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Certificates of Recognition awarded to the University of Pittsburgh 2014 K. Leroy Irvis Black History Month Celebration of the Arts honorees, Nathan Davis, Toi Derricotte and Vernell A. Lillie.
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On February 24, 2014, the University of Pittsburgh 2014 K. Leroy Irvis Black History Month Program, Celebration of the Arts, honored the achievements of three retired Pitt faculty, Nathan Davis, Toi Derricotte, and Vernell A. Lillie, who led efforts at Pitt to create distinctive and highly successful programs in jazz, poetry, and theatre, respectively. Nathan Davis arrived at the University in 1969 as director of the Jazz Studies Program. Shortly thereafter, he founded the annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert-the first academic jazz seminar of its type in the country. For more than four decades, the event has hosted some of the greatest names in American jazz history, including saxophonists Grover Washington Jr. and Sonny Stitt, drummer and band leader Art Blakey, trumpet master Dizzy Gillespie, and many others. Davis has published four books, including a scholarly text on the history of jazz. He served as faculty director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ (Washington, D.C.) career-development residency program for young artists from 2000 to 2011. In addition, Davis was a jazz master faculty member at the annual Ravinia Festival in Chicago for many summers. He also served as the musical director for the Thelonious Monk Institute in Aspen, Colo., and in 2010, was an artist in the newly formed Jazz Masters München Program, held in Munich, Germany. Davis has written more than 200 original compositions, including film scores, four symphonies, and a jazz opera Just Above My Head, based on the book by James Baldwin. It premiered in Pittsburgh in 2004. He has also received many accolades over his career, including the BNY Mellon Jazz 2013 Living Legacy Award, which was presented to him last fall in a special ceremony at the Kennedy Center in ...
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