and The Drifters, who entertained the crowd at the Elk’s Lodge with a selection of the greatest hits of the 20th century.
The show was both a Black History Month celebration and a fundraiser for the Lassen College Foundation with ticket sales benefitting the foundation’s many scholarships and projects.