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Jazz 91.9 WCLK | Membership Matters

JUNE 17: 'Friday Jazz at the High' featuring Tony Hightower

High.org

"Friday Jazz at the High" kicks off a new season of sights and sounds with jazz vocalist Tony Hightower on June 17 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Curated by Hightower, the event will feature two musical areas where musicians will play throughout the evening, layering notes and improvising melodies.

In addition to the great music, Friday Jazz patrons will also get to enjoy the What is Left Unspoken, Love exhibition.

Singer-songwriter Tony Hightower has taken up the mantle to be a bridge between R&B audiences and real jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with roots that place him firmly within the firmament of jazz, Atlanta-native Hightower is just getting started in his journey. And he is bringing a lot of young people with him.

“I didn’t have a choice about doing this music,” he says. “My mother, Theresa Hightower, lived her life onstage. She was a fiery and versatile vocal pro by age 16 and had me when she was 19. So, you could say I’ve been performing since the womb.” And though he did not know his father, Ralph Baker, Hightower inherited the percussionist’s keen sense of rhythm.

Growing up in Atlanta with a local legend funk-rock singer for a mother, Hightower was able to learn music firsthand from Bobby “Blue” Bland, the Platters, Mother’s Finest, the S.O.S. Band, and Brick.

A man of the hip-hop/R&B generation, Hightower is known in the ATL for singing some of everything. He has performed with such soul luminaries as Lionel Richie, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and OutKast. As an actor, he has been featured in several Tyler Perry stage productions, movies, and TV series. However, the last decade has found him totally devoted to jazz, on a mission to bring the real deal to fresh, young audiences in memory of Mr. Freddy Cole, who was a musical influence and family friend.

Click herefor tickets.